Air Quotes - Page 39

• The oven became hotter and hotter, and Hansel began to sweat. Then a delicious smell wafted to his nostrils. Oh no! he thought. I'm cooking! He sniffed at the air. And I smell delicious!

  Adam Gidwitz

  Sweat, Smell, Cooking

  Adam Gidwitz (2010). “A Tale Dark and Grimm”, p.26, Penguin

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• For mines are for men, not for money. And money is not something to go mad about, and throw your hat into the air for. Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes. Money is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born.

  Alan Paton

  Dream, Children, Men

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• the last cigarettes are smoked, the loaves are sliced, and lest this be taken for wry sorrow, drown the spider in wine. you are much more than simply dead: I am a dish for your ashes, I am a fist for your vanished air. the most terrible thing about life is finding it gone.

  Charles Bukowski

  Taken, Wine, Sorrow

  Charles Bukowski (2009). “sifting through the madness for the word, the line, the way: New Poems”, p.101, Zondervan

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• On the outside, Oscar simply looked tired, no taller, no fatter, only the skin under his eyes, pouched from years of quiet desperation, had changed. Inside, he was in a world of hurt. He saw black flashes before his eyes. He saw himself falling through the air. He knew what he was turning into. He was turning into the worst kind of human on the planet: an old bitter dork. Saw himself at the Game Room, picking through the miniatures for the rest of his life. He didn't want this future but he couldn't see how it could be avoided, couldn't figure his way out of it. Fukú.

  Junot Diaz

  Hurt, Fall, Tired

  Junot Diaz (2008). “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, p.268, Faber & Faber

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• These loaves, pigeons, and two little boys seemed unearthly. It all happened at the same time: a little boy ran over to a pigeon, glancing over at Levin with a smile; the pigeon flapped its wings and fluttered, gleaming in the sunshine among the snowdust quivering in the air, while the smell of freshly baked bread was wafted out of a little window as the loaves were put out. All this together was so extraordinarily wonderful that Levin burst out laughing and crying for joy.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Sunshine, Boys, Wings

  Leo Tolstoy (graf) (1978). “Anna Karenina”

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• What I bring to the interview is respect. The person recognizes that you respect them because you're listening. Because you're listening, they feel good about talking to you. When someone tells me a thing that happened, what do I feel inside? I want to get the story out. It's for the person who reads it to have the feeling . . . In most cases the person I encounter is not a celebrity; rather the ordinary person. "Ordinary" is a word I loathe. It has a patronizing air. I have come across ordinary people who have done extraordinary things. (p. 176)

  Studs Terkel

  Talking, People, Feel Good

  "Touch and Go: A Memoir". Book By Studs Terkel, 2007.

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• True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air, And more inconstant than the wind, who woos Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, Turning his side to the dew-dropping south.

  William Shakespeare

  Dream, Children, Wind

  William Shakespeare, George Steevens (1828). “The dramatic works of William Shakespeare”, p.392

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• I wonder if I shall ever see her again, and I realize that I scarcely care. I can feel the sheets beneath me, and the cold air on my chest. I feel fine. I feel absolutely fine. I feel nothing at all.

  Neil Gaiman

  Care, Cold, Wonder

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• In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Glasses, People, Water

  "Written on the Body". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 1992.

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• Adaptation is one of the great advantages to being born and bred in Jersey. We're simply not bested by bad air or tainted water. We're like that catfish with lungs. Take us out of our environment and we can grow whatever body parts we need to survive. After Jersey the rest of the country's a piece of cake. You want to send someone into a fallout zone? Get him from Jersey. He'll be fine.

  Janet Evanovich

  Country, Cake, Water

  Janet Evanovich (1999). “Three To Get Deadly: A Stephanie Plum Novel”, p.19, Simon and Schuster

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• So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Home, Blue, Wind

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2013). “The Great Gatsby”, p.136, Atlântico Press

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• The closer you get to heaven, the less air there is, because when you get to heaven for real, you don't need to breathe anymore.

