Tumbling Quotes

• I hope that one or two immortal lyrics will come out of all this tumbling around.

  Louise Bogan

  Two, Immortal

  Louise Bogan, Ruth Limmer (1981). “Journey around my room: the autobiography of Louise Bogan : a mosaic”, Viking Pr

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• I have no more pleasure in hearing a man attempting wit and failing, than in seeing a man trying to leap over a ditch and tumbling into it

  Samuel Johnson

  Men, Trying, Speech

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1799). “Boswell's Life of Johnson: Including Boswell's Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, and Johnson's Diary of A Journey Into North Wales”, p.525

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• Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds, - and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there, I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung My eager craft through footless halls of air.

  John Gillespie Magee, Jr.

  Laughter, Military, Clouds

  In K. Rhys More Poems from the Forces (1943) "High Flight"

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• It should be judged primarily on grace, elegance and beauty rather than simply on mechanic tumbling.

  Svetlana Khorkina

  Grace, Elegance, Mechanic

  "Khorkina lashes judges as cheats", www.theguardian.com. August 22, 2004.

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• Bring me a wheel of oaken wood A rein of polished leather A Heavy Horse and a tumbling sky Brewing heavy weather.

  Ian Anderson

  Horse, Sky, Weather

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• Tumbling into a dark, Lewis Carroll labyrinth of filth, pursuing a white rabbit of smut!

  Russell Brand

  Dark, White, Labyrinth

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• Our lives disconnect and reconnect, we move on, and later we may again touch one another, again bounce away. This is the felt shape of a human life, neither simply linear nor wholly disjunctive nor endlessly bifurcating, but rather this bouncey-castle sequence of bumpings-into and tumblings-apart.

  Salman Rushdie

  Moving, Castles, Shapes

  Salman Rushdie (2000). “The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel”, p.543, Macmillan

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• See, you can't rewrite, 'cause to rewrite is to deceive and lie, and you betray your own thoughts. To rethink the flow and the rhythm, the tumbling out of the words, is a betrayal, and it's a sin, Martin, it's a sin." --Hank (Kerouac)to Martin (Ginsberg) in the film Naked Lunch

  David Cronenberg

  Betrayal, Lying, Lunch

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• He kissed me, so gently at first that I melted. I pressed close against him as the kiss deepened, curling my arms around his neck and tumbling into pure sensation. The softness of his hair as I ran my fingers through it; his arms hands on my skin, caressing me. It felt so, so good. I'd been afraid that I'd never have this again--this sense of being so achingly alive that every nerve ending was on fire.

  L.A. Weatherly

  Kissing, Fire, Hair

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• It's much easier to become a hacker now. It was a private community before and you had to find your way in, like tumbling down a rabbit hole. Today, there are all-in-one desktops fully equipped with tools pre-built into the operating system, all related to hacking. They are all very powerful tools and free to download.

  Michael Demon Calce

  Powerful, Tumbling Down, Community

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• While we lie tumbling in the hay.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Lying, Hay

  'The Winter's Tale' (1610-1) act 4, sc. 2, l. 1

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• We came in the wind of the carnival. A wind of change, or promises. The merry wind, the magical wind, making March hares of everyone, tumbling blossoms and coat-tails and hats; rushing towards summer in a frenzy of exuberance.

  Joanne Harris

  Summer, Wind, Rushing

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• He loved, beneath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth's spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be; or, for image followed image, it was the back of a great horse that he was riding, or the deck of a tumbling ship -- it was anything indeed, so long as it was hard, for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spiced and amorous gales every evening about this time when he walked out.

  Virginia Woolf

  Summer, Horse, Heart

  Virginia Woolf (2014). “Orlando”, p.8, Lettere Animate Editore

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• Just as people can watch spellbound a circus artist tumbling through the air in a phosphorized costume, so they can listen to a preacher who uses the Word of God to draw attention to himself. But a sensational preacher stimulates the senses and leaves the spirit untouched. Instead of being the way to God, his 'being different' gets in the way.

