Digs Quotes

Have you noticed how much lying we do in our relationships? We tell ourselves that it's not lying or it is excusable for purposes of self-defense. How little we realise that every lie digs us deeper into a painful delusion and we end up building war zones, not love boats. ~ Donna Goddard

When you write, you lay out a line of words. The line of words is a miner's pick, a wood carver's gouge, a surgeon's probe. You wield it, and it digs a path you follow. Soon you find yourself deep in new territory. Is it a dead end, or have you located the real subject? You will know tomorrow, or this time next year. ~ Annie Dillard

Driving me nuts, bolts, screws
I got the blues from paying dues
For programmed news of honeycoated lies
Your eyes can't believe
That weave the Devil's magic with the latest gadget
From the Mean Machine
A'running the Same Game with Another Name
Down in your brain, blowing your mind
Stealing your time, smooth and slick
With the latest trick to get rich quick
From nonsense at your mind's expense
As your mind digs the scene
From the Mean Machine
Designed to drive your brain insane

From "Mean Machine" by the Last Poets ~ Jalal Mansur Nuriddin

Whoever finishes a revolution only halfway, digs his own grave. ~ Georg Buchner

The bear, he says, is many animals in one. Like a lion, he downs mammals much bigger than he; like any ruminant, he pillages crops; he steals grapes and fruit like a monkey; nibbles on berries like a blackbird; plunders anthills and beehives like a woodpecker; digs up tubers and larvae like a pig; and catches fish with the dexterity of an otter. And he eats honey like a man. ~ Paolo Rumiz

Each one seems to be, in some way, essentially different from the others, and each is a surprise to me. I think that making books, or any kind of art, might also be like mining. The artist digs into his or her life and imagination and never knows what they'll find. That's the adventure. ~ Mordicai Gerstein

One doesn't fall into love... one digs a hole for himself to trip... claiming he didn't see it coming ~ A.M.M Alusi

I'm not the kind of person who digs through things other people have thrown away. ~ Zach Braff

My conception of a novel is that it ought to be a personal struggle, a direct and total engagement with the author's story of his or her own life. This conception, again, I take from Kafka, who, although he was never transformed into an insect, and although he never had a piece of food (an apple from his family's table!) lodged in his flesh and rotting there, devoted his whole life as a writer to describing his personal struggle with his family, with women, with moral law, with his Jewish heritage, with his Unconscious, with his sense of guilt, and with the modern world. Kafka's work, which grows out of the nighttime dreamworld in Kafka's brain, is *more* autobiographical than any realistic retelling of his daytime experiences at the office or with his family or with a prostitute could have been. What is fiction, after all, if not a kind of purposeful dreaming? The writer works to create a dream that is vivid and has meaning, so that the reader can then vividly dream it and experience meaning. And work like Kafka's, which seems to proceed directly from dream, is therefore an exceptionally pure form of autobiography. There's an important paradox here that I would like to stress: the greater the autobiographical content of a fiction writer's work, the *smaller* its superficial resemblance to the writer's actual life. The deeper the writer digs for meaning, the more the random particulars of the writer's life become *impediments* to deliberate dreaming. ~ Jonathan Franzen

In a political struggle, never get personal - else the dagger digs too deep. ~ Jack Valenti

Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

My country is handed over from one tyrant to the next,
a worse tyrant; from one prison to another,
from one exile to another.
It is colonised by the observed
invader and the hidden one;
handed over by one beast to two
like an emaciated camel.
In the caverns of its death
my country neither dies
nor recovers. It digs
in the muted graves looking
for its pure origins
for its springtime promise
that slept behind its eyes
for the dream that will come
for the phantom that hid.
It moves from one overwhelming
night to a darker night.
My country grieves
in its own boundaries
and in other people's land
and even on its own soil
suffers the alienation
of exile. ~ Abdullah Al Baradouni

Pain, too, comes from depths that cannot be revealed. We do not know whether those depths are in ourselves or elsewhere, in a graveyard, in a scarcely dug grave, only recently inhabited by withered flesh. This truth, which is banal enough, unravels time and the face, holds up a mirror to me in which I cannot see myself without being overcome by a profound sadness that undermines one's whole being. The mirror has become the route through which my body reaches that state, in which it is crushed into the ground, digs a temporary grave, and allows itself to be drawn by the living roots that swarm beneath the stones. It is flattened beneath the weight of that immense sadness which few people have the privilege of knowing. So I avoid mirrors. ~ Tahar Ben Jelloun

