Windowpane Quotes

• Our personal dispositions are as windowpanes through which we see the world either as rosy or dull. The way we color the glasses we wear is the way the world seems to us.

  Fulton J. Sheen

  Attitude, Glasses, Color

  9 Copy quote

• Good writing is like a windowpane.

  George Orwell

  Writing, Good Writing, Thrive

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• It is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.

  George Orwell

  Struggle, Writing, Personality

  George Orwell (2009). “Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays”, p.231, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world.

  Grace Paley

  Optimistic, Views, World

  Grace Paley (2014). “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute: Stories”, p.174, Macmillan

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• The uncertainty of our future is nothing more than a fog of breath on a windowpane.

  Libba Bray

  Fog, Our Future, Breaths

  4 Copy quote

• He felt all at once like an ineffectual moth, fluttering at the windowpane of reality, dimly seeing it from outside.

  Philip K. Dick

  Life, Reality, Fluttering

  Philip K. Dick (2012). “Ubik”, p.136, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Shadow, Azure

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.418, Vintage

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• They leave things behind sometimes, the guests. A bottle of scent. A crumpled handkerchief. A pearl button that fell off a dress and rolled under a bed. And sometimes they leave other sorts of things. Things you can't see. A sigh trapped in a corner. Memories tangled in the curtains. A sob fluttering against the windowpane like a bird that flew in and can't get back out. I can feel these things. They dart and crouch and whisper.

  Jennifer Donnelly

  Memories, Tangled, Bird

  Jennifer Donnelly (2015). “A Gathering Light”, p.82, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• The Photograph belongs to that class of laminated objects whose two leaves cannot be separated without destroying them both: the windowpane and the landscape, and why not: Good and Evil, desire and its object: dualities we can conceive but not perceive... Whatever it grants to vision and whatever its manner, a photograph is always invisible: it is not it that we see.

  Roland Barthes

  Photography, Class, Two

  4 Copy quote

• While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane.

  Billy Collins

  Typewriters, Novelists, Poet

  FaceBook post by Billy Collins from May 31, 2013

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• The first thing he noticed was how quiet it was. This was nothing like the kind of quiet he heard when he woke up in the middle of the night after a bad dream. When that happened, there were always strange, unidentifiable sounds seeping into his room from the tiny gaps where the windowpanes weren't sealed together correctly. At those moments he could always tell there was life outside, even if all that life was fast asleep. It was a silence that wasn't silence at all.

  John Boyne

  Dream, Night, Silence

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• and the rain went rollin down the windowpanes, and the shadows wiggled n' squiggled on her check and forehead like black veins.

  Stephen King

  Rain, Black, Shadow

  4 Copy quote

• So I sit there kicked my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly attempt to commit suicide by butting his head against the windowpane.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Suicide, Thinking, New Orleans

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (2005). “The Story of a Bad Boy”, p.55, 1st World Publishing

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• You and me?” I let out a stunned bark of laughter. “There is no you and me.” “That’s what you think,” Chaz says, tugging on his coat. “And I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait around until you figure out that isn’t true.” “Fine,” I say “I’m not asking you to, am I?” “No.” Chaz is smiling… but not like he’s happy. “But you would if you had the slightest idea what was good for you.” And with that, he yanks open the door and storms through it, slamming it closed behind him with enough force to cause the windowpanes to rattle. And then he’s gone.

  Meg Cabot

  Laughter, Thinking, Doors

  4 Copy quote

• And if someone felt that his life had been an utter failure, and that he himself was only one among millions of wholly unimportant people who could be replaced as easily as broken windowpanes, he would go and pour out his heart to Momo. And, even as he spoke, he would come to realize by some mysterious means that he was absolutely wrong: that there was only one person like himself in the whole world, and that, consequently, he mattered to the world in his own particular way. Such was Momo's talent for listening.

  Michael Ende

  Mean, Heart, People

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• When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief.

  Sarah Addison Allen

  Summer, White, Light

  Sarah Addison Allen (2008). “The Sugar Queen”, p.1, Bantam

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• Tricky the paths a long love might follow, like the spiral down twists of a raindrop on a windowpane.

  Kevin Barry

  Long, Raindrops, Might

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• May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.

  Arundhati Roy

  Air, Rivers, Long

  Arundhati Roy (2002). “The God of Small Things”, p.1, Penguin Books India

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• I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate: Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass Hang all the furniture above the grass, And how delightful when a fall of snow Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so As to make chair and bed exactly stand Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Fall, Dark, Night

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• In a world beyond this one, that river goes on singing sweetly, enchanting us with what we want to hear, shaping what we need to see in order to keep going. In those waters, all disappointments are forgotten, our mistakes forgiven. Gazing into them, we see a strong father. A loving mother. Warm rooms where we are sheltered, adored, wanted. And the uncertainty of our futures is nothing more than the fog of breath on a windowpane.

  Libba Bray

  Mother, Strong, Disappointment

  Libba Bray (2015). “The Gemma Doyle Trilogy”, p.337, Delacorte Press

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• And they heard the roaring thunder of a third brilliantly lighted express. "Are they pursuing the first travelers?" demanded the little prince. "They are pursuing nothing at all," said the switchman. "They are asleep in there, or if they are not asleep they are yawning. Only the children are flattening their noses against the windowpanes." "Only the children know what they are looking for," said the little prince. "They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry..." "They are lucky," the switchman said.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Children, Yawning, Important

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• how we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces. Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable. Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we'll never get used to it.

  Richard Siken

  Mean, Apples, Light

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• Why did I become a writer? A bird's feather on my windowpane in winter and all at once there arose in my heart a battle of embers never to subside again.

  Rene Char

  Heart, Winter, Bird

  René Char (2004). “This Smoke that Carried Us: Selected Poems”, White Pine Press (NY)

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• Fate, Chance, God’s Will — we all try to account for our lives somehow. What are the chances that two raindrops, flung from the heavens, will merge on a windowpane? Gotta be Fate.

  Robert Breault

  Fate, Two, Heaven

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• Do you hear the snow against the windowpanes, Kitty? How nice and soft it sounds! Just as if some one was kissing the window all over outside. I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, 'Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.' And when they wake up in the summer, Kitty, they dress themselves all in green, and dance about - whenever the wind blows.

  Lewis Carroll

  Summer, Quilts, Nice

  Lewis Carroll (2016). “Alice In Wonderland Collection: All Four Books: Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Hunting of the Snark and Alice Underground”, p.82, Enhanced Media Publishing

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