Napkins Quotes - Page 4

• Most people, of course, spend their lives caring about the wrong things. The worry about South Africa or Nicaragua. They spend so much time finding themselves that they lose their taxicabs. They don't see that what kind of napkin you get at a delicatessen is a matter of much significance in the world today. That's why they don't get linen.

  Kinky Friedman

  Life, Caring, Worry

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• Mr Earbrass stands on the terrace at twilight. It is bleak; it is cold; and the virtue has gone out of everything. Words drift through his mind: anguish turnips conjunctions illness defeat string parties no parties urns desuetude disaffection claws loss Trebizond napkins shame stones distance fever Antipodes mush glaciers incoherence labels miasma amputation tides deceit mourning elsewards.

  Edward Gorey

  Distance, Twilight, Party

  Edward Gorey (1953). “The Unstrung Harp, Or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel”, Harcourt

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• As we're leaving the King's Arms Hotel after Sunday lunch, I watch a beautiful white dove walking down the wet road. A car approaches and the bird accidentally turns into the wheel rather than away from it. A gentle crunch. The car passes. A shape like a discarded napkin left in the road. Still perfectly white, no red stains, but bearing no relation anymore to the shape of a bird. A trail of white feathers flutter down the road after the car. The suddeness is very upsetting. That gentle crunch.

  Antony Sher

  Beautiful, Kings, Sunday

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• [On living in New York City:] I'm oblivious to everything. I just don't notice anything. I sat in a coffee shop, drank half a cup of coffee before I noticed there was lipstick on the cup. There was wadded-up gum and lipstick on the napkin. I must have been sitting on that woman's lap for an hour.

  Laura Kightlinger

  New York, Coffee, Cities

  7 Copy quote

• So precious a talent as intellect never was given to be wrapt in a napkin and buried in the earth.

  Angelina Grimke

  Earth, Talent, Buried

  Sarah Grimke, Angelina Grimke (2015). “On Slavery and Abolitionism: Essays and Letters”, p.96, Penguin

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• Inspiration can show up almost any time, though I have yet to see anyone scratching out melodic ideas on a restaurant napkin as legend would have us believe. I think inspiration comes from concentration, and early on I learned about Mark Twain's habit of leaving for his study after breakfast and not reappearing until the end of the day, ready to read to his family what he had just written. That set a good example for me, although I didn't copy his habit of taking twelve cigars along.

  William P. Perry

  Believe, Inspiration, Thinking

  Source: www.empressbooks.com

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• Back then, a few doilies and napkins were all that a lot of women had. In the little house where I grew up, the pillowcases my grandmother embroidered were the only things of beauty.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Grandmother, House, Littles

  Source: www.oprah.com

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• When we ever invited the beast to dinner he didn't come in and swipe the napkins and start taking notes on the tablecloth 'bout how to take over the whole house?

  Toni Cade Bambara

  House, Dinner, Beast

  Toni Cade Bambara (1982). “The Sea Birds are Still Alive: Stories”, Vintage

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