There's no paradise in love! It's--you're thinking in the wrong way. Love--the sort you're asking me for--is of the earth, earthy. Beautiful, maybe--sometimes it be like a gold mine that one digs into. But of the earth--earthy. Tis all wrong to speak of paradise. Love may be the nearest human beings can get--but it is still outside the gates--for it is human--easily lost--animal in the way it work, though more, much more than animal. Oftentimes it--uplifts, transports...but--but it should not be mistaken. It is a--a terrible mistake to pretend it is something quite different. ~ Winston Graham

The mole is an animal that digs passages searching for the sun. Sometimes he reaches the surface. When he looks at the sun he goes blind. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
you look like a world, lying in surrender.
My rough peasant's body digs in you
and makes the son leap from the depth of the earth.
I was lone like a tunnel. The birds fled from me,
and nigh swamped me with its crushing invasion.
To survive myself I forged you like a weapon,
like an arrow in my bow, a stone in my sling.
But the hour of vengeance falls, and I love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of eager and firm milk.
Oh the goblets of the breast! Oh the eyes of absence!
Oh the roses of the pubis! Oh your voice, slow and sad!
Body of my woman, I will persist in your grace.
My thirst, my boundless desire, my shifting road!
Dark river-beds where the eternal thirst flows
and weariness follows, and the infinite ache. ~ Pablo Neruda

Just as the earth that bears the man who tills and digs it, to bear those who speak ill of them, is a quality of the highest respect. ~ Thiruvalluvar

The mainstream media today has the biggest disconnect with its audience that it's ever, ever had. And as the disconnect grows and as more and more people distrust them, then the media digs in more and more and says you don't know what you're talking about, you don't know how we do our jobs, you don't know what's important. ~ Rush Limbaugh

If we did that, we wouldn't get confused about who was really making things happen. Not surprisingly, we'd get a lot more done too, because we wouldn't care who's looking or taking credit. All that energy would be funneled into awesomeness. Even then, though, don't take the bait that if we do incredible things Jesus will dig us more. He can't. He already digs us more. And more than that, our pictures are already in His wallet. ~ Bob Goff

She reaches in, digs her hand deep into the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. The crowd draws in a collective breath, and then you can hear a pin drop, and I'm feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it's not me, that it's not me, that it's not me.
Effie Trinket crosses back to the podium, smoothes the slip of paper, and reads out the name in a clear voice. And it's not me.
It's Primrose Everdeen. ~ Suzanne Collins

Entitlement is the shovel that digs a grave of greed. And there are those of us who stand at the bottom of such a grave having thrown out the last shovel full of dirt, never realizing that the grave that we've dug is our own until the same shovel suddenly starts backfilling the hole. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The history of successful cases, some of which are in this museum, illustrates that often the regulators and legislatures don't wake up until some plaintiff gets a lawyers and digs out the cover-ups and the incriminating information about a safety defect in an automobile or another product. ~ Ralph Nader

My college, Fitzwilliam, was pretty good but unfashionable and I lived in digs so I was not part of the cloistered 'old college' environment, which frankly was a bit intimidating. But I worked hard and settled in by exploring politics and girls. ~ Vince Cable

The mind is the mine of man, wherein he digs out good or evil. ~ Ogwo David Emenike

There'll never be a perfect breakfast eaten until some man grows arms long enough to stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee & over to Norfolk for his rolls, & reaches up to Vermont & digs a slice of butter out of a spring-house, & then turns over a beehive close to a white clover patch out in Indiana for the rest. Then he'd come pretty close to making a meal on the amber that the gods eat on Mount Olympia. ~ O. Henry

Bearing in his right paw the shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances, cut the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war; His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display - indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma ... ~ Gary Snyder

