Bushes Quotes

Something is coming uphill," said Mother Wolf, twitching one ear. "Get ready." The bushes rustled a little in the thicket, and Father Wolf dropped with his haunches under him, ready for his leap. Then, if you had been watching, you would have seen the most wonderful thing in the world - the wolf checked in mid-spring. He made his bound before he saw what it was he was jumping at, and then he tried to stop himself. The result was that he shot up straight into the air for four or five feet, landing almost ~ Rudyard Kipling

We must limit the running to and fro which most men practise, rambling about houses, theatres, and marketplaces. They mind other men's business, and always seem as though they themselves had something to do. If you ask one of them as he comes out of his own door, "Whither are you going?" he will answer, "By Hercules, I do not know: but I shall see some people and do something." They wander purposelessly seeking for something to do, and do, not what they have made up their minds to do, but what has casually fallen in their way. They move uselessly and without any plan, just like ants crawling over bushes, which creep up to the top and then down to the bottom again without gaining anything. Many men spend their lives in exactly the same fashion, which one may call a state of restless indolence. ~ Seneca.

within the frosted bushes. It was only in ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

In this man's smile was all the unfairness of the world in its thuggish seduction. "Just come with me. We'll take care of you."
"No, you won't." Taylor stroked the man's cheek. She reached her arms up to cradle the back of his head and, with the skill of a champion, she broke his neck. Then she dragged him into the bushes, took his gun and walkie-talkie, and kept moving. ~ Libba Bray

It comes from looking at the heart of things, from stopping to smell not only the roses but the bushes as well. It is a quality of attention to ordinary life that is so loving and intimate it is almost worship. ~ Martha N. Beck

I sheathe my spear on my back and I plow through bushes dotted with prickly balls, feeling them scratch and scrape my skin, but do not stop. ~ Jennifer Martucci

Bushes didn't whine. "Do your best and don't look back" - that was the code. ~ Jon Meacham

Personally, I would rather climb in the high mountains. I have always abhorred the tremendous heat, the dirt-filled cracks, the ant-covered foul-smelling trees and bushes which cover the cliffs, the filth and noise of Camp 4 (the climbers' campground), and worst of all, the multitudes of tourists which abound during the weekends and summer months. ~ Yvon Chouinard

The recollection also came back empty, and for the first time in all his life, perhaps, Luzhin asked himself the question – where exactly had it all gone, what had become of his childhood, whither had the veranda floated, whither, rustling through the bushes, had the familiar paths crept away? ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Gale spreads the bread slices with the soft goat cheese, carefully placing a basil leaf on each while I strip the bushes of their berries. We settle back in a nook in the rocks. From this place, we are invisible but have a clear view of the valley, which is teeming with summer life, greens to gather, roots to dig, fish iridescent in the sunlight. The day is glorious, with a blue sky and soft breeze. The food's wonderful, with the cheese seeping into the warm bread and the berries bursting in our mouths. ~ Suzanne Collins

Open the windows and the doors, she shouted, cook some meat and fish, buy the largest turtles around, let strangers come in and spread their mats in the corners and urinate in the rose bushes and sit down to eat as many times as they want, and belch and rant and muddy everything with their boots, and let them do whatever they want to us, because that's the only way to drive off ruin. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Even without being believed, magic can change things. It moves invisibly through the air, dissolving the usual ways of seeing, allowing new ways to creep in, secretly, quietly, like a stray cat sliding thought the bushes. ~ Janet Taylor Lisle

In a rush, the world opened its mouth to her - and it was screaming.
Everywhere - the air around her, the ground beneath her, the stars above - rippled with the soul-wrenching cries of
hunger: the trees and bushes and plants all twisted and bent, their branches and stems clawing the sky in skeletal panic; the
animals and insects, flying and crawling and burrowing, each frantic in its own way, searching incessantly to end the gnawing
demand in its belly; the swarms of people, clotting the world, stuffing themselves only to beg for more, be it food or wealth or
attention - all of them, desperate, insatiable. So very hungry.
All of them, leeching on to her. Sucking her dry. ~ Jackie Morse Kessler

The night garden felt like a home, with the glittering sky for the ceiling, the bushes our rug, and the dilapidated pavilion our bed. He lit up the place like a heart-warming hearth fire. He was the walls of my sanctuary, the food for my eyes, the scent of a home. He was everything. ~ Weina Dai Randel

Coyotes move within a landscape of attentiveness. I have seen their eyes in the creosote bushes and among mesquite trees. They have watched me. And all the times that I saw no eyes, that I kept walking and never knew, there were still coyotes. When I have seen them trot away, when I have stepped from the floorboard of my truck, leaned on the door, and watched them as they watched me over their shoulders, I have been aware for that moment of how much more there is. Of how I have only seen only an instant of a broad and rich life. ~ Craig Childs

