Crescendo Quotes

She went up to his bedroom door and listened to the wildly twanging bed springs as they reached a crescendo as they built toward a finale worthy of Grieg's 'In the Hall of the Mountain King ~ John Kennedy Toole

Patch leaned back against the booth and arched his eyebrows at me. The gesture said it all: Pay up.

"You got lucky," I said.

"I'm about to get lucky. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

When you do a 'messa di voce,' that means you start soft, you crescendo into loud - and then you go back to soft again. Some people call it circus tricks, but in bel canto, it's really written into the music. ~ Sondra Radvanovsky

And here I thought they were called Peeping Toms." I didn't need to see him to know he wore a smile.
"Stop laughing," I said, my cheeks hot with humiliation. "Get me down."
"Jump."
"What?"
"I'll catch you."
"Are you crazy? Go inside and open the window. Or get a ladder."
"I don't need a ladder. Jump. I'm not going to drop you. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Your ultimate life experience and legacy is being built moment by moment, day by day. Your story is being crafted by your every action, all leading somewhere, all leading to what one hopes will be a magnificent crescendo. ~ Brendon Burchard

Baseball is a habit. The slowly rising crescendo of each game, the rhythm of the long season
these are the essentials and they are remarkably unchanged over nearly a century and a half. Of how many American institutions can that be said? ~ George Will

The season of Lent is puzzling to many. Denying ourselves our favorite treats or habits - even for a short time - seems archaic in our I-want-it-now culture. Lent is a plodding, definitive crescendo that leads up to the cacophonous noise of Good Friday and the gorgeous aria of Easter. It's a season marked by deliberateness and intentionality. ~ Anonymous

Indian food is like classical music raga- it takes time to build up to a crescendo. ~ Shobhaa De

I'm not leaving until you tell me why you followed me. I know I'm a fascinating guy, but this is starting to feel like an unhealthy obsession. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Sometimes time can play tricks. One moment it idles by, an hour can seem a lifetime, such as when sitting by the river at dusk watching the bats snatching insects above the limpid waters; the breaching fish causing ringed ripples and a satisfying plop. Other times, time flashes by in an immodest fashion. So it is with the start of war. First time quivers with the last strum of a wonderful peace, the note holding in the air, mysterious and haunting, filling the listener with awe. Then, with a rising crescendo the terror starts with uncouth haste; with a boom the listener is shaken from their reverie and delivered into the servitude, of an ear-shattering cacophony. ~ M.A. Lossl

And in the city on all sides, the howling of the Hounds rose in an ear-shattering, soul-flailing crescendo. The Lord of Death had arrived, to walk the streets in the City of Blue Fire. ~ Steven Erikson

This final sprint of Breaking Bad is like nothing I've ever seen. It's TV as a crescendo, as a magnet, as a wave. These episodes aren't ending so much as they're gasping for breath. ~ Andy Greenwald

Ambivalence and contradiction energize nearly every figure Michaelangelo carved, from the adolescent Madonna of the Stairs onward...But the four allegories atop the sarcophagi raise them to a symphonic crescendo. Each is a battleground of conflicting emotions and motives, in which will and paralysis battle for supremacy. ~ Eric Scigliano

Silence emerges from the sound of rain and spreads in a crescendo of gray monotony over the narrow street I contemplate. I'm sleeping while awake, standing by the window, leaning against it as against everything. I search in myself for the sensations I feel before these falling threads of darkly luminous water that stand out from the grimy building facades and especially from the open windows. And I don't know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don't know what to think or where I am. ~ Fernando Pessoa

Each song is a small universe to me. Each song has a story of its own. Each has a full life to express in order to be complete, so it often happens that the building to a big crescendo feels right in the recording or writing process. ~ Damien Rice

I watched him spread out his arms with a smile before he crashed through the table in a beautiful crescendo, the glass sounding like tinkles from a piano as its shavings glittered across the floor and sliced through his face and body. ~ Lee Matthew Goldberg

