Clinking Quotes

This is newness: every little tawdry
Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar,
Glinting and clinking in a saint's falsetto. Only you
Don't know what to make of the sudden slippiness,
The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant.
There's no getting up it by the words you know.
No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe.
We have only come to look. You are too new
To want the world in a glass hat. ~ Sylvia Plath

Good housewives all the winter's rage despise, Defended by the riding-hood's disguise; Or, underneath the umbrella's oily shade, Safe through the wet on clinking pattens tread, Let Persian dames the unbrella's ribs display, To guard their beauties from the sunny ray; Or sweating slaves support the shady load, When eastern monarchs show their state abroad; Britain in winter only knows its aid, To guard from chilling showers the walking maid. ~ John Gay

The moonlight fell across her gold strands, looking for all the world like copper threads. I half expected them to sing in clinking charms every time her head moved. I hugged her closely to me, hoping to squeeze the bad memories from her life. I'd absorb them from her, if I could. Just take them and endure the obvious ache they caused her. - Callum Tate from Callum & Harper ~ Fisher Amelie

There was a sound of movement, of clinking glass: Amycus was coming round. Before Harry or Luna could act, Professor McGonagall rose to her feet, pointed her wand at the groggy Death Eater, and said, "Imperio."
Amycus got up, walked over to his sister, picked up her wand, then shuffled obediently to Professor McGonagall and handed it over along with his own. Then he lay down on the floor beside Alecto. Professor McGonagall waved her wand again, and a length of shimmering silver rope appeared out of thin air and snaked around the Carrows, binding them tightly together.
"Potter," said Professor McGonagall, turning to face him again with superb indifference to the Carrows' predicament. ~ J.K. Rowling

Wait - no, not drifting. Following us. "We have an audience," I said to Reth, nodding at the clusters of flying insects.
"I suppose we can't make the Dark Queen any angrier with us than she already is," he said, then his perfect mouth moved, silently forming words, and he gracefully waved his hands through the air in a semicircle. The warm breeze suddenly froze, and I saw frost eat across the nearest butterflies' wings. They stopped midair, then dropped to the ground with tiny clinking noises, frozen solid.
A serene smile spread across Reth's face. "I've always disliked insects."
"If the whole being-a-faerie thing doesn't work out for you, you definitely have a future in pest control. ~ Kiersten White

Signs are my food, drink are my tears; Clinking of fetters such music would crave; Stink and close air, away my life wears Innocency is all the hope I have. - Sir Thomas Wyatt ~ David Johnson

Anyway, I'm in bed with her, with her bracelets. Her face is a blank, so I darken the lights. Off go her silky undergarments. The bracelets are all she has on. They glint slightly, a pleasant muffled clinking on the sheets. I have a hard-on.
Which, halfway down the ladder, is what I noticed. Just great. Why now? Why didn't I get an erection when I needed one? And why was I getting so excited over two lousy bracelets? Especially under this slicker, with the world about to end. ~ Haruki Murakami

You probably know why I'm here. If you could hear me, talk to me, you'd probably ask me what the hell took me so long. Then you'd tell me what's been in my heart for months now. I know you'd want me to be happy, and I am. When you left, I thought you'd taken everything I had with you. Dex helped me see how wrong I was. You left everything there for me to give to someone else crazy enough to love me. I'll never forget you, Gabe." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a long chain, the small dog tags clinking together. Sloane didn't bother to hide the tears in his eyes. He smiled and let out a shaky breath before placing the dog tags on the tombstone. He put his fingers to his lips for a kiss before moving them to the black marble. "Good bye, sweetheart. Thank you for everything." Sloane ~ Charlie Cochet

Pull on the cold, clinking mail of your professional detachment, Archeth Indamaninarmal, inhabit it until it starts to feel warm and accustomed, and in time you'll forget you're wearing it at all. You'll only notice when it works, when it stops you feeling the steel-edged bite of something that might otherwise have gotten through and done you some damage. And then you'll just grin and shiver and shake off the blow, like warriors do. ~ Richard K. Morgan

Night and day the streets resounded with music, song, and the clinking of chalices and tankards, for it is well known that nothing is such thirsty work as the acquisition of knowledge. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

Alive without breath, As cold as death; Never thirsty, ever drinking, All in mail never clinking. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Craftsman Ilmarinen wept
Every evening for his woman,
Weeping sleepless through the nights
And fasting through the days;
In the early hours complaining,
Every morning sighing for her,
Lamenting for his lovely lost one,
For his dear one in the grave.
For a month he swung no hammer,
Did not touch the copper handle,
and the clinking forge was silent.