  Catherine Ryan Hyde

  Real, Heaven, Needs

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• But we had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men- men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order- do we call it? - fraught with such ruin. Was it God's command we heard or His forgiveness we must forever implore?

  Joshua Chamberlain

  Men, Hands, Order

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• If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.

  George Eliot

  Stupidity, Opinion, Conviction

  George Eliot (2016). “The Mill On The Floss”, p.30, George Eliot

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• I miss that time. The cities back then, just after the forests died, were full of wonders, and you'd stumble on them--these princes of the air on common rooftops--the rivers that burst through the city streets so they ran like canals--the rabbits in parking garages--the deer foaling, nestled in Dumpsters like a Nativity.

  Matthew Tobin Anderson

  Cities, Rivers, Missing

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• The morning air of the pasture turned steadily cooler. Day by day, the bright golden leaves of the birches turned more spotted as the first winds of winter slipped between the withered branches and across the highlands toward the southeast. Stopping in the center of the pasture, I could hear the winds clearly. No turning back, they pronounced. The brief autumn was gone.

  Haruki Murakami

  Morning, Autumn, Winter

  "A Wild Sheep Chase". Book by Haruki Murakami, December 31, 1989.

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• Why did women always believe that talking about a problem would fix it? Some issues were corpses. Hot air made them fester and rot and spread their disease to everything else. Better to bury it and move on.

  Brent Weeks

  Believe, Moving, Talking

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• For a long time I believed the opposite of passion was death. I was wrong. Passion and death are implicit, one in the other. Past the border of a fiery life lies the netherworld. I can trace this road, which took me through places so hot the very air burned the lungs. I did not turn back. I pressed on, and eventually passed over the border, beyond which lies a place that is wordless and cold, so cold that it, like mercury, burns a freezing blue flame.

  Marya Hornbacher

  Lying, Passion, Past

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• A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Atmosphere, Earth, Flight

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1982). “Tales and Sketches”, p.593, Library of America

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• Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, But which will bloom most constantly? The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring ,Its summer blossoms scent the air; Yet wait till winter comes again, And who will call the wild-briar fair? Then, scorn the silly rose-wreath now, And deck thee with holly's sheen, That, when December blights thy brow, He still may leave thy garland green.

  Emily Dickinson

  Summer, Sweet, Spring

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• I like bars just after they open in the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar -- that's wonderful.

  Raymond Chandler

  Bars, Firsts, Evening

  Raymond Chandler (2002). “The Long Goodbye: A Novel”, p.24, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• Bilbo lay with his eyes shut, gasping an taking pleasure in the feel of the fresh air again, and hardly noticing the excitement of the dwarves, or how they praised him and patted him on the back and put themseves and all their families for generations to come at his service.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Eye, Dwarves, Generations

  J. R. R. Tolkien (1985). “The Hobbit”

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• Mo could paint pictures in the empty air with his voice alone.

  Cornelia Funke

  Voice, Empty, Paint

  Cornelia Funke (2011). “Inkheart”, p.14, Scholastic Inc.

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• I asked my schoolmate Mary to write a letter to me. She was funny and full of life. She liked to run around her empty house without any clothes on, even once she was too old for that. Nothing embarrassed her. I admired that so much, because everything embarrassed me, and that hurt me. She loved to jump on her bed. She jumped on her bed for so many years that one afternoon, while I watched her jump, the seams burst. Feathers filled the small room. Our laughter kept the feathers in the air. I thought about birds. Could they fly if there wasn’t someone, somewhere, laughing?

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Running, Hurt, Laughter

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• I had never felt the allure of another human being this strongly, warmth and curiosity mixing to form an unspoken question in the air.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Curiosity, Mixing, Form

  Lisa Kleypas (2015). “The Travis Family Series, Books 1-3: Blue-Eyed Devil, Smooth Taking Stranger and Sugar Daddy”, p.368, St. Martin's Press

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