Shells Quotes - Page 20

• I was an empty shell. Like a vacant house―condemned―for months I'd been utterly uninhabitable. Now I was a little improved. The front room was in better repair. But that was all―just the one small piece. He deserved better than that―better than a one-room, falling-down fixer-upper. No amount of investment on his part could put me back in working order.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Fall, Order, House

  "New Moon". Book by Stephenie Meyer, September 6, 2006.

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• I like the way the morning can be stormy and the afternoon clear and sparkly as a jewel in the water. Put your hand in the water to reach for a sea urchin or a sea shell, and the thing desired never quite lies where you had lined it up to be. The same is true of love. In prospect or contemplation, love is where it seems to be. Reach in to lift it out and your hand misses

  Jeanette Winterson

  Morning, Lying, Love Is

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• She is a mortal danger without meaning to be one; she's exquisite without giving ita thought; shes a trap set by nature, a rose in which love lies in ambush! Anyone who has seen her smile has known perfection. She creates grace without movement and makes all divinity fit into her slightest gesture. And neither Venus in her shell, nor Diana striding in the great, blossoming forest, can compare to her when she goes through the streets of paris in her sedan chair.

  Edmond Rostand

  Lying, Streets Of Paris, Perfection

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• Because whipping an atlas at Jackson's head while he was flirt-touching that Frankie girl in geography would have been very satisfying. And beating him with the Eiffel Tower snowglobe while he kissed Cleo in French would have been tres cathartic. But she hadn't. Instead she'd been egg-like: a hard shell on the outside, and a runny mess on the inside.

  Lisi Harrison

  Crush, Girl, Flirting

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• To this day I don’t know if he was struggling with the moral implications of gunning down half a dozen civilians, or if he was mentally counting to see if he had that many shells left in the gun.

  David Wong

  Struggle, Gun, Half

  David Wong (2011). “John Dies at the End”, p.165, Titan Books

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• Stories heard but not recalled. Letters too. Words filling my head. Fragmenting like artillery shells. Shrapnel, like syllables, flying everywhere. Terrible syllables. Sharp cracked. Traveling at murderous speed. Tearing through it all in a very, very bad inreparable way.

  Mark Z. Danielewski

  Flying, Stories, Letters

  Mark Z. Danielewski (2000). “Mark Z. Danielewski's House of leaves”

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• It seems to me the worst of all the plagues is the slug, the snail without a shell. He is beyond description repulsive, a mass of sooty, shapeless slime, and he devours everything.

  Celia Thaxter

  Animal, Slime, Slugs

  Celia Thaxter (2008). “An Island Garden”, p.7, Applewood Books

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• As a boy I was a hermit crab, but I soon came out of my shell. Now I am a pincer crab, and soon I will be at my full power as a deadly nuclear lobster.

  Thom Yorke

  Boys, Lobster, Nuclear

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• I remember I was a child, and when I grew up I was a poet. It all happened at sixty miles an hour and on days when the clock stopped and all of humanity fit into a little chapel, into a pinecone, a shot of ouzo, a snail's shell, a piece of soggy rye on the pavement.

  Mary Ruefle

  Children, Humanity, Pieces

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• Alone in her shelter, she allowed herself tears. When her shelter cooled to the touch she called to Gull, “Coming out!” She eased her head out into the smoky air, looked over at Gull. She imaged they both looked like a couple of sweaty, parboiled turtles climbing out of their shells. “Hello, gorgeous.” She laughed. It hurt her throat, but she laughed. “Hey, handsome.

  Nora Roberts

  Hurt, Couple, Turtles

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• And Harry, with the unerring skill of the Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing. Voldemort was dead, killed by his own rebounding curse, and Harry stood with two wands in his hands, staring down at his enemy's shell.

  J. K. Rowling

  Eye, Hands, Skills

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• We build a shell around it, like an oyster dealing with a painful particle of grit, coating it with smooth pearl layers in order to cope. This is how we walk and talk and function , day in, day out. Immune to others’ pain and loss.