Said the craftsman Ilmarinen:
"I poor fellow, do not know
How to live or how survive;
Sitting up or lying down
Nights are long and time is tedious.
I am troubled, low in spirit.

'Lonely are the nights now,lonely
And the mornings dreary, dreary.
In my sleeping I am troubled,
But the waking is the saddest.
It's not for evening that I'm lonely,
Not for morning that I'm dreary,
Not for olden times lamenting,
But I'm lonely for my loved one,
Dreary for the missing of her,
Lamenting for my dark-browed lovely.

'Often in these days it happens,
Happens in my midnight dreaming
that I stretch my hand out touching,
touching something that is nothing... ~ Elias Lönnrot

Ragtime plinking, glasses clinking, choruses getting sung with only half the lyrics right, giggles bubbling over like a tower of champagne.

It's a party, shaking down the dawn. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Rio dragged her to her feet and held her close, the chain between her wrists clinking. Rio tumbled her hair under his hands and kissed her face. "Mine," he said. "You're all mine, Nella."
Nella nodded as he feathered kisses across her cheeks. "It's what I wanted," she whispered. "What I truly wanted. ~ Allyson James

What would the days be like now?
It was Mom who bound us all together, it was Mom who was at the center of Yngve's and my life, we knew that, Dad knew that, but perhaps she didn't. How else could she leave us like this?
Knives and forks clinking on plates, elbows moving, heads held stiff, straight backs. No one saying a word. That is us three, a father and two sons, sitting and eating. Around us, on all sides, it is the seventies.
The silence grows. And we notice it, all three of us, the silence is not the kind that can ease, it is the kind that lasts a lifetime. Well, of course, you can say something inside it, you can talk, but the silence doesn't stop for that reason. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Regarding the need to pray, the anarch is again no different from anyone else. But he does not like to attach himself. He does not squander his best energies. He accepts no substitute for his gold. He knows his freedom, and also what it is worth its weight in. The equation balances when he is offered something credible. The result is ONE.

There can be no doubt that gods have appeared, not only in ancient times but even late in history; they feasted with us and fought at our sides. But what good is the splendor of bygone banquets to a starving man? What good is the clinking of gold that a poor man hears through the wall of time? The gods must be called.

The anarch lets all this be; he can bide his time. He has his ethos, but not morals. He recognizes lawfulness, but not the law; he despises rules. Whenever ethos goes into shalts and shalt-nots, it is already corrupted. Still, it can harmonize with them, depending on location and circumstances, briefly or at length, just as I harmonize here with the tyrant for as long as I like.

One error of the anarchists is their belief that human nature is intrinsically good. They thereby castrate society, just as the theologians ("God is goodness") castrate the Good Lord. ~ Ernst Junger

What is this Charity, this clinking of money between strangers, and when did Charity cease to be a comforting and secret thing between one friend and another? Does Love make her voice heard through a committee, does Love employ an almoner to convey her message to her neighbor? ... The real Love knows her neighbor face to face, and laughs with him and weeps with him, and eats and drinks with him, so that at last, when his black day dawns, she may share with him, not what she can spare, but all that she has. ~ Stella Benson

Although it is no longer customary to offer visitors a straw through which to drink from a communal vat of beer, today tea or coffee may be offered from a shared pot, or a glass of wine or spirits from a shared bottle. And when drinking alcohol in a social setting, the clinking of glasses symbolically reunites the glasses into a single vessel of shared liquid. These are traditions with very ancient origins. ~ Tom Standage

Let's get drunk," I state, clinking my glass with his.
"Sure you want to do that?" Dorian says with a raised eyebrow. He gives me that look a lot, probably because of all my questionable behavior.
"I'm not sure of anything anymore," I say with a cynical chuckle. "But I know I'm tired of disappointment. And I'm tired of keeping secrets. And I'm tired of fucking things up!"
Dorian nods, understanding my frustration. "Do you want me to help you?" he asks quietly. I know what he means. Dorian is offering to fix me like he did the day before.
"No," I shake my head. "I want you to drink with me. Then I want you to do things to me that are as dirty and immoral as I already feel." I take another hefty gulp and let the searing burn strip away the guilt and shame in my chest.
"Ok, let's get drunk." And with that Dorian downs the entire contents of his glass and turns on the music. ~ S.L. Jennings

When he crossed the line into Shelby County, he removed his badge, tossing the five-point star inside the glove box. It slid against a half-empty pint of Wild Turkey he'd forgotten was in there, clinking softly, a siren call he left unanswered for the moment. He felt naked without his beloved badge but also strangely protected by the anonymity of its absence. Without the star, he would draw no undue attention, make no advertisement of his presence to any rank-and-file Brotherhood in the county, rabid dogs always on the hunt. And no word would get back to Houston, where he was stationed, that he was poking around something, unauthorized by his superiors, something he guessed he did hold an outsize interest in as a cop, as a Texan, and as a man. In fact as long as he wasn't wearing the Rangers star, they couldn't stop him from doing any damn thing. Without the badge, he was just a black man traveling the highway alone. ~ Attica Locke

It had been two weeks since they had last danced, and Azalea lay in bed, awake again. A dream hadn't roused her this time, but rather an odd tinny noise that had been clinking across the wooden floor of their room, under their beds and butting against the wainscot with a clinkety tap-tap. It sounded like ... well, quite honestly, it sounded like a spider dragging a spoon.

