Empty Quotes - Page 38

• Now he saw another elephant emerge from the place where it had stood hidden in the trees. Very slowly it walked to the mutilated body and looked down. With its sinuous trunk it struck the huge corpse; then it reached up, broke some leafy branches with a snap, and draped them over the mass of torn thick flesh. Finally it tilted its massive head, raised its trunk, and roared into the empty landscape.

  Lois Lowry

  Elephants, Tree, Body

  Lois Lowry (1993). “The Giver”, Laurel Leaf

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• He thought back on his family with deep emotion and love. His conviction that he would have to disappear was, if possible, even firmer than his sister's. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful reflection until the tower clock struck three in the morning. He still saw that outside the window everything was beginning to grow light. Then, without his consent, his head sank down to the floor, and from his nostrils streamed his last weak breath.

  Franz Kafka

  Morning, Reflection, Light

  Franz Kafka, Stanley Corngold (1981). “The Metamorphosis”, Bantam Classics

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• There is, I am convinced, no picture that conveys in all its dreadfulness, a vision of sorrow, despairing, remediless, supreme. If I could paint such a picture, the canvas would show only a woman looking down at her empty arms.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Sorrow, Vision, Arms

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• If I extend an empty hand and in retrieving it and finding it still empty, I feel disappointment, that is foolishness; yet if I extend a hand which is full and yet find no one to receive it, then that is hopelessness.

  Khalil Gibran

  Disappointment, Hands, Hopelessness

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• Passion is something you really don't miss, after it has cooled. It is like looking at an empty bottle on the side of the road and thinking, "Boy, I wish I had a Coke." The loves you miss are the ones that go away when they are still warm, even hot, to the touch.

  Rick Bragg

  Love You, Passion, Boys

  Rick Bragg (2010). “All Over but the Shoutin'”, p.216, Vintage

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• The problem with you is that you always see a glass of milk half empty instead of half filled.

  Jodi Picoult

  Glasses, Half, Milk

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• Good luck and believe me, dearest Doc - it's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear.

  Truman Capote

  Country, Believe, Good Luck

  Truman Capote (2012). “Breakfast at Tiffany's”, p.74, Vintage

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• This was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone...a security blanket, an ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always feel its presence like a swelling secret stone, and that way when she let go of the rage, she would not feel nearly as empty.

  Jodi Picoult

  Heartbreak, Letting Go, Pain

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• An empty frame, in which the picture is always changing, makes a statement about how time is always passing. It doesn't really stop, even in a single image. I t just feels that way.

  Sarah Dessen

  Way, Passing It, Feels

  Sarah Dessen (2006). “The Truth About Forever”, p.239, Penguin

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• We were talking of DRAGONS, Tolkien and I In a Berkshire bar. The big workman Who had sat silent and sucked his pipe All the evening, from his empty mug With gleaming eye glanced towards us: "I seen 'em myself!" he said fiercely.

  C. S. Lewis

  Eye, Dragons, Talking

  C. S. Lewis (2013). “Selected Literary Essays”, p.18, Cambridge University Press

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• If we go on to cast a look at the fate of these World-Historical persons, whose vocation it was to be the agents of the World-Spirit, we shall find it to have been no happy one. They attained no calm enjoyment; their whole life was labour and trouble; their whole nature was nought else but their master—passion. When their object is attained they fall off like empty hulls from the kernel. They die early, like Alexander; they are murdered, like Caesar.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Fall, Passion, Fate

  "Reading Hegel: The Introductions".

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• In the most complete friendship there is always a little empty space, like the space in an egg.

  Jules Renard

  Eggs, Space, Littles

  Jules Renard (2008). “The Journal of Jules Renard”, p.196, Tin House Books

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• I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free.

  Sylvia Plath

  Lying, Flower, Hands

  Sylvia Plath (2010). “Ariel”, p.14, Faber & Faber

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• With everything so perfect, reality seemed somehow fragile, as if the slightest interruption could imperil her pretty future... all of it felt as tenuous as a soap bubble, shivering and empty.

