Cinders Quotes

Love had meant nothing to him but sawdust and cinders. ~ Virginia Woolf

(Cinderella can't walk around her new castle covered in cinders, after all). ~ Katie Alender

Burn, burn tree and fern!
Shrivel and scorch! A fizzling torch
To light the night for our delight,
Ya hey!

Bake and toast 'em, fry and roast 'em!
till beards blaze, and eyes glaze;
till hair smells and skins crack,
fat melts, and bones black
in cinders lie
beneath the sky!
So dwarves shall die,
and light the night for our delight,
Ya hey!
Ya-harri-hey!
Ya hoy! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

The rest of the world points an angry finger at the South. The rest of the world sees the cinders only in the eyes of southerners. The rest of the world refuses to see the soot in its own eyes.

The South, in attitude and in effect, is probably not much worse than the North--only in degree and display. It's simply that the South has always been honest about its hatred and its prejudice. Northern intolerance has been subtle, therefore more pernicious and snaring. ~ Eddy L. Harris

My son." Hades tone was almost gentle. "Whatever happens, you have earned my respect. You brought honor to our house when we stood together against Kronos in Manhattan. You risked my wrath to help the Jackson boy, helping him to the River Styx, freeing him from my prison, pleading with me to raise the armies of Erebos to assist him. Never before have I been so harassed by one of my sons. Percy this and Percy that. I nearly blasted you to cinders. ~ Rick Riordan

And you don't ever have to worry about what I feel. The way I feel about you won't change. You can do whatever you like to me. You could turn this town to dust, burn the woods until they were cinders, you could cut out my heart. It wouldn't matter. It would not change a thing."
"What if I ate a baby?"
Jared's mouth curved up at the corners, slow and not cruel at all. "I'm sure you'd have a good reason," he said. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

Cinder's tirade ceased and she gaped at Scarlet. Between them, Thorne settled his chin on his palm as if watching a great show - though his free hand still held the shotgun aimed at Wolf's head. ~ Marissa Meyer

Out of sight of hair smoke and lip ash and bowel cinders, ~ Tom Robbins

I became Cinderella, Stella and Marcella were my evil stepsisters. If the house had mice and roaches and a damp garret, I would be living there. If we were using coals, I would be coughing over a smoking fire.
Was I not lucky to be a modern day Cinderella? At least I did not have to sleep among the cinders. ~ Gita V. Reddy

Not that they were married. They never would've married. All firemen are wedded to cinders, in the end. ~ Joe Hill

Humans die," said the grandmother, "and humans suffer too, for they lead short lives and when they are dead, no one eats them. They are stuffed in boxes and hidden in the dirt, or else set on fire and turned into cinders, so no one else can make any use of them; they are a prodigiously selfish race and consider themselves their own private property even in death. ~ Mallory Ortberg

And yet the king and his people did not love McAllister. In truth, they hated him horribly, and, to my knowledge, the whole population, with the priests at the head, tried vainly for three months to pray him to death. The devil-devils they sent after him were awe-inspiring, but since McAllister did not believe in devil-devils, they were without power over him. With drunken Scotchmen all signs fail. They gathered up scraps of food which had touched his lips, an empty whiskey bottle, a cocoanut from which he had drunk, and even his spittle, and performed all kinds of deviltries over them. But McAllister lived on. His health was superb. He never caught fever; nor coughs nor colds; dysentery passed him by; and the malignant ulcers and vile skin diseases that attack blacks and whites alike in that climate never fastened upon him. He must have been so saturated with alcohol as to defy the lodgment of germs. I used to imagine them falling to the ground in showers of microscopic cinders as fast as they entered his whiskey-sodden aura. No one loved him, not even germs, while he loved only whiskey, and still he lived. ~ Jack London

Did you know that she was cyborg?" asked a woman in an unhidden tone of disgust.
Kai stared at her, appearing confused, then let his gaze dance over the crowd. He shuffled his feet
closer to the podium, a wrinkle forming on the bridge of his nose.
Cinder bit the inside of her cheek and braced herself for adamant disgust. Who would ever invite a
cyborg to the ball?
But instead, Kai said simply, "I don't see that her being cyborg is relevant. Next question?"
Cinder's metal fingers jolted. ~ Marissa Meyer