Azalea knew it couldn't possibly be that (or, rather, she hoped it wasn't), but even so, she heaved herself from the bed and grasped one of Hollyhock's boots, strewn across the floor. The tapping now clinked from the fireplace, and Azalea caught a glint of silver among the soot. Raising the boot, she tiptoed to the unlit hearth.

The fireplace in their room was massive - so large that Azalea could stand up in it and her skirts wouldn't brush the sides. The silver hopped. Azalea dove.

In a puff of soot, Azalea found herself sitting in the hearth, and the silver bit skittering away like mad. Azalea grabbed at it and was rewarded with a very sharp, very familiar bite.

"You!" Azalea seethed, leaping up. Now she recognized the half-hopping half-skitter motion. The sugar teeth! ~ Heather Dixon Wallwork

This is a cardinal Ya-Ya rule: you must meet each person's eyes while clinking glasses in a toast. Otherwise, the ritual has no meaning, it's just pure show. And that is something the Ya-Yas are not. ~ Rebecca Wells

Be near me now,
My tormenter, my love, be near me -
At this hour when night comes down,
When, having drunk from the gash of sunset, darkness comes
With the balm of musk in its hands, its diamond lancets,
When it comes with cries of lamentation,
with laughter with songs;
Its blue-gray anklets of pain clinking with every step.
At this hour when hearts, deep in their hiding places,
Have begun to hope once more, when they start their vigil
For hands still enfolded in sleeves;
When wine being poured makes the sound
of inconsolable children
who, though you try with all your heart,
cannot be soothed.
When whatever you want to do cannot be done,
When nothing is of any use;
- At this hour when night comes down,
When night comes, dragging its long face,
dressed in mourning,
Be with me,
My tormenter, my love, be near me. ~ Faiz Ahmad Faiz

...they took him, in his frenzy of love, for a mad dog that had broken loose-- and he really looked terrifying: so emaciated that his ribs showed, a yellow film over his eyes, panting hoarsely and with his loose collar clinking as he ran headlong with frightening single-mindedness toward his unknown goal. ~ Georgi Vladimov

Oh I could be out, rollicking in the ripeness of my flesh and others', could be drinking things and eating things and rubbing mine against theirs, speculating about this person or that, waving, indicating hello with a sudden upward jutting of my chin, sitting in the backseat of someone else's car, bumping up and down the San Francisco hills, south of Market, seeing people attacking their instruments, afterward stopping at a bodega, parking, carrying the bottles in a paper bag, the glass clinking, all our faces bright, glowing under streetlamps, down the sidewalk to this or that apartment party, hi, hi, putting the bottles in the fridge, removing one for now, hating the apartment, checking the view, sitting on the arm of a couch and being told not to, and then waiting for the bathroom, staring idly at that ubiquitous Ansel Adams print, Yosemite, talking to a short-haired girl while waiting in the hallway, talking about teeth, no reason really, the train of thought unclear, asking to see her fillings, no, really, I'll show you mine first, ha ha, then no, you go ahead, I'll go after you, then, after using the bathroom she is still there, still in the hallway, she was waiting not just for the bathroom but for me, and so eventually we'll go home together, her apartment, where she lives alone, in a wide, immaculate railroad type place, newly painted, decorated with her mother, then sleeping in her oversized, oversoft white bed, eating breakfast in her light-filled nook, then maybe ~ Dave Eggers

A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind wagged to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from over the sea. All their meager breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. ~ Joseph Conrad

I never wish to celebrate
The year of my birth,
For fear lest I wake,
By the clinking of glasses and noisy mirth,
All those who sleep in memory's vaults. ~ Isa Ismayilzade

Households that have lost the soul of cooking from their routines may not know what they are missing: the song of a stir-fry sizzle, the small talk of clinking measuring spoons, the yeasty scent of rising dough, the painting of flavors onto a pizza before it slides into the oven. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Hark to the clinking of the hammers! Hark to the driving of the nails! What fun to build a gallows, the cure for all that ails! ~ Ransom Riggs