Battered Quotes

• Boxing is smoky halls and kidneys battered until they bleed.

  Roger Kahn

  Boxing, Kidneys, Halls

  Roger Kahn (2012). “Games We Used to Play: A Lover's Quarrel with the World of Sport”, p.41, Diversion Books

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• I want to warn potential victims. Many of them are women, and many of them are battered women. It's a cause for me. When I look back, though, so many of the books I've written are about wives who just couldn't get away.

  Ann Rule

  Book, Wife, Want

  8 Copy quote

• Summer is the time when one sheds one's tensions with one's clothes, and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit. A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all's right with the world.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Love, Summer, Clothes

  Ada Louise Huxtable (2010). “On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change”, p.462, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

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• One likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

  Virginia Woolf

  Strong Women, Adversity, People

  Virginia Woolf (2003). “A Writer's Diary”, p.48, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  18 Copy quote

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• Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.

  Jack Kerouac

  Inspirational, Inspiring, Travel

  Jack Kerouac (1991). “On the road”, Penguin USA

  62 Copy quote

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• 

  Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies.

  Jim Morrison

  Sex, Truth, Honesty

  "Into This House We're Born". Book by James Hunt, p. 262, July 1, 2006.

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• I've been scared and battered. My hopes the wind done scattered. Snow has friz me, Sun has baked me, Looks like between 'em they done Tried to make me Stop laughin', stop lovin', stop livin'-- But I don't care! I'm still here!

  Langston Hughes

  Wind, Snow, Looks

  Langston Hughes (2004). “Vintage Hughes”, Vintage

  28 Copy quote

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• On faith’s battered back calm eyes etch prayers that cool a nation’s hot rage.

  Aberjhani

  Prayer, Eye, Hot

  Aberjhani (2010). “The River of Winged Dreams”, p.82, Lulu.com

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• What is that which can never die It is that faithful force that is born into us that one that is greater than us that calls new seed to the open and battered and barren places so that we can be resown. It is this force in its insistence in its loyalty to us in its love of us in its most often mysterious ways that is far greater far more majestic and far more ancient than any heretofore ever known.

  Clarissa Pinkola Estes

  Loyalty, Faithful, Way

  15 Copy quote

• Unholy battered old thing you were, my sunflower O my soul, I loved you then!

  Allen Ginsberg

  Old Things, Soul, Sunflower

  Allen Ginsberg, Lewis Hyde (1984). “On the Poetry of Allen Ginsberg”, p.395, University of Michigan Press

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• ...and our footsteps rang and echoed till it sounded like the room was full of dancers, the house calling up all the people who had danced here across centuries of spring evenings, gallant girls seeing gallant boys off to war, old men and women straight-backed while outside their world disintegrated and the new one battered at their doors, all of them bruised and all of them laughing, welcoming us into their long lineage.

  Tana French

  Girl, Spring, War

  4 Copy quote

• I pounded through the houses, staggering down the hallways, falling down the steps. It was a hot streaky dawn full of insecticides, exhaust, flowers that could make you sick or fall in love. My battered Impala was still parked there on the side of the road and I wanted to lie down on the shredded seats and sleep and sleep. But I thought of the bones; I could hear them singing. They needed me to write their song.

  Francesca Lia Block

  Song, Falling In Love, Lying

  4 Copy quote

• She was battered and beaten up, and not smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words.

  Markus Zusak

  Eye, Cutting, Blood

  Markus Zusak (2013). “The Book Thief: Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition”, p.263, RH Childrens Books

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• The to Cathal was battered and only one wagon wide, with swells of hard earth where mud had frozen during cold ad rainy seasons. Enna tripped often, and cursed each time she tripped, until Dasha said, "Enna, you might watch your language." Enna grimaced. "I was. You should hear my thoughts.

  Shannon Hale

  Watches, Frozen, Earth

  Shannon Hale (2010). “Forest Born”, p.79, A&C Black

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• One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards. Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions, fruits. In fact, I insist on it. A letter is like a poem, it leaps into life and shows very clearly the marks, perhaps I should say thumbprints, of an unwilling or unready composer.

