Broom Quotes

Little Cinder

Girl, they can't understand you.
You rise from the as-heap in a blaze
and only then do they recognize you
as their one true love.

While you pray beneath your mother's
tree you carrve a phoenix into your palm
wth aa hazel twig and coal;
every night she devours more of you.

You used to believe in angels.
Now you believe in the makeover;
if you can't get the grime off your face
and your foot into a size six heel

who will ever bother to notice you?
The kettle and the broom sear in your grasp,
snap into fragments. The turtledoves sing,
"There's blood within the shoe."

You deserve the palace, you think, as you signal
the pigeons to attack, approve the barrel filled with red-hot nails.
Its great hearth beckons, and the prince's flag
rises crimson in the angry sun.

He will love you for the heat you generate,
for the flames you ignite around you,
though he encase your tiny feet in glass
to keep them from scorching the ground. ~ Jeannine Hall Gailey

In the center of the sofa were two oblong companion pillows, shouldered so closely together that they looked like the Decalogue tablets. They were white, or had been white, and painfully stitched upon them with blue thread were companion mottoes, companion pictures. In the left pillow lies a girl, her long blue hair asprawl about her face, her eyes innocently shut, asleep. The motto: I SLEPT AND DREAMED THAT LIFE WAS BEAUTY. But the story continued, and on the next pillow her innocence is all torn away: there she stands, gripping a round broom; her hair now is pinned up severely and behind her sits a disheartening barrel churn. I WOKE AND FOUND THAT LIFE WAS DUTY. The pillows sat, stuffed and stiff as disapproving bishops; they could, he thought, serve as twin tombstones for whole gray generations. ~ Fred Chappell

I grew up under Roman rule, although I didn't see many Romans until I was ten. The Romans mostly stayed in the fortress city of Sepphoris, an hour's walk north of Nazareth. That's when Joshua and I saw a Roman soldier murdered, but I'm getting ahead of myself. For now, assume that the soldier is safe and sound and happy wearing a broom on his head. ~ Christopher Moore

Mom said Dad was wasting his time, that nobody could talk Tyler out of anything once his mind was made up. 'You may as well take a broom and start sweeping dirt off the mountain,' she said. ~ Tara Westover

On wet days I will go into the thickest parts of the forest, where the pine needles are everlastingly dry, and when the sun shines I'll lie on the heath and see how the broom flares against the clouds. I shall be perpetually happy, because there will be no one to worry me. ~ Elizabeth Von Arnim

Even his highly emotional Italian mother didn't believe that true love could blossom overnight. Like his brothers and sisters-in-law, she wanted nothing more for him than to marry and start a family, but if he showed up at her doorstep and said that he'd met someone two days ago and knew she was the one for him, his mother would smack him with a broom, curse in Italian, and drag him to church, sure that he had some serious sins that needed confessing. ~ Nicholas Sparks

I can juggle, not well ... I can balance a broom on my chin. I can do very simple carny tricks, a little sleight of hand with cards and coins. ~ Rich Sommer

Far too often, the best thing I can have in my hand when someone makes a promise is a really big broom so that I can sweep up the broken pieces. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

By then Ser Gregor Clegane was in position at the head of the lists. He was huge, the biggest man that Eddard Stark had ever seen. Robert Baratheon and his brothers were all big men, as was the Hound, and back at Winterfell there was a simpleminded stableboy named Hodor who dwarfed them all, but the knight they called the Mountain That Rides would have towered over Hodor. He was well over seven feet tall, closer to eight, with massive shoulders and arms thick as the trunks of small trees. His destrier seemed a pony in between his armored legs, and the lance he carried looked as small as a broom handl ~ George R R Martin

I will be very careful the next time I fall in love, she told herself. Also, she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. They weren't worth it in the long run. They were emotionally too expensive and the upkeep was complicated. They were like having a vacuum cleaner around the house that broke all the time and only Einstein could fix it. She wanted her next lover to be a broom. ~ Richard Brautigan

The men began to trade tales of atrocities, first stories they had heard, then those they'd witnessed, and finally the things that had happened to themselves. A litany of personal humiliation, outrage, and anger turned sicklelike back to themselves as humor. They laughed then, uproariously, about the speed with which they had run, the pose they had assumed, the ruse they had invented to escape or decrease some threat to their manliness, their humanness. All but Empire State, who stood, broom in hand and drop-lipped, with the expression of a very intelligent ten-year-old. ~ Toni Morrison

If you read any poetry or stories coming out these days, you know what I mean when I say that you can smell the stench of liquor coming from the words they write. And underneath their sentences lies a pile of chicken and goat bones, and the skeletons of the innocent ones. If you poke the head of the broom into contemporary literature, you'll find a hollow wall stuffed full of money - impure, dirty money. ~ Uday Prakash

We are like broom. We keep on trying to wipe out emotions from our life but during the course we always remain with it. ~ Chandan Sharma

So they took the blossoms of the oak, and the blossoms of the broom, and the blossoms of the meadow-sweet, and produced from them a maiden, the fairest and most graceful that man ever saw. And they baptized her, and gave her the name of Blodeuwedd. ~ Anonymous

Okay, I've only just found out the final lineup for Slytherin," said Angelina, consulting a piece of parchment. "Last year's Beaters, Derrick and Bole, have left now, but it looks as though Montague's replaced them with the usual gorillas, rather than anyone who can fly particularly well. They're two blokes called Crabbe and Goyle. I don't know much about them
"
"We do," said Harry and Ron together.
"Well they don't look bright enough to tell one end of a broom from another," said Angelina, pocketing her parchment, "but then I was always surprised Derrick and Bole managed to find their way onto the pitch without signposts."
"Crabbe and Goyle are in the same mold," Harry assured her. ~ J.K. Rowling