He was out playing and heard Molly calling him. "Richard! Supper!" Instead of answering "Coming!" and running to her, he dodged under a hedge, scraping his knees. "Richard! Richard!" Molly sounded frantic this time, but he remained silent, crouched. "Richard! Where are you, Dicky?" A rabbit stopped and watched him, and he locked eyes with the rabbit and, for those short moments, only he and the rabbit knew where he was. Then the rabbit leaped out and Molly peered under the bushes and saw him. She smacked him. She told him to stay in his room for the rest of the day. She said she was very upset and would tell Mr. and Mrs. Churchill. But those short moments had made it all worthwhile, those moments of pure plenary abandon, when he felt as if he, and he alone, were in control of the universe of his childhood. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Torn clothing littered the ground, more hung from bushes. Nick held up half a pair of white panties and grinned at me.
"Wild dogs? Or just Clayton?"
"Oh God," I muttered under my breath.
I walked over to snatch the underwear from him, but he held it over his head, grinning like a schoolboy.
"I see Paris, I see France, I see Elena's underpants," he chanted.
"Everyone's already seen much more than that," Jeremy said. "I think we can safely resume the search."
Peter plucked Clay's shirt from a low-hanging branch and held it up, peering through a hole in the middle. "You guys can really do some damage. Where's the hidden video when you need it?"
"So this
uh
wasn't done by wild dogs?" one of the searchers said.
Peter grinned and tossed the shirt to the ground. "Nope. Just wild hormones. ~ Kelley Armstrong

Often, half in a bay of the mountains and half on a headland, a small and nearly amphibian Schloss mouldered in the failing light among the geese and the elder-bushes and the apple trees. Dank walls rose between towers that were topped with cones of moulting shingle. Weeds throve in every cranny. Moss mottled the walls. Fissures branched like forked lightning across damp masonry which the rusting iron clamps tried to hold together, and buttresses of brick shored up the perilously leaning walls. The mountains, delaying sunrise and hastening dusk, must have halved again the short winter days. Those buildings looked too forlorn for habitation. But, in tiny, creeper-smothered windows, a faint light would show at dusk. Who lived in those stone-flagged rooms where the sun never came? Immured in those six-foot-thick walls, overgrown outside with the conquering ivy and within by genealogical trees all moulting with mildew? My thoughts flew at once to solitary figures…a windowed descendant of a lady-in-waiting at the court of Charlemagne, alone with the Sacred Heart and her beads, or a family of wax-pale barons, recklessly inbred; bachelors with walrus moustaches, bent double with rheumatism, shuddering from room to room and coughing among their lurchers, while their cleft palates called to each other down corridors that were all but pitch dark. ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor

Whereas my grandfather was getting used to a much more terrifying reality. Holding my hand to keep his balance, as trees and bushes made strange, sliding movements in his peripheral vision, Lefty was confronting the possibility that consciousness was a biological accident. Though he'd never been religious, he realized now that he'd always believed in the soul, in a force of personality that survived death. But as his mind continued to waver, to short-circuit, he finally arrived at the cold-eyed conclusion, so at odds with his youthful cheerfulness, that the brain was just an organ like any other and that when it failed he would be no more. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

You are like a stick insect, Michaels, whose sole defence against a universe of predators is its bizarre shape. You are like a stick insect that has landed, God knows how, in the middle of a great wide flat bare concrete plain. You raise your slow fragile stick-legs one at a time, you inch about looking for something to merge with, and there is nothing. Why did you ever leave the bushes, Michaels? ~ J.M. Coetzee

In Shakespeare the birds sing, the bushes are clothed with green, hearts love, souls suffer, the cloud wanders, it is hot, it is cold, night falls, time passes, forests and multitudes speak, the vast eternal dream hovers over all. Sap and blood, all forms of the multiple reality, actions and ideas, man and humanity, the living and the life, solitudes, cities, religions, diamonds and pearls, dung-hills and charnelhouses, the ebb and flow of beings, the steps of comers and goers, all, all are on Shakespeare and in Shakespeare. ~ Victor Hugo

Enemy," hiss the bushes all around. The rest of the Pride glided forward, surrounding Lily, Rowan, and Spike. ~ Josephine Angelini

They look so tired, so hot!" everyone kept saying, but not one of them thought to open their doors, to invite one of these wretches inside, to welcome them into the shady bits of heaven that the refugees could glimpse behind the houses, where wooden benches nestled in arbours amid redcurrant bushes and roses. There were just too many of them. Too many weary, pale faces, dripping with sweat, too many wailing children, too many trembling lips asking, "Do you know where we could get a room? A bed?" … "Would you tell us where we could find a restaurant, please, Madame?" It prevented the townspeople from being charitable. There was nothing human left in this miserable mob; they were like a herd of frightened animals. Their crumpled clothes, crazed faces, hoarse voices, everything about them made them look peculiarly alike, so you couldn't tell them apart. ~ Irene Nemirovsky