On distant Luna, buildings rise seven miles high; there the Sovereign Consul, Octavia au Lune, rules with her Imperators and Praetors. The Ash Lord, who made the world of Rhea cinders, is her minion. She controls the twelve Olympic Knights, legions of Peerless Scarred, and Obsidians as innumerable as the stars. ~ Pierce Brown

Tilting forward, Iko pressed her flat, cool face to Cinder's brow, no doubt leaving a smudge of lipstick. Cinder laughed. ~ Marissa Meyer

Time piles up like brush. You burn it in the fall and all you remember are the glowing cinders. I got ash heaps everywhere I look. -Old of the Moon ~ Chris Offutt

Each civilization may choose one of two roads to travel, that is, either fret itself to death, or pet itself to death. And in the course of doing one or the other, it eats its way into the Universe, turning cinders and flinders of stars into toilet seats, pegs, gears, cigarette holders and pillowcases, and it does this because, unable to fathom the Universe, it seeks to change that Fathomlessness into Something Fathomable. ~ Stanislaw Lem

Akhmed summoned the arborist with small declarative memories, and Sonja let him go on longer than she otherwise would because she, too, had tried to resurrect by recitation, had tried to recreate the thing by drawing its shape in cinders, and hoped that by compiling lists of Natasha's favorite foods and songs and annoying habits, her sister might spontaneously materialize under the pressure of the particularities. ~ Anthony Marra

Despite any warnings, she continued to move towards the flames he had ignited within her. Her limbs tingled as the fire spread, each touch of Alex's hands and lips caused a wave of cinders. ~ Amy Lee Peine

I don't like to think of it as 'stolen'. They have no proof that I didn't plan on giving it back."
"You're kidding, right?"
He shrugged. "You have no proof either."
She squinted back at him. "Were you planning on giving it back?"
"Maybe."
An orange light blinked on in the corner of Cinder's vision-her cyborg programming picking up on the lie. ~ Marissa Meyer

What about... Cinder?... It's an unassuming name, but also... powerful. Because of where she came from. She survived that fire. She was reborn from the cinders. - Michelle Benoit ~ Marissa Meyer

If all we see are cinders and ashes, all we see is 'what was' at the expense of what the cinders and ashes are preparing to be. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Living grows 'round us like a skin
to shut away the desolation
for if we clearly mark the furthest deep
we should be dead long years before the grave

But turning around within
the homely shell of worry, discontent
and narrow joy
we grow and flourish
and rarely see the outside dark
that would confound our eyes

Some break the shell
I think that there are those
who push their fingers through the brittle walls
and make a hole
and through that cruel slit
stare out across the cinders of the world
with naked eyes
They look both in and out
knowing themselves
and too much else beside ~ Molly Drake

Would I rather the research lab that tests animals is reduced to a bunch of cinders? Yes. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

Or we can blaze! Become legends in our own time, strike fear in the heart of mediocre talent everywhere! We can scald dogs, put records out of reach! Make the stands gasp as we blow into an unearthly kick from three hundred yards out! We can become God's own messengers delivering the dreaded scrolls! We can race dark Satan himself till he wheezes fiery cinders down the back straightaway ... They'll speak our names in hushed tones, 'those guys are animals' they'll say! We can lay it on the line, bust a gut, show them a clean pair of heels. We can sprint the turn on a spring breeze and feel the winter leave our feet! We can, by God, let our demons loose and just wail on! ~ John L. Parker Jr.

