descriptions Quotes

“To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.”

“He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weather-cock perched upon his spindle neck to tell which way the wind blew.”

“Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.”

“A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a high German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson.”

“i am a museum full of art but you had your eyes shut”

“That moment. That instant when your fingers curl round the handles of a shiny, uncreased bag--and all the gorgeous new things inside it becomes yours. What’s it like? It’s like going hungry for days, them cramming your mouth full of warm buttered toast.”

“As I stare at it,I can feel little invisible strings, silently tugging me toward it. I have to touch it. I have to wear it. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

“When he walked, his heels hardly touched the ground and he seemed to walk on springs, as if he was going to pounce on somebody. And he did pounce on people quite often.”

“God is a Person, and in the deep of His mighty nature He thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires and suffers as any other person may.”

“Great day for up feet! Lefts and rights.”

“Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. One of us lifted something from it, and leaning forward, that faint and invisible dust dry and acrid in the nostrils, we saw a long strand of iron-gray hair.”

“Thus she passed from generation to generation—dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.”

“The night [Grandmother] died, Dan found her propped up in her hospital bed; she appeared to have fallen asleep with the TV on and with the remote-control device held in her hand in such a way that the channels kept changing. But she was dead, not asleep, and her cold thumb had simply attached itself to the button that restlessly roamed the channels—looking for something good. How I wish that Owen Meany could have died as peacefully as that!”

“In the great green room There was a telephone And a red balloon”

“I gazed at it in wonder—not because it was awful, but because it was beautiful.”

“When Mom first announced that her Bosnian war refugee great-aunt was coming to live with us, I’d pictured a skeletal woman in a shawl, deep half-moon shadows beneath haunted eyes.”

“Pablo looked different, and it took me a moment to figure out how. He had a smile, a smile that showed his teeth, a smile that made his eyes scrunch up. He was making a little high-pitched chipmunk sound. Pablo was laughing.”

“The stage is in darkness. Harsh music is heard as dim blue lights come up. One after another, seven women run onto the stage from each of the exits. They all freeze in postures of distress. The follow spot picks up the lady in brown. She comes to life and looks around at the other ladies. All of the others are still. She walks over to the lady in red and calls to her. They lady in red makes no response.”

“By nine o’clock the movers were gone. Ellie and Gage, both exhausted. were sleeping in their new rooms, Gage in his crib, Ellie on a mattress on the floor surrounded by a foothill of boxes--her billions of Crayolas, whole broken, and blunted; her Sesame Street posters; her picture books; her clothes; heaven knew what else.”

“Dead fields under a November sky, scattered rose petals brown and turning up at the edges, empty pools scummed with algae, rot, decomposition, dust... ”

“Beyond the house was a large field for the children to play in, and beyond the field were woods that went on damn near forever.”

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”

“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”

“I lay my hand on hers, memorizing the feel of her skin. “I love you. Those words are yours. I’ll never say them to anyone else.”

“Tessa Kelly is a man-eater. When she sets her sights on you, she doesn’t just consume your heart, she goes for your soul.”

“The house looks exactly like it did when I was a kid. And my girl did that.”

“If a kiss could be seen I think it would look like a violet.”

“I am hope.”

“Approaching the state of Delaware, the dreamer is a small dog, dreaming impatiently of a past life, long forgotten, when he sailed tall ships across uncharted. The salt spray of the ocean stings my face.”

“She had immense eyes that always seemed in danger of capsizing in their own innocence.”

“She laughed and the ringing bells in her laugh had a hard metallic sound.”

“I live in Artemis, the first (and so far, only) city on the moon. It’s made of five huge spheres called ‘bubbles.‘”

“Jesus doesn’t participate in the rat race. He’s into the slower rhythms of life, like abiding, delighting, and dwelling—all words that require us to trust Him with our place and our pace. Words used to describe us being with Him.”

“She was very old and small and she walked slowly in the dark pine shadows, moving a little from side to side in her steps, with the balanced heaviness and lightness of a pendulum in a grandfather clock.”