I see in many places little barberry bushes just come up densely in the cow-dung, like young apple trees, the berries having been eaten by the cows. Here they find manure and an open space for the first year at least, when they are not choked by grass or weeds. In this way, evidently, many of these clumps of barberries are commenced. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I feel like I am campaigning door to door. You just can't step out of a band like Brooks & Dunn and assume that it is just going to be business as usual. You have to work it. It does feel like a campaign where you would have Obama, Romney, or Newt beating the bushes right now. That's what I'm having to do. ~ Ronnie Dunn

There are so many ways to make a living that don't involve hiding in bushes opposite houses of 18-year-old girls with a camera in your hand. ~ Jamie Dornan

Nobody," he said, "has put in a good day's fishing unless he leaves a couple of flies hanging on the bushes. You can't catch fish if you don't dare go where they are." "Let ~ Norman Maclean

We're in Borneo, can't you tell? We're skimming the treetops now, big leaves are glimmering below us, and there are coffee bushes over there, smell them? and Marie-Laure will indeed smell something, whether because her uncle is passing coffee grounds beneath her nose, or because they really are flying over the coffee trees of Borneo, she does not want to decide. ~ Anthony Doerr

Look at this site - it is beautiful and deep. When we come here, we get ourselves lost in its beauty and vastness. Years of sorrow and pain lies in the depth of this lake. You do not know what was here 40-50 years back. Probably, a ditch full of stagnant water and mud breeding mosquitoes. Now here we have beautiful lake surrounded by lush green bushes and beautiful flowers. The place is beautiful today, so we come and enjoy its company, its presence. We do not think about its past or we do not to know what will happen here years later. We enjoy the beauty of its present. ~ Ravindra Shukla

She may be close. She may have crawled into the bushes. She may be dying there, wanting to find somewhere peaceful, somewhere away from the sharp metal and the stink of burning and the violence and the madness. Or she's died already, alone and frightened, and wondering where you were, why you broke your promise, why you allowed this to happen. ~ Stephen Lloyd Jones

The bluebells made such a pool that the earth had become like water, and all the trees and bushes seemed to have grown out of the water. And the sky above seemed to have fallen down on to the earth floor; and I didn't know if the sky was the earth or the earth was water. I had been turned upside down. I had to hold the rock with my fingernails to stop me falling into the sky of the earth or the water of the sky. But I couldn't hold on. ~ Graham Joyce

The suburban evening was grey and yellow on Sunday; the gardens of the small houses to left and right were rank with ivy and tall grass and lilac bushes; the tropical South London verdure was dusty above and mouldy below; the tepid air swarmed with flies. Eeldrop, at the window, welcomed the smoky smell of lilac, the gramaphones, the choir of the Baptist chapel, and the sight of three small girls playing cards on the steps of the police station. ~ T. S. Eliot

In the emptiness that was all around me, I noticed an old tennis ball in the plantings; I picked it up and dropped it at Zoë's feet. I didn't know what I was doing, if I had a specific intention. Was I trying to lighten the mood? I don't know, but I felt I had to do something. So there the ball bounced to a stop at her bare feet.
She looked down at the ball but did nothing with it.
Maxwell noticed what I had done, and he noticed Zoë's lack of reaction. He picked up the ball and, with a mighty heave, threw it so far into the woods behind the house that I lost sight of it and could only barely hear it crash through the leaves of bushes on its way back to earth. It was quite an impressive toss, the pale tennis ball sailing through the air against the clear blue sky. What amount of psychic pain was expended on that ball, I had no idea. ~ Garth Stein

You're driving through the park?" Jericho cursed.

"Yeah," Breeze laughed. "Brilliant, huh? They'll think we'll use the roads but we're not. Our guys can see us from the rooftops so we're covered."

"Do you want to turn on the headlights?" Jinx pushed his head between the seats from the back. "So you don't hit a tree. Do you see that one directly in our path?"

Breeze jerked on the wheel, sending the Jeep to the right before straightening it out. "I see it. I'm not blind, and no, I'm not using headlights. Humans don't have our night vision. The point is to get there without them knowing where we are. Now shut up and sit tight. I'll have us there before - "

"The bushes!" Flame yelled.

"I see them." Breeze swerved to the left. "Isn't this fun?"

"No," True grumbled, "it's not."

"Spoilsport." Breeze chuckled. "And yes, I see the lake." She turned the wheel. "We're not going for a swim."

