Off Quotes (page 146)
A brown spotted lady-bug climbed the dizzy height of a grass blade, and Tom bent down close to it and said, "Lady-bug, lady-bug, fly away home, your house is on fire, your children's alone," and she took wing and went off to see about it -- which did not surprise the boy, for he knew of old that this insect was credulous about conflagrations, and he had practised upon its simplicity more than once.
Mark Twain
There was a silence. Then: ‘What you are saying,’ said Philippa slowly, ‘is that the child Khaireddin would be better unfound?’ The Dame de Doubtance said nothing. ‘Or are you saying,’ pursued Philippa, inimical from the reedy brown crown of her head to her mud-caked cloth stockings, ‘that you and I and Lymond and Lymond’s mother and Lymond’s brother and Graham Malett would be better off if he weren’t discovered?’
‘Now that,’ said the Dame de Doubtance with satisfaction, ‘is precisely what...
Dorothy Dunnett
Shug: More than anything God love admiration. Celie: You saying God is vain? Shug: No, not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off when you walk by the colour purple in a field and don't notice it. Celie: You saying it just wanna be loved like it say in the bible? Shug: Yeah, Celie. Everything wanna be loved. Us sing and dance, and holla just wanting to be loved. Look at them trees. Notice how the trees do everything people do to get attention... except walk? [they...
Alice Walker
But mankind is a dead tree, covered with fine brilliant galls of people.[..]And if it is so, why is it? she asked, hostile. They were rousing each other to a fine passion of opposition.
Why, why are people all balls of bitter dust? Because they won't fall off the tree when they're ripe. They hang on to their old positions when the position is over-past, till they become infested with little worms and dry-rot.
David Herbert Lawrence
Where the wave of moonlight glosses. The dim gray sands with light, Far off by furthest Rosses. We foot it all the night, Weaving olden dances, Mingling hands and mingling glances. Till the moon has taken flight; To and fro we leap. And chase the frothy bubbles, While the world is full of troubles. And is anxious in its sleep. . . .
William Butler Yeats
Comes again the longing, the desire that has no name. Is it for Mrs. Prouty, for a drink, for both: for a party, for youth, for the good times, for dear good drinking and fighting comrades, for football-game girls in the fall with faces like flowers? Comes the longing and it has to do with being fifteen and fifty and with the winter sun striking down into a brick-yard and on clapboard walls rounded off with old hard blistered paint and across a doorsill onto linoleum. Desire has a smell:...
Walker Percy
Sometimes when we were hiding behind the breakers with the crowd, he'd hold me so tight, I'd think he's not just holding me, he's holding onto me, like I'm stopping him from falling off. I'd see him looking at me and his eyes were so full of... I dunno. Like he was about to cry. And, it's stupid, I know, but I think maybe he's hurting because he loves me and I don't love him, and this great lump used to come up into my throat and I'd hold him tight and try and squeeze him as tight as I could...
Melvin Burgess