Bare Bones Quotes

It's true to say that once I've got the bare bones of a story, I often get ideas from my own research trips to faraway places. ~ Michelle Paver

They survived on the bare bones of hope. ~ Moira Fowley Doyle

In a strange way we were free. We'd reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: all of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves ~ Susanna Kaysen

I've heard it said that God is in the details. It's the same with the truth. Leave out the details, the crucial heart, and you can damn someone with the bare bones of it. ~ Libba Bray

She felt a lot like a tree in autumn: all her hopes and dreams, desires and comforts, drying up and falling away one by one until all that remained was the bare bones of her soul. She wasn't sure how much she liked her bare-bones self. ~ Annette Marie

Then, you know, the other more-traditional role of the producer in, like, the kind of Quincy Jones sense is kind of part arranger. So you're coming up with, like, these - you hear these songs that are quite bare-bones, and you dream up what's the band doing? What's the rhythm section doing? What's the guitars, strings, pianos - that sort of thing. It's almost like a little toolbox. ~ Mark Ronson

Up high, biology vanishes to reveal a world shaped by the starker forces of geology and meteorology, the bare bones of the earth wrapped in sky. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Think about how much of your Bible, Old and New Testaments, is in the form not of doctrinal statements but of stories. Statements declare doctrinal truth; stories illustrate doctrinal truth. Doctrinal statements are like skeletons - bare bones, but absolutely essential to give form and order and interconnection to the body of revealed truth. Stories flesh out that skeleton, incarnate that truth, demonstrate how the doctrine looks and moves and acts in the real world of flesh and blood. ~ Layton Talbert

Elspeth had the joyous task of breaking the news to the rest of the Council. There was no such accord among the political leaders of Valdemar as there was among her military leaders.
Lord Gartheser was speechless with outrage and shock; Bard Hyron was dazed. Lady Kester and Lady Cathan, still seething over Orthallen's accusations of complicity with the slavers, were surprised, but not altogether unhappy. Father Aldon had closeted himself in the tiny chapel of the Keep; Lord Gildas was with him. Healer Myrim made no attempt to conceal the fact that Orthallen's treachery had not surprised her. Nor did she conceal that his demise gave her a certain grim satisfaction. But then, she might well be forgiven such uncharitable thoughts; she was one of the four Healers who were tending Talia's wounds.
Once the bare bones had been told to the Councillors as a group, Elspeth went to each of these Councillors in turn, privately. She gave a simple explanation of what had occurred, but would answer no questions. Questions, she told them, must wait until Talia had recovered enough to tell them all more. ~ Mercedes Lackey

He places the last pillow on the pile and looks at me. He jerks his head to the pile of pillows.
"I watched you die. I need to fuck you Mac."
The words slam into me like bullets taking my knees out. I lean back against a piece of furniture-an armoire I think. I really don't care. It holds me up. It wasn't a request. It was an acknowledgement of a requirement to make it from this moment to the next like I need a transfusion my body has been poisoned.
"Do you want me to " There is no purr or coyness or seduction in his voice. There is a question that needs an answer. Bare bones. That's what he's after. That's what he offers.
"Yes. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Strip your psyche to the bare bones of spontaneous process, and you give yourself one chance in a thousand to make the Pass. ~ William S. Burroughs

Love does not cost anything. Kind words and deeds do not cost anything. The real beauty of the world is equal for everyone to see. It was given by God equally to all, without restrictions.

Everyone, was given a beautiful vehicle in which to express love to others. Feelings are free to express and give to ourselves and each other through our willingness to give and care.

What is complicated about this... Why have we made others feel they have to climb mountains and swim oceans in order to make a difference.

All we need to understand my friends, is that human life was given equally to us all, not partially but in totality.

The sun was given to all. It does not shine on the few. So, just has nature is indifferent to our station or situation, we need to know that we are all equal. We need to focus on the things that are constant and not place our values on things that can be blown away with the next, great, wind.