Jeanie closed her eyes and turned into True, grateful she couldn't see anything out in the darkness. ~ Laurann Dohner

It was beginning to get late in the afternoon. On the edge of the earth, the sun slowly diminished. An unexpected calmness dropped in the atmosphere. In one short life, this drama would end. And that would be the end of it all; those, who suffered the worst, were the ones most deluded by the notion that this life was forever. Oh, how calm? How peacefully the River Murma flowed today? A mere twitter of a bird in the heavy groves, the shepherd's distant tune caught in the flute wafted through the air. There appeared to be no grimy crimes threatening such delightful sensations of undulated serenity. The night forest illuminated by fireflies everywhere. Lights sparkled, as they flew ubiquitous around the slim, tall trees and the heavy bushes of the blue forest. ~ Mehreen Ahmed

A springful of larks in a rolling Cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling Blackbirds and the sun of October Summery On the hill's shoulder. ~ Dylan Thomas

Death was more like what we went through in the park: two people walking side by side in the mist, rubbing against trees and bushes, and not a word between them. It was something emptier than the name itself and yet right and peaceful, dignified, if you like. It was not a continuation of life, but a leap in the dark and no possibility of ever coming back, not even as a grain of dust. And that was right and beautiful, I said to myself, because why would one want to come back. To taste it once is to taste it forever - life or death. Whichever way the coin flips is right, so long as you hold no stakes. Sure, it's tough to choke on your own spittle - it's disagreeable more than anything else. And besides, one doesn't always die choking to death. Sometimes one goes off in his sleep, peaceful and quiet as a lamb. The Lord comes and gathers you up into the fold, as they say. Anyway, you stop breathing. And why the hell should one want to go on breathing forever? Anything that would have to be done interminably would be torture. The poor human bastards that we are, we ought to be glad that somebody devised a way out. We don't quibble about going to sleep. A third of our lives we snore away like drunken rats. What about that? Is that tragic? Well then, say three-thirds of drunken rat-like sleep. Jesus, if we had any sense we'd be dancing with glee at the thought of it! We could all die in bed tomorrow, without pain, without suffering - if we had the sense to take advantage of our reme ~ Henry Miller

Once the moon gets to be full somebody - some man or other - goes up every day and slices bits of one side until there isn't any more,and then after a bit a new one grows. Men do that with all sorts of things, actually - rose bushes for instance.... The man who slices the bits off brings them down here and then they're used for making those lights on the cars. Clever isn't it... They only last about one night, I should think, because you hardly ever see them shining by day. ~ Richard Adams

I think the country has had enough Bushes. ~ Barbara Bush

If we could, and we must, establish a deep long abiding relationship with nature, with the actual trees, the bushes, the flowers, the grass and the fast moving clouds, then we would never slaughter another human being for any reason whatsoever. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Just think! The only reason the world knows anything about them [Jesus' Apostles] is because having met the Savior, they made Him their guide in life. If they hadn't, nobody now would know that such men had ever lived. They would have lived and died and been forgotten just as thousands of other men in their day lived and died and nobody knows or cares anything about them; just as thousands and thousands are living today, wasting their time and energy in useless living, choosing the wrong kind of men for their ideals, turning their footsteps into the road of Pleasure and Indulgence instead of the road of Service. Soon they will reach the end of their journey in life, and nobody can say that the world is any better for their having lived in it. At the close of each day such men leave their pathway as barren as they found it - they plant no trees to give shade to others, nor rose-bushes to make the world sweeter and brighter to those who follow - no kind deeds, no noble service - just a barren, unfruitful, desert-like pathway, strewn, perhaps, with thorns and thistles. Not so with the disciples who chose Jesus for their Guide. Their lives are like gardens of roses from which the world may pluck beautiful flowers forever. ~ David O. McKay

You come back here, you good-for-nothing! Come help me drag these ailing bones."
The old man flees toward the Lethe as fast as his rickety legs will carry him. Like an army scouring the countryside, she surges in his wake, flattening grasses and bushes as she goes. The gap narrows.
"Don't you recognize me?" she hollers. "It's me, your sweetie pie! ~ Emily Whitman

Roger and I would squat in the heavily scented shade of the myrtle bushes and watch the array of creatures that passed us; at certain times of the day the branches were as busy as the main street of a town. ~ Gerald Durrell

I don't like dynasty and legacy. But I think there's a period in the U.S. history where Bushes have been in the forefront. ~ George H. W. Bush

Recreate your life, always, always.
Remove the stones, plant rose bushes and make sweets."

