Deshell Sunflower Quotes

We are so impressed by scientific clank that we feel we ought not to say that the sunflower turns because it knows where the sun is. It is almost second nature to us to prefer explanations ... with a large vocabulary. We are much more comfortable when we are assured that the sunflower turns because it is heliotropic. The trouble with that kind of talk is that it tempts us to think that we know what the sunflower is up to. But we don't. The sunflower is a mystery, just as every single thing in the universe is. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

Mom has a massive sunflower for a soul so big there's hardly any room in her for organs. Jude and me have one soul between us that we have to share: a tree with its leaves on fire. And Dad has a plate of maggots for his. ~ Jandy Nelson

I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig
or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery. ~ Jostein Gaarder

Pick up a sunflower and count the florets running into its centre, or count the spiral scales of a pine cone or a pineapple, running from its bottom up its sides to the top, and you will find an extraordinary truth: recurring numbers, ratios and proportions. ~ Charles Jencks

Never look directly at the sun. Instead, look at the sunflower. ~ Vera Nazarian

We're all golden sunflowers inside. ~ Allen Ginsberg

The sunflower is mine, in a way. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

His hair stuck up more than usual, but he was otherwise neat in his typical black. If they lived through the mission, she decided to buy him an obnoxiously cheerful shirt. Something in sunflower yellow, perhaps. ~ Lindsay Buroker

I am working with the enthusiasm of a man from Marseilles eating bouillabaisse, which shouldn't come as a surprise to you because I am busy painting huge sunflowers. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

We've left the moment. It's gone. We're somewhere else now, and that's okay. We've still got that moment with us somewhere, deep in our memory, seeping into our DNA. And when our cells get scattered , whenever that happens, this moment will still exist in them. Those cells might be the building block of something new. A planet or star or a sunflower, a baby. Maybe even a cockroach. Who knows? Whatever it is, it'll be a part of us, this thing right here and now, and we'll be a part of it. ~ Libba Bray

We had a strong desire to make a trip up the Yazoo and the Sunflower - an interesting region at any time, but additionally interesting at this time, because up there the great inundation was still to be seen in force - but we were nearly sure to have to wait a day or more for a New Orleans boat on our return; so we were obliged to give up the project. ~ Mark Twain

in a crowd of roses, choose to be a sunflower.
thornless. unwithering. abundant in seeds ~ JaTawny M. Chatmon

I twist like a flower
at the sound of your voice
But you leave the receiver
static most days
You have me growing into a dial tone

All it would take is your voice
saying my name
And I would behead myself
to be carried around on your lapel ~ Kait Rokowski

... always hold your heads high like a sunflower that stretches toward the light."

Childrens' book 'Land of Sunshine ~ Malene Rossau

I don't think there's anything on this planet that more trumpets life that the sunflower. For me that's because of the reason behind its name. Not because it looks like the sun but because it follows the sun. During the course of the day, the head tracks the journey of the sun across the sky. A satellite dish for sunshine. Wherever light is, no matter how weak, these flowers will find it. And that's such an admirable thing. And such a lesson in life. ~ Helen Mirren

Dad once noted (somewhat morbidly, I thought at the time) that American institutions would be infinitely more successful in facilitating the pursuit of knowledge if they held classes at night, rather than in the daytime, from 8:00 PM to 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning. As I ran through the darkness, I understood what he meant. Frank red brick, sunny classrooms, symmetrical quads and courts--it was a setting that mislead kids to believe that Knowledge, that Life itself, was bright, clear, and freshly mowed. Dad said a student would be infinitely better off going out into the world if he/she studied the periodic table of elements, Madame Bovary (Flaubert, 1857), the sexual reproduction of a sunflower for example, with deformed shadows congregating on the classroom walls, the silhouettes of fingers and pencils leaking onto the floor, gastric howls from unseen radiators, and a teacher's face not flat and faded, not delicately pasteled by a golden late afternoon, but serpentine, gargoyled, Cyclopsed by the inky dark and feeble light from a candle. He/she would understand "everything and nothing," Dad said, if there was nothing discernible in the windows but a lamppost mobbed by blaze-crazy moths and darkness, reticent and nonchalant, as darkness always was. ~ Marisha Pessl

I began becoming that girl again, the girl who had wildflowers in hair, and madness in her soul, the girl who danced, trembling with emotions. I began becoming that girl again, the girl who sang her soul, longing to drink the wine of life again..... ~ Jayita Bhattacharjee

Restless sunflower; cease to move. ~ Pedro Calderon De La Barca

The road to freedom is bordered with sunflowers. ~ Martin Firrell

A sunflower for my sunflower. To brighten the dark October days you hate so much. Plant some more, and be safe in the knowledge a warm and bright summer awaits. ~ Cecelia Ahern

I was having trouble sleeping. This is not an uncommon thing, but because it eluded me so often, I had a passion for sleep. I had rituals that I rendered unto sleep, as though serving a goddess. White noise was key to the equation. I had a fan in the bedroom that rivaled a freight train in sound. I scented the sheets with sunflower spray, and kept an electric blanket on low for warmth. Surely sleep would be enticed. ~ Phibby Venable

