rocks Quotes

“What are men to rocks and mountains?”

“Choices, numberless as grains of sand, had layered and compressed, coalescing into sediment, then into rock, until all was set in stone.”

“The seed must grow regardless Of the fact that it’s planted in stone”

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.

On the Big Blackfoot River above the mouth of Belmont Creek the banks are fringed by large Ponderosa pines. In the slanting sun of late afternoon the shadows of great branches reached from across the river, and the trees took the river in their arms. The shadows continued up the bank, until they included us.

“A woman who will be like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her.”

“‘You can go to the rock, Cyril….’ That was what murder was—as easy as that! But afterwards you went on remembering….”

“Mrs. Delacroix selected a stone so large she had to pick it up with both hands and turned to Mrs. Dunbar. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Hurry up.‘”

″‘I see rocks!’ someone at the front of the dinghy yelled, and there was a loud POOM! like a bomb exploding, and Mahmoud went tumbling into the sea.”

“Rocks are space, and space is illusion.”

“I sometimes choose to think, no doubt perversely, that man is a dream, thought an illusion, and only rock is real. Rock and sun.”

″ ‘If you become a rock on the mountain high above me,’ said his mother, ‘I will be a mountain climber, and I will climb to where you are.’ ”

″ ‘If you become a fisherman,’ said the little bunny, ‘I will become a rock on the mountain, high above you.’ ”

“He was frightened. If he hadn’t been so frightened, he could have made the lion disappear, or he could have wished himself at home with his father and mother. He could have wished the lion would turn into a butterfly or daisy or a gnat. He could have wished many things, but he panicked and couldn’t think carefully. ‘I wish I were a rock,’ he said, and he became a rock.”

“Mrs. Duncan sat down on the rock. The warmth of his own mother sitting on him woke Sylvester up from his deep winter sleep.”

“Me and Jimmy have this special group of rocks where we like to play when we’re in the park. We play secret agent up there. Jimmy can imitate all kinds of foreign accents. Probably because his father’s a part-time actor.”

“His thoughts began to race like mad. He was scared and worried. Being helpless, he felt hopeless. He imagined all the possibilities, and eventually he realized that his only chance of becoming himself again was for someone to find the red pebble and to wish that the rock next to it would be a donkey.”

“Magpie draws her body into the shadow of the rocks, until she feels herself melting into blackness.”

″ I haven’t seen anything all day. I have been trying to climb this rock.”

“Frog hid behind a rock. He saw the thing coming. It was big and brown. It was covered with sticks and leaves. It had two horns.”

“Grandpa found Stina sitting on a rock, crying. ‘I came out to see the storm,’ she said. ‘But I don’t like it.’ Grandpa picked her up and hugged her. ‘Dear child,’ he said, ‘this is no way to see a storm You’re soaking wet and so am I. Let’s go inside and start all over again.’ “

“Grandpa and Stina watched the rain beating down and the rain beating down on the rocks.”

“And into Will’s mind, whirling him up on a wind blowing through and around the whole of Time, came the story of the Old Ones. He saw them from the beginning when magic was at large in the world; magic that was the power of rocks and fire and water and living things, so that the first men lived in it and with it, as a fish lives in the water.”

“Against the black sky climbed a brilliant, flaming rocket. It was a ship’s danger flare. Little Toot looked hard and saw a ship jammed between two huge rocks. It was an ocean liner his father had towed many times down the river.”

“Hush-a-bye baby, on the tree top, When the wind blows, the cradle will rock; When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall; Down will come baby, bough, cradle and all. Hush-a-bye baby, Daddy is near; Mammy’s a lady, and that’s very clear.”

“She paused to watch some sea gulls having breakfast. They were dropping mussels down on a rock to crack the mussel shells, just like nuts. Then they flew down to eat the insides.”

“She is one with us, a part of Thackers. Thackers is like a rock, sheltering us.”

“They were all rather big pearls, but no one really minds a pearl being big, and soon the pearl-divers had a pile of wet and shining jewels by the water-side. The worst of it was that as soon as the stones were dry- and they dried quickly in the sun- they stopped shining, and could not be counted as pearls anymore.”

“The most fun of all for Bruce was rock tumbling. There were lots of rocks in Forevergreen Forest - great jumbles of them. With a swipe of a paw the bear sent them tumbling down the steep slopes three and four at a time. The tumbling rocks shattered logs and flattened the bushes and brush, leaving no place for the rabbits and quail to hide. So they took off in a panic to go leaping and dodging and flying pell-mell in every direction.”

“In desperation Bruce scrunched himself up into a ball, hoping the witch would mistake him for part of the rock. But there was no chance of fooling old Roxy, and holding her lantern out over the creek she spotted the bear in a flash.”

“Specimens were what Jerry was interested in, not birds that fly away before one can be sure what they are but specimens of rock that may be scrutinized at leisure in one’s room by lamplight, late.”

My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible delight, but necessary.