I wondered why life had to suck so hard sometimes. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Then as Anna listened another sound began to rise within the first. It began as a low keening, like the wind in a bottle tree, almost indiscernible amid the guns. Yet it was there, and it grew and grew, gaining strength and timbre until suddenly a new note broke away and was taken up: a high weird quavering like nothing that Anna had ever heard, that peopled the smoke with an army of mourning phantoms. Anna had heard the men talk of this, too - the uncanny demon cry of the Rebel army going into the attack - and now here it was for real, echoing across violence and death for the last time in a wild crescendo that seemed to peak and yet peak again: descanting blood, crying lost youth and the loss of all dreams. One last time it shrilled out of the rolling smoke, then collapsed all at once into a maelstrom of voices - the deep snarling utterance of thousands of men in hell. ~ Howard Bahr

For the record, the vuvuzela is not my enemy - and I even have, for reasons of self-defence installed a mini-vuvu with surprisingly powerful performance levels around my neck - though I miss hearing the crescendo of noise from the crowd that should accompany a promising attack on goal or a goal itself. Instead, of course, there is the monotone drone - a constant that belies the ebbs and flows of a game. ~ Richard Calland

We could paraphrase "repent and believe" with "close your ears and listen." Obedience has both a stop and start to it. We turn our backs to the old voices and offer our attention to Jesus' voice.

We desire for God's voice to crescendo in our lives, with the competing voices fading away. This means that we must ruthlessly silence the calls of other masters. We confess our auditory rebellions to others, since somehow moving the jaw in confession seems to unplug our ears. ~ Adam S. McHugh

What women wanted to be eaten alive, choked by a thrusting tongue? Not me, I wanted to be played like a violin, strummed pianissimo, in largo timing, fingered into legato, and let it grow into crescendo. ~ V.C. Andrews

Because I'm scared. Because each time I see him, it's a little more overwhelming than before. Because I'm afraid it'll build up to a tsunami- like crescendo and come crashing down on me. ~ Leylah Attar

I'm gonna have a baby, you son of a bitch - your baby. And guess what, if you haven't killed him from kicking the hell out of me every day, he'll never know what Islam is! I'll raise him to fight your kind. In fact ..." She leaned closer to spit again, her voice rising to a screeching crescendo. "I'm gonna name him Christian! ~ Marc Cameron

Being with you never felt wrong. It's the one thing I did right. You're the one thing I did right. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

The Boston Globe: The Woodstock Music and Art Festival will surely go down in history as a mass event of great and positive significance in the life of the country ... That this many young people could assemble so peaceably and with such good humor in a mile-square area ... speaks volumes about their dedication to the ideal of respect for the dignity of the individual ... In a nation beset with a crescendo of violence, this is a vibrantly hopeful sign. If violence is infectious, so, happily, is nonviolence. ~ Michael Lang

[Christopher:] You cannot conceive of the quantity of explosives the armies throw at each other for each man killed! The shells make a continuous noise, sometimes like an enormous machine breaking apart. At other times, they come whistling towards you in a thoughtful sort of way and then go crump and the screw cap flies off, hurtling through the air, screaming. There's a kind of shell which comes with a crescendo like an express train, only faster. Another kind which makes a noise like tearing calico, louder and louder. The largest kind are the ones which burst in the sky and make a double crack, like a wet canvas being shaken out by a giant. Such immense explosions to kill such small, weak animals. ~ Tom Stoppard