When someone shows me even the tiniest bit of kindness my entire soul still twists towards them. A sunflower searching for the sun. A hatchling keening for its mother. I ~ Darshana Suresh

I'm a sunflower with a cracked petal. ~ Augusten Burroughs

Fame is the scentless sunflower, with gaudy crown of gold; But friendship is the rose, with sweets in every fold. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The sunflower is a favorite emblem of constancy ~ Thomas Bulfinch

Codes and patterns are very different from each other," Langdon said. "And a lot of people confuse the two. In my field, it's crucial to understand their fundamental difference."
"That being?"
Langdon stopped walking and turned to her. "A pattern is any distinctly organized sequence. Patterns occur everywhere in nature - the spiraling seeds of a sunflower, the hexagonal cells of a honeycomb, the circular ripples on a pond when a fish jumps, et cetera."
"Okay. And codes?"
"Codes are special," Langdon said, his tone rising. "Codes, by definition, must carry information. They must do more than simply form a pattern - codes must transmit data and convey meaning. Examples of codes include written language, musical notation, mathematical equations, computer language, and even simple symbols like the crucifix. All of these examples can transmit meaning or information in a way that spiraling sunflowers cannot. ~ Dan Brown

Once upon a time there was a poor child with no father and no mother everything was dead
and no one was left in the whole world.
Everything was dead
and it went and searched day and night And since nobody was left on the earth it wanted to go up to the heavens and the moon was looking at it so friendly and when it finally got to the moon the moon was a piece of rotten wood and then it went to the sun and when it got there the sun was a wilted sunflower and when it got to the stars they were little golden flies stuck up there
like the shrike sticks 'em on the blackthorn and when it wanted to go back down to earth the earth was an overturned piss pot! and was all alone. ~ Georg Buchner

I thought maybe I could become like the next Van Gogh. I bought a sunflower and painted it, and it looked like the work of a 6-year-old. ~ Takeshi Kitano

What god does a sunflower believe in? That's the god I believe in. ~ Marty Rubin

Later, gator."
"In an hour, sunflower. ~ Alexandra Bracken

She is a sunflower! She brings hope to people. ~ Avijeet Das

I don't want to go to Peru."
How do you know? You've never been there."
I've never been to hell either and I'm pretty sure I don't want to go there. ~ Richard Paul Evans

In each of the separate sections Mother would put a different treat - sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, sesame cookies, and peanuts. ~ Katherine Paterson

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world. ~ T. S. Eliot

The thing I miss about Russia the most is what is called 'black bread.' It's rye bread, and everyone eats it. I slice mine up and put sunflower oil and salt on it ... the best thing ever. It was like a little treat for me when I was a kid. ~ Olesya Rulin

The hermit keeps a window open onto the sky, without which the world would perish from suffocation, ugliness and boredom. He is the only one, along with the poet, who still speaks the language of the beyond, who makes existence sacred, who gives life this verticality without which humanity is buffeted about beneath itself. He is a rampart against the assaults of mediocrity, nastiness, hatred that is intolerant of its opposite. He is this force, made out of weakness, that warms the atmosphere, melts the winter of the world. For men turned toward secondary things, his presence recalls the existence of the essential things: the order of the world, knowledge, the priority of salvation and the adoration of the Supreme, by imitating the sunflower whose heliotropism has much to teach us, who never turns away from the trisolar brightness. Model and prototype, the hermit represents, in a chaotic and dehumanized world, a final landmark, an ultimate axis for reference. He allows man to remain standing by recalling the Absolute; when deprived of the Totality, man becomes totalitarian by compensation. ~ Jean Biès

Even that great poverty which had been and remains mine let up for a few days. I was not, as it happens, opposed to this poverty: I accepted to pay the price for not being a slave to life, to settle for the right I had assumed once and for all to not express any ideas but my own. We were not many in doing this ... Poverty passed by in the distance, made lovelier and almost justified, a little like what has been called, in the case of a painter who was one of your first friends, the blue period. It seemed the almost inevitable consequence of my refusal to behave the way almost all the others did, whether on one side or another. This poverty, whether you had the time to dread it or not, imagine it was only the other side of the miraculous coin of your existence: the Night of the Sunflower would have been less radiant without it. ~ Andre Breton

I would follow you anywhere and everywhere, for no reason and every reason.
Seed of the Sunflower ~ Lisa N. Edwards

From the animist point of view, humans belong in a sacred place because they themselves are sacred. Not sacred in a special way, not more sacred than anything else, but merely as sacred as anything else
as sacred as bison or salmon or crows or crickets or bears or sunflowers. ~ Daniel Quinn

I chose a sunflower because when darkness descends they close up to regenerate. But I really wish I'd never had the tattoo in the first place. Clean, clear skin is always better. ~ Halle Berry

On the way to Santa Cruz Dirk and Duck stopped along the coast to surf. They stopped so many times to surf and eat (they finished the avocado sandwiches in the first fifteen minutes and bought sunflower seeds, licorice, peaches, and Foster's Freeze soft ice cream along the way) that they didn't get to Santa Cruz until late that night. ~ Francesca Lia Block

You may know that the peony is Jeannin's, the hollyhock belongs to Quost, but the sunflower is mine in a way. ~ Vincent Van Gogh