Shapes Quotes - Page 23

• Each letter has a shape, she told them, one shape in the world and no other, and it is your responsibility to make it perfect.

  Kim Edwards

  Father, Responsibility, Perfect

  Kim Edwards (2006). “The Memory Keeper's Daughter: A Novel”, p.21, Penguin

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• She cried for herself, she cried because she was afraid that she herself might die in the night, because she was alone in the world, because her desperate and empty life was not an overture but an ending, and through it all she could see was the rough, brutal shape of a coffin.

  John Cheever

  Night, Empty Life, Coffins

  John Cheever (2010). “Collected Stories”, p.97, Random House

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• A long white ribbon shot out of the crack in the wall. The ribbon just kept coming, weaving itself into some kind of shape next to Anubis, and my first thought was, My god, he’s got a magic roll of toilet paper.

  Rick Riordan

  Wall, White, Long

  Rick Riordan (2010). “The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles Book 1): The Red Pyramid”, p.284, Penguin UK

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• When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow. The rainbow is a division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a long round arch, with it’s path high above, and it’s two ends apparently beyond the horizon. There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of a gold at one end. People look, but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

  Hayley Williams

  Beautiful, Men, Two

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• This was the shocking thing; that the slime of the pit seemed to utter cries and voices; that the amorphous dust gesticulated and sinned; that what was dead, and had no shape, should usurp the offices of life. And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Struggle, Eye, Dust

  Robert Louis Stevenson (1993). “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde: The Merry Men and Other Stories”, p.53, Wordsworth Editions

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• ...If you work hard enough and assert yourself, and use your mind and imagination, you can shape the world to your desires. (151)

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Hard Work, Imagination, Mind

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• I see her as a series of marvellous shapes formed at random in the kaleidoscope of desire.

  Angela Carter

  Desire, Kaleidoscope, Marvellous

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• For himself, then. For his idea of the world, a world in which men do not use shovels to beat corpses into a more convenient shape for processing.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Men, Ideas, Use

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• ...yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From out dark spirits.

  John Keats

  Moving, Dark, Spirit

  Mary Botham Howitt, Henry Hart Milman, John Keats (1840). “The poetical works of Howitt, Milman, and Keats: complete in one volume”, p.533

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• I missed the sound of her shuffling her homework while I listened to music on her bed. I missed the cold of her feet against my legs when she climbed into bed. I missed the shape of her shadow where it fell across the page of my book. I missed the smell of her hair and the sound of her breath and my Rilke on her nightstand and her wet towel thrown over the back of her desk chair. It felt like I should be sated after having a whole day with her, but it just made me miss her more.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Book, Smell, Feet

  Maggie Stiefvater (2011). “Linger”, p.289, Scholastic Inc.

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• Days to come stand in front of us like a row of lighted candles— golden, warm, and vivid candles. Days gone by fall behind us, a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles; the nearest are smoking still, cold, melted, and bent. I don’t want to look at them: their shape saddens me, and it saddens me to remember their original light. I look ahead at my lighted candles. I don’t want to turn for fear of seeing, terrified, how quickly that dark line gets longer, how quickly the snuffed-out candles proliferate.

  C.P. Cavafy

  Fall, Dark, Light

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• The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. 'Anything,' he thinks, 'any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.' He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and--in the shape of rich men--is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as 'smart' hotels.

  George Orwell

  Smart, Book, Men

  George Orwell (2012). “Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.86, Lulu.com

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• Geric," she called. He turned back around. "What kind of flowers were they?" "I don't rightly know," he said. He made faltering gestures with his hands, forming their size and shape from the air. "They were yellow, and smallish, and had lots of petals." "Thank you," she said. "They were beautiful.

  Shannon Hale

  Beautiful, Flower, Air

  Shannon Hale (2010). “The Goose Girl”, p.187, A&C Black

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• I have this love for Mattie. It was formed in me as he himself was formed. It has his shape, you might say. He fits it. He fits into it as he fits into his clothes. He will always fit into it. When he gets out of the car and I meet him and hug him, there he is, him himself, something of my very own forever, and my love for him goes all around him just as it did when he was a baby and a little boy and a young man grown.