“Oh you think these are carrots. These are not carrots. These are orange twiglets from Jupiter.”

“In the graveyard, no one ever changed. The little children Bod had played with when he was small were still children; Fortinbras Bartleby, who had once been his best friend, was not four or five years younger than Bod was, and they had less to talk about each time they saw each other; Thackeray Porringer was Bod’s height and age, and seemed to be in much better temper with him;...”

“Who is this creature with terrible claws and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws? He has knobbly knees and turned-out toes and a poisonous wart at the end of his nose. His eyes are orange, his tongue is black. He has prickles all over his back.”

“His eyes are orange. His tongue is black. He has prickles all over his back.”

“The girl took hold of one of its taloned feet. It was the first time she had touched a dragon’s scaly hide. It was rough and dry, like leather that had been left out in the weather for too long. ”

“My father took one look at me when I was born and must have thought I had the face of someone dignified and sad like an old-fashioned queen or a dead person, but what I turned out like in plain, not much there to notice.

“I myself fell in love with a wonderful women who was so charming and intelligent that I trusted that she would be my bride, but there was no way of knowing for sure, and all too soon circumstances changed and she ended up marrying someone else, all because of something she read in The Daily Punctilio.”

“Who will take care of us out there?” Klaus said, looking out on the flat horizon. “Nobody,” Violet said. “We’ll have to take care of ourselves. We’ll have to be self-sustaining.” “Like the hot air mobile home,” Klaus said, “that could travel and survive all by itself.” “Like me,” Sunny said, and abruptly stood up. Violet and Klaus gasped in surprise as their baby sister took her first wobbly steps, and then walked closely beside her, ready to catch her if she fell. But she didn’t fall. Sunny took a few more self-sustaining steps, and then the three Baudelaires stood together, casting long shadows across the horizon in the dying light of the sunset.”

“In the universe, on a planet, on a continent, in a country, in a city, on a block, in a house, in a window, in the rain, a little girl named Madlenka finds out her tooth wiggles...”

“My Lamb, you are so very small, You have not learned to read at all; Yet never a printed book withstands the urgence of your dimpled hands. So, though this book is for yourself, Let mother keep it on the shelf till you can read. O days that pass, that day will come too soon, alas!”

“I looked into her eyes, and saw my own staring back, the same peculiar shade, pale grey, flecked with yellow, rimmed with black. Now I knew the nature of her debt. It had weighed on her conscience for fourteen years. I was looking into the eyes of mother and I knew that I would never see her again.”

“I am Mary. I am a witch. Or so some would call me. ‘Spawn of the Devil,’ ‘Witch child,’ they hiss in the street, although I know neither father nor mother. I know only my grandmother, Eliza Nuttall; Mother Nuttall to her neighbors. She brought me up from a baby. If she knew who my parents are, she never told me.”

“In the town live witches nine: three in worsted, three in rags, and three in velvet fine...”

“Depressed” is a word that often describes somebody who is feeling sad and gloomy, but in this case it describes a secret button, hidden in a crow statue, that is feeling just fine, thank you.”

“She turns her thinker-upper on. She lets it softly purr. It thinks up friendly little things with smiles and fuzzy fur.”

“I once knew a fellow who had twelve teeth, five up on top, and five underneath...”

“You! Down there! WIth the curly hair. Will you please step out of line.”

“And I flew through the air and I went for a sail and I sprained the main bone in the tip of my tail!”

“Colored lights shone right across the northern sky, leaping and flaring, spreading in rainbow hues from horizon to zenith: blood red to rose pink, saffron yellow to delicate primrose, pale green, aquamarine to darkest indigo. Great veils of color swathed the heavens, rising and falling as light seen through cascading curtains of water. Streamers shot out in great shifting beams as if God had put his thumb across the sun.”