Value life in what ever house it dwells. For when it comes time that we are all stripped to bare bones before the divine and facing eternity, we will understand that the only law we were meant to follow, was to love ourselves and each other. Nothing more...nothing less. ~ Carla Jo Masterson

Now I have other demands on my time that are not flexible, I just can't wander into the studio at 2 A.M. like I used to. If I have an idea in the middle of the night, I will go and get the bare bones down, but mostly you can learn to tame it to your needs. ~ Jamie Cullum

What Mr. Kaufman and his team are after is less a portrait of any one person than one of the ethos of a place. In the deliberate, simple staging ... in which eight radiantly clean-scrubbed performers embody 60 different people against a bare-bones set, 'Laramie' often brings to mind 'Our Town,' the beloved Thornton Wilder study of life, love and death in parochial New Hampshire. ~ Ben Brantley

...just the bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss. It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars. It has the nakedness of the world before the first man – or of the cindered planet after the last ~ Fosco Maraini

When I write for teens, I feel I can cut through everything and get to the bare bones. I can get straight into the emotional world of the character. ~ Alice Hoffman

It sounded stupid, but of course everything does when you're just getting the bare bones facts, only the basics ... ~ Sarah Dessen

Scripts [are] kind of a bare bones type of reading material. ~ Karen Allen

I tend to gravitate towards the great rock-and-roll front men, the guys that are very "bare bones." I like Bono, I like Chris Martin(Coldplay) and I like the running around. I think they are amazing at it, but I think that there is something great about a guy that can captivate a room, and very little movement and running everywhere. ~ Matthew Mayfield

To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope. ~ Herbert Hoover

I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath. ~ Wilkie Collins

In choosing a bare bones existence, we are enriched, and can redefine success as an internal process rather than an outward display of wealth and power. ~ Kathleen Norris

Speaker Pelosi says unemployment benefits are economic stimulus. Those are bare-bones benefits. ~ Alan Nunnelee

The first draft is just a skeleton-just bare bones. It's like the very first rehearsal of a play, where the director moves the actors around mechanically to get a feel of the action. ~ Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Folk is bare bones music. ~ Ben Harper

It didn't matter who liked whom, or on what side a man might find himself, because they were all on the side of a world of very definite finite resources, and they would all suffer terrifying consequences if they drained to bare bones the world that had conceived the life of the human race, fostered and nurtured that life, which now threatened to contaminate and destroy - ~ Alan Shepard

There's a lot of feeling that the school curriculum has been bare-bones, just drill and, again, no art, music, and so on and so forth ~ John Merrow

The reader tries to uncover the skeleton that the book conceals. The author starts with the skeleton and tries to cover it up. His aim is to conceal the skeleton artistically or, in other words, to put flesh on the bare bones. If he is a good writer, he does not bury a puny skeleton under a mass of fat; on the other hand, neither should the flesh be too thin, so that the bones show through. If the flesh is thick enough, and if the flabbiness is avoided, the joints will be detectable and the motion of the parts will reveal the articulation. ~ Mortimer J. Adler

The bare bones tools for a cyber-attack are to identify a vulnerability in the system you want to gain access to or you want to subvert or you want to deny, destroy, or degrade, and then to exploit it, which means to send codes, deliver code to that system somehow and get that code to that vulnerability, to that crack in their wall, jam it in there, and then have it execute. ~ Edward Snowden

I always overwrite - really awful, long bits of script - and then I trim it down to the bare bones and then add a little bit to colour it in. At the end of all of my stories, I test for wordless comprehension. So I remove the text and see if it works by itself. And if it does, I feel that that's a successful story. ~ Shaun Tan

To live with yourself you had to cut off the hand that offended, cut, slice, peel, scrape, and tear away at yourself till all you were left with were your stripped-down bones. Your bones gave you away; you could not hide your bones, nor could you avoid staring at them. All you wanted was for others to be stripped down like you ... ~ Andre Aciman

Ir's just that nowadays people are so quick to boil you down to the bare bones of info and upload you into a system, you know? And I think no one can ever really know another person unless you really pay attention ... I don't want to just see someone's face; I want to know his shadow, too. ~ Alexandra Bracken

People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made. ~ Greg Iles

Basically, I'm going to take what you did, the bare-bones structure of what you were trying to do, how you were attacking the song, and attack it in pretty much the same way, just with more intensity to show you that you could've come harder. Like, I've been in situations where I've had to tell a cat how to rhyme his rhyme. ~ Bun B.

