881 Bulb Quotes

It's like someone jammed an electric light bulb in your face, and busted it. I thought half my head was blowed off ... When he knocked me down I could have stayed there for three weeks. ~ James J. Braddock

Step up to red alert."
Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb."
- Rimmer & Kryten, "Red Dwarf ~ Rob Grant

If we were going to determine what was broken in the radios, we needed a power source. With no electricity, this meant batteries. [ ... ] we'd walk to the trading center and look for used cells that had been tossed in the waste bins. [ ... ]
First we'd test the battery to see if any juice was left in it. We'd attach two wires to the positive and negative ends and connect them to a torch bulb. The brighter the bulb, the stronger the battery. Next we'd flatten the Shake Shake carton and roll it into a tube, then stack the batteries inside, making sure the positives and negatives faced in the same direction. Then we'd run wires from each end of the stack to the positive and negative heads inside the radio, where the batteries normally go. Together, this stack of dead batteries usually contained enough juice to power a radio. ~ William Kamkwamba

By the time the human stuck his key in the lock of his third-floor apartment door and pushed it open, Dante was shoving him into the dark, tossing the guy across the spartan living room.
"Motherfu - " Sullivan came up out of his crash on one knee, then froze, his face caught in a wedge of light from the bare bulb glowing in the hall outside.
Something flashed in the human's eyes, something beneath his immediate fear. Recognition, Dante thought, figuring he probably remembered them from the club the other night. But there was anger there too. Pure male animosity. Dante could smell it seeping out of the human's pores.
He slowly got to his feet. "What the fuck's going on?"
"How about you tell us," Dante said, willing a lamp to come on as he strode farther into the place. Behind him, Chase closed and locked the door. "I'm pretty sure you can guess this isn't a social call."
"What do you want?"
"We'll start with information. It'll be up to you how we go about getting it."
"What kind of information?" His gaze swung anxiously between Dante and Chase. "I don't know who you guys are, and I don't have any idea what you're talking abou - "
"Now, see," Dante said, cutting him off with a chuckle, "that kind of bullshit answer puts us off to a real bad start." As the human's right hand slid into the deep pocket of his down-filled vest, Dante smirked. "You wanna convince me you're an idiot, go ahead and pull that gun out. Just so we're clear, I reall ~ Lara Adrian

All morning I lay down sentences, erase them, and try new ones. Soon enough, when things go well, the world around me dwindles: the sky out the window, the furious calm of the big umbrella pine ten feet away, the smell of dust falling onto the hot bulb in the lamp. That's the miracle of writing, the place you try to find
when the room, your body, and even time itself cooperate in a vanishing act. ~ Anthony Doerr

If your face is being illuminated by your television or computer screen, then you should increase the illumination in your environment by moving closer to the window or by using filament light bulbs. ~ Steven Magee

Now, if you're Al Gore, you can afford $10 a pop for squiggly-pig-tailed fluorescent light bulbs. But if you're mainstream America, two or three kids, mom and dad working outside the home, that's not a very good deal. ~ Joe Barton

Oh love! You are like a light bulb in my life.
I am in deep darkness without you. ~ Debasish Mridha

In the old days, Christmas lights had come in short strings that were wired serially. If a single bulb burned out or even just loosened in its socket, the circuit was broken and the entire string went dark. One of the season's rituals for Gary and Chip had been to tighten each little brass-footed bulb in a darkened string and then, if this didn't work, to replace each bulb in turn until the dead culprit was found. (What joy the boys had taken in the resurrection of a string!) By the time Denise was old enough to help with the lights, the technology had advanced. The wiring was parallel, and the bulbs had snap-in plastic bases. A single faulty light didn't affect the rest of the community but identified itself instantly for instant replacement ... ~ Jonathan Franzen

Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb. ~ Mitch Daniels

This revolution, the information revoultion, is a revolution of free energy as well, but of another kind: free intellectual energy. It's very crude today, yet our Macintosh computer takes less power than a 100-watt bulb to run it and it can save you hours a day. What will it be able to do ten or 20 years from now, or 50 years from now? ~ Steve Jobs

There's no light bulb lit. I half wonder if there's any power to light one.
"Aunt Alice?"
A round goblin comes out of the darkness of the hallway. ~ Travis Thrasher

She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs. ~ J.D. Salinger

But a child, so recently come into the world from the void of creation, can be more resilient than the strongest man, more strong willed than the hardiest woman. A child is like an early spring bulb that carries all the resources needed within its skin for the first push through the soil towards the sun. And just as a little bit of water can start the bulb to grow, even through fissured rock, so can a little kindness give a child the ability to push through the dark. ~ Kathleen Kent

