Sitting Quotes - Page 17

• In the days that follow, he begins to remember things about Moushumi, images that come to him without warning while he is sitting at his desk at work, or during a meeting, or drifting off to sleep, or standing in the mornings under the shower. They are scenes he has carried within him, buried but intact, scenes he has never thought about or had reason to conjure up until now.

  Jhumpa Lahiri

  Morning, Sleep, Drifting Off

  Jhumpa Lahiri (2003). “The Namesake”, p.200, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died...He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life...Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense.

  Jhumpa Lahiri

  Father, People, Grandparent

  "The Namesake". Book by Jhumpa Lahiri, 2003.

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• I love making, I love doing. I love being to the full, I love everything which is not sitting and watching and copying and dead at heart.

  John Fowles

  Life, Heart, Copying

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

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• The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself "Oh now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home. And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.

  Thornton Wilder

  Home, Adventure, Wish

  Thornton Wilder (2016). “Our Town and Other Plays”, p.293, Penguin UK

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• I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.

  Dodie Smith

  Writing, Kitchen, Kitchen Sinks

  Dodie Smith (2012). “I Capture the Castle”, Random House

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• The rooms of his apartment were full with the dog home again, convalescing. He was satisfied to know, even when she was out of sight, that somewhere in the apartment she was sleeping or eating or sitting watchfully. It was family, he guessed, more or less. Did most people want a house of living things at night, to know that in the dark around them other warm bodies slept? Such a house could even be the whole world.

  Lydia Millet

  Dog, Home, Sleep

  Lydia Millet (2009). “How the Dead Dream”, p.185, Counterpoint Press

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• When I heard the learn’d astronomer; When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me; When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them; When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room, How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick; Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself, In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time, Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

  Walt Whitman

  Time, Stars, Learning

  Walt Whitman (2015). “Drum-Taps: The Complete 1865 Edition”, p.42, New York Review of Books

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• Meanwhile it's got stormy, the tattered fog even thicker, chasing across my path. Three people are sitting in a glassy tourist cafe between clouds and clouds, protected by glass from all sides. Since I don't see any waiters, it crosses my mind that corpses have been sitting there for weeks, statuesque. All this time the cafe has been unattended, for sure. Just how long have they been sitting here, petrified like this?

  Werner Herzog

  Fog, Clouds, Glasses

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• But that's typical of me. "This is going to end in tears," I tell myself every time I balance a cup of coffee on the upholstered arm of the chair I'm sitting on. And then, lo and behold, the cup topples and even before it lands, I tell myself, "Told me so!" Not to spell out, or spill out, one of the metaphors of my life, but I always do the stupid thing and then I do it again. I never learn.

  Patricia Marx

  Stupid, Coffee, Land

  Patricia Marx (2008). “Him Her Him Again The End of Him”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

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• What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but "who is sitting in" - and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.

  Howard Zinn

  What Matters, White, House

  "The Israel Lobby, the Syrian War and the Meaning of Empire" by Andrew Stewart, www.counterpunch.org. September 12, 2016.

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• D’Artagnan: Why is Athos sitting by himself? Aramis: He takes his drinking very seriously. Not to worry, he’ll be his usual charming self by morning.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Morning, Drinking, Self

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• because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.

  Sylvia Plath

  Depression, Glasses, Air

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.94, Hamilton Books

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• Well, I was thinking this very thing. I was thinking: I am going to die today, but Jesu also died, so he knows how it is with me. And I was thinking, would he know me when I came to him? Yes! Sitting in his hall, he will see me sail into the bay, and he will run down to meet me on the shore; he will wade into the sea and pull my boat onto the sand and welcome me as his wayfaring brother. Why will he do this? Because he too has suffered, and he knows...HE KNOWS...Is that not good news?

  Stephen R. Lawhead

  Running, Brother, Thinking

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• I do not think you are in any danger of starving," Maximus said. "The surgeon said only two weeks ago that you are too fat." "The devil!" Berkley said indignantly, sitting up; and Maximus snorted in amusement at having provoked him.

  Naomi Novik

  Thinking, Two, Devil

  Naomi Novik (2009). “In His Majesty's Service: Three Novels of Temeraire (His Majesty's Service, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War)”, p.209, Del Rey

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• The gate is perfectly simple," Temeraire said. "There is only a bar across the fence, which one can lift very easily, and then it swings open; Nitidus could do it best, for his forehands are the smallest. Though it is difficult to keep the animals inside the pen, and the first time I learned how to open it, they all ran away," he added. "Maximus and I had to chase after them for hours and hours--it was not funny at all," he said, ruffled, sitting back on his haunches and contemplating Laurence with great indignation.

  Naomi Novik

  Animal, Simple, Swings

  Naomi Novik (2009). “In His Majesty's Service: Three Novels of Temeraire (His Majesty's Service, Throne of Jade, and Black Powder War)”, p.390, Del Rey

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• Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9:00 a.m. telling lies to one another, far from God.

  Denis Johnson

  Lying, Giving, Bars

  Denis Johnson (2009). “Jesus' Son: Stories”, p.25, Macmillan

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• Bolivia is a striking example. The mostly white, Europeanized elite, which is a minority, happens to be sitting on most of the hydrocarbon reserves. For the first time Bolivia is becoming democratic. So it's therefore bitterly hated by the West, which despises democracy, because it's much too dangerous.

  Noam Chomsky

  White, Democracy, Example

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• Don't we look suspicious, the three of us just sitting here in the car?" Borden asked. We'd look a lot more suspicious if we were all three making out in the car," Jazz said. "What?" she added, when Borden turned and gave her a wide-eyed look. You have no idea what kind of happy place you just took me to." Shut up.

  Rachel Caine

  Ideas, Car, Three

  Rachel Caine (2009). “Devil's Due”, p.132, Harlequin

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• There was something about being in the vicinity of Grahame Coats that always made Fat Charlie (a) speak in cliches and (b) begin to daydream about huge black helicopters first opening fire upon, then dropping buckets of flaming napalm onto the offices of the Grahame Coats agency. Fat Charlie would not be in the office in those daydreams. He would be sitting in a chair outside a little cafe on the other side of Aldwych, sipping a frothy coffee and occasionally cheering at an exceptionally well-flung bucket of napalm.

  Neil Gaiman

  Cheer, Coffee, Fire

  Neil Gaiman (2005). “Anansi Boys”

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• We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy's fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure--your perfection--is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Heart, Perfection, Silence

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• You wake up one morning and there it is, sitting in an old plaid bathrobe in your kitchen, unpleasant and unshaved. You look at it, heart sinking. Madness is a rotten guest.

  Marya Hornbacher

  Morning, Heart, Kitchen

  Marya Hornbacher (2008). “Madness: A Bipolar Life”, p.266, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I don't know. I imagine good teaching as a circle of earnest people sitting down to ask each other meaningful questions. I don't see it as a handing down of answers.

  Alice Walker

  Meaningful, Teaching, Circles

  Alice Walker (1987). “Meridian: a novel”, Isis Large Print Books

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• When you argue against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.

  C. S. Lewis

  Cutting, Religion, Branches

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.53, HarperCollins UK

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• ...That he'd seen...two people, a young man and a woman, sitting on invisible furniture with their feet up, reading books and eating chocolates.

  Megan Whalen Turner

  Book, Reading, Men

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• Oh, Lor!' said the boy, sitting down on the grassy bank at the edge of the shrubbery and very quickly getting up again because the grass was soaking wet. His name was unfortunately Eustace Scrubb but he wasn't a bad sort.

  C. S. Lewis

  Boys, Names, Sitting Down

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