Begin again. ~ Cora Coralina

Scrubby evergreen bushes released a strong scent of resin and honey; forests of pine gave way to gentle south-facing vineyards disturbed only by the ululation of early summer cicadas. Sitting up tall on the seat, she craned around eagerly to see what plants thrived naturally.
It was a wild and romantic place, Laurent de Fayols had written, the whole island once bought as a wedding gift to his wife by a man who had made his fortune in the silver mines of Mexico. One of three small specks in the Mediterranean known as the Golden Isles, after the oranges, lemons, and grapefruit that glowed like lamps in their citrus groves.
There were few reference works in English that offered information beyond superficial facts about the island, and those she had managed to find were old. The best had been published in 1880, by a journalist called Adolphe Smith. Ellie had been struck by the loveliness of his "description of the most Southern Point of the French Riviera":


'The island is divided into seven ranges of small hills, and in the numerous valleys thus created are walks sheltered from every wind, where the umbrella pines throw their deep shade over the path and mingle their balsamic odor with the scent of the thyme, myrtle and the tamarisk. ~ Deborah Lawrenson

We were having another look among the bushes for David's lost worsted ball, and instead of the ball we found a lovely nest made of the worsted, and containing four eggs, with scratches on them very like David's handwriting, so we think they must have been the mother's love-letters to the little ones inside. ~ J.M. Barrie

Tell me, Laurel, what
do you know of erosion?"
Laurel couldn't imagine what this had to do with anything, but she answered anyway. "Like when water or
wind wears away the ground?"
"That's right. Given enough time, wind and rain will carry the tallest mountain into the sea. But," he said,
raising a finger, "a hillside covered in grass will resist erosion, and a riverbank may be held in place by
bushes and trees. They spread their roots," he said, extending his hands with his story, "and grab hold. And
though the river will pull at the soil, if the roots are strong enough, they will prevail. If they cannot, they
will eventually be carried away too. ~ Aprilynne Pike

Some Churches are heated and cooled 365 days a year. As homeless soldiers lay in alleys and bushes quite near. ~ Stanley Victor Paskavich

I was burned out from exhaustion, buried in the hail, poisoned in the bushes,
blown out on the trail; hunted like a crocodile, ravaged in the corn,
"Come in," she said, "I'll give ya shelter from the storm." ~ Bob Dylan

The bushes puzzled him, they were so big, almost trees, some twice his height, and there seemed so many. They were planted all along the edges of the towering droop-limbed hemlocks that sheltered the place, and in the acres sheltered there were dozens of great rectangular clumps like loaves of porous green bread. The bushes were evergreen. With their zigzag branches and long oval leaves fingering in every direction they seemed to belong to a different climate, to a different land, whose gravity pulled softer than this one. ~ John Updike

Today is Earth Day. The way I see it, as humans the very least we can do is recycle. A lot of recycling is going on this year. For example, Bushes and Clintons. ~ David Letterman

There was a strong but not unpleasant smell- moist earth, decomposing leaf matter, new flowers beginning to catch the day's sun- and great fat bumblebees were busy already collecting pollen from a profusion of small pink and white blooms. Blackberries: Sadie surprised herself by dredging up the knowledge. They were blackberry flowers, and in a few months' time the bushes would be heavy with fruit. ~ Kate Morton

The boy shot Wild Bill's horse at dusk, while Bill was off in the bushes to relieve himself ~ Pete Dexter

Hungry for beautiful words, the fox comes rooting around in the hedge, almost too close to the fire. He reads my mind with one glance and is gone.
All my poetry is now trotting around the bushes inside him, maybe some day to be partly eaten or left to rot. He understands being alive for as long as he can be, and does not worry about why, or what might happen afterwards. ~ Jay Woodman

What is the story with the airport sinks, that they will not give us a twist-on twist-off human faucet. "Is it that too risky for the human population? We have to do the one-handed pain-in-the-ass Alcatraz-style faucets. "What is it they think we will do? Turn 'em all on full, run out into the parking lot, laughing, pushing each other into the bushes? ~ Jerry Seinfeld

He forced himself not to break down as he remembered Dumbledore's funeral, and the rows and rows of golden chairs, and the Minister of Magic in the front row, the recitation of Dumbledore's achievements, the stateliness of the white marble tomb. He felt that Dobby deserved just as grand a funeral, and yet here the elf lay between bushes in a roughly dug hole. ~ J.K. Rowling

I have to find her. I check out hiding places in the lanes, behind bushes. A place where a boy could pull in a girl for a quick kiss. But there's nobody. ~ Carolyn Marsden

The Outing
An outburst of anger near the road, a refusal to speak on the path, a silence in the pine woods, a silence across the old railroad bridge, an attempt to be friendly in the water, a refusal to end the argument on the flat stones, a cry of anger on the steep bank of dirt, a weeping among the bushes. ~ Lydia Davis

