Lyrical Quotes

“The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“The full moon, well risen in a cloudless eastern sky, covered the high solitude with its light. We are not conscious of daylight as that which displaces darkness. Daylight, even when the sun is clear of clouds, seems to us simply the natural condition of the earth and air. When we think of the downs, we think of the downs in daylight, as with think of a rabbit with its fur on. Stubbs may have envisaged the skeleton inside the horse, but most of us do not: and we do not usually envisage the downs without daylight, even though the light is not a part of the down itself as the hide is part of the horse itself. We take daylight for granted. But moonlight is another matter. It is inconstant. The full moon wanes and returns again. Clouds may obscure it to an extent to which they cannot obscure daylight. Water is necessary to us, but a waterfall is not. Where it is to be found it is something extra, a beautiful ornament. We need daylight and to that extent it us utilitarian, but moonlight we do not need. When it comes, it serves no necessity. It transforms. It falls upon the banks and the grass, separating one long blade from another; turning a drift of brown, frosted leaves from a single heap to innumerable flashing fragments; or glimmering lengthways along wet twigs as though light itself were ductile. Its long beams pour, white and sharp, between the trunks of trees, their clarity fading as they recede into the powdery, misty distance of beech woods at night. In moonlight, two acres of coarse bent grass, undulant and ankle deep, tumbled and rough as a horse's mane, appear like a bay of waves, all shadowy troughs and hollows. The growth is so thick and matted that event the wind does not move it, but it is the moonlight that seems to confer stillness upon it. We do not take moonlight for granted. It is like snow, or like the dew on a July morning. It does not reveal but changes what it covers. And its low intensity---so much lower than that of daylight---makes us conscious that it is something added to the down, to give it, for only a little time, a singular and marvelous quality that we should admire while we can, for soon it will be gone again.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Erik: Are you very tired?
Christine: Oh, tonight I gave you my soul, and I am dead.
Erik: Your soul is a beautiful thing, child. No emperor received so fair a gift. The angels wept to-night.”
― Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera

“Waktu berjalan ke Barat di waktu pagi hari matahari mengikutiku di belakang.
Aku berjalan mengikuti bayang-bayangku sendiri yang memanjang di depan.
Aku dan matahari tidak bertengkar tentang siapa di antara kami yang telah menciptakan bayang-bayang,
aku dan bayang-bayang tidak bertengkar tentang siapa di antara kami yang harus berjalan di depan.”
― Sapardi Djoko Damono

“Sung to the tune of O Christmas Tree

O woe is me,
O woe is me,
I used to have a hamster tree,
But it was eaten by a newt,
And now I have no cuddly fruit,
O woe is me,
O woe is me,
I used to have a hamster tree!”
― Clive Barker, Abarat

“Half a page --- and the morning is already ancient.”
― Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family

“Give me a man, for his sons make courageous soldiers while pretty boys can only decorate the dance.”
― Euripides, Electra

“To think she has forfeited her ethics for the Devil’s Book! The only book in the world she sees in her dreams, daydreams, and nightmares. The only book that may have the real secrets of voice instead of boring jargon page after page, tickling your curiosity and giving you the things you already know.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Not that the war heroes will touch them. Neither to shake hands, nor trace lightly, and never-ever intimately. Touching the unevolved people for pleasure isn’t principled.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“For now, we will watch the seagulls swallow paper, Appa and I. We will laugh and laugh, because the snow is still soft and we are still here.”
― Elane Kim, Postcards

“… in these new days and in these new pages a philosophical tradition of the spontaneity of speculation kind has been rekindled on the sacred isle of Éire, regardless of its creative custodian never having been taught how to freely speculate, how to profoundly question, and how to playfully define.

Spontaneity of speculation being synonymous with the philosophical-poetic, the philosophical-poetic with the rural philosopher-poet, and by roundelay the rural philosopher-poet thee with the spontaneity of speculation be.

And by the way of the rural what may we say?
A philosopher-poet of illimitable space we say.

Iohannes Scottus Ériugena the metaphor of old salutes you; salutes your lyrical ear and your skilful strumming of the rippling harp.