  James Salter

  Book, Landscape, Letters

  13 Copy quote

• I’m sorry, Eve. I love you. I’m not letting you do this.” She screamed and battered harder. “You love me? You asshole! Let me go!

  Rachel Caine

  Sorry, Love You, Let Me Go

  Rachel Caine (2007). “The Dead Girls' Dance: The Morganville Vampires”, p.112, Penguin

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• Historical memory is a potent weapon in fighting against the desert of organized forgetting and implies a rethinking of the role that artists, intellectuals, educators, youth and other concerned citizens can play in fostering a reawakening of America's battered public memories.

  Henry Giroux

  Memories, Fighting, Artist

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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• My Papa's Waltz: The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

  Theodore Roethke

  Mother, Boys, Hands

  Theodore Roethke (2011). “The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke”, p.83, Anchor

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• His heart felt dangerously full, for the first time in years. That dried-up battered organ, suddenly flush with love. It could kill him.

  Maile Meloy

  Heart, Years, Firsts

  Maile Meloy (2010). “Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It”, p.173, Canongate Books

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• My one-time roommate Claire had inherited the house from her uncle, and when she went off to bigger and better things, she’d left it in my care. And it needed a lot of it. Most importantly, it needed a new roof. There was a worrying stain on the ceiling of my bedroom that had started out roughly the shape of Rhode Island, but now looked more like North Carolina. Another few more days of rain and it was going to be Texas. And then it wouldn’t be anything at all because the battered old shingles were going to cave in on my head.

  Karen Chance

  Uncles, Rain, Rhode Island

  4 Copy quote

• When I think about my relationship with America, I feel like a battered wife: Yeah, he knocks me around a lot, but boy, he sure can dance.

  Sarah Vowell

  Boys, Thinking, America

  Sarah Vowell (2013). “Take the Cannoli: Stories From the New World”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

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• When I am battered and oppressed by the world that humanity has made - which is difference from the world that is was given - my primary defense, my consolation, is the absurdity of that world

  Dean Koontz

  Differences, Humanity, Defense

  Dean Koontz (2008). “Odd Hours: An Odd Thomas Novel”, p.150, Bantam

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• Glass shattered, vampires roared, humans screamed. The noise battered at me, just as the tidal wave of scores of brains at high gear washed over me. When it began to taper off, I looked up into Eric's eyes. Incredibly, he was excited. He smiled at me. "I knew I'd get on top of you somehow," he said. Are you trying to make me mad so I'll forget how scared I am?" No, I'm just opportunistic." I wiggled, trying to get out from under him, and he said, "Oh, do that again. It felt great.

  Charlaine Harris

  Eye, Glasses, Mad

  Charlaine Harris (2009). “Sookie Stackhouse 8-copy Boxed Set”, p.471, Penguin

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• I did not love cold harmony and perfect regularity of organization; what I sought was variety, mystery, tradition, the venerable, the awful. I despised sophisters and calculators; I was groping for faith, honor, and prescriptive loyalties. I would have given any number of neo-classical pediments for one poor battered gargoyle.

  Russell Kirk

  Loyalty, Organization, Numbers

  Russell Kirk (2014). “The Essential Russell Kirk: Selected Essays”, p.213, Open Road Media

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• Wimsey stooped for an empty sardine-tin which lay, horribly battered, at his feet, and slung it idly into the quag. It struck the surface with a noice like a wet kiss, and vanished instantly. With that instinct which prompts one, when depressed, to wallow in every circumstance of gloom, Peter leaned sadly against the hurdles and abandoned himself to a variety of shallow considerations upon (1) The vanity of human wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First love; (4) The decay of idealism; (5) The aftermath of the Great war; (6) Birth-control; and (7) The fallacy of free-will.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  War, Kissing, First Love

  9 Copy quote