“In the distance thunder echoed round the mountains. The air was heavy and humid. I was sweating, but the sweat was turning cold in my forehead. I jumped across the ditch of the last terraced field and looked down to where my home had always been. The house was gone.”

“Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound. He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot, And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot; A bundle of toys he had flung on his back, And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.”

“But when I did get back, muddy from sliding down the hillside, bruised from fighting, once bleeding great spouts of blood from a stone wound to the head (I still have the scar, like a silver thumbnail), there would be the fire, and the smell of soup, and my mother’s arms not tearing me apart but trying to hold me, clean my face, or straighten my hair, while I twisted like a lizard to get away from her.”

“I could eat a goose-moose burger, fifteen pickles and a purple plum!”

“I stubbed my big toe on a very hard rock...”

“A very fresh green-headed Quilligan Quail sneaked up from in back and went after my tail!”

A stunning novel based on the true story of the Great Plague that came to Eyam, England in 1665, and nearly destroyed the village. The disease arrives in a parcel of dress patterns, and within 14 months, destroys 267 of the village’s 350 inhabitants.

“Outside the wind was blowing the wrong way and the world was filled with the smell of death ...” At face value, Cheshunt is a model neighbourhood. But almost as soon as he and his mother move there Nathanial knows there is something wrong--something hideously wrong. And it isn’t just the stench from the old abattoir, which doesn’t seem to bother most residents.

“I began reading the flyer again, immersed in the drawings and descriptions of the performers. In fact, I was so immersed, I forgot about Mr. Dalton. I only remembered him when I realized the room was silent.”

“His face was the colour of a well-worn polished brown boot. The skin was creased but still young and suppple-not that you could see much of his face for it was almost entirely hidden by a head and beard of wild white hair.”

“But it was his eyes that marked him out from any other man I had ever seen for they drew you into them somehow so that you could not look away even if you wanted to.”

“The wind, coming to the city from far away, bring it unusual gifts, notice by only a few sensitive souls, such as hay-fever victims, who sneeze at the pollen from flowers of other lands.”

“it’s stunningly written, the descriptions of Oxford are vivid and beautiful, and the subject _particularly Maria’s research about a boy who grew up during the Civil War and who lived at one of Oxfordshire’s superb stately homes_ fascinating.”

“It’s a perfect description. I never got to fall out of love. I just had to move on.”

“His arms become a set of parentheses bracketing the sweetest secret phrase.”

“Mr. Dearly wasn’t exactly handsome but he had the kind of face you don’t get tired of.”

“He was a chameleon, an enigma. I had no idea, really, who I had invited under this roof, into the bosom of my family.”

“Even at my age I saw what this did to Dad’s posture. He was an easygoing metro guy, but Mr. Nick’s casual familiarity with the property immediately pushed some macho rigidity into his spine.”

“Every dream in the world is making a different sort of buzzy-hum music.”

″...he stood 3 feet tall, and he drooled.”

“She noticed immediately that they were now in an altogether paler country. The sun had disappeared above a film of vapor. The air was becoming cooler every minute. The land was flat and treeless and there seemed to be no color in it at all. Every minute, the mist became thicker. The air became colder still and everything became paler and paler until soon there was nothing but grey and white all around them. They were in a country of swirling mists and ghostly vapors. There was some sort of grass underfoot but it was not green. It was ashy grey.”

“The sun was shining, the birds were flying, the grass smelled sweet.”

“The telltale sound of Verline’s rustling skirts arrived well before her. When she saw Rossamünd stricken within the chalk ring, she gave a startled cry.”

“At last he could lie down, his head pounding, his cheek pounding—throb, throb—sharp, iron-tasting.”

“The moonbeam was like a silver blade slicing through the room on to her face.”

“I would love to go somewhere else and pick peachy fruits in the early morning from the back of an elefunt.”

The first to appear was Major Rumbold, a tall, grey-haired, grey-moustached, silent man, wearing a Norfolk coat and grey flannel trousers, who lived on his retired pay and wrote natural history articles for the papers.