Stretching Quotes - Page 10

• The wind picks up. It sends leaves scurrying for cover until a softer breeze blows through, settling them down again as if to say, Shhh, there, there, it's all right. One leaf still dances in the air. It spins higher and higher, defying gravity and logic, stretching for something just out of reach. It shall have to fall, of course. Eventually. But for now, I hold my breath, willing it to keep going, taking comfort in its struggle.

  Libba Bray

  Struggle, Fall, Blow

  Libba Bray (2010). “Rebel Angels”, p.376, Simon and Schuster

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• It is the purpose of life that each of us strives to become actually what he or she is potentially. Each photographer, then, should be obsessed with stretching towards that goal through an understanding of others and the world we inhabit. When that happens, the results, like photographs, are really the expressions of the life of the maker.

  David Hurn

  Photography, Expression, Goal

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• O sleep! O gentle sleep! Nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down And steep my senses in forgetfulness? Why rather, sleep, liest thou in smoky cribs, Upon uneasy pallets stretching thee, And hush'd with buzzing night-flies to thy slumber, Than in the perfum'd chambers of the great, Under the canopies of costly state, And lull'd with sound of sweetest melody?

  William Shakespeare

  Nature, Sleep, Night

  'Henry IV, Part 2' (1597) act 3, sc. 1, l. 5

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• Will's Father's gaze went immediately to Gabriel, and then to Cecily, his eyes narrowing. "And who is this gentlemen?" Will's grin widened. "Oh him," he said. "This is Cecliy's friend, Mr. Gabriel Lightworm." Gabriel, half in the act of stretching his hand to greet Mr. Herondale, froze in horror. "Lightwood," he sputtered. "Gabriel Lightwood.

  Cassandra Clare

  Father, Eye, Hands

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• My eyes widened at the ball of orange fluff squeezing out from under the counter, blinking and stretching. I looked again, not believing. “It’s a cat,” I said, winning the Pulitzer prize for incredible intellect.

  Kim Harrison

  Believe, Cat, Eye

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• It does seem that a fantasy, working out in its own terms, stretching you beyond the normal concerns of your own life, gains you a peculiar charge of energy which inexplicably enriches you. At least, this is my ideal of a fantasy, and I am always trying to write it.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Writing, Always Trying, Work Out

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• I see a few hands stretching out to me at the edge of the net, so I grabbed the first one I could reach and pull myself across. I roll off, and would have fallen face-first onto a wood floor if he had not caught me. "He" is the young man attached to the hand I grabbed. He has a spare upper lip and a full lower lip. His eyes are so deep-set that his eyelashes touch the skin under his eyebrows, and they are dark blue, a dreaming, sleeping, waiting color.

  Veronica Roth

  Dream, Sleep, Eye

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• To call Keegan a superstar is stretching a point.

  George Best

  Superstar

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• Sun and wind and beat of sea,
  Great lands stretching endlessly...
  Where be bonds to bind the free?
  All the world was made for me!

  Adelaide Crapsey

  Travel, Wind, Sea

  Adelaide Crapsey, “Adventure”

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• If you let go of me now,” I whispered, stretching against him, “it could be another six hundred years before you find me again. Are you willing to take that risk?

  Anne Fortier

  Letting Go, Years, Risk

  Anne Fortier (2010). “Juliet: A Novel”, p.372, Ballantine Books

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• You are saying, are you not, I said to Manuelito, that stories have more room in them than ideas? [...] He laughed. That is correct, Señor. It is as if ideas are made of blocks. Rigid and hard. And stories are made of a gauze that is elastic. You can almost see through it, so what is beyond is tantalizing. You can't quite make it out; and because the imagination is always moving forward, you yourself are constantly stretching. Stories are the way spirit is exercised.

  Alice Walker

  Block, Moving, Ideas

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• A sleepy smile pulled at my lips as I rolled onto my stomach, stretching my legs out and pointing my toes. The sheets slipped over my bare skin and ended up somewhere at the foot of my bed. There was either a perverted ghost in my bedroom or Cam was wide awake.

  J. Lynn

  Feet, Skins, Lips

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• Solitude is the surest nurse of all prurient passions, and a girl in the hurry of preparation, or tumult of gaiety, has neither inclination nor leisure to let tender expressions soften or sink into her heart. The ball, the show, are not the dangerous places: no, 'tis the private friend, the kind consoler, the companion of the easy vacant hour, whose compliance with her opinions can flatter her vanity, and whose conversation can sooth, without ever stretching her mind, that is the lover to be feared: he who buzzes in her ear at court, or at the opera, must be contented to buzz in vain.

