Descriptive Imagery Quotes

No human metal had gone into the forging of that blade. It was alive with moonlight, translucent, a shard of crystal so thin that it seemed to almost vanish when seen edge on. There was a faint blue shimmer to the thing and a ghost light that played around its edges, and somehow Will knew that it was sharper than any razor. ~ George R R Martin

Morning came in through the blinds cutting everything into ribbons. ~ Amber Dawn

The deep sea breaking miles away on the reef made an undertone less perceptible than the susurration of the blood. ~ William Golding

It was as hot as ever, even the turn of the moon bringing no relief, and the cries of cicadas fell like showers around me. ~ Lian Hearn

The oak trees had shed their leaves, revealing the inky thumbprints of crows' nests in the crackle glaze of dark branches. ~ Kevin Ansbro

The vocabulary of pleasure depends on the imagery of pain. ~ Marina Warner

Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately. ~ Edward Weston

There were a million things, everything, I didn't know. I was stupid, the official descriptive phrase for happy. I took this thing I'm giving you back, this thing you gave me as the star we were waiting for finally emerged. ~ Daniel Handler

When we reach a certain age we have opportunity to decide how we present ourselves to the world, and that age is getting ever younger. Even our young teenage generation is aware of fashion and we grow acutely more and more aware of how obsessed our society is with imagery and appearance. Or rather we become more aware that to get on in life we need to be brash and bright and sparkling all the time. That bright colours and big noises is what gets your through life, that any substance behind that is almost irrelevant to success. We only need look at who we proclaim as celebrities, who society rewards with wealth, that substance is not a prerequisite to success.




Be bright, make a statement, choose a bold look, dye your hair, pierce your body, paint it with permanent ink, wear outlandish clothes and don't be afraid to say something crude or mean or controversial because that's the person you are.




Or is it?




Is it that when you've done with the all the additions to your body, the person you look at in the mirror is no longer the real you. It is a character, the one you think society wants you to be, that society has convinced you that you want to be, substance optional. One of the most beautiful moments of conversation on and offline I've had with some people is when they surprise me, a comment or opinion with substance and thought, something away fro their character, revealing the real indivi ~ Raven Lockwood

I like Carson. I really like Carson. I can hand an idea to him that's still a little rough, and he can turn it over and tumble it and hand it back to me shining. And I can do the same for him. ~ Dexter Palmer

The thought washed over me like water on a flower shop window, like a soothing, cool lotion after you've showered and spent the whole day in the sun, loving the sun but loving the balsam more. ~ Andre Aciman

Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery. ~ Alan Watts

Twilight draped the fertile landscape, like a dampened threadbare sheet, hung over the sun to dry. ~ Kevin Moccia

A simple dream, set in a city park, along an avenue of mature elms, whose overarching branches turned the avenue into a green tunnel into which the sky and the sunlight were dripping, here and there, through the perfect imperfections in the canopy of leaves. ~ Salman Rushdie

I wanted to go to him then? Not all of me but the same part he'd just hurt. I don't understand this pull, still. I think it must be a really dangerous physics, the gravity of wound to fist. You can see it happen to the other animals. When a hunter or trapper begins kicking at an alligator, its body curls to accommodate the withdrawing foot. ~ Karen Russell

She leaned out of the window slow and sleepy, and the light came through her nightdress like sand through a sieve. ~ Laurie Lee

If we leave that general descriptive talk where everything which looks like a poem can be called a poem and turn instead to normative talk, we will of course not recognize as a poem everything that looks like a poem. A real poem has to be a successful poem, a successful speech act. In approximately the same way that only a mathematical proof which really proves something can be called a mathematical proof. It is not enough that it looks like a proof. The proof has to prove. For the poem it is not enough to look like a poem. It has to achieve something. ~ Lars Gustafsson

When the symbols are 'public' they usually act in an oblique manner, revealing themselves as archetypal symbols, which though familiar, have their central meanings obscured as is usual in esoteric imagery. ~ Kenneth Coutts-Smith

The grass he walked through was new and a sweet smell clung to his clothes. There was blue dye on his hands from the wild irises ... that the color of the sky was a shade that could never be replicated in any photograph, just as Heaven could never be seen from the confines of Earth. ~ Alice Hoffman

I should have realized, when Cathal kissed me in the hallway, that my response was the first raindrop heralding a storm. ~ Juliet Marillier

I am a man who would live an heroic life and make the world more endurable in his own sight. If, in some moment of weakness,of relaxation, of need, I blow off steam-a bit of red-hot rage cooled off in words-a passionate dream, wrapped and tied in imagery_well, take it or leave it ... but don't bother me! ~ Henry Miller

My staff tells me not to say this, but I'm going to say it anyway. In the summer because of the heat and high humidity, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol. It may be descriptive but it's true. ~ Harry Reid

A fast note about Ice-T's autobiography: There's a section where he tells a story about hanging out with Flavor Flav that involves going to Red Lobster in a Ferrari. I suspect the phrase "going to Red Lobster in a Ferrari" is the most accurate description of Flavor Flav anyone will ever come up with. ~ Shea Serrano

