Fluttering Quotes - Page 3

• It's nowhere near as intense as what I imagine an actor experiences backstage, but I feel a fluttering nervousness before a curtain goes up on a play. I mean, any play, anywhere - on Broadway or the Bowery or in a church basement.

  Ben Brantley

  Mean, Play, Church

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• That night, like every other night since I’d met her, I curled Grace into my arms, listening to her parents’ muffled movements in the living room. They were like busy little brainless birds, fluttering in and out of their nest at all hours of the day or night, so involved in the pleasure of nest building that they hadn’t noticed that it had been empty for years.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Night, Years, Bird

  Maggie Stiefvater (2011). “Shiver”, p.167, Scholastic UK

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• To live as I incline, or not to live at all: so do I wish; so wisheth also the holiest. But alas! how have I still - inclination? Have I-still a goal? A haven towards which MY sail is set?A good wind? Ah, he only who knoweth WHITHER he saileth, knoweth what wind is good, and a fair wind for him.What still remaineth to me? A heart weary and flippant; and unstable will; fluttering wings; a broken backbone.This seeking for MY home: O Zarathustra, dost thou know that this seeking hath been MY home-sickening; it eateth me up.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Heart, Home, Wind

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2016). “Thus spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None”, p.281, Friedrich Nietzsche

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• A plodding diligence brings us sooner to our journey's end than a fluttering way of advancing by starts.

  Roger L'Estrange

  Journey, Way, Diligence

  Sir Roger L'Estrange (1714). “Fables of Æsop and other eminent mythologists: with morals and reflections”, p.150

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• My taking a seat on the Council of the Fathers caused a desperate fluttering among my ghosts.

  Mason Cooley

  Father, Age, Ghost

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• He is solid; immovable, iron-willed. He showed me one day his killing bottle. I'm imprisoned in it. Fluttering against the glass. Because I can see through it I still think I can escape. I have hope. But it's all an illusion. A thick round wall of glass.

  John Fowles

  Wall, Thinking, Glasses

  John Fowles (1980). “The collector”, Dell Pub Co

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• From numberless books the fluttering reader, idle and inconstant, bears away the bloom that only clings to the outer leaf; but genius has its nectaries, delicate glands, and secrecies of sweetness, and upon these the thoughtful mind must settle in its labor, before the choice perfume of fancy and wisdom is drawn forth.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Reading, Book, Thoughtful

  Robert Aris Willmott (1907). “Pleasures of Literature”

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• The gentle fair on nervous tea relies,
  Whilst gay good-nature sparkles in her eyes;
  An inoffensive scandal fluttering round,
  Too rough to tickle, and too light to wound.

  George Crabbe

  Eye, Gay, Light

  George Crabbe, John Crabbe (1834). “The poetical works of the Rev. George Crabbe: in eight volumes”, p.300

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• Vain-glorious man, when fluttering wind does blow
  In his light wing's, is lifted up to sky;
  The scorn of-knighthood and true chivalry.
  To think, without desert of gentle deed
  And noble worth, to be advanced high,
  Such praise is shame, but honour, virtue's meed,
  Doth bear the fairest flower in honourable seed.

  Edmund Spenser

  Flower, Blow, Men

  Edmund Spenser (1965). “Books I and II of the Faerie queene: the mutability cantos, and selections from the minor poetry”

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• You could be attached to merely a description of a plant or a flower. Or a narrative of an event. Or rage at injustice. Isaiah and the other Hebrew prophets, in their rage, were being altogether attached - not at all detached, although as I think of the word "detachment," I also think of a sheet of paper, loose from its notebook, fluttering around somewhere in the wind trying to find its home again.

  Gerald Stern

  Notebook, Flower, Home

  Source: therumpus.net

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• He felt all at once like an ineffectual moth, fluttering at the windowpane of reality, dimly seeing it from outside.