Meanwhile a certain amount of moaning and groaning was coming from upstairs. Sophie kept muttering to the dog and ignored it. A loud, hollow coughing followed, dying away into more moaning. Crashing sneezes followed the coughing, each one rattling the window and all the doors. Sophie found those harder to ignore, but she managed. Poot-pooooot! went a blown nose, like a bassoon in a tunnel. The coughing started again, mingled with moans. Sneezes mixed with the moans and the coughs, and the sounds rose to a crescendo in which Howl seemed to be managing to cough, groan, blow his nose, sneeze, and wail gently all at the same time. The doors rattled, the beams in the ceiling shook, and one of Calcifer's logs rolled off onto the hearth.
"All right, all right, I get the message!" Sophie said, dumping the log back into the grate. "It'll be green slime next". ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Nothing makes me happy quite like a boatload of freshly fried fast food, smothered in good old MSG. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Verse after verse follows, her voice rising to a crescendo and then falling, only to rise again with a new passage, each echoing the same refrain. I never realized how many verses of the Bible boil down to, I tried to tell you idiots, but no - you wouldn't listen. ~ Rysa Walker

Woman: Wow-Man!

A woman is an exclamation mark on the work of creation! When all was said and done, GOD made her - the crescendo of all that was created.

A woman is the solution to the first problem GOD identified in man: loneliness. Loneliness is like sin, in
that it can alter the entire existence of a man - it can reduce a man, full of significance, to absolute nothing. For sin, GOD gave Jesus. For loneliness, GOD gave Woman!

A woman is a multiplier effect. Shewill take any little and make it a great nation. She incubates dreams, broods over them, stretches them and expands them beyond your wildest dreams.

A good woman is a secret weapon. You are better because of her. She increases you just by reason of being there. It's so clearly stated "He who finds a wife - the one who has a woman on his side - finds a good thing and automatically obtains favors from
the Lord.

You must love on her, be sweet to her, care for her, respect her, involve her, honor her, give her room, be patient with her, be good to her, be kind to her and watch your life completely blossom with beauty.

Woman, you are a wonder! Own it, love it, honor it, feel wonderful because of it, walk in beauty because of it, shine brighter because of it. ~ TemitOpe Ibrahim

Thousands of sheep, cattle, and donkeys were also cleansed through water as spoils of war and divided among the peoples. So too the thousands of shekels of items of silver, gold, bronze, and iron were purified through fire and also apportioned out to the tribes. On the final day of purification, Joshua and Caleb were getting ready to return to camp. They were in Joshua's tent eating a small meal of goat and bread. Joshua took a sip of wine from his goatskin flask. Caleb watched him closely. He had been watching Joshua closely these seven days. Joshua looked refreshed. And he looked different. Like he was a changed man from the one whose pursuit of rigid excessive holiness rose to a crescendo of self-righteous vengeance and hate. He had come to the end of himself and was crushed by his own unrighteousness. ~ Brian Godawa

At the cross, Jesus paid the penalty we should have paid, by enduring the wrath of God we should have endured. And this required him to do something unprecedented. It required him to provide the ultimate level of obedience - one that we'll never be asked to emulate. It required him to give up his relationship with the Father so that we could have one instead. The very thought of being torn away from the Father caused him to sweat great drops of blood (Luke 22:44). And at the crescendo of his obedience, he screamed, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34). ~ Anonymous

Oh. My. God." he murmured as it all ended in a crescendo complete with beautiful sparks and all the bells and whistles of fantastic makeup sex.
Five full minutes later he propped up on a an elbow and kissed the tip of her nose. "Can we fight again tomorrow?"
She smiled up at him. "I was thinking of starting an argument right now. ~ Carolyn Brown

This was different. It had synths droning and sending saltwater waves under my feet. It had drumbeats bursting like fireworks, rumbling the furniture out of place, and then a crazy, irregular, disharmonious, spiral crescendo of pure electric noise, like a typhoon dragging our bodies into it. It featured brass orchestras and choirs of mermaids and a piano in Iceland, all of them right there, visible, touchable, in Axton House. It shook us, fucked us, suspended us far above the reach of Help bouncing on his hind legs. It spoke of magenta sunsets and plastic patio chairs growing moss under summer storms rolling on caterpillar tracks. It sprinkled a bokeh of car lights rushing through night highways and slapped our faces like the wind at a hundred and twenty miles an hour. It pictured Niamh playing guitar, washed up naked on a beach in Fiji. ~ Edgar Cantero

