Carved Into Wood Quotes

Akos had appeared in my doorway, his short brown hair sticking out in all directions, leaning into the wood.
"What," he said, eyes wide, "is that sound?"
In spite of the current's pain shooting through me, I laughed. I had never seen him this disheveled before. His drawstring pants were twisted halfway around, and his cheek bore the red imprint of creased sheets.
"It's just the start of the Sojourn Festival," I said. "Relax. Untwist your pants."
His cheeks turned faintly pink, and he righted the waistband of his pants.
"Well, how was I supposed to know that?" he replied irritably. "Next time, when something that sounds remarkably like war drums is going to wake me at dawn, could you maybe warn me?"
"You're determined to deprive me of fun."
"That's because apparently, your version of 'fun' is making me believe I'm in mortal peril. ~ Veronica Roth

My mother's dying soaked down through the carpet, through the wood. When it was done with the bedroom, it took over our house, and then it moved on to me. It soaked through my hair and skin and bone, through my skull and deep into my brain. Now it's staining everything, leaking the blackest black into the rest of the world. ~ Emily X.R. Pan

Alas!' he writes, 'I am morbid,
And have put a purple colour about my brow.
All men seem eating and drinking the
"Joy of the Round Feast," while I am
Melancholy and silent, as though in a
Gloomy wood, astray.
Strange images of myself did I create,
As I gazed into the seeming pit of others,
Losing myself in the thoughtfulness
Of my unreal self, as humanity saw me.
But alas ! on entering to the consciousness
Of my real being to find fostering
"The all-prevailing woman,"
And I strayed with her, into the path direct.
"Hail! the Jewel in the Lotus. ~ Austin Osman Spare

If the weather is good I go into the nearby wood - there I am painting a small beech forest (in the sun) with a few conifers mixed in. This takes until 8 'o clock. ~ Gustav Klimt

Zane walked over to the bookshelf and picked up a tin container with pencils in it. He rattled the pencils around in a circle, then reached into the tin to pull out a piece of chalk. Then he drew a circle on the wood floor around the chair Mary sat in.
"What are you doing?"
"At the end of my dream, I was very old. And I shed my skin. And I became something frightening that wasn't like me at all. If I come back, and I've turned into a monster, then you'll be safe from me in there."
"Oh, I don't like this." She felt a little punchy, a little giggly. "And then you're going off to the bathroom to pee? You're going to have to hold it." She held onto his hand. It was like her dad's hand, maybe even a bit older. The skin was soft, and thinner than her father's.
"No, really, I have to go." He pulled his hand.
She didn't let go. She giggled. "I'm not going to let you go. Not after you just said that to me."
Her giggling was a bit infectious. And he got the bug. He laughed. "But I have to go."
"Well, you shouldn't have said that first. 'I might turn into a horrible monster of which you should be so afraid that you'll remain in a chalk . . .'" She giggle-snorted. "'Chalk ring.' How's that going to help me?" She giggled again. "I'm having too much fun, Zane; I'm not going to let this turn into some horrible nightmare, because then I'm going to make myself wake up and I might never see you again."
They stared and stared at each other, the grins fro ~ James T. Riley

A trail made of pine needles and thistles leads you into the green darkness. The canopy casts shadows on old oaks and dogwoods, and you think you can smell the sour breath of a witch behind you. The wind sighs like a sleeping girl, carrying her bittersweet dreams along the paths to attract any man willing to look for thorn-covered castles. A wolf darts between fallen, rotted wood; maybe he's the one who can tell you where your heart is, how you're still breathing. ~ Kimberly Karalius

All the madnesses, each and every blinding one, they can all be traced back to the gates. Those carved monstrosities, those clay and chalk portals, existing everywhere and nowhere and all at once. They open, things are born, they close. The opening is easy, a pushing out, an expansion, an inhalation: the dust of divinity is released into the world. It has to be a temporary channel, though, a thing that is sealed afterward, because the gates stink of knowledge, they cannot be left swinging wide like a slack mouth, leaking mindlessly. That would contaminate the human world--bodies are not meant to remember things from the other side. But these are gods and they move like heated water, so the rules are softened and stretched. The gods do not care. It is not them, after all, that will pay the cost. ~ Akwaeke Emezi