For the farsighted, the folks in the know, life is a deer park, where gentle breezes and fragrant grape leaves keep you company, complete with afternoon foot-soakings, peaceful snoozes, fine hounds and desirable wenches, the hell with all care; a long life, a nice pipe from time to time, mellow dinners: that's the way to spend life, life that digs your grave even now, steadfastly, like the ever-burrowing mole. To want nothing, and ask only for peace and quiet. Hope for nothing besides fair weather on the morrow. Trust no one, believe no one, think no extraordinary thoughts, just live, live, and love; fall asleep, and wake up healthy ... Wear comfy slippers and pass the night in a feather bed. Live out a happy and long old age, the best part of life. To get an honest night's sleep, and then a snooze after lunch, let out a few whoops, fight and make up. ~ Gyula Krudy

The year is 1327. Franciscans in a wealthy Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, and Brother William of Baskerville arrives to investigate. When his delicate mission is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths, Brother William turns detective. He collects evidence, deciphers secret symbols and coded manuscripts, and digs into the eerie labyrinth of the abbey, where extraordinary things are happening under the cover of night. A spectacular popular and critical success The Name of the Rose is not only a narrative of a murder investigation but an astonishing chronicle of the Middle Ages. ~ Umberto Eco

Things you crave for won't come if you cry, but when you craft and create. Creativity digs up the buried gold. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Zik spits into the dirt in from of home plate, his own little ritual. He digs in and grits his teeth, snarling at the Heat. Psychology. Baseball's all about psychology. ~ Barry Lyga

It's time for the drawing. Effie Trinket says as she always does, "Ladies first!" and crosses to the glass ball with the girls' names. She reaches in, digs her hand deep into the ball, and pulls out a slip of paper. The crowd draws in a collective breath and then you can hear a pin drop, and I'm feeling nauseous and so desperately hoping that it's not me, that it's not me, that it's not me. ~ Suzanne Collins

The grave will fall in upon him who digs it. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Paymasters come in only two sizes: one sort shows you where the book says that you can't have what you've got coming to you; the second sort digs through the book until he finds a paragraph that lets you have what you need even if you don't rate it. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

When saving righteousness meets with saving faith it becomes righteousness by faith and righteousness by faith digs the grave for righteousness by works and righteousness by works is buried never to resurrect again. ~ JOEL NYARANGI AKOYA

Gnag bends things for breaking, and the Maker makes a flourish! Evil digs a pit, and the Maker makes a well! That is his way. ~ Andrew Peterson

I often said that writers are of two types.
There is the architect, which is one type. The architect, as if designing a building, lays out the entire novel at a time. He knows how many rooms there will be or what a roof will be made of or how high it will be, or where the plumbing will run and where the electrical outlets will be in its room. All that before he drives the first nail. Everything is there in the blueprint.
And then there's the gardener who digs the hole in the ground, puts in the seed and waters it with his blood and sees what comes up. The gardener knows certain things. He's not completely ignorant. He knows whether he planted an oak tree, or corn, or a cauliflower. He has some idea of the shape but a lot of it depends on the wind and the weather and how much blood he gives it and so forth.
No one is purely an architect or a gardener in terms of a writer, but many writers tend to one side or the other. I'm very much more a gardener. ~ George R R Martin

When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn't climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened. ~ Criss Jami

The man who seeks revenge digs two graves. ~ Ken Kesey

One un-vents something; one unearths it; one digs it up; one runs it down in whatever recesses of the eternal consciousness it has gone to ground. ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann

Life turns, and returns death. Where death digs its claws into the grave only to pull out life, as a baby from a womb; and the recycle of air, the recycle of struggles that never achieve satisfaction, in a constant turning world, of an untuned universe. ~ Anthony Liccione

I look up but don't spot him. "I take care of myself. I ain't living with nobody. Got my own digs. What are you doing up there?"
"Tracking the Hag. Trying to devise a way to trap her. She's fast but she's not a sifter."
I jerk, and look around warily. That's all we need right now. "Is she here?"
"If you brought that crazy bitch near me again." Ryodan doesn't finish his sentence. He doesn't need to. ~ Karen Marie Moning

One doesn't fall in love... one digs a hole for himself to trip in... claiming he didn't see it coming ~ A.M.M Alusi

Truth often harms the one who digs it up. ~ Seneca.