Laughter. Yes, laughter is the Zen attitude towards death and towards life too, because life and death are not separate. Whatsoever is your attitude towards life will be your attitude towards death, because death comes as the ultimate flowering of life. Life exists for death. Life exists through death. Without death there will be no life at all. Death is not the end but the culmination, the crescendo. Death is not the enemy it is the friend. It makes life possible. ~ Rajneesh

The reductio ad absurdum of M.D.'s view, I argued, was that science devises ever bloodier means of war until humanity's powers of destruction overcome our powers of creation and our civilization drives itself to extinction. M.D. embraced my objection with mordant glee. 'Precisely. Our will to power, our science, and those v. faculties that elevated us from apes, to saves, to modern man, are the same faculties that'll snuff out Homo Sapiens before this century is out! You'll probably live to see it happen, you fortunate son. What a symphonic crescendo that'll be, eh? ~ David Mitchell

Arising there, a china cabinet, its gifts enclosed in a hug.
Atop a pedestal table, hand-sanded and love-stained,
Mom's Christmas cactus trails and cascades in forest greens
awaiting pink-winged petals alighting in season, a crescendo of bloom framed an autumn-light meandering through remembrance like a dream. ~ Christina M. Ward

I wonder, for example, if the twins' piano training had given them the Tomaini brand of dexterity with hand jobs? Could a non-musician learn it? Could I?

Children stumble through these most critical acts with no real help from the elders who are so anxious to teach them everything else. We were given rules and taboos for the toilet, the sneeze, the eating of an artichoke. Papa taught us all a particular brush stroke for cleaning our teeth, a special angle for the pen in our hand, the exact words for greeting elders, with fine-tuned distinctions for male, female, show folk, customers, or tradesmen. The twins and Arty were taught to design an act, whether it lasted three minutes or thirty, to tease, coax, and startle a crowd, to build to crescendo and then disappear in the instant of climax. From what I have come to understand of life, this show skill, this talk-'em, sock-'em, knock-'em-flat information, is as close as we got to that ultimate mystery. I throw death aside. Death is not mysterious. We all understand death far too well and spend chunks of life resisting, ignoring, or explaining away that knowledge.

But this real mystery I have never touched, never scratched. I've seen the tigers with their jaws wide, their fangs buried in each other's throats, and their shadowed hides sizzling, tip to tip. I've seen the young norms tangled and gasping in the shadows between booths. I suspect that, even if I had begun as a norm, the saw-toothed yearning that w ~ Katherine Dunn

Death is not the end, but the beginning of a new life. Yes, it is an end of something that is already dead. It is also a crescendo of what we call life, although very few know what life is. They live, but they live in such ignorance that they never encounter their own life. And it is impossible for these people to know their own death, because death is the ultimate experience of this life, and the beginning experience of another. Death is the door between two lives; one is left behind, one is waiting ahead. ~ Rajneesh

Somehow she willed enough strength back into her knees to satisfy him, and she moaned as he began to thrust more powerfully and deeply than ever before. Each inward drive was a sensuous jolt, lifting her heels from the floor. She breathed and sweated and pushed back at him, the feelings rising thickly to a crescendo. The repeated wet impacts of their flesh embarrassed and excited her, and there was nothing she could do about any of it; she had lost all hope of control. One of his hands slid to the triangle between her thighs, caressing her pulsing flesh, while the other went to her breast and clamped the nipple gently between his thumb and finger.
That was all she needed. She pressed her clenched fists against the door and cried out repeatedly, in ecstasy that sounded like anguish. Satisfaction rushed and ebbed, back and forth, in heavy waves that soon broke into shudders. She really couldn't stand then, her limbs quaking, and he picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.
Before her body had even settled completely on the bed, he was in her again, thrusting almost savagely, reaching beneath her hips to pull her up into each plunge. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Everybody is afraid of death for the simple reason that we have not tasted of life yet. The man who knows what life is, is never afraid of death; he welcomes death. Whenever death comes he hugs death, he embraces death, he welcomes death, he receives death as a guest. To the man who has not known what life is, death is an enemy; and to the man who knows what life is, death is the ultimate crescendo of life. ~ Rajneesh

