A Bridge Dreaming Quotes

Houses built on bridges are scandals. A bridge wants to not be. If it could choose its shape, a bridge would be no shape, an unspace to link One-place-town to Another-place-town over a river or a road or a tangle of railway tracks or a quarry, or to attach an island to another island or to the continent from which it strains. The dream of a bridge is of a woman standing at one side of a gorge and stepping out as if her job is to die, but when her foot falls it meets the ground right on the other side. A bridge is just better than no bridge but its horizon is gaplessness, and the fact of itself should still shame it. But someone had built on this bridge, drawn attention to its matter and failure. An arrogance that thrilled me. ~ China Mieville

In getting from Windsor to Detroit there is a choice between a free tunnel and a toll bridge, which turned out to be a short ride for a dollar, which I mentioned to the toll-collector who said, 'One of those things,' impelling me to remark to my cousin, 'Almost everything said by people one sees for only an instant is something like poetry. Precise, incisive, and just right, and the reason seems to be that there isn't time to talk prose. This suggests several things, the most important of which is probably that a writer ought not to permit himself to feel that he has all the time in the world in which to write his story or play or novel. He ought to set himself a time-limit, and the shorter the better. And he ought to do a lot of other things while he is working within this time-limit, so that he will always be under pressure, in a hurry, and therefore have neither the inclination nor the time to be fussy, which is the worst thing that happens to a book while it's being written. ~ William, Saroyan

The fog, which Meg knew from her father wasn't fog at all, but low-lying clouds, began to burn off as the morning sun continued its climb through a blue-gray sky. The Golden Gate Bridge came into focus right before her eyes through a cloud that caressed the crimson metal into view. ~ Tracy Ewens

This is the middle of my life, I think of it as a place, like the middle of a river, the middle of a bridge, halfway across, halfway over. I'm supposed to have accumulated things by now: possessions, responsibilities, achievements, experience and wisdom. I'm supposed to be a person of substance. ~ Margaret Atwood

If a man can bridge the gap between life and death,if he can live after he's died, then maybe he was a great man. Immortality is the only true success. ~ James Dean

So it is that both this breathing moment and what is called "the future"are always linked with what is called "the past." So it is that dreams become reality, that memories move back and forth between dreams, and that our stories are a swaying, dancing bridge between them. ~ Joseph Bruchac

I leaned down and looked at his handsome face. I wanted to kiss him in a way that would remain soft and true on his lips, all the while help him from escaping the overwhelming sense of sadnes that he felt. I pressed forward and kissed him, tasting the saltiness of fish against his lips, and the disappointment that he held so very deeply inside. I kissed him long and wide, yet limp and yielding, pulling myself away from reality to only drown in the fantasy of our love. I touched his mouth in such a loving way, that not even his incapability to reach into my soul, could tear us away from exchanging such romance. He immediately gave into the kiss, his sadness slowly giving way to the moment that we so intimately shared. It amazed me what a merman could do, even when flowing tears streamed down his face. Through the bridge of kissing, I had healed him, and he had healed me in return. ~ Keira D. Skye

On Waterloo Bridge where we said our goodbyes,
the weather conditions bring tears to my eyes.
I wipe them away with a black woolly glove
And try not to notice I've fallen in love
On Waterloo Bridge I am trying to think:
This is nothing. you're high on the charm and the drink.
But the juke-box inside me is playing a song
That says something different. And when was it wrong?
On Waterloo Bridge with the wind in my hair
I am tempted to skip. You're a fool. I don't care.
the head does its best but the heart is the boss-
I admit it before I am halfway across ~ Wendy Cope

It's like when all you've been seeing before you is a cliff and then this bright bridge appears out of nowhere, and you run fast across it knowing, sooner or later, there'll be another cliff on the other side. What if my sadness is actually my most brutal teacher? And the lesson is always this: you don't have to be like the buffaloes.
You can stop. ~ Ocean Vuong

Excerpt from Storm's Eye by Dean Gray

With a final drag and drop, Jordan Rayne sent his latest creation winging its way toward the publisher. He looked up, squinted at that little clock in the right hand corner of his monitor, and removed his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose. His cover art was finished and shipped, just in time for lunch. He sighed and stood, rolling his shoulders and bending side to side, his back cracking in protest as the muscles loosened after having been hunched over the screen for so long. Sam raised his head, tilting it enquiringly at him, and Jordan laughed.
"Yeah, I know what you want, some lunch and a nice long walk along the beach, hmm?" Jordan smiled fondly at the furry ball of energy he'd saved from certain death. With his mom's recent death it was just Sam and him in the house. Sometimes he wondered what kept him here, now that the last thread tethering him to the island was severed.