A dachshund came out of the bushes. Ruzena's father extended his pole toward him, but the dog alertly evaded it and ran over to the boy, who lifted him up and hugged him. Other old men rushed over to help Ruzena's father and tear the dachshund out of the boy's arms. The boy was crying, shouting, and grappling with them so that the old men had to twist his arms and put a hand over his mouth because his cries were attracting too much attention from the passersby, who were turning to look but not daring to intervene. [...] Jakub was leading the dog by the collar toward the hotel steps when one of the old men shouted: "Release that dog at once!"
And the other old man: "In the name of the law!"
Jakub pretended not to notice the old men and kept going, but behind him a pole slowly descended alongside his body and the wire loop wavered clumsily over the boxer's head.
Jakub grabbed the end of the pole and brusquely pushed it aside.
A third old man ran up and shouted: "Its an attack on law and order! I'm going to call the police!"
And the high-pitched voice of another old man complained: "He ran on the grass! He ran in the playground, where it's prohibited! He pissed in the kids' sandbox! Do you like dogs more than children?"
The boxer scampered around the room curiously, unaware that he had just escaped danger. Jakub stretched out on the daybed, wondering what to do with him. He liked the lively, good-natured dog. The insouciance with which, in a f ~ Milan Kundera

For a moment, I thought I heard laughter, the click of one croquet ball striking another, a dog barking.
I stared at the empty yard, trying hard to see what Great-grandfather saw, but nothing shifted, nothing changed. If the Tylers were playing croquet, they were visible to him and him alone. The only dog in sight was Binky. Running across the lawn to meet him, I took the stick he carried and threw it as hard as I could. It sailed across the sky, and Binky dashed after it.
As the dog disappeared into the bushes, I looked up at the attic window and remembered the flash of white I'd seen the day I arrived--my first glimpse of Andrew. Funny to think I'd been scared. Nothing stirred in the attic now. No one watched, no one waited.
Deep in my pocket, I touched the red bull's-eye, warm as blood and twice as lucky. The marbles were mine for keeps. They were safe, and so was Andrew. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

As I prepare to leave she walks with me, half deaf and blind, under several ladders in her living room that balance paint and workmen, into the garden where there is a wild horse, a 1930 car splayed flat on its axles and hundreds of flowering bushes so that her eyes swim out into the dark green and unfocussed purple. There is very little now that separates the house from the garden. Rain and vines and chickens move into the building. Before I leave, she points to a group photograph of a fancy dress party that shows herself and my grandmother Lalla among the crowd. She has looked at it for years and has in this way memorized everyone's place in the picture. She reels off names and laughs at the facial expressions she can no longer see. It has moved, tangible, palpable, into her brain, the way memory invades the present in those who are old, the way gardens invade houses here, the way her tiny body steps into mine as intimate as anything I have witnessed and I have to force myself to be gentle with this frailty in the midst of my embrace. ~ Michael Ondaatje

Three weeks ago, he'd seen hail fall from the sky, only
to be followed minutes later by a spectacular rainbow that seemed to frame the azalea bushes. The colors, so vivid they seemed almost alive, made him think that nature sometimes sends us signs, that it's important to remember that joy can always follow despair. But a moment later, the rainbow had vanished and the hail returned, and he realized that joy was sometimes only an illusion. ~ Nicholas Sparks

When you have the paparazzi hiding in the bushes outside your home, the only thing you can control is how you respond publicly. ~ Portia De Rossi

There, standing before the mausoleum, Michael's anxiety skyrocketed. His heart raced. His head spun. His stomach turned. For a few moments, he really thought he was going to have to run to the bushes and puke. He'd never heard of a ghost being able to actually curse someone, but he didn't want to risk it by vomiting on Bluidy Mackenzie's front lawn. ~ Jacqueline E. Smith

He had been longing to get at these Frenchmen and to cut them down, their being so near seemed to him now so awful that he could not believe his eyes. "Who are they? What are they running for? Can it be to me? Can they be running to me? And what for? To kill me? Me, whom every one's so fond of?" He recalled his mother's love, the love of his family and his friends, and the enemy's intention of killing him seemed impossible. "But they may even kill me." For more than ten seconds he stood, not moving from the spot, nor grasping his position. The foremost Frenchman with the hook nose was getting so near that he could see the expression of his face. And the excited, alien countenance of the man, who was running so lightly and breathlessly towards him, with his bayonet lowered, terrified Rostov. He snatched up his pistol, and instead of firing with it, flung it at the Frenchman and ran to the bushes with all his might. ~ Leo Tolstoy

TO my quick ear the leaves conferred;
The bushes they were bells;
I could not find a privacy
From Nature's sentinels.

