Pale Quotes - Page 11

• A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign.

  Zadie Smith

  Mother, Country, Land

  Zadie Smith (2003). “White Teeth”, p.136, Vintage

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• The smile that flickers on a baby’s lips when he sleeps- does anyone know where it was born? Yes, there is a rumor that a young pale beam of a crescent moon touched the edge of a vanishing autumn cloud, and there the smile was first born in the dream of a dew-washed morning.

  Rabindranath Tagore

  Smile, Dream, Baby

  Rabindranath Tagore (2013). “Gitanjali”, p.79, Simon and Schuster

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• She had no mercy. He looked at her neck and thought how he would like to jab it with the knife he had for his muffin. He knew enough anatomy to make pretty certain of getting the carotid artery. And at the same time he wanted to cover her pale, thin face with kisses.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Kissing, Knives, Muffins

  W. Somerset Maugham (2016). “Of Human Bondage (Diversion Classics)”, p.403, Diversion Books

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• For time and eternity there have been fathers like Nathan who simply can see no way to have a daughter but to own her like a plot of land. To work her, plow her under, rain down a dreadful poison upon her. Miraculously, it causes these girls to grow. They elongate on the pale slender stalks of their longing, like sunflowers with heavy heads. You can shield them with your body and soul, trying to absorb that awful rain, but they'll still move toward him. Without cease they'll bend to his light.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Girl, Daughter, Father

  Barbara Kingsolver (2008). “The Poisonwood Bible”, p.162, Faber & Faber

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• and for a moment he held out his hands as if to steady himself or as if to bless the ground there or perhaps as if to slow the world that was rushing away and seemed to care nothing for the old or the young or rich or poor or dark or pale or he or she. Nothing for their struggles, nothing for their names. Nothing for the living or the dead.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Struggle, Dark, Hands

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.286, Pan Macmillan

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• The first lights of the evening were springing into pale existence. The Ferris wheel, pricked out now in lights, revolved leisurely through the dusk; a few empty cars of the roller coaster rattled overhead.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Light, Car, Ferris Wheels

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2015). “The Complete Works of F. Scott Fitzgerald: Novels, Short Stories, Poetry, Articles, Letters, Plays & Screenplays: From the author of The Great Gatsby, The Side of Paradise, Tender Is the Night, The Beautiful and Damned, The Love of the Last Tycoon, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and many other notable works”, p.1790, e-artnow

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• She looked up at him and her face was pale and austere in the uplight and her eyes lost in their darkly shadowed hollows save only for the glint of them and he could see her throat move in the light and he saw in her face and in her figure something he'd not seen before and the name of that thing was sorrow.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Moving, Eye, Light

  Cormac McCarthy (2013). “The Border Trilogy”, p.136, Pan Macmillan

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• History with its flickering lamp stumbles along the trail of the past, trying to reconstruct its scenes, to revive its echoes, and kindle with pale gleams the passion of former days. What is the worth of all this? The only guide to a man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.

  Winston Churchill

  Memories, Passion, Fate

  Winston Churchill, David Cannadine (1989). “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat: The Speeches of Winston Churchill”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• The native hue of resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; and enterprises of great pitch and moment, With this regard, their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.

  William Shakespeare

  Names, Hue, Hamlet And Ophelia

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 3, sc. 1, l. 56

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• You must know the story of how the race of ancient days reached the stars, and how they bargained away all the wild half of themselves to do so, so that they no longer cared for the taste of the pale wind, no for love or lust, nor to make new songs nor to sing old ones, nor for any of the other animal things they believed they had brought with them out of the rain forests al the bottom of time--though in fact, so my uncle told me, those things brought them

  Gene Wolfe

  Song, Stars, Uncles

  Gene Wolfe (1994). “Sword & Citadel: The Second Half of 'The Book of the New Sun'”, p.38, Orb Books

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• Back in middle school, Catherine and I had gone through this stage where all we would read were fantasy books. We'd consume them like M&M's, by the fistful, J.R.R. Tolkien and Terry Brooks and Susan Cooper and Lloyd Alexander. Susan Boone looked, to me, like the queen of the elves (there's almost always an elf queen in fantasy books). I mean, she was shorter than me and had on a strange lineny outfit in pale blues and greens.

  Meg Cabot

  Queens, Book, School

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• Never a possession, always the possessor, with skin as pale as smoke, and eyes tawny and sharp as yellow wine: Desire is everything you have ever wanted. Whoever you are. Whatever you are. Everything.