Show up here." "Let's go then," she said on a breathy sigh. "Not yet." The music thrummed, rising to a loud crescendo, and so did Fiona's pulse, pounding in her ears while Scorpio's fingertip grazed the lace edging of her panties. ~ Cindy Gerard

Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo
... Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage. ~ M.R. James

As he played on, the energy magnified; the tuning fork going crazy now, firing off vibrations all over, until my entire body was humming, until I was left breathless. And when I felt like I could not take it one more minute, the swirl of sensations hit a dizzying crescendo, sending every nerve ending in my body on high alert. ~ Gayle Forman

Love is a wave building to a crescendo. Ride if you will, ride it with me. ~ Jimmy Buffett

Rush-hour on the A rain. A blind man
staggers forth, his cane tapping lightly
own the aisle. He leans against the door,

raises a violin to chin, and says I'm sorry
to bother you, folks. But please. Just listen.
And it kills me, the word sorry. As if something like music

should be forgiven. He nuzzles into the wood like a lover,
inhales, and at the first slow stroke, the crescendo
seeps through our skin like warm water, we

who have nothing but destinations, who dream of light
but descend into the mouths of tunnels, searching.
Beads of sweat fall from his brow, making dark roses

on the instrument. His head swooning to each chord
exhaled through the hollow torso. The woman beside me
has put down her book, closed her eyes, the baby

has stopped crying, the cop has sat down, and I know
this train is too fast for dreaming, that these iron jaws
will always open to swallow a smile already lost.

How insufficient the memory, to fail before death.
how will hear these notes when the train slides
into the yard, the lights turned out, and the song

lingers with breaths rising from empty seats?
I know I am too human to praise what is fading.
But for now, I just want to listen as the train fills

completely with warm water, and we are all
swimming slowly toward the man with Mozart
flowing from his hands ~ Ocean Vuong

The organist was almost at the end of the anthem's long introduction, and as the crescendo increases the cathedral began to glitter before my eyes until I felt as if every stone in the building was vibrating in anticipation of the sweeping sword of sound from the Choir.

The note exploded in our midst, and at that moment I knew our creator had touched not only me but all of us, just as Harriet had touched that sculpture with a loving hand long ago, and in that touch I sensed the indestructible fidelity, the indescribable devotion and the inexhaustible energy of the creator as he shaped his creation, bringing life out of dead matter, wresting form continually from chaos. Nothing was ever lost, Harriet had said, and nothing was ever wasted because always, when the work was finally completed, every article of the created process, seen or unseen, kept or discarded, broken or mended – EVERYTHING was justified, glorified and redeemed. ~ Susan Howatch

My mom's coming home soon," I said. "We should go to your place."
Patch ran a hand across the shadow of stubble along his jaw. "I have rules about who I take there." I was getting really tired of that answer.
"If you showed me, you'd have to kill me?" I guessed, fighting the urge to feel irritated. "Once I'm inside, I can never leave?"
Patch studied me a moment. Then he reached into his pocket, twisted a key off his key chain, and slipped it into the front pocket of my pajama top. "Once you've gone inside, you have to keep coming back. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

The tragedy of sin reached its crescendo when God in Christ became sin ... He was offering Himself as the sacrifice required by the justice of God if man was to be redeemed. ~ Billy Graham

The Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.
It was impossib1e, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment. ~ Jack Gilbert

his life a constant uphill battle. No matter how hard he worked or how much he followed the rules, nothing ever changed, his life a monotonous country two-step. Quick, quick, slow, slow, run, run, walk, walk, a tedious, repetitive dance that never ended in a glorious crescendo. ~ Julia Bramer

