Lyrical Quotes

Quotes tagged as "lyrical" Showing 1-30 of 60
James Joyce
“The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.”
James Joyce, Ulysses

Richard  Adams
“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

Gaston Leroux
“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

Sapardi Djoko Damono
“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

Clive Barker
“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

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

Misba
“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

Misba
“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

Elane Kim
“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

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

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

James   McBride
“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

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

Kim Addonizio
“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

John McPhee
“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

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

Oscar Wilde
“That a burnt child loves the fire'

'I am not even singed. My wings are untouched.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Casey Renee Kiser
“Don't bother pulling my string again-
Not behind those doll eyes anymore
I won't say what's expected, kid,
laugh at your tantrum on the floor

I'm just not looking at you, kid,
I'm not a piss-poor heart anymore;
Not going home with the lowest bid
Out of stock- your projection whore

I'm never going back to the toy box
Elevated up from the cellar-
home of the wish-washed pretty cocks
Out of the dark, preachin' Helen Keller

Bored with the coin-operated allure
I'm top shelf, kid, out of your reach
You can't afford to walk in the store
Turn around, kid, don't slip in bleach


-from 'Ragdoll$ & Riche$”
Casey Renee Kiser, Confessions of a D3AD Petal

Kris Faatz
“She walked under the sun that browned her skin and let the wind brush her hair, let the sea lick her fingers” - In regards to Klaya.”
Kris Faatz, Fourteen Stones

Amal El-Mohtar
“As each letter unfolds inside her mind, she frames it in the palace of her memory.”
Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

Amal El-Mohtar
“I sing myself out to you, and my talons clutch the branch, and I am wrung out until your next letter gives me breath, fills me to bursting.”
Amal El-Mohtar, This Is How You Lose the Time War

Celeste Ng
“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

Celeste Ng
“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

Oscar Wilde
“That a burnt child loves the fire.'

'I am not even singed. My wings are untouched.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Doran Gray

Casey Renee Kiser
“Bad Trash
( I Don't Like the Sound of That)

Runs in the family
R u n s in the f a m i l y-
No, that's an atrocity
you won't hear from me

I don't like the sound of that
Not lyin' in a mouse trap-
I'm a mofo' sassy cat
I don't clean no d i r t y rat

No, not my reality
Said not M Y reality-
Don't shine shit in front of me
and call it my reality!

I don't like the sound of that
Cruel intentions get tires flat

I say what will shine for me
I say what will bleed for me
I call out the trash to me
Bad trash always dies for me

Clawed out my own reality
The top from the back alley
I don't run in the family
I run far from the alley

Calling all my sour soulmates-
Recovering a l l e y c a ts
You all clean up so good now
No bad, bad trash, just LoVe pats!










No bad trash, just LoVe pats”
Casey Renee Kiser, Confessions of a D3AD Petal

Giovanni Verga
“Αλλά η επίμονη προσκόλληση αυτών των φτωχών ανθρώπων στο βράχο που τους έριξε η τύχη όταν έσπερνε πρίγκιπες αποδώ και δούκισσες αποκεί, αυτή η θαρραλέα εγκατάλειψη σε μια ζωή όλο μόχθο, αυτή η πίστη της οικογένειας που αντανακλάται στο επάγγελμα, στο σπίτι και στις πέτρες που το περιτριγυρίζουν, μου μοιάζουν πράγματα σοβαρότατα και πολύ σεβαστά. Μου φαίνεται ότι οι ανησυχίες ενός περιπλανώμενου πνεύματος θα αποκοιμούνταν γλυκά μέσα στη γαλήνη αυτών των ήπιων, απλών συναισθημάτων που κληροδοτούνται ήσυχα και αμετάβλητα από γενιά σε γενιά.”
Giovanni Verga, Vita dei campi

Casey Renee Kiser
“only said you loved me
one time i cornered you...
now i understand
only want the tightest hand
to just let go,
yeah, letting you go, go, go
ready, set, go
ready, set, go
ready, set, GO!!!

Now, I'm racing so slow!
Snails RRR running the show!
At my own pace, LET GO!
Said, pour another, Moe,
I'm just tryin' to let go...”
Casey Renee Kiser, Altered States of the Unflinching Souls

Casey Renee Kiser
“Remember my heart laid bare at your feet-
you kicked it way across the Universe
Never thought I'd travel this much, I'm beat
Lip-stitched, still smile and wave from the hearse”
Casey Renee Kiser, Altered States of the Unflinching Souls

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