He dropped the phone back onto its cradle, began to turn around and felt a sudden ice-cold furrow open up in his side. Strength drained from his legs, and a moment later he sank to his knees. There was warmth now that ran over the initial and persistent cold.
Mohammed was confused, and barely noticed the briefcase being removed from his grip. He heard the click of a cell phone opening, and a soft beeping as a number was dialed.
'The package is in my possession,' a female voice said, and the phone clicked shut. ~ R.D. Ronald

I like visual imagery in my head. ~ Stephen Malkmus

The lake was a shield of beaten brass flung down in the valley under a full sun. ~ Jane Urquhart

Dear Nancy,
I love your book The Crystal Navigator. You paint beautiful imagery throughout the pages of the story, and I loved learning about art through the adventures of Lucy. I'm honored to be one of the first readers of your wonderful story,
Sincerely,
Sylvie" (11 years old) ~ Sylvie

He was neither good looking nor ugly, and while he would not have turned a young girl's head, someone older might have been struck by his face and the evidence of passion which had left its traces. ~p17 ~ Nicholas Shakespeare

The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

the tall white windmills that came to her mind. How their skinny long arms all turned, but never together, except for just once in a while two of them would be turning the same way, their arms poised at the same place in the sky. ~ Elizabeth Strout

Lots of talk lately about the GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL that seems to be exclusively masculine. And how many of the characters in the GENIUS BOOKS are likable? Is Holden Caulfield likable? Is Meursault in The Stranger? Is Henry Miller? Is any character in any of these system novels particularly likable? Aren't they usually loathsome but human, etc., loathsome and neurotic and obsessed? In my memory, all the characters in Jonathan Franzen are total douchebags (I know, I know, I'm not supposed to use that, feminine imagery, whatever, but it is SO satisfying to say and think). How about female characters in the genius books? Was Madame Bovary likable? Was Anna Karenina? Is Daisy Buchanan likable? Is Daisy Miller? Is it the specific way in which supposed readers HATE unlikable female characters (who are too depressed, too crazy, too vain, too self-involved, too bored, too boring), that mirrors the specific way in which people HATE unlikable girls and women for the same qualities? We do not allow, really, the notion of the antiheroine, as penned by women, because we confuse the autobiographical, and we pass judgment on the female author for her terrible self-involved and indulgent life. We do not hate Scott Fitzgerald in "The Crack-Up" or Georges Bataille in Guilty for being drunken and totally wading in their own pathos, but Jean Rhys is too much of a victim. ~ Kate Zambreno

The sun, like a boil on the bright blue ass of day, rolled gradually forward and spread its legs wide to reveal the pubic thatch of night, a hairy darkness in which stars crawled like lice, and the moon crabbed slowly upward like an albino dog tick striving for the anal gulch. ~ Joe R. Lansdale

The beautifully composed imagery of '12 Years a Slave' underscores the savagery of its subject, which is an American South not of knights and ladies but obscene values and a grotesque pageantry, every gorgeous shot of the languid landscape radiating toxicity like a hyperlush blossom that's poison to the touch. ~ Steve Erickson

Grace abounds in contemporary movies, books, novels, films and music. If God is not in the whirlwind, He may be in a Woody Allen film, or a Bruce Springsteen concert. Most people understand imagery and symbol better than doctrine and dogma. Images touch hearts and awaken imaginations. One theologian suggested that Springsteen's 'Tunnel of Love' album, in which he symbolically sings of sin, death, despair and redemption, is more important for Catholics than the Pope's last visit when he spoke of morality only in doctrinal propositions. ~ Brennan Manning

These cities grew in approximately the same places as our cities do now, however different the shape of the continents was. There was even a New York that in some way resembled the New York familiar to all of you, but was much newer, or, rather, more awash with new products, new toothbrushes, a New York with its own Manhattan that stretched out dense with skyscrapers gleaming like the nylon bristles of a brand-new toothbrush. ~ Italo Calvino

We are in the dark places of the earth," said Madman. "Where all the ancient and most dangerous secrets are kept. There are Old Things down here, sleeping all around us, in the earth and in the living rock, and in the spaces between spaces. Keep your voices down. Some of these old creatures sleep but lightly, and even their dreams can have force and substance in our limited world. We have come among forgotten gods and sleeping devils, from the days before the world settled down and declared itself sane. ~ Simon R. Green

The point is that descriptive writing is very rarely entirely accurate and during the reign of Olaf Quimby II as Patrician of Ankh-Morpork some legislation was passed in a determined attempt to ?put a stop to this sort of thing and introduce some honest. ~ Terry Pratchett

And in the same way, again, are not the thoughts of men and women in the agony of death often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, internal, intestinal aspect, towards that 'seamy side' of death which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents to them and forces them to feel, a side which far more closely resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are accustomed to give the name of Death? ~ Marcel Proust

We emerged onto the ruined street, where gaps showed in the rows of buildings like missing teeth ~ Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

We know that negative reinforcement or punishment works well for behavior that should be eliminated. And we know from feedback theory that the best kind of feedback is descriptive because the client can then make the evaluation. These are valid guidelines but they don't solve some of the subtle issues that can arise in the relationship. ~ Edgar H Schein