Dust Quotes - Page 23

• I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race where that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.

  John Milton

  Running, Race, Heat

  Areopagitica (1644)

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• When the music stopped, it could have been forever since we'd begun. My grandfather took a step back, and the light grew yellow at his back. 'I'm going,' he said. 'Where?' I asked. 'Don't worry, sweetheart. You're so close.' He turned and walked away, disappearing rapidly into spots and dust. Infinity.

  Alice Sebold

  Light, Yellow, Worry

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• Above my cradle loomed the bookcase where/ Latin ashes and the dust of Greece/ mingled with novels, history, and verse/ in one dark Babel. I was folio-high/ when I first heard the voices.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Latin, Dark, Voice

  Charles Baudelaire, Richard Howard (1983). “Les Fleurs Du Mal”, p.165, David R. Godine Publisher

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• Writing is something that you don't know how to do. You sit down and it's something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It's beyond me, because you yourself don't even know if you're going to be able to. I'm always worried, well, you know, every time I go upstairs with my wine bottle. Sometimes I'll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don't go up there to write. The typewriter's up there. If it doesn't start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.

  Charles Bukowski

  Fear, Moving, Wine

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• Love, love, love, says Percy. And hurry as fast as you can along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust. Then, go to sleep. Give up your body heat, your beating heart. Then, trust.

  Mary Oliver

  Beach, Giving Up, Heart

  Mary Oliver (2008). “The Truro Bear and Other Adventures: Poems and Essays”, p.77, Beacon Press

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• Why, what is pomp, rule, reign, but earth and dust? And, live we how we can, yet die we must.

  William Shakespeare

  Earth, Reign, Dies

  'Henry VI, Part 3' (1592) act 5, sc. 2, l. 23

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• I'll always want him. Until every sun goes dark in every sky, until I am nothing more than long-forgotten cosmic dust, I will want him. And even then I suspect my particles will long for his.

  Ann Aguirre

  Dark, Sky, Long

  Ann Aguirre (2009). “Doubleblind”, p.64, Penguin

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• but as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certain fatal cliffside fall—falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves.

  Philip K. Dick

  Weed, Fall, Pride

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• Ah, Los Angeles! Dust and fog of your lonely streets, I am no longer lonely. Just you wait, all of you ghosts of this room, just you wait, because it will happen, as sure as there's a God in heaven.

  John Fante

  Lonely, Fog, Waiting

  "Ask the Dust". Book by John Fante, 1939.

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• Ask the dust on the road! Ask the Joshua trees standing alone where the Mojave begins. Ask them about Camilla Lopez, and they will whisper her name.

  John Fante

  Names, Tree, Mojave

  John Fante (1990). “Prologue to Ask the Dust”

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• Golden lads and girls all must as chimney sweepers come to dust.

  William Shakespeare

  Girl, Death, Heat Of The Sun

  'Cymbeline' (1609-10) act 4, sc. 2, l. 258

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• I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more /the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort /to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires /and expires, too soon, too soon /before life itself

  Joseph Conrad

  Love, Heart, Men

  "Youth" (1902)

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• She is happy where she lies With the dust upon her eyes.

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Lying, Eye, Her Eyes

  Edna St Vincent, Edna St. Vincent Millay (2013). “The Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection”, p.185, eBookIt.com

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• We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that doesn't stop us from wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine doesn't disappear; it's transformed into the clean surface.

  Paulo Coelho

  Witch, Clean, Divine

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• I’ve lived to bury my desires, And see my dreams corrode with rust; Now all that’s left are fruitless fires That burn my empty heart to dust.

  Alexander Pushkin

  Dream, Failure, Heart

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• The wood nymph instructors left me in the dust. They told me not to worry about it. They'd had centuries of practice running away from lovesick gods. But still, it was a little humiliating to be slower than a tree.

  Rick Riordan

  Running, Practice, Nymphs

  Rick Riordan (2006). “The lightning thief”

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• He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.

  Miranda July

  Air, Doubt, Done

  Miranda July (2008). “No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories”, p.37, Simon and Schuster

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• When she saw my messy desk, she said she was the same way, and there was no dust on the TV, and I was easy to love. People just need a little help because they are so used to not loving. It's like scoring the clay to make another piece of clay stick to it.

  Miranda July

  People, Clay, Needs

  Miranda July (2008). “No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories”, p.138, Simon and Schuster

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• She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.

  Oscar Wilde

  Laughter, Pain, Passion

  Oscar Wilde, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Novel, Short Stories, Poetry, Essays and Plays”, p.49, GENERAL PRESS

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• While I was looking the other way your fire went out Left me with cinders to kick into dust What a waste of the wonder you were In my living fire I will keep your scorn and mine In my living fire I will keep your heartache and mine At the disgrace of a waste of a life

  Kristin Cashore

  Fire, Heartache, Way

  Kristin Cashore (2009). “Fire”, p.7, Penguin

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• As a breath on glass, - As witch-fires that burn, The gods and monsters pass, Are dust, and return. (“The Face of the Skies”)

  George Sterling

  Fire, Glasses, Sky

  George Sterling (1921). “Sails and Mirage”

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• Sifting daylight dissolves the memory, turns it into dust motes floating in light.

  Toni Morrison

  Memories, Light, Floating

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• Let us go forth, the tellers of tales, and seize whatever prey the heart long for, and have no fear. Everything exists, everything is true, and the earth is only a little dust under our feet.

  William Butler Yeats

  Heart, Feet, Long

  William Butler Yeats (2007). “The Celtic Twilight”, p.6, Library of Alexandria

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• They’re ogling you, dude. Talking about your assets and the fact that you’re nauseatingly ripped, which I would have been had I not bit the dust at seventeen. I’m forever trapped in my tall, gangly phase. (Jesse)

  Sherrilyn Kenyon

  Talking, Forever, Phases

  Sherrilyn Kenyon (2008). “Dream Chaser”, p.124, St. Martin's Paperbacks

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• I wondered how long it took for a baby to become yours, for familiarity to set in. Maybe as long as it took a new car to lose that scent, or a brand-new house to gather dust. Maybe that was the process more commonly described as bonding: the act of learning your child as well as you know yourself.

  Jodi Picoult

  Baby, Children, Parenting

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “Handle with Care: A Novel”, p.258, Simon and Schuster

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