If you set off on a witch-hunt, you will find a witch.
When you find her, she will be dressed like any other person. But to you, her skin will glow in stripes of white and black. You will see her broom, and you will hear her witch-cry, and you will feel the effects of her spells on you.
No matter how unlike a witch she is, there she will be, a witch, before your eyes. ~ Chinelo Okparanta

It's like this. Sometimes, when you've a very long street ahead of you, you think how terribly long it is and feel sure you'll never get it swept. And then you start to hurry. You work faster and faster and every time you look up there seems to be just as much left to sweep as before, and you try even harder, and you panic, and in the end you're out of breath and have to stop
and still the street stretches away in front of you. That's not the way to do it.
You must never think of the whole street at once, understand? You must only concentrate on the next step, the next breath, the next stroke of the broom, and the next, and the next. Nothing else.
That way you enjoy your work, which is important, because then you make a good job of it. And that's how it ought to be.
And all at once, before you know it, you find you've swept the whole street clean, bit by bit. what's more, you aren't out of breath. That's important, too ... (28-29) ~ Michael Ende

Percy! he bellowed. He dropped his broom and ran at me. If you've never been charged by an enthusiastic Cyclops wearing a flowered apron and rubber cleaning gloves, I'm telling you, it'll wake you up quick. ~ Rick Riordan

The big shock of my life was Abstract Expressionism - Pollock, de Kooning, those guys. It changed my work. I was an academically trained student, and suddenly you could pour paint, smear it on, broom it on! ~ LeRoy Neiman

It scared her to think that one day in the future, she might not be able to remember every little detail of the things that had mattered the most to her. She wished there was a way to store them, emotions and all, in a jar, and then she could screw the lid on tight and peer at them through the glass. ~ Isabelle Broom

Today Ramon defended the garbage bin by Plumpy's back door, and I defended a shiny silver Mercedes because, according to Ramon, it represented the privileged white aristocracy of America trying to keep the Latino man down.

"Our duel," Ramon said, spinning his broom like a bo staff, "will represent the struggle our nation's currently engaged in."

"Please, we both know you're just going for home team advantage."

"You wound me, Sam. I can't help it if your crackerlike oppression gives me the better playing field." He did a quick hamstring stretch. "Suck it up."

"Fine," I said, "then I get the handicap."

"Sam, you're Texas. Texas always gets the handicap."

"I'm Team Texas again?"

He grinned, rolled his shoulders, and wiggled his arms, loosening them.

I gave up and nodded at the Mercedes. It looked old and expensive, especially in our parking lot. "Shiny."

Ramon snorted. "Classic. Check out the gullwing doors."

"Fine. Classic Shiny."

Ramon tossed an empty Plumpy's cup into the Dumpster. "Sometimes, Sammy, I question your manhood."

"A car is to get you from place to place. That's it."

Ramon shook his head at my ignorance.

"Whatever. Just try not to dent the car, Team Mexico."

"It's Team South America," he said.

"You do know that Mexico is in North America, right?"

"Yeah, but I have the whole contin ~ Lish McBride

They need to practice harder," he said. 'If they're really going to do this, they need to work much harder.'
'They will," I assured him. 'But they got better, right?'
Baz laughed. 'Are you going to stand in front of them during their gigs too? If so, make sure you get equal billing. People will pay a lot to see the girl with the broom. ~ Antony John

New Orleans humidity is like a mood. TO say to someone "It's humid today" is to comment on the mind-set. ~ Sarah M. Broom

So I dipped into my childhood and came up with Nicky Deuce. I wanted him to get into a lot of mischief, like the time I taped a fork to a broom handle and cattle-rustled a steak off the barbecue of the next-door neighbor. ~ Steve Schirripa

Which women would no longer be the second-rate, unimportant creatures that they were now considered, but the equal and respected companions of men. Indeed, that school garden, now trimly beautiful in its twenty-year-old mellowness, but then recently hewn from the rough surface of the Downs and golden-hedged with tangled gorse and broom, has been for me somehow associated with every past phase of life. There, at the age of sixteen, I first began to dream how the men and women of my generation - with myself, of course, conspicuous among that galaxy of Leonardos - would inaugurate a new Renaissance on a colossal scale, and incidentally redeem all the foolish mistakes of our forefathers. ~ Vera Brittain

They drank from a spring which filled an ancient stone trough behind the ruin. Beyond it lay overgrown beds and plants John had never set eyes on before: tall resinous fronds, prickly shrubs, long grey-green leaves hot to the tongue. Nestling among them he found the root whose scent drifted among the trees like a ghost, sweet and tarry. He knelt and pressed it to his nose.
'That was called silphium.' His mother stood behind him. 'It grew in Saturnus's first garden.'
She showed him the most ancient trees in the orchards, their gnarled trunks cloaked in grey lichen. Palm trees had grown there too once, she claimed. Now even their stumps had gone.
Each day, John left the hearth to forage in the wreckage of Belicca's gardens. His nose guided him through the woods. Beyond the chestnut avenue, the wild skirrets, alexanders and broom grew in drifts. John chased after rabbits or climbed trees in search of birds' eggs. He returned with mallow seeds or chestnuts that they pounded into meal then mixed with water and baked on sticks. The unseasonal orchards yielded tiny red and gold-streaked apples, hard green pears and sour yellow cherries. ~ Lawrence Norfolk