  Henri Nouwen

  Artist, Air, People

  "The Search For Applause" by Henri Nouwen, www.christianitytoday.com. 1984.

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• You're walking through a field all by yourself one day in spring and this sweet little bear cub with velvet fur and shiny little eyes comes walking along. And he says to you, 'Hi, there, little lady. Want to tumble with me?' So you and the bear spend the whole day in each other's arms, tumbling down this clover-covered hill. Nice, huh?

  Haruki Murakami

  Sweet, Spring, Nice

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• Do you know how sometimes - when you are riding your bike and you start skidding across sand, or when you miss a step and start tumbling down the stairs - you have those long, long seconds to know that you are going to be hurt, and badly?

  Jodi Picoult

  Hurt, Riding Your Bike, Tumbling Down

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “My Sister's Keeper: A Novel”, p.218, Simon and Schuster

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• I had wanted to live forever as a gypsy girl; I had wanted to live forever as a child, tumbling down a rabbit hole. I had been granted both wishes, only to find immortality was not what it had promised to be; instead of a passport to the future, it was a yoke that bound me to the past.

  Melanie Benjamin

  Girl, Children, Past

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• Listening (had there been any one to listen) from the upper rooms of the empty house only gigantic chaos streaked with lightning could have been heard tumbling and tossing, as the winds and waves disported themselves like the amorphous bulks of leviathans whose brows are pierced by no light of reason, and mounted one on top of another, and lunged and plunged in the darkness or the daylight (for night and day, month and year ran shapelessly together) in idiot games, until it seemed as if the universe were battling and tumbling, in brute confusion and wanton lust aimlessly by itself.

  Virginia Woolf

  Night, Light, Years

  Virginia Woolf (2007). “Selected Works of Virginia Woolf”, p.343, Wordsworth Editions

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• Do you know how there are moments when the world moves so slowly you can feel your bones shifting, your mind tumbling? When you think that no matter what happens to you for the rest of your life, you will remember every last detail of that one minute forever?

  Jodi Picoult

  Moving, Thinking, Forever

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• It’s the end. It’s the end of the civilization. We’re going down. No, it’s sure not too attractive. Lenticels. I just hope my kids don’t live to see the last days. The things burning and people living in cellars. Violet. The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.

  Matthew Tobin Anderson

  Kids, Tumbling Down, Civilization

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• The cats at the edge of the clearing were staring up at the sky, their eyes huge with fear. As he looked upward, Fireheart heard the beating of wings and saw a hawk circling above the trees, its harsh cry drifting on the air. At the same time he realized that one cat had not taken shelter; Snowkit was tumbling and playing in the middle of the open space. "Snowkit!" Speckletail yowled desperately.

  Erin Hunter

  Taken, Cat, Eye

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• To be born again,' sang Gibreal Farishta tumbling from the heaveans, 'first you have to die. Ho ji! Ho ji! To land upon the bosomy earth, first one needs to fly Tat-taa! Takatun! How to ever smile again, if first you won't cry? How to win the darling's love mister, without a sigh?

  Salman Rushdie

  Winning, Land, Needs

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• Tumbling-hair picker of buttercups violets dandelions And the big bullying daisies through the field wonderful with eyes a little sorry Another comes also picking flowers

  e. e. cummings

  Bullying, Sorry, Flower

  E. E. Cummings (1996). “Tulips and Chimneys”, p.30, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Everybody in America started to define themselves by all these things they had around them. And all of a sudden it came tumbling down. So the old American dream has died, and that is a good thing.

  Suze Orman

  Dream, Tumbling Down, America

  "Suze Orman on the 'New' American Dream" by Vicki Mabrey, abcnews.go.com. March 8, 2011.

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• Words move, turning over like tumbling clowns; like certain books and like fleas, they possess activity. All men equally have the right to say, 'This word shall bear this meaning,' and see if they can get it across. It is a sporting game, which all can play, only all cannot win.

  Rose Macaulay

  Moving, Book, Winning

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