In the shade of the house, in the sunshine of the riverbank near the boats, in the shade of the Sal-wood forest, in the shade of the fig tree is where Siddhartha grew up, the handsome son of the Brahman, the young falcon, together with his friend Govinda, son of a Brahman. The sun tanned his light shoulders by the banks of the river when bathing, performing the sacred ablutions, the sacred offerings. In the mango grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father, the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked. For a long time, Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men, practising debate with Govinda, practising with Govinda the art of reflection, the service of meditation. He already knew how to speak the Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while inhaling, to speak it silently out of himself while exhaling, with all the concentration of his soul, the forehead surrounded by the glow of the clear-thinking spirit. He already knew to feel Atman in the depths of his being, indestructible, one with the universe. ~ Hermann Hesse

In [James Kelman's story] 'The Third Man, or Else the Fourth,' four men stand around a fire, on a freezing day. They appear to be out of work, and very poor. They talk about politics, about an old man who was recently found dead in a cold tenement building, about prison. One of the men, Arthur, starts describing a dream he had. Like most dreams, it is incomprehensible; it gathers pace, and we are drawn into it, and then it fizzles out. Kelman makes a funny, implicit connection between maintaining the fire (the narrator goes off to get "burnables") and maintaining a story: everything is potentially burnable, everything can be used. ~ James Wood

Once upon a time, you dragged a part of me into the world of the dead, and now Naoko has dragged another pat of me into that world. ~ Haruki Murakami

At the far end of the hall she could make out the raised dais where a throne of black oak stood. Its arms had been carved to represent the forelegs of a bear, and its feet into those of a dragon. And above it hung the battle standard of the Icemark: a standing polar bear, lips drawn back in a vicious snarl and claws outstretched. ~ Stuart Hill

I'll hold the door as a shield, but you'll have to fire."
"Why can't you just slice them to pieces like that chopstick?"
"Because my telekinetic magic doesn't work on living things. I can throw something metal fast enough to slice an opponent to pieces. I can hurl a board at him, because cut wood is dead. I can choke him with his own clothes if they are loose enough. But I can't simply throw a body."
Oh. "So the best way to fight you is to strip naked and attack?"
His eyes flashed with wicked light. "Yes. You should try it and see what happens."
Well, I did walk right into that one. ~ Ilona Andrews

She looked at the knife, her throat tight with emotion. No roses or rings with him, but a knife with feathers carved into the handle. A knife that was part of him. She couldn't accept it. ~ Veronica Rossi

Where were you? What happened?" I carved a chunk out of another lizard's face.
"I just took the kids to fight some ghouls," Curran said.
Oh, so it was fine, then . . . Wait. "You did what?"
He kicked a lizard. It flew into the others like a cannonball. "I called Jim before we left the house to talk about ghouls, and he said they found some in the MARTA tunnels. So I grabbed the kids and did a little hunting."
I would kill him. "Just so I get it right, Jim calls you and says, 'Hey, we found a horde of ghouls in the MARTA tunnels,' and your first thought was, 'Great, I'll take the kids'?"
"They had fun." A careful note crept into his voice. Curran saw the shark fin in the water but wasn't sure where the bite would be coming from.
"You even took the dog."
Grendel chose that moment to try to shove past me. I shoved him back into the Guild and he began running back and forth behind us, growling.
"He had fun, too. Look at him. He's still excited. ~ Ilona Andrews

Plants are not like us. They are different in critical and fundamental ways. As I catalog the differences between plants and animals, the horizon stretches out before me faster than I can travel and forces me to acknowledge that perhaps I was destined to study plants for decades only in order to more fully appreciate that they are beings we can never truly understand. Only when we begin to grasp this deep otherness can we be sure we are no longer projecting ourselves onto plants. Finally we can begin to recognize what is actually happening.

Our world is falling apart quietly. Human civilization has reduced the plant, a four-million-year-old life form, into three things: food, medicine, and wood... ~ Hope Jahren

It's a queer thing is a man's soul. It is the whole of him. Which means it is the unknown him, as well as the known. It seems to me just funny, professors and Benjamins fixing the functions of the soul. Why, the soul of man is a vast forest, and all Benjamin intended was a neat back garden. And we've all got to fit into his kitchen garden scheme of things. Hail Columbia !

The soul of man is a dark forest. The Hercynian Wood that scared the Romans so, and out of which came the white- skinned hordes of the next civilization.

Who knows what will come out of the soul of man? The soul of man is a dark vast forest, with wild life in it. Think of Benjamin fencing it off!

Oh, but Benjamin fenced a little tract that he called the soul of man, and proceeded to get it into cultivation. Providence, forsooth! And they think that bit of barbed wire is going to keep us in pound for ever? More fools they.

...

Man is a moral animal. All right. I am a moral animal. And I'm going to remain such. I'm not going to be turned into a virtuous little automaton as Benjamin would have me. 'This is good, that is bad. Turn the little handle and let the good tap flow,' saith Benjamin, and all America with him. 'But first of all extirpate those savages who are always turning on the bad tap.'