School until the day a teacher, acting on an anonymous tip from a member of the student body, surprised the undercover couple in flagrante delicto in a broom ~ Junot Diaz

A new broom can sweep the floor, but an old broom knows where the dirt is. ~ Paul Mooney

If you covered a broom handle with oil and shoved it up my arse, then put me on a trampoline, in a lift, I could write a better song on the walls. ~ Dylan Moran

I don't care if you fall off your broom as long as you catch the Snitch first. ~ J.K. Rowling

Not that I speak in regard to being in need: for I have learned, in whatever state I am in, to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low by poverty, and I know how to live in abundance: everywhere and in all things I have learned to both be full and to be hungry, both of having abundance and suffering need. 13 I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. 14 ~ David Broom

You play beautifully," she told him, although the music was obscurely classical and, because there were no lyrics, unmemorable to her. But the compliment was like a drop of water on the dry wool of his face. His cheeks seemed to soften, color, even swell. "I hope it doesn't disturb you," he said. She held out her hand, the thin string of the bakery box looped around her wrist. "Not at all," she said, although three or four times now she had hung on her husband's arm to keep him from banging the broom handle against the ceiling. "We enjoy it," she said. And then, at a loss for a more substantial compliment, she added, "You must have some beautiful piano. ~ Alice McDermott

They didn't exchange a single word. But in the weeks that followed, Trip spent his days wandering the halls, hoping for Lux to appear, the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen. Even in sensible school shoes, she shuffled as though barefoot, and the baggy apparel Mrs. Lisbon bought for her only increased her appeal, as though after undressing she had put on whatever was handy. In corduroys her thighs rubbed together, buzzing, and there was always at least one untidy marvel to unravel him: an untucked shirttail, a sock with a hole, a ripped seam showing underarm hair. She carted her books from class to class but never opened them. Her pens and pencils were as temporary as Cinderella's broom. When she smiled, her mouth showed too many teeth, but at night Trip Fontaine dreamed of being bitten by each one. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

And, er, these stories about you..."

"Oh, all true. Most of them. A bit of exaggeration, but mostly true."

"The one about the Citadel in Muntab and the Pash and the fish bone?"

"Oh, yes."

"But how did you get in where half a dozen armed and trained men couldn't even - ?"

"I am a little man and I carry a broom," said Lu-Tze simply. "Everyone has some mess that needs clearing up. What harm is a man with a broom?"

"What? And that was it?"

"Well, the rest was a matter of cookery, really. The Pash was not a good man, but he was a glutton for his fish pie."

"No martial arts?" said Lobsang.

"Oh, always a last resort. History needs shepherds, not butchers."

"Do you know okidoki?"

"Just a lot of bunny-hops."

"Shittake?"

"If I wanted to thrust my hand into hot sand I would go to the seaside."

"Upsidazi?"

"A waste of good bricks."

"No kando?"

"You made that one up. ~ Terry Pratchett

Take hold of kettle, broom, and pan, then you'll surely get a man! Shop and office leave alone, Your true life's work lies at home. - COMMON GERMAN RHYME OF THE 1930S ~ David R. Gillham

I'm not sure if all Syrena have bulletproof endurance or if Galen is particularly blessed with it. Even now, as I lock the front dead bolt while Mark holds his car door open for me, Galen is blowing up my cell. I slide into the passenger seat of the pickup truck and try to organize my face into a convincing expression of relaxed, even though my insides are twisting faster than a whirlpool.
I thought Galen had given up trying to talk to me. I mean, what else is there to say? He played me like an Xbox. A broom and dustpan couldn't clean up all the pieces of my heart he shattered. I've been so stupid. But not anymore. ~ Anna Banks

One day when I went to see him (Picasso), we were looking at the dust dancing in a ray of sunlight that slanted in through one of the high windows. He said to me, 'Nobody has any real importance to me. As far as I'm concerned, other people are like those little grains of dust floating in the sunlight. It takes only a push of the broom and out they go.'I told him I had often noticed in his dealings with others that he considered the rest of the world only little grains of dust. But I said, as it happened, I was a little grain of dust gifted with autonomous movement and who didn't therefore need a broom. I could go out by myself. ~ Francoise Gilot

I wasn't going to let you avoid me this time. After Allan and I got settled, I was going to see you. Although I hadn't envisioned you smacking me in the head with the broom. ~ Terry Spear

A new girl came to work in the room, and the cat was still in it. The cat hid from the new girl in Jess' old room behind a crack in the wall and yowled for Jess to come and throw this strange girl out of the cat's bed. This new girl clapped her hands over her ears, and then pulled powder out from her bag of make-up. She doused a piece of old food in the powder and threw it into the wall for the cat to eat.
Later that night, Rachel had to pull the dead cat from a crack in the wall with a long broom handle.
Rachel threw the dead cat over the wall, where the rain would come to wash the body into the sewers.
With Jess crying somewhere about her lost cat - selling hot corn among the thugs and night bruisers, paying for anything stolen - Rachel figured that the powder had done exactly what it had been made to do. The powder had killed a working girl's baby. ~ J.M. McDermott