What, may I ask, does your one truck contain if not gowns?"
Inspiration struck, and Elizabeth smiled radiantly. "Something of great value. Priceless value," she confided.
All faces at the table watched her with alert fascination-particularly the greedy Sir Francis. "Well, don't keep us in suspense, love. What's in it?"
"The mortal remains of Saint Jacob."
Lady Eloise and Lady Mortand screamed in unison, Sir William choked on his wine, and Sir Francis gaped at her in horror, but Elizabeth wasn't quite finished. She saved the coup de grace until the meal was over. As soon as everyone arose she insisted they sit back down so a proper prayer of gratitude could be said. Raising her hands heavenward, Elizabeth turned a simple grace into a stinging tirade against the sins of lust and promiscuity that rose to crescendo as she called down the vengeance of doomsday on all transgressors and culminated in a terrifyingly lurid description of the terrors that awaited all who strayed down the path of lechery-terrors that combined dragon lore with mythology, a smattering of religion, and a liberal dash of her own vivid imagination. When it was done Elizabeth dropped her eyes, praying in earnest that tonight would loose her from her predicament. There was no more she could do; she'd played out her hand with all her might; she'd given it her all.
It was enough. After supper Sir Francis escorted her to her chamber and, with a poor attempt at regret, announced that he gr ~ Judith McNaught

As in music, when we hear the crescendo building, suddenly if the music stops, we begin to hear the silence as part of the music. ~ Chogyam Trungpa

There is no other possibility for possessing certitude with regard to one's life apart from self-abandonmen t, in a continuous crescendo, into the hands of a love that seems to grow constantly because it has its origin in God. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

I've stabbed a man to death. Had sex with a stranger on camera. My soul was stained black with so many crimes, but I couldn't bear to watch him die. Maybe that made me a coward, worse than Vinny. He had been sadistic. I had been selfish. ~ Lana Sky

The countdown reached ten seconds and I could almost hear an invisible crescendo of stirring background music. 'Anchors aweigh!' Five, four, three, two, one ... and we had ignition! ~ Eugene Cernan

I'm a private contractor now. I choose my clients, not the other way around. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

He's focused on something - or someone - over her shoulder.
The harmonious warbling of the rainforest morphs into organized disarray, as if a primitive maestro has thrown conducting to the wind and let Mother Nature take over. Birds trill a warning as the breeze rustles the plant life. Wings flutter overhead. A crescendo of stridulation changes tempo, the insects seemingly performing a sonata as the rhythm shifts yet again.
"What - who is it?" Summer asks in a strained whisper.
His gaze lands on her, his brows furrowing. "The Forsaken. ~ Laura Kreitzer

The waters of the stream played the part of the orchestra, and the sunlight provided the dancers. Every now and then a crescendo of wind highlighted the symphony in the clearing by the creek. ~ Edward Mooney Jr.

Love is a decision.

It's not an emotion that we see on movie screens or read about in books. It isn't the dramatic crescendo that leads to happily ever after.

Love is hard work.

It's the decision you make, knowing your differences, knowing your flaws, but choosing anyway, because you can't imagine life without that person. ~ Jenny Bravo

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It's like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals–sounds that say listen to this, it is important. ~ Gary Provost

Their conflicting sounds oppose one another, outdo one another, and fight to be better than one another. The crescendo of the heart being ripped to shreds, loves ... . ~ Mai Nishikata

It grabs me, but not as much as it grabs some of the other people that rave about them. With the Black Keys, I'm missing crescendos with the sax, keyboard or guitar solo. It never comes to me. All my favorite music is rife with crescendo and I'm not hearing enough with them. If you can get the Black Keys to hear this, tell them I offer my crescendo guitar anytime they desire it. ~ Ted Nugent

Even Clark French's novels exerted a tenacious and combative goodwill: his main characters, lost souls and serial sinners, always found redemption; the act of redeeming usually followed a moral low point; the novels predictably ended in a crescendo of benevolence. ~ John Irving