  Scott Westerfeld

  Life, Reality, Perfect

  Scott Westerfeld (2010). “Pretties”, p.297, Simon and Schuster

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• For, how else to seize such an instant? How to shout out into the empty air just the right words, and on cue? Frame a moment to last a lifetime?

  Richard Ford

  Air, Lasts, Moments

  Richard Ford (2006). “Independence Day”, p.352, A&C Black

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• Being a mother is like trying to hold a wolf by the ears,” Gram said. “If you have three or four –or more – chickabiddies, you’re dancing on a hot griddle all the time. You don’t have time to think about anything else. And if you’ve only got one or two, it’s almost harder. You have room left over – empty spaces that you think you’ve got to fill up.

  Sharon Creech

  Mother, Thinking, Two

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• Cool is spent. Cool is empty. Cool is ex post facto. When advertisers and pundits hoard a word, you know it's time to retire from it. To move on. I want to suggest, therefore, that we begin to avoid cool now. Cool is a trick to get you to buy garments made by sweatshop laborers in Third World countries. Cool is the Triumph of the Will. Cool enables you to step over bodies. Cool enables you to look the other way. Cool makes you functional, eager for routine distraction, passive, doped, stupid.

  Rick Moody

  Country, Stupid, Moving

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• Space is not empty. It is full, a plenum as opposed to a vacuum, and is the ground for the existence of everything, including ourselves. The universe is not separate from this cosmic sea of energy.

  David Bohm

  Sea, Space, Energy

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• I've lived so little that I tend to imagine I'm not going to die; it seems improbable that human existence can be reduced to so little; one imagines, in spite of oneself, that sooner or later something is bound to happen. A big mistake. A life can just as well be both empty and short. The days slip by indifferently, leaving neither trace nor memory; and then all of a sudden they stop.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Memories, Mistake, Leaving

  Michel Houellebecq (2011). “Whatever: A Novel”, p.46, Profile Books

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• On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.

  Mark Haddon

  Rain, Sunday, White

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• Regrets came up and asked me if I’d like to own them. Declined them for the most part but took a few just so I wouldn’t leave this relationship empty handed.

  Steve Toltz

  Regret, Ifs

  Steve Toltz (2008). “A Fraction of the Whole”, p.214, Spiegel & Grau

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• An empty shell. Those were the first words that sprang to mind. .... Something incredibly important - .. - had disappeared from Miu for good. Leaving behind not life, but its absence

  Haruki Murakami

  Leaving, Mind, Important

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• There we were - demented children mincing about in clothes that no one ever wore, speaking as no man ever spoke, swearing love in wigs and rhymed couplets, killing each other with wooden swords, hollow protestations of faith hurled after empty promises of vengeance - and every gesture, every pose, vanishing into the thin unpopulated air. We ransomed our dignity to the clouds, and the uncomprehending birds listened. Don't you see?! We're actors - we're the opposite of people!

  Tom Stoppard

  Children, Men, Clouds

  Tom Stoppard (2007). “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, p.63, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• She looked out then, through the crowd, and saw Simon with the Lightwoods, looking at her across the empty space that separated them. It was the same way that Jace had looked at her at the manor. It was the one thread that bound these two boys that she loved so much, she thought, their one commonality: They both believed in her even when she didn't believe in herself.

  Cassandra Clare

  Believe, Boys, Two

  Cassandra Clare (2012). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instruments Series (5 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels, City of Lost Souls”, p.1227, Simon and Schuster

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• I want to tear myself from this place, from this reality, rise up like a cloud and float away, melt into this humid summer night and dissolve somewhere far, over the hills. But I am here, my legs blocks of concrete, my lungs empty of air, my throat burning. There will be no floating away.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Summer, Block, Night

  Khaled Hosseini (2011). “The Kite Runner: Rejacketed”, p.301, A&C Black

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