While he digs he is free to let his mind wander, and he dreams his kingdom of pear trees in the orchard across to his left, growing skywards, gnarling, putting forth fat green soft fruits with ease each year. The trees that already grow in the orchards he loves almost as women in his life; the Catherine pear, the Chesil or pear Nouglas, the great Kentish pear, the Ruddick, the Red Garnet, the Norwich, the Windsor, the little green pear ripe at Kingsdon Feast; all thriving where they were planted in his father's ground at Lytes Cary before the management of the estate became his own responsibility as the eldest son. So much has happened these last six years since his father handed over and left for his house in Sherborne: there have been births and deaths - Anys herself was taken from him only last year. But the pear trees live on, reliably flowering and yielding variable quantities as an annual crop that defines the estate, and he has plans to add more. ~ Jane Borodale

Simon, would you still care for me if you discovered I was not who I say I am?"
What do you mean?"
I mean would you still care for me, no matter what you came to know?"
What a thing to ponder. I don't know what to say."
The answer is no. He does not need to say it.
With a sigh, Simon digs at the fire with the iron poker. Bits of the charred log fall away, revealing the angry insides. they flare orange for a moment, then quiet down again. After three tries, he gives up.
I'm afraid this fire's had it."
I can see a few embers remaining. "No, I think not. If ... "
He sighs, and it says everything. ~ Libba Bray

But unvented - ahh! One un-vents something; one unearths it; one digs it up, one runs it down in whatever recesses of the eternal consciousness it has gone to ground. I very much doubt if anything is really new when one works in the prehistoric medium of wool with needles. The products of science and technology may be new, and some of them are quite horrid, but knitting? In knitting there are ancient possibilities; the earth is enriched with the dust of the millions of knitters who have held wool and needles since the beginning of sheep. Seamless sweaters and one-row buttonholes; knitted hems and phoney seams - it is unthinkable that these have, in mankind's history, remained undiscovered and unknitted. One likes to believe that there is memory in the fingers; memory undeveloped, but still alive. ~ Elizabeth Zimmermann

Fool indeed is he, who, living on the banks of the Ganga, digs a little well for water. Fool indeed is the man who, coming to a mine of diamonds, begins to search for glass beads. ~ Swami Vivekananda

I have a cat, so I know that when she digs her very sharp claws into my chest or stomach it's really a sign of affection, but I don't see any reason for programming languages to show affection with pain. ~ Erik Naggum

War always costs more than you expect. Hostility takes over every facet of your accustomed life. It worms and digs its way into each tiny crevice, spreading, ripping, and shredding everything that is familiar. Eventually, fighting congeals and reforms itself into a living, breathing reality that consumes everything you knew. ~ Alpha Four

He digs out a fortune cookie fortune from his mouth, as if his mouth has a pocket. It says THE SIMPLEST ANSWER IS TO ACT. He hands it to me. I nod and put the fortune in my own mouth pocket. ~ A.S. King

In trying to scramble out of a hole, it sometimes digs it deeper. ~ Wellington Mara

Sorry to inform you...but as a fellow failed miner, the problem is there's nowhere left to dig.
We're real poets man.
And whatever. But it's the digging, it's the holes! Its these burrows to half nestle in just to pass the time, to chafe the inner thigh of boredom and that level of power-demanding pain is only in existence because you really, really know that there isn't anything else.
The holes.
And me missing a shovel, that has created the voids, the tears, the fucks, the sucks, the shame, the stares, the songs, the words, and in admittedly, even more holes. Not having one of my shovels has somehow overcompensated the digs in which I've dug.
The holes.
The holes are why you smoke aware of cancer, a disease to take over years of boring lives, and give us a bone to gnaw on, overcome, defeat, lick-dry, or die.
The holes are why you drink with your last dollars, when you know you're going to throw it up tonight anyway.
The holes are why you think you're in love, and that's a hole that you might not climb back from.
The holes, the holes the holes, making you question everything standing at a bus stop...smelling like cigarettes and perfume...signing up for classes you wont go to... hand covered in club stamps... face covered in guilt... Maybe go to a protest and just stand there...Or lay in bed when there's no way you can sleep... ~ Wesley Eisold

He knows what he'll find if he digs deeper. there's no rush to unpack my insides. he understands there is nothing special about emptiness, nothing interesting about depression. ~ Jasmine Warga

Elsewhere that same day, sleet covered the dead grass outside a modest lavender home in the northern village of Oščadnica like bits of confetti. The piercing wind picked up, keeping afloat a host of identical LSNS flags, green cloth dancing under the murky winter sky.