  Neil Gaiman

  Wine, Eye, Yellow

  "Season of Mists (The Sandman #21: Prologue)". Book by Neil Gaiman, December 1990 – July 1991.

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• Her cheeks were flushed. She caught hold of the Savage's arm and pressed it, limp, against her side. He looked down at her for a moment, pale, pained, desiring, and ashamed of his desire. He was not worthy, not... Their eyes for a moment met. What treasures hers promised! A queen's ransom of temperament. Hastily he looked away, disengaged his imprisoned arm. He was obscurely terrified lest she should cease to be something he could feel himself unworthy of.

  Aldous Huxley

  Queens, Eye, Desire

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• Boys are just boys after all, but sometimes girls really seem to be the turn of a pale wrist, or the sudden jut of a hip, or a clutch of very dark hair falling across a freckled forehead. I'm not saying that's what they really are. I'm just saying sometimes it seems that way, and that those details (a thigh mole, a full face flush, a scar the precise shape and size of a cashew nut) are so many hooks waiting to land you.

  Zadie Smith

  Girl, Fall, Dark

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• I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart? I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches? - Its snaky acids kiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.

  Sylvia Plath

  Heart, Sleep, Dark

  Sylvia Plath (2010). “Ariel: The Restored Edition”, p.35, Faber & Faber

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• A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think. Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, only I grow old, a pale softball of death swelling inside me. Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work fulfilling their appointed rounds.

  Haruki Murakami

  Softball, Fun, Spring

  Haruki Murakami (1994). “The Elephant Vanishes”, Vintage

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• Well! I had the most fantastic dream! Trees crying blood. Horrible dead elves going around and killing people! Raistlin wearing black robes! It was the most incredible thing! And you were there, Sturm. Laurana and Flint. And everyone died! Well, almost everyone. Raistlin didn't. And there was a green dragon-' Tasslehoff stopped. What was wrong with his friends? Their faces were pale, their eyes wide.

  Margaret Weis

  Dream, Eye, Wearing Black

  Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman (1985). “Dragons of Winter Night”, Random House Books for Young Readers

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• You want to go play with your new friends back there? The really pale ones with the taste for plasma? --Shane

  Rachel Caine

  Play, Want, Taste

  Rachel Caine (2009). “Lord of Misrule: The Morganville Vampires”, p.75, Penguin

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• Or if I truly gave up I could be like Wet Lindsay. When Robbie dumped her she got all pale and even wetter than normal. She was like an anoraksick. (A person who is both very thin and wears tragic anoraks.) I just made that up as a joke. Even though I am very upset I can still think of a joke.

  Louise Rennison

  Thinking, Upset, Dumped Her

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• Shane looked…pale. Pale and shaken and—how predictable was this?—pissed.

  Rachel Caine

  Shane, Predictable

  Rachel Caine (2006). “Glass Houses: The Morganville Vampires”, p.172, Penguin

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• Every moment of the night Forever changing places And they put out the star-light With the breath from their pale faces

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Stars, Night, Light

  Edgar Allan Poe (2008). “Edgar Allan Poe Annotated and Illustrated Entire Stories and Poems”, p.817, Bottletree Books LLC

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• I remember it all: every word, every breath, every tick of the clock . . . everything that happened is with me forever. I can never forget it. But that dosen't mean I can live it again. You can't live what's gone, you can only remember it, and memories have no life. They're just pale reminders of a time that's gone - like faded photographs, or a dried-up daisy chain at the back of a drawer. They have no substance. They can't take you back. Nothing can take you back. Nothing can be the same as it was. Nothing is. All I can do is tell it.

  Kevin Brooks

  Memories, Mean, Forever

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• Time, which is so often an enemy in life, can also become our ally if we see how a pale moment can lead to a glowing moment, and then turn to a moment of perfect transparency, before dropping again to a moment of everyday simplicity.

  Peter Brook

  Glowing, Perfect, Simplicity

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• Blanche, prosaic in a pale yellow sweater and blue jeans, was wondering again if anything mattered—-life, faith--specifically, finishing homework assignments.

  Regina Doman

  Pale Yellow, Blue, Jeans

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• Pale blind diver, luckless slinger, lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

  Pablo Neruda

  Blind, Lost

  Pablo Neruda (2015). “The Poetry of Pablo Neruda”, p.25, Macmillan

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