Battered Quotes - Page 3

• 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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• There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning. For loneliness assumed the absence of other people, and the solitude she found in that desperate terrain had never admitted the possibility of other people. She wept then. Tears for the deaths of the littlest things: the castaway shoes of children; broken stems of marsh grass battered and drowned by the sea; prom photographs of dead women she never knew; wedding rings in pawnshop windows; the tiny bodies of Cornish hens in a nest of rice.

  Toni Morrison

  Children, Loneliness, Sea

  Toni Morrison (1987). “Sula”

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• And that, ...is the story of our country, one invasion after another...Macedonians. Saddanians. Arabs. Mongols. Now the Soviets. But we're like those walls up there. Battered, and nothing pretty to look at, but still standing.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Country, Wall, Looks

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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

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• 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

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• 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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• 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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• I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Cells, Wind, Creative

  I Have a Dream, delivered 28 August 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.

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• It's a battered old suitcase and a hotel someplace and a wound that will never heal.

  Tom Waits

  Travel, Journey, Suitcases

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• There is a contemptibly quiet path for all those who are afraid of the blows and clamor of opposing forces. There is no honorable fighting for a man who is not ready to forget that he has a head to be battered and a name to be bespattered. Truth wants no champion who is not as ready to be struck as to strike for her.

  J. G. Holland

  Courage, Fighting, Blow

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 166, 1895.

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• Hope can be bruised and battered. It can be forced underground and even rendered unconscious, but hope cannot be killed.

  Neal Shusterman

  Unconscious, Bruised

  Neal Shusterman (2013). “UnSouled”, p.403, Simon and Schuster

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• But what struck me was the book-madness of the place--books lay scattered across the unmade bed and the top of a battered-looking desk, books stood in knee-high piles on the floor, books were crammed sideways and right side up in a narrow bookcase that rose higher than my head and leaned dangerously from the wall, books sat in stacks on top of a dingy dresser. The closet door was propped open by a pile of books, and from beneath the bed a book stuck out beside the toe of a maroon slipper.

  Steven Millhauser

  Wall, Book, Doors

  Steven Millhauser (2008). “Dangerous Laughter”, p.35, Vintage

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• What I know about living is the pain is never just ours Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo So I keep a listening to the moment the grief becomes a window When I can see what I couldn’t see before, through the glass of my most battered dream, I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds. So the next time I tell you how easily I come out of my skin, don’t try to put me back in just say here we are together at the window aching for it to all get better

  Andrea Gibson

  Dream, Hurt, Pain

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• Sam and Caine were left standing side by side, bruised and battered, to stare over Penny's sickening corpse, at the face of their mother.

  Michael Grant

  Mother, Faces, Pennies

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• What about this?" I held up a battered copy of Beauty and the Beast. "It sounds romantic." Xavier wrinkled his nose. "Disney... I don't think so." "Why not?" "Because if anyone found out, I'd never live it down." "I won't tell if you don't," I pleaded, and Xavier shook his head in defeat. "The things I do for you," He said with an exaggerated sigh.

  Alexandra Adornetto

  Thinking, Sound, Why Not

  Alexandra Adornetto (2012). “Heaven: Number 3 in series”, p.29, Hachette UK

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• What makes authentic disciples is not visions, ecstasies, biblical mastery of chapter and verse, or spectacular success in the ministry, but a capacity for faithfulness. Buffeted by the fickle winds of failure, battered by their own unruly emotions, and bruised by rejection and ridicule, authentic disciples may have stumbled and frequently fallen, endured lapses and relapses, gotten handcuffed to the fleshpots and wandered into a far county. Yet, they kept coming back to Jesus.

  Brennan Manning

  Jesus, Biblical, Wind

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• We are such small, stupid things. For most of my life I thought of nature as the stupid thing: Blind, animal, destructive. We, the humans, were clean and smart and in control: we had wrestled the rest of the world into submission, battered it down, pinned it to a glass slide and the pages of The Bool of Shhh.

  Lauren Oliver

  Smart, Stupid, Animal

  Lauren Oliver (2011). “Hana: A Delirium Short Story”, p.21, Hachette UK

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• It's me, love," he said softly. "Everything's all right." Daisy managed to whisper through dry lips. "If you're a ghost...I hope you haunt me forever." Matthew sat on the floor and reached for her cold hands. "Would a ghost use the door?" he asked gently, bringing her fingers to his scratched, battered face.

  Lisa Kleypas

  Doors, Hands, Forever

  Lisa Kleypas (2011). “Scandal In Spring: Number 4 in series”, p.115, Hachette UK

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• ...you are battered and bruised in the collisions between reminiscence and reality.

  David Eagleman

  Reality, Collision, Bruised

  David Eagleman (2009). “Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives”, p.110, Vintage

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• The rain battered the cottage. Valkyrie risked a look up at Skulduggery. “What is it?” she whispered. “It’s a box,” he whispered back. “What kind of box?” “A wooden one.” She gave him a look.

  Derek Landy

  Rain, Looks, Cottages

  Derek Landy (2011). “Death Bringer (Skulduggery Pleasant, Book 6)”, p.48, HarperCollins UK

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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

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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

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