Within the thirty-person crowd, greetings all around. 'At guard,' they said to one another, saluting coyly, using a fascist phrase that was popular under Tiso's rule. The green-clad audience former rows and stood with folded hands over their laps, as local LSNS František Drozd placed a multicolored wreath of flowers at the foot of the home where Tiso once lived. Drozd broke the momentary silence and welcomed the crowd. As the Sunday morning mass concluded across the street, churchgoers poured out of the church. A handful of them - dressed smartly in church digs - joined the procession.

A gaggle of police officers stood next to their cars in the adjacent parking lot, rubbing their gloved hands together to stay warm, boredom sketched across their faces. ~ Patrick Strickland

This world ... belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak. We must face up to this. No more than right that it should be this way. We must learn to accept it as a law of the natural world. The rabbits accept their role in the ritual and recognize the wolf is the strong. In defense, the rabbit becomes sly and frightened and elusive and he digs holes and hides when the wolf is about. And he endures, he goes on. He knows his place. He most certainly doesn't challenge the wolf to combat. Now, would that be wise? Would it? ~ Ken Kesey

us. The little shit really digs Celia here. Been seein' her ~ Kirk Alex

What separates man from divine Reality is the slightest of barriers: God is infinitely close to man, but man is infinitely far from God. The barrier is, for man, a mountain; he stands before a mountain which he must remove with his own hands. He digs away the earth, but in vain; the mountain remains. Man, however, goes on digging, in the name of God. And the mountain vanishes. It was never there. ~ Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

For months beforehand, I fielded calls from British media. A couple of the reporters asked me to name some British chefs who had inspired me. I mentioned the Roux brothers, Albert and Michel, and I named Marco Pierre White, not as much for his food as for how - by virtue of becoming an apron-wearing rock-star bad boy - he had broken the mold of whom a chef could be, which was something I could relate to. I got to London to find the Lanesborough dining room packed each night, a general excitement shared by everyone involved, and incredibly posh digs from which I could step out each morning into Hyde Park and take a good long run around Buckingham Palace. On my second day, I was cooking when a phone call came into the kitchen. The executive chef answered and, with a puzzled look, handed me the receiver. Trouble at Aquavit, I figured.
I put the phone up to my ear, expecting to hear Håkan's familiar "Hej, Marcus." Instead, there was screaming. "How the fuck can you come to my fucking city and think you are going to be able to cook without even fucking referring to me?" This went on for what seemed like five minutes; I was too stunned to hang up. "I'm going to make sure you have a fucking miserable time here. This is my city, you hear? Good luck, you fucking black bastard." And then he hung up.
I had cooked with Gordon Ramsay once, a couple of years earlier, when we did a promotion with Charlie Trotter in Chicago. There were a handful of chefs there, including Daniel Bou ~ Marcus Samuelsson

This weekend on The History Channel, someone digs through old plastic junk ("It's a Dukes of Hazzard wastebasket!"), someone else tries to sell a doll head ("I used to take the heads off the bodies, and I kept the heads") . . . and Larry the Cable Guy taste-tests Tabasco sauce ("I can't feel my dadgum tongue!"). The History Channel. What the hell happened to us? Jimmy Kimmel Live4 ~ Donald R. Prothero

I have come more and more to the belief that we owe our arts a thousand times what we are paying them. We support our cigarette factories, soap manufacturers, beauticians, all the luxury and pleasure businesses of our over-indulged civilization, but we pay our painters an average wage ... and yet when the future digs us from the past they won't care how we smell, what we smoke, or if we bathed. All they'll know of us will be our architecture, our paintings, sculpture, poems, laws, philosophy, drama, our pottery and fabrics, the things which our hands made and our minds thought up - oh, the machines they'll dig up too, but perhaps they'll point to them as our destruction, the wheels that drove us down to death. ~ Vincent Price