Fireworks made of glass. An explosion of dew. Crescendo. Diminuendo. Silence.
There are drugs that work the same, and while I am not suggesting that our founder purchased the glassworks to get more drops, it is clear that she had the seed planted, not once, but twice, and knew already the lovely contradictory nature of glass and she did not have to be told, on the day she saw the works at Darling Harbour, that glass is a thing in disguise, an actor, is not solid at all, but a liquid, that an old sheet of glass will not only take on a royal and purplish tinge but will reveal its true liquid nature by having grown fatter at the bottom and thinner at the top, and that even while it is as frail as the ice on a Parramatta puddle, it is stronger under compression than Sydney sandstone, that it is invisible, solid, in short, a joyous and paradoxical thing, as good a material as any to build a life from. ~ Peter Carey

Their making of love ... had even been something like this, when it became a kind of harmony, enveloping them together and together and for ever into that crescendo. And, yes, now really, really she knew the multitudinous singing of the stars and she wanted everything to stay where it was, now and forever with him ... ~ Bryan Islip

A woman is an exclamation on the work of creation. She is the last note, the best note, the crescendo of all that was created. ~ TemitOpe Ibrahim

Take the example of my daughter. A lot of people were speaking out about education when the Taliban were bombing schools in Swat Valley, but Malala's voice was like a crescendo. It spread all around the world. She was the smallest but her voice was the biggest, because she was speaking for herself. ~ Ziauddin Yousafzai

The time has come (ominous musical crescendo) for some missions! ~ Andy Weir

I'm quite glad I never learned to play the guitar, because I think I'd write songs that were more classically structured. As it is, I've had to create my own way of writing, which isn't typical. Everything's a big crescendo. ~ Florence Welch

Strange, how such a small realization can affect everyone's life forever. In movies there is always a carefully staged moment - a big crescendo of music, close- ups of the actors' faces, the camera slowly pulling away to let all this sink in for the viewer ... but, in real life, most all of the extraordinary things happen with no more loudness than a whisper. ~ Silas House

Well, within a phrase. And with a series of phrases, you can certainly create the effect of diminuendo and crescendo, no question. ~ Mahan Esfahani

The air was warm and heavy as sprinkles began to fall from the clouds high above. The Triton glided through the waters and the whoosh of the ship combined with the steady beat of the rain to make a concerto, like a pianist fluttering his fingers on the keys at one end and running his fingers up and down the scales at the other. Expectancy hung in the air as the tune moved to a crescendo. ~ Victoria Kahler

I'm touched, Rixon. A bomb. How elaborate. Why didn't you keep things simple and just march inside my bedroom one night and put a bullet between my eyes? ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Layer upon layer it comes, dense and rich within the texts, echo upon echo, allusion and resonance tumbling over one another, so that for those with ears to hear it becomes un-missable, a crescendo of questions to which in the end there can be only one answer. Why are you speaking like this? Are you the one who is to come? Can anything good come out of Nazareth? What sign can you show us? Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners? Where did this man get all this wisdom? How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Who are you? Why do you not follow the traditions? Do the authorities think he's the Messiah? Can the Messiah come from Galilee? Why are you behaving unlawfully? Who then is this? Aren't we right to say that you're a Samaritan and have a demon? What do you say about him? By what right are you doing these things? Who is this Son of Man? Should we pay tribute to Caesar? And climactically: Are you the king of the Jews? What is truth? Where are you from? Are you the Messiah, the son of the Blessed One? Then finally, too late for answers, but not too late for irony: Aren't you the Messiah? Save yourself and us! If you're the Messiah, why don't you come down from that cross?
…
And Jesus had his own questions. Who do you say I am? Do you believe in the Son of Man? Can you drink the cup I'm going to drink? How do the scribes say that the Messiah is David's son? Couldn't you keep watch with me for a single hour? And finally and horribly: My God, my God, why did ~ N.T. Wright

I like it when things crescendo to a huge moment like 'Hold Back the River.' ~ James Bay