It was a cold still afternoon with a hard steely sky overhead, when he slipped out of the warm parlour into the open air. The country lay bare and entirely leafless around him, and he thought that he had never seen so far and intimately into the insides of things as on that winter day when Nature was deep in her annual slumber and seemed to have kicked the clothes off. Copses, dells, quarries and all hidden places, which had been mysterious mines for exploration in leafy summer, now exposed themselves and their secrets pathetically, and seemed to ask him to overlook their shabby poverty for a while, til they could riot in rich masquerade as before, and trick and entice him with the old deceptions. It was pitiful in a way, and yet cheering-even exhilarating. He was glad that he liked the country undecorated, hard, and stripped of its finery. He had got down to the bare bones of it, and they were fine and strong and simple. He did not want the warm clover and the play of seeding grasses; the screens of quickset, the billowy drapery of beech and elm seemed best away; and with great cheerfulness of spirit he pushed on towards the Wild Wood, which lay before him low and threatening, like a black reef in some still southern sea. ~ Kenneth Grahame

It frightened her how deep her sobs could reach, as if someone was pulling sorrow from her bones. ~ Genevieve Valentine

The calcium in your bones came from a star. We are all made from recycle bits and pieces of the universe. This matters because origins matter. ~ Augusten Burroughs

Then I got back to the house, and all I worried about was my story and the people in it
bags of bones which were putting on flesh daily. ~ Stephen King

Alex was right in front of the mantel now, bent forward, his nose mere inches from a picture of me.
"Oh,God. Don't look at that!"
It was from the year-end recital of my one and only year of ballet class. I was six: twig legs, a huge gap where my two front teeth had recently been, and a bumblebee costume. Nonna had done her best, but there was only so much she could do with yellow and black spandex and a bee butt. Dad had found one of those headbands with springy antennai attached. I'd loved the antennae. The more enthusiastic my jetes, the more they bounced. Of course, I'd also jeted my flat-chested little self out of the top of my costume so many times that, during the actual recital itself,I'd barely moved at all, victim to the overwhelming modesty of the six-year-old. Now, looking at the little girl I'd been, I wished someone had told her not to worry so much, that within a year, that smooth, skinny, little bare shoulder would have turned into the bane of her existence. That she was absolutely perfect.
"Nice stripes," Alex said casually, straightening up.
That stung. It should't have-it was just a photo-but it did. I don't know what I'd expected him to say about the picture. It wasn't that. But then, I didn't expect the wide grin that spread across his face when he got a good look at mine, either.
"Those," he announced, pointing to a photo of my mulleted dad leaning against the painted hood of his Mustang "are nice stripes. That-" he pointed to the ~ Melissa Jensen

Walter looked about him lingeringly and lovingly. This spot had always been so dear to him. What fun they all had had here lang syne. Phantoms of memory seemed to pace the dappled paths and peep merrily through the swinging boughs–Jem and Jerry, bare-legged, sunburned schoolboys, fishing in the brook and frying trout over the old stone fireplace; Nan and Di and Faith, in their dimpled, fresh-eyed childish beauty; Una the sweet and shy, Carl, poring over ants and bugs, little slangy, sharp-tongued, good-hearted Mary Vance–the old Walter that had been himself lying on the grass reading poetry or wandering through palaces of fancy. They were all there around him–he could see them almost as plainly as he saw Rilla–as plainly as he had once seen the Pied Piper piping down the valley in a vanished twilight. And they said to him, those gay little ghosts of other days, "We were the children of yesterday, Walter–fight a good fight for the children of today and tomorrow. ~ L.M. Montgomery

I cannot look at you with anything other than abhorrence, much less affection! I couldn't bare your presence when we were children and, I'm afraid to say, the repulsive way at which you have grown to be has made it even worse! You have taken everything from me... ~ Madeline Courtney

Tonight
Since I'd forgotten for a moment where you are,
I search for you with hope in my bones. ~ Hester Knibbe

Some people think their fingers are toes or claws, but they're actually finger bones. ~ Ann Burton

Just as the dog loves to chew bones, the human mind loves its problems. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Tungnath's lonely eminence gives it a magic of its own. To get there (or beyond), one passes through some of the most delightful temperate forest in the Garhwal Himalaya. Pilgrim, or trekker, or just plain rambler such as myself, one comes away a better person, forest-refreshed, and more aware of what the world was really like before mankind began to strip it bare. Duiri ~ Ruskin Bond

I used to know things no one knew,
Things no one cared to know.
Of bare feet running through the dew,
The taste of every snow. ~ Rebekah