Q: How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb? A: Four. ~ Various

Before long, my mother's friend, who, at the last minute, decided to stay for dinner, was asked to sit where I'd sat at lunch. Oliver's place setting was instantly removed,

The removal was performed summarily, without a hint of regret or compunction, the way you'd remove a bulb that was no longer working, or scrape out the entrails of a butchered sheep, or take off the sheets and blankets from a bed where someone had died. Here, take these, and remove them from sight. I watched his silverware, his place mat, his napkin, his entire being disappear. It presaged exactly what would happen less than a month from now. ~ Andre Aciman

Q: How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? A: Only one, but the light bulb has to WANT to change. ~ David John Allan

I saw a want ad. "light housekeeping." They said "Here, change this bulb." I said "I'll need some friends." ~ Steven Wright

In your body, there exists a subtle current of electricity, very subtle. But the subtler it is, the deeper it goes. It is not very visible. Scientists say that all the electricity that is in your body, if put together, can be used to light a five-candle bulb. It is not much. Quantitatively it is not much, quantitatively the atom is not much, but qualitatively ... If it explodes, it has tremendous energy in it. ~ Rajneesh

- That - to cut to a chase which the interviewers' hands-on-hip attitudes and replacement of the lamp's bulb with a much higher wattage signified they'd very much like to see cut to - as ~ David Foster Wallace

She could hear her hair growing. It sounded like something crumbling. A burnt thing crumbling. Coal. Toast. Moths crisped on a light bulb. She remembered reading somewhere that even after people died, their hair and nails kept growing. Like starlight, travelling through the universe long after the stars themselves had died. Like cities. Fizzy, effervescent, simulating the illusion of life while the planet they had plundered died around them. ~ Arundhati Roy

So from the mould
Scarlet and Gold
Many a Bulb will rise --
Hidden away, cunningly,
From sagacious eyes.

So from Cocoon
Many a Worm
Leap so Highland gay,
Peasants like me --
Peasants like Thee,
Gaze perplexedly! ~ Emily Dickinson

I might not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, but I'm pretty good at getting most of the other bulbs to light up. ~ Jack Welch

Imagination, then, must be the flip side of memory, not so much a calling up as a calling forth. Yet imagination also relies on knowledge: on knowing what is - and is not - possible in this world of fact. Imagination plants the seed or buries the bulb knowing the seasons will shift, seeing, in the mind's eye, April give way to August, the azalea to the rose, knowing that the red leaves of the maple will burnish in autumn, knowing that from this exact window, one can look down to the inlet where the moon's reflection will be just another shimmering white blossom. ~ Judith Kitchen

The bubble, as investing phenomenon, has been well studied ever since the 17th-century tulip bulb frenzy. Its counterpart in bear markets is not well understood. ~ Kenneth Fisher

Keith Tyson, a winner of the Turner Prize, did a piece once where he just got the things already in the gallery and made them into artworks with what he called his 'magical activation'. So he looked at the light switch and he called it 'the apocalyptic switch' and he looked at the light bulb and he called it 'the light bulb of awareness'. He was using his power as an artist to designate things art, but it was within the art context. ~ Grayson Perry

God is the light bulb, to where faith is the light switch. ~ Anthony Liccione

Without discipline in spiritual pursuits, the central nervous system doesn't have a chance to adjust and grow with the increased demand. It would be like putting a high voltage into a small bulb - it is bound to explode. ~ Sivananda Radha Saraswati

When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Gentle reader, we see God through our assholes in the flash bulb of orgasm. ~ William S. Burroughs

[S]uppose you make a hole in an ordinary evacuated electric light bulb and allow the air molecules to pass in at the rate of 1,000,000 a second, the bulb will become full of air in approximately 100,000,000 years. ~ Francis William Aston

No invention ever comes into being fully developed in a single step, from nothing.
Ten thousand inventions had to be in place before Edison could invent the electric light-bulb. ~ Daniel Quinn

You want to be the first to do something. You want to create something. You want to innovate something...I often think of Edison inventing the light bulb. That's what I want to do. I want to drive over the bridge coming out of New York there and look down on that sea of lights that is New Jersey and say, `Hey, I did that!' ~ David Keirsey

Someone's gotta determine whether you guys are destined for superstardom," I said, my mind catching up somewhat. A light bulb popped over my head. "Hey, I could be your momager! Get you gigs, do your wardrobe. Ride your coattails all the way to the Grammys." I was mentally calculating my cut.
"Mom, we're a high school band who haven't even properly rehearsed yet. Don't write the acceptance speech just yet," she chided.
"Mmhmm," I said distractedly, thinking of the Porsche I'd buy with my income.
Brad the front desk receptionist wandered past. "Brad!" I called, stopping him. "Lexie's band is going to be world famous. Want her autograph now so you can sell it on eBay in five years and retire a rich man?" I asked him.
He grinned. "You bet. I'll also be doing a TMZ interview telling all about how I knew her before she was gobbled up by the fame monster," he responded without missing a beat.
I gave him a thumbs up and turned to Lexie, grinning. She had her head in her hands. ~ Anne Malcom