My lack of faith in God is not a dilapidated house.
It does not need to be razed to the ground or burned down to cinders.
I refuse to be the wounded woman on a cross
that you crucify with your disapproval like nails;
I will only be the woman who believes in thunderstorms
the same way lightning loves the tops of trees it strikes
every time it gets tired of being pent up in an unforgiving sky,
the only difference is that I believe these are natural weather phenomenons,
not God's belly rumbling or synapses firing.
When my doorway is filled with groups of people
wielding religious conversion pamphlets like crossbows,
I will be the martyr who steps aside to let the arrows
crack through the plaster in my wall instead of piercing my chest.
This is not a eulogy to the believer I could have been.
This is a battle cry to the believer I always have been,
believer in sunsets like splashes of paint, handholding
like willow branches brushing one another, new mornings
after old nights spent drowning in despair, believer
in love as an entire language instead of a single word.
Just because my beliefs align themselves on a different spectrum
does not mean they are the wrong wavelength or color.
And even though I think the universe was created by the Big Bang
instead of a God with magic dust shooting from his fingertips,
my universe does not contain fewer stars. ~ Meggie Royer

God can craft ten thousand tomorrows and shape a thousand dreams to fill every one of them. And He carries out this most ingenious 'crafting' and 'shaping' using the very cinders and ashes left by the fires that had originally destroyed our tomorrows and leveled our dreams. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

No matter how hard the times at home may have been, in the ashes of every past there were a few cinders of memory that glowed with warmth - ... ~ Amitav Ghosh

You probably have a client list a mile long. I shouldn't expect royal treatment." His mouth twitched. "Although I guess I do anyway." Cinder's heart tripped as his grin caught her by surprise, every bit as charming and unexpected as it had been at the market. ~ Marissa Meyer

Love in a hut, with water and a crust,
Is - Love, forgive us! - cinders, ashes, dust. ~ John Keats

Scarlet brushed her hair off her shoulder. "It's a lemon cake. My grandmother's special recipe. But" - her gaze swooped down Cinder's dress - "you might want to wait until after the coronation so you don't get frosting all over yourself."
Winter snorted and grabbed the tray away from Kai. "Let's not be cruel. One should never save cake for later when it can be eaten now." She slid the cake onto a priceless silk divan. ~ Marissa Meyer

Now, what I'm worried about is how we're going to be dividing the reward money when this is all over. Because this ship is starting to feel awfully crowded and I'm not sure I'm happy with all of you cutting into my profits."
"What reward money?" asked Scarlet.
"The reward Cinder's going to pay us out of the Lunar treasury once she's queen."
Cinder rolled her eyes. "I should have guessed. ~ Marissa Meyer

But the touch or company of any man whatsoever stirreth up their heat, which in their solitude was hushed and quiet, and lay as cinders raked up in ashes. ~ Michel De Montaigne

In my biology class, we'd talked about the definition of life: to be classified as a living creature, a thing needs to eat, breathe, reproduce, and grow. Dogs do, rocks don't, trees do, plastic doesn't. Fire, by that definition, is vibrantly alive. It eats everything from wood to flesh, excreting the waste as ash, and it breathes air just like a human, taking in oxygen and emitting carbon. Fire grows, and as it spreads, it creates new fires that spread out and make new fires of their own. Fire drinks gasoline and excretes cinders, it fights for territory, it loves and hates. Sometimes when I watch people trudging through their daily routines, I think that fire is more alive than we are–brighter, hotter, more sure of itself and where it wants to go. Fire doesn't settle; fire doesn't tolerate; fire doesn't 'get by.'
Fire does.
Fire is. ~ Dan Wells

Cinder's voice was no longer jovial when she said, "You have ten minutes to come to the front gates of your palace and surrender."

That was all.

The people waited for more. More taunting. More threats. More explanation. But the message was over.

Levana looked visibly shaken, while the emperor looked ready to burst out laughing. ~ Marissa Meyer

If that's how it all started, then we might as well face the fact that what's left out there is a great deal of shrapnel and a whole bunch of cinders (one of which is, fortunately, still hot enough and close enough to be good for tanning). Trying to find some sense and order in this mess may be as futile as trying to ... reconstruct the economy of Iowa from a bowl of popcorn. [On searching for evidence of the Big Bang.] ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Thorne glanced back at the pantry. "Did you see any rice in there? Maybe we could fill Cinder's head with it." Everyone stared at him. "You know, to ... absorb the moisture, or something. Isn't that a thing?" "We're not pouring rice in my head. ~ Marissa Meyer