The bones of the oak tree that had stood by the spring branch during my youth were scattered about the ground, pieces of the skeleton of a majestic life that had passed while I was off growing up and old. ~ Dan Groat

I have no bones to pick and no fight with society. And I'm willing to be and interested in being in the mainstream of society. ~ Christopher Reeve

By the time the Somnambulist had set her creaking bones to rest on their assigned landing pad, Holden had lost all patience with human stupidity.
So, of course, it came out to meet him. ~ James S.A. Corey

Edison pressed on and designed a range of concrete furnishings - bureaus, cupboards, chairs, even a concrete piano - to go with his concrete houses. He promised that soon he would offer, for just $5, a double bed that would never wear out. The entire range was to be unveiled at a cement industry show in New York in 1912. In the event, when the show opened, the Edison stand was bare. No one from the Edison company ever offered an explanation. It was the last anyone ever heard of concrete furniture. As far as is known, Edison never discussed the matter. A ~ Bill Bryson

No, I just mean ... I'm not into ... this."
"This?" Her scowl deepens and her teeth bare. "Aliens?"
"Women."
"Oh. Oh."
"Yes, oh."
"Oh. ~ Chuck Wendig

I come from the theatre; my bones are in the theatre. It's as natural as breathing to want to be in the theatre. ~ Kenneth Branagh

I love him, I truly do. I feel it in my bones, in my soul, with all my heart. It's just like all those sentiments that I've read about in the past in those Hallmark cards. ~ L. Filloon

I often wonder what she's thinking," says Ed, still gazing up at her. "That's quite an intriguing expression she has."
"I often wonder that myself," chimes in Malcolm Gledhill eagerly. "She seems to have such a look of serenity and happiness ... Obviously, from what you've said, she has a certain emotional connection with the painter Malory ... I often wonder if he was reading her poetry as he painted ... "
"What an idiot this man is," says Sadie scathingly in my ear. "It's obvious I what I'm thinking. I'm looking at Stephan and I'm thinking, I want to jump his bones."
"She wanted to jump his bones," I say to Malcolm Gledhill. Ed shoots me a disbelieving look, then bursts into laughter. ~ Sophie Kinsella

Colors of spring have turned upside down.
Red once burned underfoot, now hangs over the horizon--a blood bruise where sky
smashed itself against hills. Green once gathered in the quick-shaping clouds carrying a mix of sand and rain and left quickly as it arrived; now it cushions your steps, hides the evidence of bones. ~ D.A. Gray

Pasquale considered his friend's face. It had such an open quality, was such a clearly American face, like Dee's face, like Michael Deane's face. He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality - that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility, a quality that, in his estimation, even the youngest Italians lacked. Perhaps it was the difference in age between the countries - America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires. This reminded him of Alvis Bender's contention that stories were like nations - Italy a great epic poem, Britain a thick novel, America a brash motion picture in Technicolor - and he remembered, too, Dee Moray saying she'd spent years "waiting for her movie to start," and that she'd almost missed out on her life waiting for it. ~ Jess Walter

The plane banked, and he pressed his face against the cold window. The ocean tilted up to meet him, its dark surface studded with points of light that looked like constellations, fallen stars. The tourist sitting next to him asked him what they were. Nathan explained that the bright lights marked the boundaries of the ocean cemeteries. The lights that were fainter were memory buoys. They were the equivalent of tombstones on land: they marked the actual graves. While he was talking he noticed scratch-marks on the water, hundreds of white gashes, and suddenly the captain's voice, crackling over the intercom, interrupted him. The ships they could see on the right side of the aircraft were returning from a rehearsal for the service of remembrance that was held on the ocean every year. Towards the end of the week, in case they hadn't realised, a unique festival was due to take place in Moon Beach. It was known as the Day of the Dead...

...When he was young, it had been one of the days he most looked forward to. Yvonne would come and stay, and she'd always bring a fish with her, a huge fish freshly caught on the ocean, and she'd gut it on the kitchen table. Fish should be eaten, she'd said, because fish were the guardians of the soul, and she was so powerful in her belief that nobody dared to disagree. He remembered how the fish lay gaping on its bed of newspaper, the flesh dark-red and subtly ribbed where it was split in half, and Yvonne with her sleeves rolled back and ~ Rupert Thomson

The room was small, lit by two naked bulbs in wall recesses, and bare of anything except for two solid wooden posts the height of a man and four feet apart. In each post, at just below shoulder height, was set a large iron ring. There were two other men already waiting, both leathermen. Len indicated each in turn. 'Rick and Sam.' The two men regarded Mike with arms folded.

