Surface Quotes - Page 7

I want to think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be interrupted, never to have to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one thing to another, without any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to sink deeper and deeper, away from the surface, with its hard separate facts.

Virginia Woolf

Thinking, Facts, Want

Virginia Woolf, David Bradshaw (2001). “The Mark on the Wall and Other Short Fiction”, p.5, Oxford University Press, USA

6 Copy quote

Show source
I’ve always liked the feeling of traveling light; there is something in me that wants to feel I could leave wherever I am, at any time, without any effort. The idea of being weighed down made me uneasy, as if I lived on the surface of a frozen lake and each new trapping of domestic life - a pot, a chair, a lamp - threatened to be the thing that sent me through the ice.

Nicole Krauss

Lakes, Light, Ice

7 Copy quote
Knowledge can be like the skin on the surface of the water in a pond, or it can go all the way down to the mud. It can be the tiny tip of the iceberg or the whole hundred percent.

Siobhan Dowd

Water, Skins, Ponds

7 Copy quote
As I descend the stairs, I can’t help brushing my fingers along the unblemished white marble walls. So cold and beautiful. Even in the Capitol, there’s nothing to match the magnificence of this old building. But there is no give to the surface - only my flesh yields, my warmth taken. Stone conquers people every time.

Suzanne Collins

Beautiful, Wall, Taken

Suzanne Collins (2010). “Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3)”, p.209, Scholastic Inc.

5 Copy quote

Show source
As I travel through life, I gather experiences that lie imprinted on the deepest strata of memory, and there they ferment, are transformed, and sometimes rise to the surface and sprout like strange plants from other worlds. What is the fertile humus of the subconscious composed of? Why are certain images converted into recurrent themes in nightmares or writing?

Isabel Allende

Memories, Lying, Writing

4 Copy quote
He was wearing a look that she found odd and compelling - that amusement that didn’t seem to pass beyond the surface of his features, as he found everything in the world both infinitely funny and infinitely tragic all at the same time.

Cassandra Clare

Looks, World, Amusement

Cassandra Clare (2013). “The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Angel; Clockwork Prince; Clockwork Princess”, p.91, Simon and Schuster

4 Copy quote

Show source
The happiness of man is: I will. The happiness of woman is: he wills. 'Behold , just now the world ... entire love. And woman must obey and find a depth for her surface. Surface is the disposition of woman: a mobile, stormy film over shallow water. Man's disposition, however, is deep; his river roars in subterranean caves: woman feels his strength but does not comprehend it.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Men, Thinking, Rivers

"The Portable Nietzsche".

5 Copy quote

Show source
It was funny to hear her voice aloud. Her thoughts and perceptions usually existed so deep inside her, they rarely made it to the surface without a deliberate effort.

Ann Brashares

Voice, Effort, Perception

Ann Brashares (2012). “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants Complete Collection”, p.82, Delacorte Press

4 Copy quote

Show source
Literature presents you with alternate mappings of the human experience. You see that the experiences of other people and other cultures are as rich, coherent, and troubled as your own experiences. They are as beset with suffering as yours. Literature is a kind of legitimate voyeurism through the keyhole of language where you really come to know other people's lives--their anguish, their loves, their passions. Often you discover that once you dive into those lives and get below the surface, the veneer, there is a real closeness.

Chaim Potok

Real, Passion, Other Cultures

13 Copy quote
Music burst through him, perfect notes he hear rarely. Fire and ice, wind and calm, sky and earth, water and rock all fused together. Joley seemed as wild and turbulent s the sea, yet beneath her fiery passion, at the very core of her, she was as forceful and strong and as constant as the deepest ocean currents. Ilya seemed as calm as a windless sea, yet beneath the surface smoldered a volcano of such explosive magnitude, his power could easily sweep everything from his path. Together they completed each other, his melody and hers merging together into a single, perfect harmony.

Christine Feehan

Strong, Ocean, Passion

6 Copy quote
She thought of Aziza's stutter, and of what Aziza had said earlier about fractures and powerful collisions deep down and how sometimes all we see on the surface is a slight tremor.

Khaled Hosseini

Powerful, Down And, Sometimes

Khaled Hosseini (2009). “A Thousand Splendid Suns”, p.206, Bloomsbury Publishing

4 Copy quote

Show source
She wandered over to the enclosed range, a rather modern-looking contraption that Cook had purchased earlier in the year. "Do you know how to work this?" she asked. "No idea. You? " Daphne shook her head. "None." She reached forward and gingerly touched the surface of the stove top. "It's not hot. " " Not even a little bit? " She shook her head. "It's rather cold, actually. " Brother and sister were silent for a few seconds . " You know," Anthony finally said, "cold milk might be quite refreshing ." " I was just thinking that very thing!