Too often the spotlight that highlights our successes burns out quickly, while the spotlight that scrutinizes our failures is a long-life bulb. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The electric bulb cannot give light without electricity. Likewise, you cannot change yourself if today you are cut off from Christ. If there be any change or difference in you, it is not because you yourself have changed, for all is in Christ. Such is the way of God's salvation.[2] ~ Watchman Nee

Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb. ~ Bob Dylan

Byron, as he burns on, sees more and more of this pattern. He learns how to make contact with other kinds of electric appliances, in homes, in factories and out in the streets. Each has something to tell him. The pattern gathers in his soul (Seele, as the core of the earlier carbon filament was known in Germany), and the grander and clearer it grows, the more desperate Byron gets. Someday he will know everything, and still be as impotent as before. His youthful dreams of organizing all the bulbs in the world seem impossible now - the Grid is wide open, all messages can be overheard, and there are more than enough traitors out on the line. Prophets traditionally don't last long - they are either killed outright, or given an accident serious enough to make them stop and think, and most often they do pull back. But on Byron has been visited an even better fate. He is condemned to go on forever, knowing the truth and powerless to change anything. No longer will he seek to get off the wheel. His anger and frustration will grow without limit, and he will find himself, poor perverse bulb, enjoying it. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Get this: how many Weavers does it take to screw in a light bulb?'

Kate folded her arms, her expression aloof. Acciper pensively scratched his beard, withholding his ignorance.

'One?' ventured Vivian.

Lucian's boyish face split into a grin. His body filled up with the imminent rumble of laughter.

'Two Weavers. One holds the light bulb and the other one spins reality around it. ~ Louise Blackwick

The killer app that got the world ready for appliances was the light bulb. So the light bulb is what wired the world. And they weren't thinking about appliances when they wired the world. They were really thinking about - they weren't putting electricity into the home. They were putting lighting into the home. ~ Jeff Bezos

I'd done all the things I thought a person had to do in order to be successful and fulfilled, like getting a great education and becoming a lawyer, and yet there was zero spark in my life. But there was no light-bulb moment. It was gradual. In the early 1990s, I decided to experiment and try some new ways of living. ~ Robin S. Sharma

I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action. ~ Tennessee Williams

It is true that often she doesn't want advice; she wants a listening ear. At the same time, however, the wise wife will realize her husband's desire to help and advise is strong. She should refrain from getting angry and humor him a bit, as one wife did by saying, "Thanks for the input. I know I am not the brightest bulb on the tree when it comes to certain things. I am glad we have each other. ~ Emerson Eggerichs

Between two of the joists, backlit by a bare dust-coated bulb in a white ceramic socket, a fat spider danced from string to string, plucking from its silken harp a music beyond human hearing. Bibi ~ Dean Koontz

A word of advice: If you get the choice between the upper and lower bunks in a cell, choose the lower. Prisons do not turn off their lights at night, and I spent a sleepless night, without a mattress, with a five-hundred-watt bulb shining directly into my eyes. ~ William Powell

Beginning with doom in the bulb, the spring unravels ... ~ Dylan Thomas

Who"

The month of flowering's finished. The fruit's in,
Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth.
October's the month for storage.

The shed's fusty as a mummy's stomach:
Old tools, handles and rusty tusks.
I am at home here among the dead heads.

Let me sit in a flowerpot,
The spiders won't notice.
My heart is a stopped geranium.

If only the wind would leave my lungs alone.
Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down.
They rattle like hydrangea bushes.

Mouldering heads console me,
Nailed to the rafters yesterday:
Inmates who don't hibernate.

Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze,
A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted,
Their veins white as porkfat.

O the beauty of usage!
The orange pumpkins have no eyes.
These halls are full of women who think they are birds.

This is a dull school.
I am a root, a stone, an owl pellet,
Without dreams of any sort.

Mother, you are the one mouth
I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness
Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways.

I said: I must remember this, being small.
There were such enormous flowers,
Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely.

The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry.
Now they light me up like an electric bulb.
For weeks I can remember nothing at all. ~ Sylvia Plath

What did moths bump into before the electric light bulb was invented? Boy, the lightbulb really screwed the moth up didn't it? Are there moths on their way to the sun now going, It's gonna be worth it!. ~ Bill Hicks