  Neil Gaiman

  Pain, Loss, Order

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• And Alex understood that Scotty Hausmann did not exist. He was a word casing in human form: a shell whose essence has vanished.

  Jennifer Egan

  Essence, Alex, Form

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• She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.

  Sarah Dessen

  Self, Talking, Alive

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “Dreamland”, p.33, Penguin

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• She hardly ever thought of him. He had worn a place for himself in some corner of her heart, as a sea shell, always boring against the rock, might do. The making of the place had been her pain. But now the shell was safely in the rock. It was lodged, and ground no longer.

  T. H. White

  Pain, Heart, Unrequited Love

  T. H. White (2011). “The Once and Future King”, p.366, Penguin

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• ... all this talking, this rather liquid confessing, was something I didn't think I could ever bring myself to do. It seemed foolhardy to me, like an uncooked egg deciding to to come out of its shell: there would be a risk of spreading out too far, turning into a formless puddle.

  Margaret Atwood

  Thinking, Talking, Eggs

  Margaret Atwood (1999). “The Edible Woman”, Emblem Editions

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• Not naive,' Conch shell had corrected him. 'He simply has not been taught to fear the things you fear.

  Tom Robbins

  Taught, Naive

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Skinny Legs and All”, p.68, Bantam

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• The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior. Suddenly I discover that I am ministering to AIDS victims to enhance my resume. I find I renounced ice cream for Lent to lose five excess pounds... I have fallen victim to what T.S. Eliot calls the greatest sin: to do the right thing for the wrong reason.

  Brennan Manning

  Christian, Ice Cream, Self

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• Her hands were empty now, as empty as her heart, which itself was a coconut shell with its meat scooped out.

  Thrity Umrigar

  Heart, Hands, Meat

  Thrity Umrigar (2009). “The Space Between Us: A Novel”, p.7, Harper Collins

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• It's okay to play turtle for a while, as long as you don't get too fond of your shell.

  Eileen Wilks

  Turtles, Play, Long

  Eileen Wilks (2008). “Night Season”, p.16, Penguin

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• Hickory dickory dock my daddy’s nuts from shell shock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and burned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o clock scholar blow off his legs and then watch him holler. Rockaby baby in the tree top don’t stop a bomb or you’ll probably flop. Now I lay me down to sleep my bombproof cellars good and deep but if I’m killed before I wake remember god its for your sake amen.

  Dalton Trumbo

  Wise, Baby, Sleep

  Dalton Trumbo (2007). “Johnny Got His Gun”, p.189, Kensington Publishing Corp.

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• A heartless hand on my shoulder A push and it's over Alabaster crashes down Six months is a long time Tried living in the real world Instead of a shell But before I began I was bored before I even began

  Steven Morrissey

  Real, Hands, Long

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• Books... are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with 'em, then we grow out of 'em and leave 'em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Book, Reading, Lobster

  "The Unpleasantness at The Bellona Club". Book by Dorothy L. Sayers, 1928.

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• Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and bones, ash and rind and dandruff and nailparings, saliva and snowflakes and moulted feathers of dreams, the wrecks and sprats and shells and fishbones, whale-juice and moonshine and small salt fry dished up by the hidden sea.

  Dylan Thomas

  Dream, Sleep, Eye

  Dylan Thomas (1954). “Under Milk Wood: A Play for Voices”, p.22, New Directions Publishing

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• We, unaccustomed to courage exiles from delight live coiled in shells of loneliness until love leaves its high holy temple and comes into our sight to liberate us into life. Love arrives and in its train come ecstasies old memories of pleasure ancient histories of pain. Yet if we are bold, love strikes away the chains of fear from our souls. We are weaned from our timidity In the flush of love's light we dare be brave And suddenly we see that love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.

  Maya Angelou

  Love, Pain, Memories

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