Sam limped over and nuzzled at his hand. When Jordan had first found him out on the main road, hurt and bleeding, he hadn't been sure the pooch would make it. Taylor, his best friend and the local vet, had done what she could. At the time, Jordan simply didn't have the deep pockets for the fancy surgery needed to mend Sam's leg perfectly, he could barely afford the drugs to keep his mom in treatment. So they'd patched him up as well as they could, Taylor extending herself further than he could ever repay, and hoped for the best. The d ~ Dean Gray

There was something else amusing about the house: the irony that the most important battle of the American Revolution--the shoot-out at the Old North Bridge--had taken place just outside the residence of the pacifist Ralph Waldo Emerson. True, Emerson was born after the battle in 1803, but his grandfather had been living in the house at the time of the Revolution, and the juxtaposition of such pacifism against such violence struck Paul as a symbol of an eternal truth about American history: Nixon, that goofy Vietnam War mortician, was right: the silent majority ruled (not the rebellious, pacifist fringe); the majority killed for their property; and there was nothing really revolutionary about the minutemen , who won a war and took over the entire country to ultimately build fast-food restaurants and Disneyland while abolitionists, pacifists, hippies, and environmentalists were left to make well-intended flatulent noises--to write poems such as Ginsberg's "Howl"--in books for other defeated noisemakers. ~ Josh Barkan

Give me a moment I am preparing to drawback to scream
Louder than a train overhead below a railroad bridge ~ John E. Wordslinger

Words build a bridge between the imaginations of writer and reader, creating something unique between them. ~ Jane Lindskold

Calling it a simple schoolgirl crush was like saying a Rolls-Royce was a vehicle with four wheels, something like a hay-wagon. She did not giggle wildly and blush when she saw him, nor did she chalk his name on trees or write it on the walls of the Kissing Bridge. She simply lived with his face in her heart all the time, a kind of sweet, hurtful ache. She would have died for him.. ~ Stephen King

I see Lord Buddha in the 21st Century across national borders, across faith systems, across political ideologies, playing the role of a bridge to promote understanding to counsel patience and to enlighten us with tolerance and empathy. ~ Narendra Modi

The little toy piped on and into "London Bridge" in the same cheerfully lunatic tone. It was enough to make anyone crazy, but it probably had an extra effect on someone like MacGregor who lived for children. At any rate, I certainly hoped so. I had quite deliberately chosen the little keyboard to lure him out, and I sincerely hoped, in fact, that he would think he had been found out - and that a toy had come from Hell to punish him. After all, why shouldn't I enjoy what I do? ~ Jeff Lindsay

She had to reach. She had to want it more than she'd ever wanted anything. She had to grab like a drowning girl for every good thing that came her way and she had to swim like fuck away from every bad thing. She had to count the years and let them roll by, to grow up and then run as far as she could in the direction of her best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by her own desire to heal. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Congress displayed contempt for the city's residents, yet it retained a fondness for buildings and parks. In 1900, the centennial of the federal government's move to Washington, many congressmen expressed frustration that the proud nation did not have a capital to rival London, Paris, and Berlin. The following year, Senator James McMillan of Michigan, chairman of the Senate District Committee, recruited architects Daniel Burnham and Charles McKim, landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., and sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to propose a park system. The team, thereafter known as the McMillan Commission, emerged with a bold proposal in the City Beautiful tradition, based on the White City of Chicago's 1893 Columbian Exposition. Their plan reaffirmed L'Enfant's avenues as the best guide for the city's growth and emphasized the majesty of government by calling for symmetrical compositions of horizontal, neoclassical buildings of marble and white granite sitting amid wide lawns and reflecting pools. Eventually, the plan resulted in the remaking of the Mall as an open lawn, the construction of the Lincoln Memorial and Memorial Bridge across the Potomac, and the building of Burnham's Union Station. Commissioned in 1903, when the state of the art in automobiles and airplanes was represented by the curved-dash Olds and the Wright Flyer, the station served as a vast and gorgeous granite monument to rail transportation. ~ Zachary M. Schrag