Of course not! I knew you would protect me. You swore that you were strong enough to protect Vivienne, didn't you? How can you promise to protect my sister, but not trust yourself to keep me safe?"
The music swelled to a crescendo. Although Adrian kept her imprisoned against the muscular length of his body, he gave up all pretense of dancing. "Because I don't lose my wits every time Vivienne walks into a room. I don't toss and turn in my bed every night dreaming of making love to her. She doesn't drive me to distraction with her endless questions, her incessant snooping, her harebrained schemes." His voice rose. "I can trust myself to protect your sister because I'm not in love with her! ~ Teresa Medeiros

The dark has a eased a little. There has been a street-lamp burning, that has lit the threads of the bleached net scarf hung at the window, now it is put out. The light turns filthy pink. The pink gives way to sickly yellow. It creeps, and with it creeps sound - softly at first, then rising in a staggering crescendo: crowning cocks, whistles and bells, dogs, shrieking babies, violent calling, coughing, spitting, the tramp of feet, the endless hollow of beating hooves and the grinding of wheels. Up, up it comes, out of the throat of London. It is six or seven o'clock. ~ Sarah Waters

The flower-covered grave of the saint in the inner room could be seen dimly through the narrow doorway. In front of it was a wide vestibule where about two dozen people were seated in a circle. One of them was singing lustily some Persian verses, while others kept the time by clapping their hands; they joined in the refrain which was sung in chorus. Like rising tidal waves, the tempo of the singing was getting faster and faster, the clapping became more frantic and heads rolled from side to side, keeping time with the tempestuous melody. Eyes were closed and everyone was lost in the surging waves of emotion that seemed to flow out of the Sufistic poetry of the great Roomi. Then, to his amazement Anwar saw a man in the centre of the crowd open his eyes and stare vacantly. For a moment this man was silent, ominously silent and motionless in the midst of the emotional storm that raged around him. Then he was caught by a sudden frenzy, his whole body quivered and moved, beating time to the song which by now had reached a weird and frightening crescendo, faster and faster, louder and louder. The man's hands rose high in the air and as if clutching at an unseen rope, he raised himself and started to dance, wildly, ecstatically, tearing his clothes and pulling his hair, completely unselfconscious and unrestrained, oblivious of everything by some mysterious inner urge that demanded expression in this wild manner. And then the song died on the lips of the singer, the waves of emotion ~ Khwaja Ahmad Abbas

Do you know what my father used to say?" I ask her. "He used to say that songs had a heart. A crescendo that can make all your blood rush from your head to your toes. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Living with long-term suffering in American culture feels like being off-key. Suffering quiets and slows, but our culture prefers a crescendo. ~ K.J. Ramsey

I was just about to ask you the same thing. I know you followed me. Don't look so suprised. It's called a rearview mirror. Are you stalking me for a specific reason? ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Shortly afterwards it started raining, very innocently at first, but the sky was packed tight with cloud and gradually the drops grew bigger and heavier, until it was autumn's dismal rain that was falling - rain that seemed to fill the entire world with its leaden beat, rain suggestive in its dreariness of everlasting waterfalls between the planets, rain that thatched the heavens with drabness and brooded oppressively over the whole countryside, like a disease, strong in the power of its flat, unvarying monotony, its smothering heaviness, its cold, unrelenting cruelty. Smoothly, smoothly it fell, over the whole shire, over the fallen marsh grass, over the troubled lake, the iron-grey gravel flats, the sombre mountain above the croft, smudging out every prospect. And the heavy, hopeless, interminable beat wormed its way into every crevice in the house, lay like a pad of cotton wool over the ears, and embraced everything, both near and far, in its compass, like an unromantic story from life itself that has no rhythm and no crescendo, no climax, but which is nevertheless overwhelming in its scope, terrifying in its significance. And at the bottom of this unfathomed ocean of teeming rain sat the little house and its one neurotic woman. ~ Halldor Laxness