Humming Quotes - Page 2

• To be worth making at all a journey has to be made in the mind as much as in the world of objects and dimensions. What value can there be in seeing or experiencing anything for the first time unless it comes as a revelation? And for that to happen, some previously held thought or belief must be confounded, or enhanced, or even transcended. What difference can it make otherwise to see a redwood tree, a tiger, or a humming bird?

  Ted Simon

  Journey, Differences, Bird

  Ted Simon (1984). “Riding Home”

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• Meditation is not concentration. It is simple awareness. You simply relax and watch the breathing. In that watching, nothing is excluded. The car is humming - perfectly okay, accept it. The traffic is passing - that's okay, part of life. The fellow passenger snoring by your side, accept it. Nothing is rejected. You are not to narrow down your consciousness.

  Rajneesh

  Life, Simple, Your Side

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• Love is both Creator's and Saviour's gospel to mankind; a volume bound in rose-leaves, clasped with violets, and by the beaks of humming-birds printed with peach-juice on the leaves of lilies.

  Herman Melville

  Love, Rose, Bird

  Herman Melville (1971). “Pierre, Or The Ambiguities: Volume Seven, Scholarly Edition”, p.34, Northwestern University Press

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• YOU'RE just humming with sexual energy! Is it the fabric? Is it wearing tights?

  Richard Madeley

  Energy, Tights, Fabric

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• I remember having some problems with [the Deus Ex theme] when I first heard it and I was trying to figure out how to tell [Alex Brandon] I wanted changes. But then I noticed that I couldn't get it out of my mind. I was whistling or humming it to myself all the time. So I just kept my mouth shut and let it be. I think it's a highly addictive tune

  Warren Spector

  Thinking, Mind, Trying

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• If I try to write a song, I will completely fail to write a song. But if I'm just holding my guitar and I just start humming, then I'll have a song in an hour.

  Kina Grannis

  Song, Writing, Guitar

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• All my life I've been aware of the Second World War humming in the background. I was born 10 years after it was finished, and without ever seeing it. It formed my generation and the world we lived in. I played Hurricanes and Spitfires in the playground, and war films still form the basis of all my moral philosophy. All the men I've ever got to my feet for or called sir had been in the war.

  A. A. Gill

  Philosophy, War, Men

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• When April winds
  Grew soft, the maple burst into a flush
  Of scarlet flowers. The tulip tree, high up,
  Opened in airs of June her multitude
  Of golden chalices to humming-birds
  And silken-wing'd insects of the sky.

  William C. Bryant

  Flower, June, Air

  "The Fountain". Poem by William C. Bryant, 1839.

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• It was almost noon when the plane touched down at the Triad airport on the outskirts of Greensboro. There was a hire car waiting for me; I waved my notepad at the dashboard to transmit my profile, then waited as the seating and controls rearranged themselves slightly, piezoelectric actuators humming. As I started to reverse out of the parking bay, the stereo began a soothing improvisation, flashing up a deadpan title: Music for Leaving Airports 11 June 2008.

  Greg Egan

  June, Airports, Car

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• Remembering how my mother looked before she gave birth to my sister is frightening. But even more frightening is the feeling that I wanted them to catch me and beat me. Why did I want to be punished? Shadows out of the past clutch at my legs and drag me down. I open my mouth to scream, but I am voiceless. My hands are trembling, I feel cold, and there is a distant humming in my ears.

  Daniel Keyes

  Mother, Past, Hands

  Daniel Keyes (2007). “Flowers for Algernon”, p.132, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Solitude in the city is about the lack of other people or rather their distance beyond a door or wall, but in remote places it isn’t an absence but the presence of something else, a kind of humming silence in which solitude seems as natural to your species as to any other, words strange rocks you may or may not turn over.

  Rebecca Solnit

  Wall, Distance, Rocks

  Rebecca Solnit (2006). “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”, p.68, Penguin

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• Here’s what I learned: First thing in the morning, before I have drowned myself in coffee, while I still have that sleepy brain I used to believe was useless — that is the best brain for creative writing. Words come pouring out easily while my head still feels as if it is full of ground fog, wrapped in flannel and gauze, and surrounded by a hive of humming, velvety sleep bees.

  Merrill Markoe

  Morning, Coffee, Believe

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• I am a black woman the music of my song some sweet arpeggio of tears is written in a minor key and I can be heard humming in the night Can be heard humming in the night

  Mari Evans

  Music, Song, Sweet

  Mari Evans (2007). “Continuum: New and Selected Poems”

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• I was unfair to him, of course, but where would I have been without unfairness? In thrall, in harness. Young women need unfairness, it's one of their few defenses. They need their callousness, they need their ignorance. They walk in the dark, along the edges of high cliffs, humming to themselves, thinking themselves invulnerable.

  Margaret Atwood

  Ignorance, Dark, Thinking

  Margaret Atwood (1989). “Cat's Eye”, Bantam

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• [Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.

  Anne Carson

  Mother, Hurt, Government

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• Suppose within each book there is another book, and within every letter on every page another volume constantly unfolding; but these volumes take no space on the desk. Suppose knowledge could be reduced to a quintessence, held within a picture, a sign, held within a place which is no place. Suppose the human skull were to become capacious, spaces opening inside it, humming chambers like beehives.

  Hilary Mantel

  Book, Skulls, Space

  "Wolf Hall & Bring Up the Bodies". Book by Hilary Mantel, 2015.

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• I’m in a shallow hole, not filled with the humming orange bubbles of my hallucination but with old, dead leaves.

  Suzanne Collins

  Orange, Hallucinations, Shallow

  Suzanne Collins (2011). “The Hunger Games Trilogy”, p.262, Scholastic Inc.

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• Marvin started his ironical humming again. Zaphod hit him and he shut up.

  Douglas Adams

  Shut Up, Marvin

  Douglas Adams (2012). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: The Trilogy of Five”, p.96, Pan Macmillan

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• For the longest time after that, neither of us said anything. I was unaccustomed to his silence, but I didn't mind it. I knew near everything about him, and he knew near everything about me, and all that made our quiet a kind of song. The kind you hum without even knowing what it is or why you're humming it. The kind that you've always known.

  Gabrielle Zevin

  Song, Knowing, Silence

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• We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.

  Neal Stephenson

  Smart, Urban Legends, Self

  "Snow Crash". Book by Neal Stephenson, 1992.

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• Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much.

  Douglas Adams

  Hated, Humans, Marvin

  Douglas Adams (2009). “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, p.79, Pan Macmillan

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• And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me...everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent.

  Knut Hamsun

  Song, Air, Voice

  Knut Hamsun (2015). “Hunger”, p.40, Xist Publishing

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• I still hear you humming, Mama. The colour of your song calls me home. The colour of your words saying, Let her be. She got a right to be different. She gonna stumble on herself one of these days. Just let the child be. And I be, Mama.

  Sonia Sanchez

  Daughter, Mother, Song

  Sonia Sanchez (2012). “Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems”, p.58, Beacon Press

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• One has the feeling of enormous safety. You don't have the torque from the propeller. You have no noise; it's almost like little electric motors humming inside, and you feel sort of safe.

  Erich Warsitz

  Airplane, Electric Motors, Safety

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• To write a book is for all the world like humming a song.

  Laurence Sterne

  Song, Book, Writing

  Laurence Sterne (1849). “The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy ... [etc.] ; with a Life of the Author Written by Himself”, p.137

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