Rebecca's eyes were like faith, - "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." Under her delicately etched brows they glowed like two stars, their dancing lights half hidden in lustrous darkness. Their glance was eager and full of interest, yet never satisfied; their steadfast gaze was brilliant and mysterious, and had the effect of looking directly through the obvious to something beyond, in the object, in the landscape, in you. They had never been accounted for, Rebecca's eyes. The school teacher and the minister at Temperance had tried and failed; the young artist who came for the summer to sketch the red barn, the ruined mill, and the bridge ended by giving up all these local beauties and devoting herself to the face of a child, - a small, plain face illuminated by a pair of eyes carrying such messages, such suggestions, such hints of sleeping power and insight, that one never tired of looking into their shining depths, nor of fancying that what one saw there was the reflection of one's own thought. ~ Kate Douglas Wiggin

We must learn how to develop bridges of relationship with people if we hope to minister healing (or anything else) to them. Even if it's a small bridge, they must have a reason to trust us. ~ Praying Medic

Because there's no such thing as too much water under the bridge. The only problem is a refusal to deal with the water that's already gone pasts. ~ Ellen Miller

the fact of not being understood by others had been my sole source of pride since my early youth, and I had not the slightest impulse to express myself in such a way that I might be understood. When I did try to clarify my thoughts and actions, I did so with no consideration whatsoever. I do not know whether or not this was because I wanted to understand myself. Such a motive is in accord with a person's real character and comes automatically to form a bridge between himself and others ~ Yukio Mishima

Time stood still in a swelling moment where my curiosity drew me to be still in thought as the breaking speed of sound caused my heart to ascend to where my ears did know. An almost desperate attempt is made to catch my breath. Conservatively sitting down near behind the door reading, I make note of the incredible lines that veer beyond the vantage of what beauty I can absorb. She is a woman, if whose flaws were to unveil would only make her even more distinctly unique with beauty. Her ivory-colored complexion bears the brilliance of champagne balanced by a hint of ochre. Ringlets of black thread and pearl lay gracefully alongside her charming features. Her lips look as if they speak of love often, but only to herself. Her style, grace, elegance, and posture display the pure determination that she has made clear in her mind. The slight indent on the bridge of her adorable nose complements her slender face and endearing qualities. Her elegance alone surpasses any expression I've ever encountered. ~ Luccini Shurod

The movement of animals across the bridge was by no means always in one direction, for although it is true that the more spectacular beasts - mastodon, saber-tooth, rhinoceros - came out of Asia to enrich the new world, other animals like the camel originated in America and carried their wonderful capacities into Asia. ~ James A. Michener

He also had a version of Billy Goat's Gruff where the troll under the bridge ended up the winner. ~ Stephen King

The Twin Towers stood out like an enormous number 11 looming over New York City, a familiar icon coupled with the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State building and the Statue of Liberty. Those towers were like the soul of lower Manhattan, alive in their own right. ~ Rebecca McNutt

One night between sunset and river
On the old bridge we stood, you and I.
Will you ever forget it, I queried,
- That particular swift that went by?
And you answered, so earnestly: Never!
And what sobs made us suddenly shiver,
What a cry life emitted in flight!
Till we die, till tomorrow, for ever,
You and I on the old bridge one night. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Go deep into meditation. and be meditation I mean silence, awareness, witnessing. You can meditate any time of the day, you can meditate working, walking, doing things. Meditation is not something separate from life; it should not be separate, otherwise it remains a little artificial. Meditation should be spread all over life. You should walk in meditation, you should sit in meditation; that means silently, fully aware. Slowly slowly it becomes your very flavour, then the bridge is created. ~ Rajneesh