I am a moral animal. But I am not a moral machine. I don't work with a little set of handles or levers. The Temperance- silence-order- resolution-f ~ D.H. Lawrence

My own time on earth has led me to believe in two powerful instruments that turn experience into love: holding and listening. For every time I have held or been held, every time I have listened or been listened to, experience burns like wood in that eternal fire, and I find myself in the presence of love. This has always been so. ~ Mark Nepo

The Taking Of Turns

Monday, June 14, 2010
You are in some songs that still get played on the radio when the DJ is feeling nostalgic.
You are in a book you once lent me (never returned) with yellowed pages.
You are in trees when I touch them, even ones without names carved into them.
You are in the way someone on the street laughs as I pass them.
You are in a box I keep filled with letters.
You are in a ring I no longer wear.
And, every day, you each get a moment to haunt me. ~ Iain S. Thomas

I scooted out of the laundry room and skipped down the hallway, arms flaying around my head like one of the hot pink puppets from the movie Labyrinth. "A scent and a sound, I'm lost and I'm found. And I'm hungry like the wolf. Something on a line, it's discord and rhyme - whatever, whatever, la la la - Mouth is alive, all running inside, and I'm hungry like the - " Warmth spread down my neck.

"It's actually, 'I howl and I whine. I'm after you,' and not blah or whatever."


Startled by the deep voice, I shrieked and whipped around. My foot slipped on a section of well-cleaned wood and my butt smacked on the floor.

"Holy crap," I gasped, clutching my chest. "I think I'm having a heart attack."

"And I think you broke your butt." Laughter filled Daemon's voice.

I remained sprawled across the narrow hallway, trying to catch my breath. "What the hell? Do you just walk into people's houses?"

"And listen to girls absolutely destroy a song in a matter of seconds? Well, yes, I make a habit out of it. Actually, I knocked several times, but I heard your…singing, and your door was unlocked." He shrugged.

"So I just let myself in."

"I can see that." I stood, wincing. "Oh, man, maybe I did break my butt."

"I hope not. I'm kind of partial to your butt." He flashed a smile. "Your face is pretty red. You sure you didn't smack that on the way down?"

I groaned. "I hate you. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Now Brutus had deliberately assumed a mask to hide his true character. When he learned of the murder by Tarquin of the Roman aristocrats, one of the victims being his own brother, he had come to the conclusion that the only way of saving himself was to appear in the king's eyes as a person of no account. If there were nothing in his character for Tarquin to fear, and nothing in his fortune to covet, then the sheer contempt in which he was held would be a better protection than his own rights could ever be. Accordingly he pretended to be a half-wit and made no protest at the seizure by Tarquin of everything he possessed. He even submitted to being known publicly as the 'Dullard' (which is what his name signifies), that under cover of that opprobrious title the great spirit which gave Rome her freedom might be able to bide its time. On this occasion he was taken by Arruns and Titus to Delphi less as a companion than as a butt for their amusement; and he is said to have carried with him, as his gift to Apollo, a rod of gold inserted into a hollow stick of cornel-wood - symbolic, it may be, of his own character.
The three young men reached Delphi, and carried out the king's instructions. That done, Titus and Arruns found themselves unable to resist putting a further question to the oracle. Which of them, they asked, would be the next king of Rome? From the depths of the cavern came the mysterious answer: 'He who shall be the first to kiss his mother shall hold in Rome su ~ Livy

One day Lal shahbaz was wandering in the desert with his friend Sheikh Bhaa ud-Din Zakariya. It was winter, and evening time, so they began to build a fire to keep warm. They found some wood, but then they realised they had no fire. So Baha ud- Din suggested that Lal Shahbaz turn himself into a falcon and get fire from hell. Off he flew, but an hour later he came back empty handed. "There is no fire in hell," he reported. "Everyone who goes there brings their own fire, and their own pain, from this world. ~ William Dalrymple