(Source: Hearing in the Write, Canto 19, Ivy-muffled)”
― Richard Mc Sweeney, Hearing in the Write

“Why do I find it hard to write the next line?”
― Gary Kemp

“Apollo, your voice hymned a justice I could not see clear, but all too clear the anguish you caused, the bloodhaunted, homeless future you've doled out.”
― Euripides, Electra

“I drown myself in liquids of all kind
Pour me another fiery glass of wine
Volcanoes flash before my eyes
I fear the love I left behind”
― Isbelle Razors, Reflective Dogma

“That's why we sing for these kids who don't have a thing, except for a dream and a fuckin rap magazine; Who post pin-up pictures on they walls all day long, idolize they favorite rappers and know all they songs; Or for anyone who's ever been through shit in they lives, so they sit and they cry, at night, wishin they'd die; Til they throw on a rap record and they sit and they vibe; We're nothin to you, but we're the fuckin shit in they eyes; That's why we seize the moment; Try to freeze it and own it, squeeze it and hold it, cause we consider these minutes golden; And maybe they'll admit it when we're gone; Just let our spirits live on, through our lyrics that you hear in our songs... [Sing for the Moment]”
― Eminem

“Artists have the ability 2 changes lives with a single per4mance.”
― Prince

“She had that light about her that turned people around her into moths.”
― Dennis Lehane, Live by Night

“Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part"
or kiss anyway, let's start with that, with the kissing part,
because it's better than the parting part”
― Kim Addonizio, Brooklyn Poets Anthology

“So, a little desperate and surprisingly inspired, I bought a cap. Not just any cap. I picked one with a bright-gold visor, a gold button at the top, a crown of navy blue, an American flag on the left temple, and—on the forehead emblem—a spread-winged eagle over a rising sun and a red-and-green tractor-trailer and the white letters “America— Spirit of Freedom.” On the back, over my cerebellum, was a starred banner in blue, white, red, green, and gold that said “Carnesville, GA Petro.” I put on that hat and disappeared. The glances died like flies. I could sit anywhere, from Carnesville to Tacoma. In Candler, North Carolina, while Ainsworth was outside fuelling the truck, I sat inside in my freedom hat saying “Biscuits and gravy” to a waitress. She went “Oooooo wheeeee” and I thought my cover wasn’t working, but a trucker passing her had slipped his hand between the cheeks of her buttocks, and she did not stop writing.”
― John McPhee, Uncommon Carriers

“Back then, the mornings were warm and melting, the kind that invited light.”
― Elane Kim, Postcards

“Sometimes in life you meet a femme fatale and you can refuse them nothing they treat you like dirt but even the dirt they dish out has a taste you can resist?
From the novel 'Adventures of a Dark Duke: The Pin”
― Russell C. Brennan, Adventures Of A Dark Duke : The Pin

“That girl is my seasoned infatuation, God's greatest creation,
She has the power to put my body in the physical depression;
She encourages the animal inside of me,
To take the advantage of my sexual aggression;
My words are inspired by those curves of her body,
And that's just a little lyrical confession.”
― Literary terrorist/Neil

“He was a human, and the gamut upon which his inner life trilled ranged from the translucent surface to beyond the deepest crevice of any sea.”
― Fiona Mozley, Elmet

“Mr. Fox didn't come, he didn't come, he didn't.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox

“tonight the backyard is brutal
in its twilit emptiness
& I have put my lips
on the glass of his face again
so I won't be lonely
& I have dressed to please him
because it's too quiet here
my hand alive in the cage of his
an actual dandelion in the grass
beside his sandal
the mosquitoes grazing our ankles
we should go inside he says
as the pitchblack comes on again like arsenic
over the glowing lawn”
― Deborah Landau, The Last Usable Hour

“Her moments were so lyrical, I hear music every time I write about her.”
― Nitya Prakash

“The sight of her lovely brown face breaking into laughter and focusing tightly on him, as she stood in the dress of azaleas in the sunlight yard of weeds, made him feel light again. In that moment he realized that all the experience of thirty-two years on the NYPD and all the formal police training in the world was useless when the smile of someone you suddenly care about finds the bow that wraps your heart and undoes it.”
― James McBride

“Moody would never remember crossing the street, or propping his bike in the front walkway, or introducing himself. So it would feel to him that he had always known her name, and that she had always known his, that somehow, he and Pearl had known each other always.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“She looked at him fiercely, almost a glare, and Moody saw that her eyes, which he’d thought were hazel, were a deep jade green. At that moment Moody had a sudden clear understanding of what had already happened that morning: his life had been divided into a before and an after, and he would always be comparing the two.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“Even the tiniest loose thread in the fabric of your world cannot be tolerated. Either everyting works, or nothing does”
― Neal Shusterman, Game Changer