I object," said the man emphatically. He stopped work again and studied Elnora. Even the watching mother could not blame him. Against the embankment, in the shade of the bridge Elnora's bright head, and her lavender dress made a picture worthy of much contemplation.
I object!" repeated the man. ~ Gene Stratton-Porter

The rays of the moon seemed to search the very bottom of the profound gulf; but still I could make out nothing distinctly, on account of a thick mist in which everything there was enveloped, and over which there hung a magnificent rainbow, like that narrow and tottering bridge which Musselmen say is the only pathway between Time and Eternity. This mist, or spray, was no doubt occasioned by the clashing of the great walls of the funnel, as they all met together at the bottom-but the yell that went up to the Heavens from out of that mist, I dare not attempt to describe. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

His months of teaching experience were now a lost age of youth and innocence. He could no longer sit in his office at Fort McNair, look out over the elm trees and the golf course, and encompass the world within "neat, geometric patterns" that fit within equally precise lectures. Policy planning was a very different responsibility, but explaining just how was "like trying to describe the mysteries of love to a person who has never experienced it."

There was, however, an analogy that might help. "I have a largish farm in Pennsylvania."...it had 235 acres, on each of which things were happening. Weekends, in theory, were days of rest. But farms defied theory:

Here a bridge is collapsing. No sooner do you start to repair it than a neighbor comes to complain about a hedge row which you haven't kept up half a mile away on the other side of the farm. At that very moment your daughter arrives to tell you that someone left the gate to the hog pasture open and the hogs are out. On the way to the hog pasture, you discover that the beagle hound is happily liquidating one of the children's pet kittens. In burying the kitten you look up and notice a whole section of the barn roof has been blown off and needs instant repair. Somebody shouts from the bathroom window that the pump has stopped working, and there's no water in the house. At that moment, a truck arrives with five tons of stone for the lane. And as you stand there hopelessly, wondering which of these crises ~ John Lewis Gaddis

Pont Saint Benezet."
"What happened to it?" Luce asked.
Daniel glanced over his shoulder. "Remember how quiet Annabelle got when I mentioned we were coming here? She inspired the boy who built that bridge in the Middle Ages in the time when the popes lived here and not in Rome. He noticed her flying across the Rhone one day when she didn't think anyone could see her. He built the bridge to follow her to the other side."
"When did it collapse?"
"Slowly, over time, one arch would fall into the river. Then another. Arriane says the boy-his name was Benezet-had a vision for angels, but not for architecture. Annabelle loved him. She stayed in Avignon as his muse until he died. He never married, kept apart from the rest of Avignon society. The town thought he was crazy."
Luce tried not to compare her relationship with Daniel to what Annabelle had had with Benezet, but it was hard not to. What kind of relationship could an angel and a mortal really have? Once all this was over, if they beat Lucifer…then what? Would she and Daniel go back to Georgia and be like any other couple, going out for ice cream on Fridays after a movie? Or would the whole town think she was crazy, like Benezet?
Was it all just hopeless? What would become of them in the end? Would their love vanish like a medieval bridge's arches?
The idea of sharing a normal life with an angel was what was crazy. She sensed that in every moment Daniel flew her through the sky. And yet she lo ~ Lauren Kate

Like it or not, we all carry the past of our country. The unresolved conflicts of race and class lay coiled, ready to erupt, unless we set our minds to an honest reckoning with that past and a search for solutions grounded in genuine truth and justice. Unlike the cursing anonymous voice on a telephone, or the menacing face, or the billy club that split John Lewis's head in Selma, Alabama, at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965, implicit bias is hard to see; implicit bias is a silent snake that slinks around in ways we don't notice. ~ Mitch Landrieu

Since the fanciful vision of the future that had flitted through her imagination at their first meeting she had hardly ever thought of his marrying her. She had not had to put the thought from her mind; it had not been there. If ever she looked ahead she felt instinctively that the gulf between them was too deep, and that the bridge their passion had flung across it was as insubstantial as a rainbow. But she seldom looked ahead; each day was so rich that it absorbed her.... ~ Edith Wharton