Insects Quotes - Page 11

The strain of constant adaptation to so many fearful events and discoveries is already too much to bear with sanity; one has to keep pretending to slip successfully into the new mould; a time will come when the tailored and camouflaged mind breaks beneath the burden; the stick insect in our brains no longer cares to resemble a twig on the same habitual human tree in the mere hope that it may survive extinction.

Janet Frame

Discovery, Tree, Brain

Janet Frame (2010). “Towards Another Summer”, p.105, Counterpoint Press

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There are two things that I know for certain guys are good for: pushing swings and killing insects.

Carrie Fisher

Swings, Two, Guy

Carrie Fisher (2011). “Postcards From the Edge”, p.78, Simon and Schuster

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However, as words become particularized, and as men begin - in however small a way - to use them in personal, arbitrary ways, so their transformation into art begins. It was words of this kind that, descending on me like a swarm of winged insects, seized on my individuality and sought to shut me up within it. Nevertheless, despite the enemy's depredations upon my person, I turned their universality - at once a weapon and a weakness - back on them, and to some extent succeeded in using words to universalize to my own individuality.

Yukio Mishima

Art, Men, Individuality

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I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

Jonathan Safran Foer

Rain, Eye, Moon

Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.37, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence—or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.

Arthur C. Clarke

Beautiful, Butterfly, Wings

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Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretches to the horizon. Complete silence - their speech centres are destroyed - except for the crackle of sparks and the popping of singed flesh as they apply electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionless air. A group of children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire and built a fire between his legs and stand watching with bestial curiosity as the flames lick his thighs. His flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony.

William S. Burroughs

Children, Air, Flames

"Naked Lunch". Book by William S. Burroughs, 1959.

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Looking a dead insect in the sack of basmati that had come all the way from Dehra Dun, he almost wept with sorrow and marvel at its journey, which was tenderness for his own journey. In India almost nobody would be able to afford this rice, and you had to travel around the world to be able to eat such things where they were cheap enough that you could gobble them down without being rich; and when you got home to the place where they grew, you couldn't afford them anymore.

Kiran Desai

Home, Journey, Sorrow

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I brought the birdcages to the windows. I opened the windows, and opened the birdcages. I poured the fish down the drain. I took the dogs and cats downstairs and removed their collars. I released the insects onto the street. And the reptiles. And the mice. I told them, Go. All of you. Go. And they went. And they didn’t come back

Jonathan Safran Foer

Dog, Cat, Reptiles

Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: A Novel”, p.185, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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I do not knowingly kill any living thing - including insects or rodents - and I thank my food for sustaining me.

Joan Jett

Rodents, Living Things, Sustaining

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By the River Piedra I sat down and wept. There is a legend that everything that falls into the waters of this river -- leaves, insects, the feathers of birds -- is transformed into the rocks that make the riverbed. If only I could tear out my heart and hurl it into the current, then my pain and longing would be over, and I could finally forget.

Paulo Coelho

Pain, Fall, Heart

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I had that trapped feeling, like some sort of a poor insect that you've put inside a downturned glass, and it tries to climb up the sides, and it can't, and it can't, and it can't.

Cornell Woolrich

Glasses, Feelings, Trying

Cornell Woolrich, Mark T. Bassett (1991). “Blues of a Lifetime: Autobiography of Cornell Woolrich”, p.16, Popular Press

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A stray fact: insects are not drawn to candle flames, they are drawn to the light on the far side of the flame, they go into the flame and sizzle to nothingness because they're so eager to get to the light on the other side.

Michael Cunningham

Light, Flames, Facts

Michael Cunningham (2010). “By Nightfall: A Novel”, p.207, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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Look at the bark of a redwood, and you see moss. If you peer beneath the bits and pieces of the moss, you'll see toads, small insects, a whole host of life that prospers in that miniature environment. A lumberman will look at a forest and see so many board feet of lumber. I see a living city.

Sylvia Earle

Cities, Feet, Forests

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No one knows, incidentally, why Australia's spiders are so extravagantly toxic; capturing small insects and injecting them with enough poison to drop a horse would appear to be the most literal case of overkill. Still, it does mean that everyone gives them lots of space.