Rick was in his late twenties, a tall, blond biker, his hair hanging down well past his shoulders. Under his leather waistcoat he was bare-chested, his spare, pale flesh covered with tattoos of skulls, burning angels and other biker motifs, the twining reds, blues and blacks extending along both arms as well. He was wearing black leather gloves and impenetrable black shades. Shaven-headed Sam was older, shorter and stockier, built like a rugby player. A leather harness stretched across the barrel of his chest, its steel circlet buried in wiry hair. Through his leather chaps Mike could see a sizeable pouch, heavy with its contents. ~ Jack Stevens

It is a great while since I felt the grind of bone under my saw,' he added, smiling with anticipation. ~ Patrick O'Brian

Heaven opened then, indeed. The flash was almost too novel for its inexpressibly dangerous nature to be at once realized, and they could only comprehend the magnificence of its beauty. It sprang from east, west, north, south, and was a perfect dance of death. The forms of skeletons appeared in the air, shaped with blue fire for bones - dancing, leaping, striding, racing around, and mingling altogether in unparalleled confusion. With these were intertwined undulating snakes of green, and behind these was a broad mass of lesser light. Simultaneously came from every part of the tumbling sky what may be called a shout; since, though no shout ever came near it, it was more of the nature of a shout than of anything else earthly. ~ Thomas Hardy

The praying which makes a prayerful ministry is not a little praying put in as we put flavor to give it a pleasant smack, but the praying must be in the body, and form the blood and bones. Prayer is no petty duty, put into a corner; no piecemeal performance made out of the fragments of time which have been snatched from business and other engagements of life; but it means that the best of our time, the heart of our time and strength must be given. ~ E. M. Bounds

You and Tristan are easing into the whole relationship thing, right? Taking it slow?" Juliet asked a little too casually.
"We have sex six time a day, and we're thinking of making a porno together," Lily said, poker-faced, while she rubbed almond oil on her bare legs. She glanced up to see Juliet glaring at her. "Yes! We're taking it slow. Maybe a little too slow. ~ Josephine Angelini

I did another commercial. Don't lose your loved ones, I wrote, because of excessive radioactivity. Don't be a wallflower at the dance because of strontium 90 in your bones. Don't be a victim of fallout. When the tart on Thirty-sixth Street gives you the big eye does your body stride off in one direction and your imagination in another? Does your mind follow her up the stairs and taste her wares in revolting detail while your flesh goes off to Brooks Brothers or the foreign exchange desk of the Chase Manhattan Bank? Haven't you noticed the size of the ferns, the lushness of the grass, the bitterness of the string beans, and the brilliant makings on the new breeds of butterflies? You have been inhaling lethal atomic waste for the last twenty-five years and only Elixircol can save you. ~ John Cheever

I can make going to the dry-cleaners last an entire day, and the dry cleaners might be 150 yards from my front door. You might find it hard to believe, but I am bone-idle lazy. ~ Noel Gallagher

What was desire anyway, when examined in the clear light of day? Was it the way a woman searched for her clothes in the morning, or the manner in which a man might watch her sit before the mirror and comb her hair? Was it a pale November dawn, when ice formed on windowpanes and crows called from the bare black trees? Or was it the way a person might yield to the night, setting forth on a path so unexpected that daylight would never again be completely clear? ~ Alice Hoffman

Sometimes I dream about it, I'm walking down this long empty hall. My voice echoes all around, but no one answers, so I walk faster, opening doors, shouting names. I don't even know who I'm looking for. Most nights it's my father, but sometimes it's Robb instead, or my little sister Arya, or my uncle. Even the ravens are gone from the rookery, and the stables are full of bones. That always scares me. I start to run then, throwing open doors, climbing the tower three steps at a time, screaming for someone, for anyone. And then I find myself in front of the door to the crypts. It's black inside, and I can see the steps spiraling down. Somehow I know I have to go down there, but I don't want to. I'm afraid of what might be waiting for me. The old Kings of Winter are down there, sitting on their thrones with stone wolves at their feet and iron swords across their laps, but it's not them I'm afraid of. I scream that I'm not a Stark, that this isn't my place, but it's no good, I have to go anyway, so I start down, feeling the walls as I descend, with no torch to light the way. It gets darker and darker, until I want to scream" -Jon Snow ~ George R.R. Martin

Our women - our wives - are the heart of Calberna. Without them, Calbernan males could not function. We would die. Just as you would die without the heart that beats in your chest."