But that was where his excitement began to melt into cold anxiety. His dad had been the Gryffindor Seeker, the youngest one in Hogwarts history. The best he, James, could hope for was to match that record. That's what everyone would expect of him, the first-born son of the famous hero. He remembered the story, told to him dozens of times (although never by his own dad) of how the young Harry Potter had won his first Golden Snitch by virtually jumping off his broom, catching the golden ball in his mouth and nearly swallowing it. The tellers of the tale would always laugh uproariously, delightedly, and if Dad was there, he'd smile sheepishly as they clapped him on the back. When James was four, he found that famed Snitch in a shoe box in the bottom of the dining room hutch. His mum told him it'd been a gift to Dad from the old school headmaster. The tiny wings no longer worked, and the golden ball had a thin coat of dust and tarnish on it, but James was mesmerized by it. It was the first Snitch he had ever seen close up. It seemed both smaller and larger than he'd imagined, and the weight of it in his small hand was surprising. This is the famous Snitch, James thought reverently, the one from the story, the one caught by my dad. He asked his dad if he could keep it, stored in the shoebox when he wasn't playing with it, in his room. His dad agreed easily, happily, and James moved the shoebox from the bottom of the hutch to a spot under the head of his bed, next to his toy broom. ~ G. Norman Lippert

...that, to repeat what I heard for years and years and suspect you've been hearing over and over, yourself, something's meaning is nothing more or less than its function. Et cetera et cetera et cetera. Has she done the thing with the broom with you? No? What does she use now? No. What she did with me--I must have been eight, or twelve, who remembers--was to sit me down in the kitchen and take a straw broom and start furiously sweeping the floor, and she asked me which part of the broom was more elemental, more fundamental, in my opinion, the bristles or the handle. The bristles or the handle. And I hemmed and hawed, and she swept more and more violently, and I got nervous, and finally when I said I supposed the bristles, because you could after a fashion sweep without the handle, by just holding on to the bristles, but couldn't sweep with just the handle, she tackled me, and knocked me out of my chair, and yelled into my ear something like, 'Aha, that's because you want to sweep with the broom, isn't it? It's because of what you want the broom for, isn't it?' Et cetera. And that if what we wanted a broom for was to break windows, then the handle was clearly the fundamental essence of the broom, and she illustrated with the kitchen window, and a crowd of the domestics gathered; but that if we wanted the broom to sweep with, see for example the broken glass, sweep sweep, the bristles were the thing's essence. No? What now, then? With pencils? No matter. Meaning as fundamentaln ~ David Foster Wallace

Where was the use, originally, in rushing this whole globe through in six days? It is likely that if more time had been taken in the first place, the world would have been made right, and this ceaseless improving and repairing would not be necessary now. But if you hurry a world or a house, you are nearly sure to find out by and by that you have left out a towhead, or a broom-closet, or some other little convenience, here and there, which has got to be supplied, no matter how much expense or vexation it may cost. ~ Mark Twain

In a vivid parable to Soeur Philippine Molinéry, Bernadette asks, "What do you do with a broom when you're done sweeping?" Soeur Philippine got surprised and answered, "What kind of a Question is that?"
"Yes, I am asking you where you put it when you are done with it?
"'....In a corner behind the door.'
Then gleefully Bernadette said, "Well, I was like a broomstick for the Blessed Virgin; when she no longer needed me, she put me in my place behind the door.'
And with a clap of her hands, she added, "Here I am and here I'll stay."
"Both her voice and gesture were very happy," the witness went on to say. ~ St. Bernadette

Grab the broom of anger and drive off the beast of fear. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

He shrugged. "I have a stomach thing. Don't get close."
"Well, now you've spoiled everything," I said casually, working hard to fake it. "I was planning to seduce you in the broom closet." I pointed. "Right there."
A joyless smile appeared on Jamie's lips. "We are far too screwed-up for a goddamned love
triangle."
That's my Jamie. ~ Michelle Hodkin

He wished he could prop his fearful self up in a corner like a broom and walk away. ~ Nina George

Kanan is a big road through the Santa Monica Mountains. Between mid-March and mid-April, when you get over to the western side of the mountains, it's populated by Spanish broom - this beautiful, yellow, flowering weed that smells the way I imagine it smells along the Yellow Brick Road. ~ John C. McGinley

about to knock again when the inside door is pulled open to reveal a sinewy woman dressed in what appears to be layers of old sweaters and an ankle-length denim skirt. Her long hair held back in an elastic that leaves the ends bunched and brittle as the head of a broom. Brown eyes wide and alive, ~ Andrew Pyper

The broom wasn't as comforting as a flamethrower would have been, but it was better than a mop and certainly more threatening than a feather duster. ~ Dean Koontz

Buttercups"

When we were children our papas were stout
And colorless as seaweed or the floats
At anchor off New Bedford. We were shut
In gardens where our brassy sailor coats
Made us like black-eyed susans bending out
Into the ocean, Then my teeth were cut:
A levelled broom-pole butt
Was pushed into my thin
And up-turned chin--
There were shod hoofs behind the horseplay. But
I played Napoleon in my attic cell
Until my shouldered broom
Bobbed down the room
With horse and neighing shell.