What a strange life I lead- a kind of Cinderella-life-half glitter in crystal shoes, half mice and cinders! But it is a wonderful life all the same. ~ Helen Keller

Innocence is a strange thing. For those who held it within them, the experienced people in the world flew to them like moths to a flame. Yet, instead of bursting into cinders, they smothered the flame and showed the candle just how dark the world could be. Once that innocence was lost, there was no turning back. No way back to the light of the normal world. It became an addiction. Pain, domination, submission, and degradation would be constant yearnings for the newly initiated." ~Lexie Syrah ~ Lexie Syrah

Your kiss thrilled me beyond imagining," he whispered. "Every night for the rest of my life, I'll dream of the afternoon in the holloway, when I was waylaid by a dark-haired beauty who devastated me with the heat of a thousand troubled stars, and left my soul in cinders. Even when I'm an old man, and my brain has fallen to wrack and ruin, I'll remember the sweet fire of your lips under mine, and I'll say to myself, 'Now, that was a kiss.'" Silver-tongued devil, Pandora thought, unable to hold back a crooked grin. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The taste of the usual was like cinders in his mouth, and there were moments when he felt as if he were being buried alive under his future. ~ Edith Wharton

I knew that I had turned my world back to cinders, sunk my lovely ship with my own stupid, wicked hands. ~ Mary Stewart

Selfishness is as bad as kerosene. When someone is cold and you share your blanket, you're both warmer than you would have been alone. You offer the sick your medicine and their happiness will be your medicine. Someone probably a lot smarter than me said hell is other people. I say you're in hell when you don't give to someone who needs, because you can't bear to have less. What you are giving away then is your own soul. You have to care for each other or you walk on cinders, a matchstick ready to be struck. That's what I believe, anyway. Do you believe it? ~ Joe Hill

Trains running in every direction spit hot ash and cinders. Ministers and moralists feared that the vibrations and jostling of such fast travel would throw weak-minded women into sexual frenzies. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The aged are terrible - mere heaps of cinders on the grass from which none can tell how tall the flames once were or what company gathered round them. ~ Rebecca West

I'm a starving child trying to stuff my stomach, gorging my senses on the decadence of these moments as if I'll wake up in the morning and realize I'm still sweeping cinders for my stepmother.But then Adam's lips press against my head and my worries put on a fancy dress and pretend to be something else for a while. ~ Tahereh Mafi

It's a simple choice! We can all be good boys and wear our letter sweaters around and get our little degrees and find some nice girl to settle, you know, down with ... Take up what a friend of ours calls the hearty challenges of lawn care ... Or we can blaze! Become legends in our own time, strike fear in the hearts of mediocre talent everywhere! We can scald dogs, put records out of reach! Make the stands gasp as we blow into an unearthly kick from three hundred yards out! We can become God's own messengers delivering the dreaded scrolls! We can race satan himslef till he wheezes fiery cinders down the back straight away ... They'll speak our names in hushed tones, 'those guys are animals' they'll say! We can lay it on the line, bust a guy, show them a clean pair of heels. We can sprint the turn on a spring breeze and feel the winter leave our feet! We can, by god, let out demons loose and just wail on! ~ John L. Parker Jr.

Cinders. Embers. Ashes. ~ Marissa Meyer

And when the firemen turned off the hose and were standing in the wet, smoky room, Jim's Aunt, Miss. Prothero, came downstairs and peered in at them. Jim and I waited, very quietly, to hear what she would say to them. She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said, Would you like anything to read? ~ Dylan Thomas

Dialogue is action. It's not separate from it. Action is doing something. Dialogue is talking, and talking is doing something. Even better when dialogue manifests while characters do shit: drive a car, execute some baddies, make an omelet, build a sinister dancing robot whose mad mechanical choromania will reduce the world to cinders. Characters don't need to stand in one place in space and talk. They're not puppets in community theater. Find language with movement and motion. ~ Anonymous