In cave if I presumed to hide,
The walls began to tell;
Creation seemed a mighty crack
To make me visible. ~ Emily Dickinson

Former spider boys came from all walks of life - they ranged from homeless street kids and school dropouts to decent kids, but the best ones were those who had gone anywhere and everywhere to search out and capture their fighting spiders; they even ventured into dangerous bushes infested with black mambas. These boys were risk-takers and crowd-pullers, always on the move, always looking for worthy opponents with which to fight their spiders. ~ Ming Cher

Hermione made purple and gold streamers erupt from the end of her wand and drape themselves artistically over the trees and bushes.
"Nice," said Ron, as with one final flourish of her wand, Hermione turned the leaves on the crabapple tree to gold. "You've really got an eye for that sort of thing."
"Thank you, Ron!" said Hermione, looking both pleased and a little confused. Harry turned away, smiling to himself. He had a funny notion that he would find a chapter on compliments when he found time to peruse his copy of Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches; he caught Ginny's eye and grinned at her before remembering his promise to Ron and hurriedly striking up a conversation with Monsieur Delacour.
"Out of the way, out of the way!" sang Mrs. Weasley, coming through the gate with what appeared to be a giant, beach-ball-sized Snitch floating in front of her. Seconds later Harry realized that it was his birthday cake, which Mrs. Weasley was suspending with her wand, rather than risk carrying it over the uneven ground. When the cake had finally landed in the middle of the table, Harry said,
"That looks amazing, Mrs. Weasley."
"Oh, it's nothing, dear," she said fondly. Over her shoulder, Ron gave Harry the thumbs-up and mouthed, Good one. ~ J.K. Rowling

Turn left here," I said about fifteen minutes later.
"I know what you're doing," he told me, but he turned anyway. The road cut through thick bushes and red pine groves. The moon was bright enough to cast blue moonshadow over the snow. If I squinted I could just barely make out a house light through the trees, close to the mountains. We passed the familiar landmarks: the lightning-struck ash, the boulder shaped like a bull, the hill where wild daffodils grew in spring.
My phone rang the very second we crossed onto Drake land.
"Lucy Hamilton, you just keep on driving."
I gulped at Helena's stern voice. "Oops. Bye!" I wrinkled my nose at Kieran. "Busted. Keep driving. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

I've voted Libertarian as long as I can remember, but I don't really remember much before the Clintons and the Bushes. Those clans made a lot of us bugnutty. ~ Penn Jillette

She lit the candelabras which stood on the mantelpiece. Placed at the head of the bead, on a side-table, they looked like two burning bushes, their flames solemn and inextinguishable. But beneath that avalanche of light the dead man became hideous: the pale head displayed a whiteness more livid than the bedsheet, ghastly against the cambric of the pillow; pits of shadow were hollowed out under the eyes and his nose was villainously elongated, and even the mouth seemed wicked – his mouth, which was so very gentle!
~ Remy De Gourmont

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about and with worms crawling through the damp earth and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms so different from each other and dependent on each other and so complex a manner have all been produced by laws acting around us. ~ Charles Darwin

Going to Europe as a budding cook opened my eyes to food in a different way. When I got to Italy, the first thing I did was put my little basil plants in the ground and watch them turn into big, healthy bushes. ~ Frances Mayes

I have a green thumb. I really like to get into the shrubs, the bushes, and really cultivate. ~ Jeffrey Donovan

They asked me to go in front of the Reagans. I'm not used to going in front of President Reagan, so we went out behind the Bushes. ~ Dan Quayle

People who claim to know jackrabbits will tell you they are primarily motivated by Fear, Stupidity, and Craziness. But I have spent enough time in jack rabbit country to know that most of them lead pretty dull lives; they are bored with their daily routines: eat, fuck, sleep, hop around a bush now and then ... No wonder some of them drift over the line into cheap thrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful adrenalin rush in crouching by the side of a road, waiting for the next set of headlights to come along, then streaking out of the bushes with split-second timing and making it across to the other side just inches in front of the speeding front wheels ~ Hunter S. Thompson

I will tell you a sad thing about the leaving of the Franks, which affected me very much. When we went down to the beaches, we found all the mules and horses that they had left behind. They were well-fed, big animals, and they were combed and brushed and beautiful, with fine markings, and they were tethered on the beach in a line. But the Franks had not been able to take them away with them, and so, to prevent us from having them, and even though they obviously cared for them, the Franks had sacrificed them all, with love in their hearts, and had cut their throats of shot them after feeding and combing them. Some Frankish soldiers disobeyed the order, however, as we would find donkeys hidden away in the bushes with a big bag of hay, and this is what happens in war, which is that out of all the vileness, a small light still shines. ~ Louis De Bernieres

However difficult the future might prove, anything was worth this single, exhilarating moment. Absolutely anything.