Recall the shadows the doll-curtains veined
On ancrem Winslow's ponderous plate from blue
China, the breaking of time's haggard tide
On the huge cobwebbed print of Waterloo,
With a cracked smile across the glass. I cried
To see the Emperor's sabered eagle slide
From the clutching grenadier
Staff-officer
With the gold leaf cascading down his side--
A red dragoon, his plough-horse rearing, swayed
Back on his reins to crop
The buttercup
Bursting upon the braid ~ Robert Lowell

Everyone had something to overcome. We all have broken pieces, and we have choices to make. We can either tiptoe around those pieces forever and let them guide our happiness, or if we're lucky, we can find someone who has a broom, a dustpan, and a bottle of glue, and try to make it work. ~ Melissa Foster

Some have brains, so they get a book! Others are feather-brained, so they get a broom! ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

A broom is drearily sweeping up the broken pieces of yesterday's life. ~ Jimi Hendrix

I carry fairy dust, pack dry herb and drive a broom. If you don't get that you won't get me, so long, it's my journey. ~ D.C. Allen

Meditation is like a giant broom for sweeping away any stagnant or blocked energy that you may have buried deep in your body. ~ Deborah King

You are getting a wooden leg for your birthday, and you are going to love it. Incidentally, this means removing your leg below the knee. You'll make lots of friends. You can even attach a bundle of straw at the end, like a broom, and apply to be a janitor. ~ Jarod Kintz

It didn't seem like they were here to find food. Nor did they have the patience to bite anyone. Left to themselves, they'd quickly haul to particles of mud and built nests here and there in the house. You could try scuttling them with a broom, but they'd get into a mad frenzy and climb up the broom and on to your arm. Before you knew it, they'd be all over you, even under your clothes. For days on end there would be a terrific invasion, and then one day you would wake up to find them gone. There was no telling why they came, where they went. I sometimes saw them racing in lines along the window sills in the front room, where there was nothing to eat. Perhaps they were on a mission of some sort, only passing through our house in self-important columns. But not once did I see the trail of a column, an ant that had no other ants behind it. ~ Vivek Shanbhag

Sure you can manage that broom, Potter?" said a cold, drawling voice.
Draco Malfoy had arrived for a closer look, Crabbe and Goyle right behind him.
"Yeah, reckon so," said Harry casually.
"Got plenty of special features, hasn't it?" said Malfoy, eyes glittering maliciously. "Shame it doesn't come with a parachute - in case you get too near a Dementor."
Crabbe and Goyle sniggered.
"Pity you can't attach an extra arm to yours, Malfoy," said Harry. "Then it could catch the Snitch for you. ~ J.K. Rowling

Hostel is one phase in a man's life that teaches him what Indian mothers fail to teach their children despite the use of potential weapons like rolling pin,broom stick, wiper so on and henceforth. Who knows if you are luckier, you might just experience your bachelorhood as a paying guest. ~ Parul Wadhwa

Poverty is not a vice, that's a true saying. Yet I know that drunkenness too is not a virtue and that's even truer. But destitution, dear sir, destitution is a vice. In poverty you may still retain your innate nobility of soul , but in destitution-never-no-one. For destitution a man is not chased out of society with a stick, he is swept out with a broom to make it as humiliating as possible; and quite right, too, for in destitution I am the first to humiliate my self. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sweep the broom
Over sand and stone.
Softly, gently,
Brush away the dust.
Listen to the leaves
As they sing in the tree.
Peace fills the soul
When living well. ~ Teresa Garcia

Willa maintains a vigil. Certain tasks are relegated to women. Mourning, staring into the wastes, waiting for no one to surface.

It's a white man who's missing. Usually, that would be enough to keep it in the news, but eight days in, the police release their grief in an official report. The art of blame-casting is a lesser sorcery. History is written in sand, and a broom changes everything. Every woman knows the art of covering up a mess: a carpet, a dustpan, bleach on the boards. What do you do with the cleaning supplies of the world? Use them to wash the blood away, and grind the bones into bread. Swallow the confessions whispered in bed.

If events don't make sense, a story grows to cover up the confusion. Motives and mistakes. ~ Maria Dahvana Headley

Your mother is holding your hand too tightly. You whimper and cling to her dress, because you know what will happen next. She stares at you, as if she's forgotten how to blink. There's one last glimpse of her face before she bundles you into the cupboard under the stairs. 'Don't make a sound,' she hisses, 'don't even breathe.' Darkness smothers you as the key twists in the lock. There's a chance that he won't find you, cowering on the floor, between the broom and floor mops, a stack of wellington boots. ~ Kate Rhodes

The girls changing in the gym watched her from the other side of the room the first time she went in, and one of the nuns was sitting there as well, just because Stella was there. They took her into a meeting in school and she had to say in advance that she wasn't a lesbian, or they wouldn't have let her even try to use the girls' changing room. They asked her if she was still a Christian. She explained that her family are not religious. They asked her what she knew of damnation. She asked them what they knew of autonomy. They asked her how she knew that word. She asked if they had met her mother. They said they would pray for her. She said it was not necessary. They asked if she might feel different in a few months, or if perhaps she would simply change for gym in the janitor's cupboard. She said she'd felt like this her whole life and no amount of praying was going to change it and she could use the janitor's cupboard to change, but she was a person, not a broom. They said she needed to find Jesus. She asked if it was like finding Wally? Only one nun knew what she meant. That little drawing in those old comic strips her mum had, when you look for the dweeby guy in the stripy hat. ~ Jenni Fagan