He reached out slowly, laid three fingers lightly on the thin fabric that covered her left breast. Her breath caught in her throat. She stared at him in shocked silence. She made no attempt to move or to remove his hand. There was nothing sexual or teasing about his touch this time. It stunned her all the same.

"But for all its strength, the heart is a vulnerable thing," he continued. "It needs must be surrounded by a cage of bone to protect it. At all cost, at all times, the heart must be protected." His hand turned over. Now it was the back of his fingers that caressed her skin just above the neckline of her gown, the touch featherlight, impossibly gentle. "Calberna's sons are those bones. We are the spear, the sword, the unbreakable shield that protects Calberna's vulnerable heart. It's why we are born. It's what we live for. ~ C.L. Wilson

Rubbish!" said Aunt Letty, and then, turning to the Witch, "Get out of my house this moment, you shameless hussy, or I'll send for the police." She thought the Witch must be someone out of a circus and she did not approve of bare arms.

"What woman is this?" said Jadis. "Down on your knees, minion, before I blast you."

"No strong language in this house if you please, young woman," said Aunt Letty. ~ C.S. Lewis

The tongue has no bones, but can break a heart. ~ Ed Sheeran

The look in your eyes, boy. You're afraid. A man like you is afraid, I take stock." "I've known some fearless men. Hunted lions with them. A few of those gents forgot that Mother Nature is more of a killer than we humans will ever be and wound up getting chomped. She wants our blood, our bones, our goddamned guts. Fear is healthy. ~ Laird Barron

Remember your true self. You are more than just flesh and bones; you are unlimited energy and power. Knowing this, you will understand why happiness and prosperity are your birth right. ~ Stephen Richards

A new darkness pulled away the room, inked out flesh and outlined bones. My mother was wide awake again. She become sharply herself - bone, wire, antenna - but she was not afraid. She had been pared down like this before, when she had travelled up the mountains into rare snow - alone in white not unlike being alone in black. She had also sailed a boat safely between land and land. ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

Then there's the two
of us. This word
is far too short for us, it has only
four letters, too sparse
to fill those deep bare
vacuums between the stars
that press on us with their deafness.
It's not love we don't wish
to fall into, but that fear.
This word is not enough but it will
have to do. It's a single
vowel in this metallic
silence, a mouth that says
O again and again in wonder
and pain, a breath, a finger
grip on a cliffside. You can
hold on or let go. ~ Margaret Atwood

I throw him two bones: a smile and a nod. Both lies. ~ Julie Anne Peters

Through getting sponsored and becoming a part of the Bones Brigade and Powell Peralta, doors were being opened. The entire culture was shifting from ramps to street, and I sort of became a poster child for that. ~ Mike Vallely

'No Bones' has some reverb that I kick around. ~ J Mascis

You're mad, you missionaries,' ejaculated Tai Haruru angrily. 'What good do you think you do, crawling out to the extremities of all the different world's ends and dying there like lizards spiked on sticks?'
Brother Balaam jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at the church behind him. 'Ye'll get no civilization worth havin' in a new country unless ye lay down a few martyrs' bones for a foundation,' he said. 'They generate. Slow but sure. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

The pale and quiet moon Makes her calm forehead bare, And the last fragments of the storm, Like shattered rigging from a fight at sea, Silent and few, are drifting over me. ~ James Russell Lowell

I put her burnt bones into my mouth and swallowed them whole. ~ Cheryl Strayed

It was Christmas Eve. Big snowflakes fluttered slowly through the air like white feathers and made all of the Heavenly Valley smooth and white and quiet and beautiful.
Tall fir trees stood up to their knees in snow and their outstretched hands were heaped with it. Those that were bare of leaves wore soft white fur on their scrawny, reaching arms and all the stumps and low bushes had been turned into fat white cupcakes. ~ Betty MacDonald