Bill Bryson

Horse, Mean, Australia

Bill Bryson (2001). “In a Sunburned Country”, Broadway

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Of all the systems of the body - neurological, cognitive, special, sensory - the cardiological system is the most sensitive and easily disturbed. The role of society must be to shelter these systems from infection and decay, or else the future of the human race is at stake. Like a summer fruit that is protected from insect invasion, bruising, and rot by the whole mechanism of modern farming; so must we protect the heart.

Lauren Oliver

Summer, Heart, Race

Lauren Oliver (2014). “Delirium: The Complete Collection: Delirium, Hana, Pandemonium, Annabel, Raven, Requiem”, p.47, Harper Collins

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...If there's a noise in the woods, and there's nobody around to hear it, is it really a noise?" "Of course it is," she replied calmly. "How did you reach that conclusion?" Beldin demanded. "Because there's no such thing as an empty place, uncle. There are always creatures around --wild animals, mice, insects, birds --and they can all hear." "But what if there weren't? What if the woods are truly empty?" "Why waste your time talking about an impossibility?

David Eddings

Uncles, Animal, Talking

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You were just a boy on a bed in a room, like a kaleidoscope is a tube full of bits of broken glass. But the way I saw you was pieces refracting the light, shifting into an infinite universe of flowers and rainbows and insects and planets, magical dividing cells, pictures no one else knew.

Francesca Lia Block

Flower, Boys, Light

Francesca Lia Block (2009). “Wasteland”, p.6, Harper Collins

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Ben: "Gorog's no assassin! She's my best friend." Mara: "She's an insect, Ben." Ben: "So? Your best friend's a lizard." Mara: "Don't be ridiculous. Aunt Leia is my best friend." Ben: "Doesn't count. She's family. Saba is a lizard." Mara: "Okay, maybe my best friend's a lizard.

Troy Denning

Aunt, My Best Friend, Assassins

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The poor dog, in life the firmest friend, The first to welcome, foremost to defend, Whose honest heart is still the master's own, Who labours, fights, lives, breathes for him alone, Unhonour'd falls, unnoticed all his worth, Denied in heaven the soul he held on earth, While man, vain insect hopes to be forgiven, And claims himself a sole exclusive heaven.

Lord Byron

Dog, Fall, Heart

George Gordon Byron, “Epitaph To A Dog”

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Rust, corrosion, wind, rain. The nibbling teeth of mice and the acrid droppings of insects and the devouring jaws of years. The was of nature upon machines, of the planet's chaotic forces upon the works of humankind. The energy that man had pulled from the earth was being inexorably pulled back into it, sucked like water down a drain. Before long, if it hadn't happened already, not a single high-tension pole would be left standing on the earth. Mankind had built a world that would take a hundred years to die. A century for the last light to go out.

Justin Cronin

Rain, Men, Light

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Let us not go hurrying about and collecting honey, bee-like buzzing here and there for a knowledge of what is not to be arrived at, but let us open our leaves like a flower, and be passive and receptive, budding patiently under the eye of Apollo, and taking hints from every noble insect that favours us with a visit - sap will be given us for meat and dew for drink.

John Keats

Flower, Knowledge, Eye

John Keats (2002). “Selected Letters”, p.63, Oxford University Press, USA

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... a country encapsulates our childhood and those lanes, byres, fields, flowers, insects, suns, moons and stars are forever reoccurring.

Edna O'Brien

Country, Stars, Flower

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No poetic phantasy
but a biological reality,
a fact: I am an entity
like bird, insect, plant
or sea-plant cell;
I live; I am alive.

Hilda Doolittle

Life, Reality, Cells

Hilda Doolittle (1988). “Selected Poems”, p.172, New Directions Publishing

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Now did you know if a stick insect laid it's eggs in a jar of Bovril it will give birth to a litter of twiglets.

Tim Vine

Funny, Humor, Eggs

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The German passion for bureaucracy -- for written and signal forms . . . to move about, to work, to exist -- is like a steel pin pinning each French individual to a sheet of paper, the way an entomologist pins each specimen insect . . .

Janet Flanner

Moving, Passion, Steel

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