Julia Quinn

Brother, Thinking, Years

4 Copy quote
High school’s actually kind of boring. It’s a little bit like living in the Center. Everyone thinks they know everything about everyone else, but really there’s a lot more under the surface. (Lend)

Kiersten White

School, Thinking, Littles

4 Copy quote
I love this quote when Valerian the King of the Nymphs says to his mate Shaye; "I am Valerian, leader of the nymphs. You may call me Oh God, that is what the other surface dwellers have preferred to call me".

Gena Showalter

Kings, Nymphs, Leader

4 Copy quote
For a man who finds life tolerable only by staying on the surface of himself, it is natural to be satisfied with offering no more than his surface to others. There are few demands to be met, and no commitment is required. Marriage, on the other hand, closes the door. Your existence is confined to a narrow space in which you are constantly forced to reveal yourself – and therefore, constantly obliged to look into yourself, to examine your own depths.

Paul Auster

Commitment, Space, Offering

Paul Auster (2011). “Collected Prose”, p.17, Faber & Faber

6 Copy quote

Show source
The brain may take advice, but not the heart, and love, having no geography, knows no boundaries: weight and sink it deep, no matter, it will rise and find the surface.

Truman Capote

Heart, Advice, Brain

Truman Capote (2007). “Other Voices, Other Rooms”, p.124, Vintage

15 Copy quote

Show source
And that is how Goodwin problems were always fixed. Fix them on the surface but don't go to the root, always ignoring the elephant in the room. I think that morning was when I realized I'd grown up with an elephant in every room of my life. It was practically our family pet.

Cecelia Ahern

Morning, Thinking, Elephants

5 Copy quote
In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the lips and face and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smile and kept moving. If I could have physically passed away, just let it all go, like that, without doing anything, stepped out of life as easily as walking through a door I would have done. But I was going to sleep at night and waking in the morning, disappointed to be there and resigned to existence.

Neil Gaiman

Morning, Moving, Sleep

"Fragile Things". Book by Neil Gaiman, 2006.

5 Copy quote

Show source
Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be.

Orson Scott Card

Stars, Blow, Lakes

Orson Scott Card (2009). “Children of the Mind”, p.166, Macmillan

4 Copy quote

Show source
As though she had entered a fable, as though she were no more than words crawling along a dry page, or as though she were becoming that page itself, that surface on which her story would be written and across which there blew a hot and merciless wind, turning her body to papyrus, her skin to parchment, her soul to paper.

Salman Rushdie

Wind, Soul, Skins

7 Copy quote
The girls said she was too cynical about love, but how could you not be? On the surface, relations between men and women were all soft kisses and white gowns and hand-holding. But underneath they were a scary, complicated, ugly mess, just waiting to rise to the surface.

J. Courtney Sullivan

Girl, Kissing, Men

J. Courtney Sullivan (2009). “Commencement”, p.96, Vintage

4 Copy quote

Show source
The ones I loved fly as birds in the open sky above me. Soaring, weaving, calling to me to join them. I want so badly to follow them, but the seawater saturates my wings, making it impossible to lift them. The ones I hated have taken to the water, horrible scaled things that tear my salty flesh with needle teeth. Biting again and again. Dragging me beneath the surface.

Suzanne Collins

Taken, Sky, Wings

4 Copy quote
Those final weeks, spanning end of summer and the beginning of another autumn, are blurred in memory, perhaps because our understanding of each other had reached that sweet depth where two people communicate more often in silence than in words: an affectionate quietness replaces the tensions, the unrelaxed chatter and chasing about that produce a friendship’s more showy, more, in the surface sense, dramatic moments.

Truman Capote

Summer, Sweet, Memories

4 Copy quote
Inside that darkness, i saw rain falling on the sea. Rain softly falling on a vast sea, with no one there to see it. The rain strikes the surface of the sea, yet even the fish don't know it is raining.

Haruki Murakami

Rain, Fall, Sea

FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Nov 30, 2015

18 Copy quote

Show source
There is something called the rapture of the deep, and it refers to what happens when a deep-sea diver spends too much time at the bottom of the ocean and can't tell which way is up. When he surfaces, he's liable to have a condition called the bends, where the body can't adapt to the oxygen levels in the atmosphere. All of this happens to me when I surface from a great book.

Nora Ephron

Ocean, Book, Oxygen

10 Copy quote