  Samuel Johnson

  Girl, Passion, Heart

  James Boswell, Samuel Johnson (1859). “The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: Including a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides”, p.256

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• In fact, for a period stretching over seven hundred years, the international language of science was Arabic. For this was the language of the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, and thus the official language of the vast Islamic Empire that, by the early eighth century CE, stretched from India to Spain.

  Jim Al-Khalili

  Book, Islamic, Years

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• I leaned back in my chair, stretching luxuriantly, delibrately letting my jacket fall open. Predictably, his eyes moved down my body-some things outlast even the change. I grinned and he looked away, a rueful smile twitching at his lips. I finished breakfast in peace.

  Karen Chance

  Fall, Eye, Breakfast

  Karen Chance (2008). “Midnight's Daughter”, p.71, Penguin

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• Walking the streets of Tokyo with Hawking in his wheelchair ... I felt as if I were taking a walk through Galilee with Jesus Christ [as] crowds of Japanese silently streamed after us, stretching out their hands to touch Hawking's wheelchair. ... The crowds had streamed after Einstein [on Einstein's visit to Japan in 1922] as they streamed after Hawking seventy years later. ... They showed exquisite choice in their heroes. ... Somehow they understood that Einstein and Hawking were not just great scientists, but great human beings.

  Freeman Dyson

  Jesus, Hero, Science

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• But why, she thought wryly, did a man seem more attractive as he became less available? How humbling to think one had so much in common with a cow stretching its neck through a gate for better grass.

  Mary Jo Putney

  Men, Thinking, Cows

  Mary Jo Putney (2000). “The Bargain”

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• He was a worried man (I'm stretching the term a bit here, I know. By now, in his mid to late teens, he might just about have passed for a man. When seen from behind. At a distance. On a very dark night).

  Jonathan Stroud

  Distance, Dark, Night

  Jonathan Stroud (2005). “Bartimaeus Trilogy, Book Three: Ptolemy's Gate”, Disney-Hyperion

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• I am stretching out this volume, since those German dogs estimate the value of books by their cubic contents.

  Karl Marx

  Dog, Book, Economics

  Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels (1956). “Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Correspondence, [1843-1895].”

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• Craving clarity, we attempt to eliminate the risk of trusting God. Fear of the unknown path stretching ahead of us destroys childlike trust in the Father's active goodness and unrestricted love.

  Brennan Manning

  Father, Risk, Path

  Brennan Manning (2010). “Ruthless Trust: The Ragamuffin's Path to God”, p.6, Harper Collins

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• The ascendancy over men's minds of the ruins of the stupendous past, the past of history, legend and myth, at once factual and fantastic, stretching back and back into ages that can but be surmised, is half-mystical in basis. The intoxication, at once so heady and so devout, is not the romantic melancholy engendered by broken towers and mouldered stones; it is the soaring of the imagination into the high empyrean where huge episodes are tangled with myths and dreams; it is the stunning impact of world history on its amazed heirs.

  Rose Macaulay

  Dream, Men, Past

  Rose Macaulay (Dame.), Roloff Beny, Constance Babington Smith (1977). “Roloff Beny interprets in photographs Pleasure of ruins”

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• There is no substitute under the heavens for productive labor. It is the process by which dreams become realities. It is the process by which idle visions become dynamic achievements. Most of us are inherently lazy. We would rather play than work. We would rather loaf than work...But it is work that spells the difference in the life of a man or woman. It is stretching our minds and utilizing the skills of our hands that lift us from mediocrity.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Dream, Work, Reality

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• I’d really love to be a versatile, chameleon-like actress, stretching myself a bit.

  Gabriella Wilde

  Actresses, Chameleon, Bits

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• There is a great line of women stretching out behind you into the past, and you have to seek them out and find them in yourself and be conscious of them.

  Doris Lessing

  Women, Past, Lines

  Doris May Lessing (1994). “The Golden Notebook”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• In the end, I take my shoes off and stick my feet in, letting the lukewarm water lick at my ankles. It feels good, and not just because I’m stoned. I make a mental note to add this to Dulcie’s list of things worth living for. For some reason, I keep seeing her rolling her eyes at me, that big, goofy grin stretching her face like Silly Putty. On my private list, I add her smile. She doesn’t have to know.

  Libba Bray

  Silly, Eye, Shoes

  Libba Bray (2009). “Going Bovine”, p.249, Delacorte Books for Young Readers

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