  Philip K. Dick

  Life, Reality, Moths

  Philip K. Dick (2012). “Ubik”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Why all this insistence on the senses? Because in order to convince your reader that he is THERE, you must assault each of his senses, in turn, with color, sound, taste, and texture. If your reader feels the sun on his flesh, the wind fluttering his shirt sleeves, half your fight is won. The most improbable tales can be made believable, if your reader, through his senses, feels certain that he stands at the middle of events. He cannot refuse, then, to participate. The logic of events always gives way to the logic of the senses.

  Ray Bradbury

  Fighting, Order, Color

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• The World Trade Organization, The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions virtually write economic policy and parliamentary legislation. With a deadly combination of arrogance and ruthlessness, they take their sledgehammers to fragile, interdependent, historically complex societies and devastate them, all under the fluttering banner of 'reform'.

  Arundhati Roy

  Writing, Organization, Arrogance

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• The image that I remember most of all is of the Fenerbahçe players storming into the stadium before kickoff. They were called the canaries because of their yellow jerseys. It was as if they, like canaries, were fluttering into the stadium out of a hole. I loved it. It was poetry.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Player, Yellow, Jersey

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• The orange sky is rolling across the sky like a severed head, gentle light glimmers in the ravines among the clouds, the banners of the sunset are fluttering above our heads. The stench of yesterday’s blood and slaughtered horses drips into the evening chill.

  Isaac Babel

  Horse, Sunset, Yesterday

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• In my dreams I gorge on chocolates, I roll in chocolates, and their texture is not brittle but soft as flesh, like a thousand mouths on my body, devouring me in fluttering small bites. To die beneath their tender gluttony seems the culmination of every temptation I have ever known.

  Joanne Harris

  Dream, Temptation, Chocolate

  Joanne Harris (2000). “Chocolat”, p.188, Penguin

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• All craftsmen share a knowledge. They have heldReality down fluttering to a bench.

  Vita Sackville-West

  Benches, Share, Craftsman

  1926 The Land,'Summer'.

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• Those five fingers and that palm were like a display case crammed full of everything I wanted to know--and everything I had to know. By taking my hand, she showed me what these things were. That within the real world, a place like this existed. In the space of those ten seconds I became I tiny bird, fluttering in the air, the wind rushing by. From high in the sky I could see a scene far away. It was so far off I couldn't make it out clearly, yet something was there, and I knew that someday I would travel to that place.

  Haruki Murakami

  Real, Air, Hands

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• Art is like a butterfly fluttering in a meadow. Analysis of art is like a butterfly on a pin. Each has its value, but we must always be aware of the difference, and what is gained or lost.

  Walter Darby Bannard

  Art, Butterfly, Differences

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• Sometimes goldfinches one by one will drop From low hung branches; little space they stop; But sip, and twitter, and their feathers sleek; Then off at once, as in a wanton freak: Or perhaps, to show their black, and golden wings Pausing upon their yellow flutterings.

  John Keats

  Space, Wings, Yellow

  John Keats, Helen Vendler (1990). “Poetry Manuscripts at Harvard”, p.34, Harvard University Press

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• Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself -- in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity -- is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Lying, Men, Talking

  Friedrich Nietzsche “Delphi Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche (Illustrated): Friedrich Nietzsche”, Delphi Classics

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• From whence it happens, that they which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves; but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Book, Errors, Glasses

  Thomas Hobbes (1898). “The Ethics of Hobbes: As Contained in Selections from His Works”

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• Poetry isn't like any writing I've ever heard before. I don't understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind.

  Lauren Oliver

  Writing, Wind, Together

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• I’ve missed you,” he whispers softly. The air between them is electric as he leans in, gently brushing his lips against her neck. In the next room, the guests complain about the sudden increase in temperature. Fans are drawn from colorful bags, fluttering like tropical birds.

  Erin Morgenstern

  Air, Bird, Fans

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• Then your fingers moved down to my chin. You pushed it up with your thumb to look at me, almost like you were studying me in the artificial lights above my head. And, I mean, you really looked at me … with eyes like two stars. [...] And I had wings fluttering away inside me all right. Big fat moth wings. You trapped me easily, drew me toward you like I was already in the net.

  Lucy Christopher

  Stars, Mean, Eye

  Lucy Christopher (2014). “Stolen”, p.10, Scholastic Inc.

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