Absolutely nothing would stop him from wreaking vengeance on the menace who had brought him to his knees. Grimly, Dragon set his mind apart from the waves of pain still resonatng within him and turned to the far more pleasant contemplation of the punishment he would inflict. No one,not even a green boy,could be pardoned for such an assault. He would have to pay and pay dearly.The only question was how.
First he had to be caught,but that was no matter. Had the imp of hell deliberately set out to mark his trail,he could not have left it clearer. Granted, Dragon was a hunter of rare skill, but it required no special talent to see where the boy had gone. His way was littered with broken branches, trampled grass, even bits of wool caught on prickler bushes. By the length of his stride, he had run as fast as a bat out of hell, which suggested he at least had a brain, much good that it would do him. ~ Josie Litton

Ahead, a house sits close to the road: a small, single-story place painted mint green. Ivy grows up one corner and onto the roof, the green tendrils swaying like a girl's hair let loose from a braid. In front there's a full and busy vegetable garden, with plants jostling for real estate and bees making a steady, low, collective hum. It reminds me of the aunties' gardens, and my nonna's when I was a kid. Tomato plants twist gently skywards, their lazy stems tied to stakes. Leafy heads of herbs- dark parsley, fine-fuzzed purple sage, bright basil that the caterpillars love to punch holes in. Rows and rows of asparagus. Whoever lives here must work in the garden a lot. It's wild but abundant, and I know it takes a special vigilance to maintain a garden of this size.
The light wind lifts the hair from my neck and brings the smell of tomato stalks. The scent, green and full of promise, brings to mind a childhood memory- playing in Aunty Rosa's yard as Papa speaks with a cousin, someone from Italy. I am imagining families of fairies living in the berry bushes: making their clothes from spiderweb silk, flitting with wings that glimmer pink and green like dragonflies'. ~ Hannah Tunnicliffe

Rain
Soft rain, summer rain
Whispers from bushes, whispers from trees.
Oh, how lovely and full of blessing
To dream and be satisfied.
I was so long in the outer brightness,
I am not used to this upheaval:
Being at home in my own soul,
Never to be led elsewhere.
I want nothing, I long for nothing,
I hum gently the sounds of childhood,
And I reach home astounded
In the warm beauty of dreams.
Heart, how torn you are,
How blessed to plow down blindly,
To think nothing, to know nothing,
Only to breathe, only to feel. ~ Hermann Hesse

I'm not usually the guy who has people hiding in his bushes and saying, 'Will you love me forever and ever?' ~ Doug Jones

Being a shepherd seems easy. I went with Kaliel last week to tend his flock. The Law says that two must go with the flock to keep an abomination from happening. I can spot an abomination from fifty paces." Maggie smiled. "And did you prevent any abominations?" "Oh yes, I kept all of the abominations at bay while Kaliel played with his favorite sheep behind the bushes." "Biff," Joshua said gravely, "that was the abomination you were supposed to prevent." "It was?" "Yes." "Whoops. ~ Christopher Moore

The snow fell straight and slow, adding another layer to the drifts and covering roads, trees, bushes, and bodies, the living and the dead as one beneath its veil. ~ John Connolly

In the life of Moses, in Hebrew folklore, there is a remarkable passage. Moses finds a shepherd in the desert. He spends the day with the shepherd and helps him milk his ewes, and at the end of the day he sees that the shepherd puts the best milk he has in a wooden bowl, which he places on a flat stone some distance away. So Moses asks him what it is for, and the shepherd replies 'This is God's milk.' Moses is puzzled and asks him what he means. The shepherd says 'I always take the best milk I possess, and I bring it as on offering to God.' Moses, who is far more sophisticated than the shepherd with his naive faith, asks, 'And does God drink it?' 'Yes,' replies the shepherd, 'He does.' Then Moses feels compelled to enlighten the poor shepherd and he explains that God, being pure spirit, does not drink milk. Yet the shepherd is sure that He does, and so they have a short argument, which ends with Moses telling the shepherd to hide behind the bushes to find out whether in fact God does come to drink the milk. Moses then goes out to pray in the desert. The shepherd hides, the night comes, and in the moonlight the shepherd sees a little fox that comes trotting from the desert, looks right, looks left and heads straight towards the milk, which he laps up, and disappears into the desert again. The next morning Moses finds the shepherd quite depressed and downcast. 'What's the matter?' he asks. The shepherd says 'You were right, God is pure spirit, and He doesn't want my milk.' Mose ~ Anthony Bloom

Jack hoped they weren't going back to Silver Hill, even in daylight. 'Are we going far?' Elan laughed. 'Only to the far end of the kitchen garden, the bushes there are laden with fruit but it will probably take us till lunchtime to pick enough.' 'They're for picking, not eating,' Nora reminded Camelin. 'It's not my fault. It's not easy picking blackberries with a beak without squashing them. You wouldn't want me to put squashed fruit in the bowl would you? ~ Catherine Cooper