She was a woman with a broom or a dust-
pan or a washrag or a mixing spoon in her hand. You saw
her cutting piecrust in the morning, humming to it, or you
saw her setting out the baked pies at noon or taking them in,
cool, at dusk. She rang porcelain cups like a Swiss bell ringer
to their place. She glided through the halls as steadily as a
vacuum machine, seeking, finding, and setting to rights. She
made mirrors of every window, to catch the sun. She strolled
but twice through any garden, trowel in hand, and the flowers
raised their quivering fires upon the warm air in her wake.
She slept quietly and turned no more than three times in a
night, as relaxed as a White glove to which, at dawn, a brisk
hand will return. Waking, she touched people like pictures,
to set their frames straight. ~ Ray Bradbury

Things did get better after that, though never like they were before the small blue baby boy was put into the earth. Catherine's mother wasn't a girl anymore, singing at any chance like she used to. She was old with a young face, walking slowly and watching the trees when she could stop and lean on her broom. Catherine thought that her brother was always with her ma, never quite letting her go, and it made her ma tired to carry him, too. ~ Rachel Devenish Ford

Morgan: How fuckin' retarded do you have to be to get shit-canned from that job? How hard is it to push a fuckin' broom?
Chuckie: You got fired from pushing a broom, you little bitch.
Morgan: Yah, that was different. Management was restructurin'.
Billy: Yah, restructurin' the amount of retards they had workin' for them. ~ Matt Damon

I quite like convincing the person the broom is their favourite actress. They are talking to a broom and they think it's Julia Roberts and they snog it. In Reading one guy took the broom into the wings and was getting amorous with it. I had a struggle to get it back. He was exhausted when he came out. ~ Paul McKenna

I'm a writer; I can float for hours on a word like "amethyst" or "broom" or the way so many words sound like what they are: "earth" so firm and basic, "air" so light, like a breath. You can't imagine them the other way around: She plunged her hands into the rich brown air. Sometimes I think I would like to be a word - not a big important word, like "love" or "truth," just a small ordinary word, like "orange" or "inkstain" or "so," a word that people use so often and so unthinkingly that its specialness has all been worn away, like the roughness on a pebble in a creek bed, but that has a solid heft when you pick it up, and if you hold it to the light at just the right angle you can glimpse the spark at its core. ~ Katha Pollitt

It is up to us to organize the people. As for the reactionaries in China, it is up to us to organize the people to overthrow them. Everything reactionary is the same; if you do not hit it, it will not fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish of itself. ~ Mao Zedong

He led them around the base of a great fallen tree whose exposed roots resembled more than anything else a huge broom - a broom that would have fired the imagination of Rachel the Dragon toward heroic, legendary feats of sweeping. ~ Tad Williams

The data are not easy to come by, but a mid 1940s study by the US Rural Electrification Authority reports that, with the introduction of the electric washing machine and electric iron, the time required for washing a 38 lb load of laundry was reduced by a factor of nearly 6 (from 4 hours to 41 minutes) and the time taken to iron it by a factor of more than 2.5 (from 4.5 hours to 1.75 hours).2 Piped water has meant that women do not have to spend hours fetching water (for which, according to the United Nations Development Program, up to two hours per day are spent in some developing countries). Vacuum cleaners have enabled us to clean our houses more thoroughly in a fraction of the time that was needed in the old days, when we had to do it with broom and rags. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

I am the saint at prayer on the terrace like the peaceful beasts that graze down to the sea of Palestine.
I am the scholar of the dark armchair. Branches and rain hurl themselves at the windows of my library.
I am the pedestrian of the highroad by way of the dwarf woods; the roar of the sluices drowns my steps. I can see for a long time the melancholy wash of the setting sun.
I might well be the child abandoned on the jetty on its way to the high seas, the little farm boy following the lane, its forehead touching the sky.
The paths are rough. The hillocks are covered with broom. The air is motionless. How far away are the birds and the springs! It can only be the end of the world ahead. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Got a broom?" "The one I use for sweeping or the one I ride on?" Aurora tilted her head and pierced him with a maybe sort of accusing glare. So that's what she assumed he thought of her. Hardly. He wasn't sure what to think. This was the longest he'd spent in a room with her other than a courtroom, and they didn't converse much inside. Besides, he never allowed himself to see her as anything but the enemy. Now, she was a target who trusted him to protect her. And that's exactly what he planned to do. "Sweeping will be fine." He smirked. "I don't want to put you out a vehicle."

Jessica R. Patch (2017-01-15T06:00:00+00:00). Final Verdict (Kindle Locations 202-206). Harlequin. Kindle Edition. ~ Jessica R. Patch

The extreme point of mysticism, I hold it now in the real and in my body, like a toilet broom. ~ Antonin Artaud

So, um, where's your broomstick?" he countered, his face turning pink from his effort at not laughing.

"Broomsticks are *sooo* 1695," I replied, rolling my eye. "Modern witches use vibrators and drop acid just like everyone else."

"What?" He frowned, looking confused.