My men are hungry and restless, and you've put us in a confined space with a lot of sweet-smelling flesh." Cinder raised an eyebrow. "If they need a snack, tell them to chew on each other for a while. I just want to make sure Jacin has enough time to reach as many sectors as possible." Strom smirked, as if impressed at Cinder's inability to be bullied. ~ Marissa Meyer

Cinders patter, falling with the snow. We creep infinitesimally northward through the dirty chaos of a world in the process of making itself.
Praise then Creation unfinished! ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I shall show the cinders of my spirits Through the ashes of my chance. ~ William Shakespeare

That's terrifying, said Iko, who had acknowledged the truth of Cinder's race much as she'd acknowledged Thorne's convict status: with loyalty and acceptance, but without changing her opinion that Lunars and convicts remained untrustworthy and unredeemable as a general rule. ~ Marissa Meyer

While I was looking the other way your fire went out
Left me with cinders to kick into dust
What a waste of the wonder you were
In my living fire I will keep your scorn and mine
In my living fire I will keep your heartache and mine
At the disgrace of a waste of a life ~ Kristin Cashore

Irritation hardened in Cinder's gut. She might have pointed out that Pearl and Peony could have been given ready-made rather than custom dresses in order to budget for Cinder's as well. She might have pointed out that they would only wear their dresses one time too. ~ Marissa Meyer

Well,'said Ernest, 'by some strange coincidence I know this story.'
Boddichek was not good at irony. 'I knew that there was that possibility,' he said, 'but we have a great new way to treat it, and I thought you might want to reread it before taking a meeting.'
'Reread it?' said Mayday. 'We are talking about Cinderella, and the wicked stepmother and the Ugly Sisters and Buttons the page and the Fairy Godmother, "Cinders, you shall go to the ball but be sure you're home by midnight or you'll turn into pumpkin"?'
'Hey, you know it pretty well,' said young Casey with admiration in his voice. 'But I've found a new directionality for this story.'
'Do you mean direction?' asked Mayday.
'I guess I do.'
'Then', snapped Mayday, 'why don't you fucking say so? ~ Jonathan Lynn

She felt like a juggler tossing torches into the air. The circus-master kept throwing more in. Sooner or later, one would fall, and the life she'd built would burn to cinders. ~ Courtney Milan

Did you see any rice in there? Maybe we could fill Cinder's head with it."
Everyone stared at him.
"You know, to ... absorb the moisture, or something. Isn't that a thing?"
"We're not putting rice in my head. ~ Marissa Meyer

Every night for the rest of my life, I'll dream of the afternoon in the holloway, when I was waylaid by a dark-haired beauty who devastated me with the heat of a thousand troubled stars, and left my soul in cinders. Even when I'm an old man, and my brain has fallen to wrack and ruin, I'll remember the sweet fire of your lips under mine, and I'll say to myself, 'Now, that was a kiss.'" Silver-tongued ~ Lisa Kleypas

This New World utopia, this promised land, was soon buried under the ashes and cinders that erupted over the Western World in the nineteenth century, thanks tot he resurrection and intensification of all the forces that had originally brought 'civilization' itself into existence. The rise of the centralized state, teh expansion of the bureaucracy and the conscript army, the regimentation of the factory system, the depredations of speculative finance, the spread of imperialism, as in the Mexican War, and the continued encroachment of slavery-all these negative movements not only sullied the New World dream but brought back on a larger scale than ever the Old World nightmares that the immigrants to America had risked their lives and forfeited their cultural treasures to escape. ~ Lewis Mumford

We are like travelers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

They thought they were heroes when they were only cinders in the eye of humanity too many creatures both insects and humans estimate their own value by the amount of irritation they are able to cause greater personalities than themselves ~ Don Marquis

Hatreds are the cinders of affection. ~ Walter Raleigh

Since the foundation of the world man has had nearly all the forces on his side, working with him and for him; his intellect has been stimulated, while that of woman has been abased; he has had the run of the world and all quickening and brightening things, while she has sat in the cinders, and until of late been illumined only by his reflected light. ~ Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford

The fire which seems out often sleeps beneath the cinders. ~ Pierre Corneille