So I got to witness firsthand how those metal links got broken. The muscles in his upper arms pumped to the size of grapefruits, and the fabric of the T-shirt tightened around them almost to tearing…
Then the metal gave way with a musical twang, and the chain snaked noisily from the grate, falling to the rain-softened earth with a clunk.
"By all means," John said, brushing his hands together in a self-satisfied way, "let's call Mr. Smith."
I ducked my head, hiding my blushing cheeks by pretending to be busy putting my cell phone back in my bag. Encouraging his occasional lapses into less than civilized behavior seemed like a bad idea, so I didn't let on how extremely attractive I'd found what he'd just done.
"You know," I remarked coolly, "I'm already your girlfriend. You don't have to show off your superhuman strength for me."
John looked as if he didn't for one minute believe my disinterest. He opened the grate for me with a gentlemanly bow. "Let's go find your cousin," he said. "I'd like to be home in time for supper. Where's the coffin?"
"It's at my mom's house," I said.
"What?" That deflated his self-satisfaction like a pin through a balloon. He stood stock-still outside the door to his crypt, the word HAYDEN carved in bold capital letters above his head. "What's it doing there?"
"Seth Rector and his girlfriend and their friends asked me if they could build it in my mom's garage," I said. "They said it was the last place anyone wou ~ Meg Cabot

Our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off color of my own tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, hers for all I know gone to Black Forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery I still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound, hers screeching, mine – I didn't hear mine – only hears, probably counter-pointing mine, a high-pitched cry, then a whisper dropping unexpectedly to practically a bark, a grunt, whatever, no sense any more, and suddenly no more curves either, just the straight away, some line crossed, where every fractured sound already spoken finally compacts into one long agonizing word, easily exceeding a hundred letters, even thunder, anticipating the inevitable letting go, when the heat is ultimately too much to bear, threatening to burn, scar, tea ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Iran and Iraq have been at war for five years now. The traditional present for a fifth anniversary is wood. Here's a gift suggestion: a big stick to beat some goddamned sense into their
heads. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

People slice up tree trunks, nail the pieces together into boxy shapes, and then go inside to sleep. Trees use the wood in their trunks for a different purpose - namely, they use it to fight with other plants. From dandelions to daffodils, from ferns to figs, from potatoes to pine trees - every plant growing on land is striving toward two prizes: light, which comes from above, and water, which comes from below. Any contest between two plants can be decided in one move, when the winner simultaneously reaches higher and digs deeper than the loser. Consider the tremendous advantage that wood confers to one of the contestants during such a battle: armed with a stiff-yet-flexible, strong-yet-light prop that separates - and connects - leaves and roots, trees have dominated the tournament for more than four hundred million years. ~ Hope Jahren

19. Before the divine fire is introduced into the substance of the soul and united with it through perfect and complete purgation and purity, its flame, which is the Holy Spirit, wounds the soul by destroying and consuming the imperfections of its bad habits. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit, in which he disposes it for divine union and transformation in God through love. The very fire of love that afterward is united with the soul, glorifying it, is what previously assailed it by purging it, just as the fire that penetrates a log of wood is the same that first makes an assault on the wood, wounding it with the flame, drying it out, and stripping it of its unsightly qualities until it is so disposed that it can be penetrated and transformed into the fire. Spiritual writers call this activity the purgative way. ~ San Juan De La Cruz

Oh my God," Mrs. McIntire screamed. She'd dropped to her knees, the dark sand and water soaking into her jeans. "Neely!"
Mr. McIntire held his wife while she screeched her daughter's name over and over. "She's going to be fine, sweetie," he kept saying.
I really wanted to believe him.
"Is she on the other side?" I paced the shore. I couldn't see anything except a piece of driftwood lying at the water's edge. "I don't see her."
Mr. McIntire didn't answer, only pointed across the rolling water.
A log had washed up on the shore. It looked like maybe the water had rubbed all the bark off and left a naked, saturated trunk behind.
"Tell me where she is." Aggravated, I stared until my eyes blurred with stress. "All I see is a damn log."
"Son," Sheriff Mills said from behind me. "That ain't a log. ~ K.D. Wood

Industrialists, who turn the Amazonian jungle into useless tundra or cement over half the planet, are not, for some reason, machine-gunned en masse, nor captured and exhibited, nor do they have their teeth extracted and carved into little men. ~ Heathcote Williams

Perhaps Mother Nature is punishing us, he thought, for our greed and selfishness. We torture her at all hours by iron and wood, fire and stone. We dig her up and dump her in the sea. We sink mineshafts into her and drag out her entrails - and all for a jewel to wear on a pretty finger. Who can blame her if she occasionally quivers with anger? ~ Robert Harris

grow in Texas, several as common weeds. Next time you are weeding your garden, instead of throwing the
wood sorrel in the garbage, toss the leaves into a salad or use them to flavor a soup. The fresh leaves and tender green fruit pods add a zingy sour flavor to vegetable dishes. Wood sorrel is high in vitamin C and was used in the past to prevent and treat scurvy, which is caused by a vitamin C deficiency. Wood sorrel is available year-round (Gibbons and Tucker 1979; Fleming 1975; Zennie and Ogzewella 1977). ~ Delena Tull