"Yeah, *flying on broomsticks* equals a big-ass euphemism for pagan women getting their freak on with broom handles greased up with morning glory butter," I said. "Sometimes strychnine. Not a good idea, but hey, back in the day they used to think a wolf's testicle wrapped in a greasy rag was a good barrier contraceptive. So, yeah, no broomsticks for me. But thanks *ever* so much for asking about my sex life when we've only just met. ~ Lucy A. Snyder

It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick; and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged. ~ Michel De Montaigne

The maid in the lime-color panties ... She had a plain broad face and was the most virtuous woman alive: she laid for EVERYBODY, regardless of race, creed, color or place of national origin, donating herself sociably as an act of hospitality, procrastinating not even for the moment it might take to discard the cloth or broom or dust mop she was clutching at the time she was grabbed. Her allure stemmed from her accessibility; like Mt. Everest, she was there, and the men climbed on top of her each time they felt the urge. ~ Joseph Heller

Hair"

There is great mystery, Simone,
In the forest of your hair.
It smells of hay, and of the stone
Cattle have been lying on;
Of timber, and of new-baked bread
Brought to be one's breakfast fare;
And of the flowers that have grown
Along a wall abandonèd;

Of leather and of winnowed grain;
Of briers and ivy washed by rain;
You smell of rushes and of ferns
Reaped when day to evening turns;
You smell of withering grasses red
Whose seed is under hedges shed;

You smell of nettles and of broom;
Of milk, and fields in clover-bloom;
You smell of nuts, and fruits that one
Gathers in the ripe season;
And of the willow and the lime
Covered in their flowering time;

You smell of honey, of desire,
You smell of air the noon makes shiver:
You smell of earth and of the river;
You smell of love, you smell of fire.
There is great mystery, Simone,
In the forest of your hair.

Contemporary French Poetry, edited by Jethro Bithell (Wentworth Press March 4th 2019)

reply | edit | delete | flag * ~ Remy De Gourmont

Dolphins felt top-heavy, that year, most of the time, and wanted to lie down. When their heads weren't on top they still felt top-heavy, but metaphysically. In public places they felt sad. They went into restrooms, hugged themselves, and quietly went, 'Eeeee eee eeee.' Weekends they went to playgrounds alone. They sat in the top of slides - the enclosed part, where it glowed a little because of the colored plastic - and felt very alert and awake but also very sad and immature. Sometimes they fell asleep and a boy's mother would prod the dolphin with a broom and the dolphin would go down the slide while still asleep. At the bottom they would feel ashamed and go home and lie in bed. They felt so sad that they believed a little that it was their year to be sad, which made them feel better in a devastated, hollowed-out way. Life was too sad and it was beautiful to really feel it for once; to be allowed to feel it, for one year. When dolphins had these thoughts, usually on weekends at night, it was like dreaming, like a pink flower in a soft breeze on a field was lightly dreaming them. The sadness was like a pink forest that got less dense as you went in and then changed into a field, which the dolphins walked into alone. Sometimes the sadness was like a knife against the face. It made the dolphins cry and not want to move. But sometimes a young dolphin would feel very lonely and ugly and it was beautiful how alone it felt, and it would become restless with how perfect and elegant ~ Tao Lin

In a straight up movie montage scene, ten things happened around me at once: someone pulled the broom from my hand, another person ripped the shirt off my head, a measuring tape appeared around my boobs, and two women crouched down in front of my legs. HEYO. "Nice tits," one assistant said as she finished measuring my chest. "Uhh, thanks," I replied as she ran in the opposite direction, having acquired the measurement she needed. "Is this your natural color?" a hairstylist asked as she ripped the hat and ponytail from my head. ~ R.S. Grey

Mr. Bloemker moved closer. He smelled like a wet diaper. "What is it," he asked, looking over Lenore's shoulder.
"If it's what I think it is," said Lenore, "it's a sort of joke. A what do you call it. An antinomy."
"An antinomy?"
Lenore nodded. "Gramma really likes antinomies. I think this guy here," looking down at the drawing on the back of the label, "is the barber who shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves."
Mr. Bloemker looked at her. "A barber?"
"The big killer question," Lenore said to the sheet of paper, "is supposed to be whether the barber shaves himself. I think that's why his head's exploded, here."
"Beg pardon?"
"If he does, he doesn't, and if he doesn't, he does. ~ David Foster Wallace

They stood on the porch
and were ready to knock,
when they heard heavy footsteps,
and a turn of the lock.

When what to their
curious eyes should loom,
but a wicked old witch
holding a broom.
Her cape--how it shimmered!
Her face--oh, how scary!
Her hat was so pointy,
it frightened the fairy!

The wicked witch said,
"Welcome. We have a surprise."
And the children yelled,
"Run! It's not a disguise!"

The monsters were sad
when the kids ran away.
They wanted the children
to come in and play.

The wicked witch said,
"We can have our own fun!
Come on, little monsters,
the night's just begun!"

The monsters all cheered
as they danced with delight,
"Happy Halloween to all--
and to all a fright night! ~ Natasha Wing

The worst thing about falling in love with her so early in life was that he'd been an absolute snot at fourteen, at once arrogant and self-pitying. Almost as bad was the fact that he'd been nearly half a foot shorter than she at their first meeting - she'd been five foot nine, and he barely five foot four. Though she was only a few weeks older than he was, she'd looked upon him as a child - while he broiled with the heat and anguish of first love.
When nothing else garnered him her attention, he turned horrid. She was disgusted by this midget who tried to trick her into broom closets to steal kisses, and he was at once miserable and thrilled. Disgust was better than indifference; anything was better than indifference. ~ Sherry Thomas

Picking oranges in Florida. Pushing a broom in New Orleans. Mucking out horse-stalls in Lufkin, Texas. Handing out real estate brochures on street corners in Phoenix, Arizona. Working jobs that pay cash.
...
The faces on the currency don't matter. What matters is the sight of a weathervane against a violent pink sunset, the sound of his heels on an empty road in Utah, the sound of the wind in the New Mexico desert, the sight of a child skipping rope beside a junked-out Chevrolet Caprice in Fossil, Oregon. What matters is the whine of the powerlines beside Highway 50 west of Elko, Nevada, and a dead crow in a ditch outside Rainbarrel Springs.