  Wendell Berry

  Baby, Boys, Men

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• Beloved community is formed not by the eradication of difference but by its affirmation, by each of us claiming the identities and cultural legacies that shape who we are and how we live in the world.

  Bell Hooks

  Beloved Community, Differences, Identity

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• I love you. As the same value, as the same expression, with the same pride and the same meaning as I love my work, my mills, my Metal, my hours at a desk, at a furnace, in a laboratory, in an ore mine, as I love my ability to work, as I love the act of sight and knowledge, as I love the action of my mind when it solves a chemical equation or grasps a sunrise, as I love the things I've made and the things I've felt, as *my* product, as *my* choice, as a shape of my world, as my best mirror, as the wife I've never had, as that which makes all the rest of it possible: as my power to live.

  Ayn Rand

  Love You, Pride, Expression

  Ayn Rand (2011). “Ayn Rand Novel Collection”, p.2002, Penguin

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• I have always known that there were spellbinding evil parts for women. For one thing, I was taken at an early age to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Never mind the Protestant work ethic of the dwarfs. Never mind the tedious housework-is-virtuous motif. Never mind the fact that Snow White is a vampire -- anyone who lies in a glass coffin without decaying and then comes to life again must be. The truth is that I was paralysed by the scene in which the evil queen drinks the magic potion and changes her shape. What power, what untold possibilities!

  Margaret Atwood

  Queens, Lying, Taken

  Margaret Atwood (2009). “Curious Pursuits: Occasional Writing”, p.127, Hachette UK

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• Can it really be love if we don't talk that much, don't see each other? Isn't love something that happens between people who spend time together and know each other's faults and take care of each other?...In the end, I decide that the mark we've left on each other is the color and shape of love.

  Sara Zarr

  Color, People, Together

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• At first glance, the key and the lock it fits may seem very different," Sazed said. "Different in shape, different in function, different in design. The man who looks at them without knowledge of their true nature might think them opposites, for one is meant to open, and the other to keep closed. Yet, upon closer examination he might see that without one, the other becomes useless. The wise man then sees that both lock and key were created for the same purpose.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Wise, Men, Thinking

  Brandon Sanderson (2011). “Mistborn Trilogy”, p.1196, Macmillan

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• The stems stood tall and straight, one series arranged in a single line, the other in a crudely shaped heart, the final one in the shape of the letter U. I love you.

  Lurlene McDaniel

  Flower, Love You, Heart

  Lurlene McDaniel (2010). “Don't Die, My Love”, p.160, Laurel Leaf

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• There rolls the deep where grew the tree. O earth, what changes hast thou seen! There where the long street roars, hath been The stillness of the central sea. The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form, and nothing stands; They melt like mist, the solid lands, Like clouds they shape themselves and go.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Science, Clouds, Sea

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Illustrated)”, p.845, Delphi Classics

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• I knew her hair and her coloring and her shapes would be different next time, but the way she wore her body would keep on.

  Ann Brashares

  Hair, Different, Would Be

  Ann Brashares (2010). “My Name is Memory”, p.65, Penguin

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• I love her bare legs from a distance. When she's standing by a pool. When she's facing the water, thinking. Her legs are white as watermelon rind, veined blue from cold. There's that 'H' shape behind her knees. The H trembles softly with the swimming-water cold.

  Jaclyn Moriarty

  Distance, Swimming, Thinking

  Jaclyn Moriarty (2010). “Dreaming of Amelia”, p.27, Pan Macmillan

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• The pyramid shape is said to hold many secrets and amazing properties. One of them is a sense of wonder.

  Vera Nazarian

  Pyramids, Secret, Wonder

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• The fierce words of Jesus addressed to the Pharisees of His day stretch across the bands of time. Today they are directed not only to fallen televangelists but to each of us. We miss Jesus' point entirely when we use His words as weapons against others. They are to be taken personally by each of us. This is the form and shape of Christian Pharisaism in our time. Hypocrisy is not hte prerogative of people in high places. The most impoverished among us is capable of it. Hypocrisy is the natural expression of what is meanest in us all.

  Brennan Manning

  Christian, Jesus, Taken

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