Sometimes he's sober and sometimes he gets drunk. Once he lays up in an abandoned shed-this is just over the California state line from Nevada-and drinks for four days straight. It ends with seven hours of off-and-on vomiting. For the first hour or so, the puking is so constant and so violent he is convinced it will kill him. Later on, he can only wish it would. And when it's over, he swears to himself that he's done, no more booze for him, he's finally learned his lesson, and a week later lies drunk again and staring up at the strange stars behind the restaurant where he has hired on as a dishwasher. He is an animal in a trap and he doesn't care.
...
Sometimes he asks himself what he thinks he's doing, where the hell he's going, and such questions are apt to send him in search of the next bottle in a hurry. ~ Stephen King

The Blessed Virgin used me like a broom, and then put me back in my place. ~ Bernadette Soubirous

Our great leader, Chairman Mao, has taught us, 'Every reactionary is the same; if you do not hit him, he will not fall. This is also like sweeping the floor; as a rule, where the broom does not reach, the dust will not vanish by itself.'" Her ~ Ji-li Jiang

Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let, fifty cents. No phone, no pool, no pets, ain't got no big regrets. Two hours of pushin' broom, buys an eight by twelve, four-bit room. I'm a man of means, by no means, king of the road. ~ Roger Miller

Just because I don't have on a silly black costume and carry a silly broom and wear a silly black hat, doesn't mean that I'm not a witch. I'm a witch all the time and not just on Halloween. ~ E.L. Konigsburg

THE FIREBOLT This state-of-the-art racing broom sports a streamlined, superfine handle of ash, treated with a diamond-hard polish and hand-numbered with its own registration number. Each individually selected birch twig in the broomtail has been honed to aerodynamic perfection, giving the Firebolt unsurpassable balance and pinpoint precision. The Firebolt has an acceleration of 150 miles an hour in ten seconds and incorporates an unbreakable Braking Charm. Price on request. Price ~ J.K. Rowling

It's not like I ride a broom into interviews. I don't hang upside down with a cape on. ~ Trent Reznor

I cover a yawn with the back of my hand.
"Go on up to bed, lass." Logan stands, brushes off his pants and picks the broom up from the floor. "I'll finish here."
I drag myself up too. "I thought you don't sweep fucking floors?"
Logan winks. And, right there in that dim little coffee shop, he steals a piece of my heart forever.
"In your case, I'll make a fucking exception. ~ Emma Chase

She began to fret about God's exact location. It was the Sunday-school teacher's fault: God is everywhere, she'd said, and Laura wanted to know: was God in the sun, was God in the moon, was God in the kitchen, the bathroom, was he under the bed? ... Laura didn't want God popping our at her unexpectedly ... Probably God was in the boom closet. It seemed the most likely place. He was lurking in there like some eccentric and possibly dangerous uncle, but she couldn't be certain whether he was there at any given moment because she was afraid to open the door. "god is in your heart", said the Sunday-school teacher, and that was even worse. If in the broom closet, something might have been possible, such as locking the door. ~ Margaret Atwood

Sleep in my arms. Like a baby bird. Like a broom among brooms ... in a broom closet. Like a tiny parrot. Like a whistle. Like a little song. A song sung by a forest ... within a forest ... a thousand years ago. ~ Milan Kundera

When what to their
curious eyes should loom,
but a wicked old witch
holding a broom.
Her cape - how it shimmered!
Her face - oh, how scary!
Her hat was so pointy,
it frightened the fairy!
The wicked witch said,
"Welcome. We have a surprise."
And the children yelled,
"Run! It's not a disguise! ~ Natasha Wing

Someone woke up on the wrong side of the broom this morning. ~ Jodi Picoult

Porches could be cleaned with a broom in a few minutes, but the soul could not be swept. It had to be shaken. And shaking the loess from a soul took a lifetime and more strength than most people had. ~ Dan Groat

When the house fell down, it can be said, something in me opened up. Cracks help a house resolve internally its pressures and stresses, my engineer friend had said. Houses provide a frame that bears us up. Without that physical structure, we are the house that bears itself up. I was now the house. ~ Sarah M. Broom

So many people never seemed to think about the consequences of their everyday actions. And then a witch on her broom would have to set out from her bed in the rain in the dead of night because of "I only" and its little friends "I didn't know" and "It's not my fault."
"I only wanted to see if the copper was hot ... "
"I didn't know a boiling pot was dangerous ... "
"It's not my fault
no one told me dogs that bark might also bite."
And her favorite, "I didn't know it would go off bang"
when it said "goes bang" on the box it came in. That had been when little Ted Cooper had put an explosive banger (another tiny clue) into the carcass of a chicken after his mum's birthday party and nearly killed everybody around the table. ~ Terry Pratchett

My mother said, "Arturo, stop that. Your sister's tired."

"Oh Holy Ghost, Oh Holy inflated triple ego, get us out of the depression. Elect Roosevelt. Keep us on the gold standard. Take France off, but for Christ's sake keep us on!"

"Arturo, stop that"

"Oh Jehovah, in your infinite mutability see if you can't scrape up some coin for the Bandini family."

My mother said, "Shame, Arturo. Shame."

I got up on the divan and yelled, "I reject the hypothesis of God! Down with the decadence of a fraudulent Christianity! Religion is the opium of the people! All that we are or ever hope to be we owe to the devil and his bootleg apples!"

My mother came after me with the broom. ~ John Fante