I was, a near grown man, sat in his dank, dark and rickety digs, feverishly hovering about the glare of a computer screen like a disorientated moth, one searching for a flaming light of recognition from someone/anyone! ~ Tom Conrad

As an undergraduate, I had an opportunity to go on a number of archeological digs. So I had experience excavating, digging up remains of ancient Indian villages in the Midwest and in the Southwest. ~ Donald Johanson

...He can recite to you the nomenclature of a machine gun or grenade launcher and use either one effectively is he must.
He digs foxholes and latrines and can apply first aid like a professional.
He can march until he is told to stop, or stop until he is told to march.
He obeys orders instantly and without hesitation, but he is not without spirit or individual dignity. He is self-sufficient.
...He sometimes forgets to brush his teeth, but never to clean his rifle. He can cool his own meals, mend his own clothes, and fix his own hurts.
...He'll even split his ammunition with you in the midst of battle when you run low.
He has learned to use his hands like weapons and weapons like they were his hands.
He can save your life- or take it, because that is his job. He will often do twice the work of a civilian, draw half the pay, and still find ironic humor in it all. He has seen more suffering and death than he should have in his short lifetime. He has wept in public and in private, for friends who have fallen in combat and is unashamed.
He feels every note of the National Anthem vibrate through his body while at rigid attention, while tempering the burning desire to "square-away" those around him who haven't bothered to stand, remove their hat, or even stop talking.
...Just as did his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, he is paying the price for our freedom. Beardless or not, he is not a boy. He is the American Fighting ~ Sarah Palin

You feel you are hedged in; you dream of escape; but beware of mirages. Do not run or fly away in order to get free: rather dig in the narrow place which has been given you; you will find God there and everything. God does not float on your horizon, he sleeps in your substance. Vanity runs, love digs. If you fly away from yourself, your prison will run with you and will close in because of the wind of your flight; if you go deep down into yourself it will disappear in paradise. ~ Gustave Thibon

In the convent, y'all,
I tend the gardens,
watch things grow,
pray for the immortal soul
of rock 'n' roll.

They call me
Sister Presley here,
The Reverend Mother
digs the way I move my hips
just like my brother.

Gregorian chant
drifts out across the herbs
Pascha nostrum immolatus est...
I wear a simple habit,
darkish hues,

a wimple with a novice-sewn
lace band, a rosary,
a chain of keys,
a pair of good and sturdy
blue suede shoes.

I think of it
as Graceland here,
a land of grace.
It puts my trademark slow lopsided smile
back on my face.

Lawdy.
I'm alive and well.
Long time since I walked
down Lonely Street
towards Heartbreak Hotel.

- Elvis's Twin Sister ~ Carol Ann Duffy

Ove brushes the snow off the gravestone. Digs determinedly into the frozen ground and carefully replenishes the flowers. He stands up, dusts himself off, and looks helplessly at her name, feeling ashamed of himself. He who always used to nag at her about being late. Now he stands here himself, apparently quite incapable of following her as he'd planned. ~ Fredrik Backman

Personally." My mother digs a smile into the side of her cheek. "I'm rooting for Logan."
Logan produces a grin that suggests he's the cat that ate the canary, and suddenly I'm feeling rather canary-ish. ~ Addison Moore

The part of my soul that is driven to make stories is a fierce thing, like a ferret: long, sleek, incapable of sleep, it digs and bites through all I know of the world. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Years later I saw a film - poignantly sad, and for me unbearably so - about a scientist who had invented a kind of total sense recorder, not just video but audio and smellio and touchio and the rest, which he set to play every afternoon in a given place a given time, for as long as the mechanism lasted. The scene he projected was that of a dozen or so young couples dancing on a terrace in the same holiday house, on the same island, where the recorder itself was kept. Then this young man comes across it while it is playing and at first is convinced he is watching a real occurrence: he sees this beautiful girl, in her slinky 1930s outfit, dancing and laughing and chattering with her friends, and he falls in love with her on the spot. Second day, same time around, he comes to the island at a slightly different time so he sees a slightly different excerpt, and still doesn't twig and falls deeper in love. And so on and so forth for various days until he happens on a duplicate bit and realises something is wrong. But by then, of course, he is irretrievably hooked. So what does he do? He digs out the machine, fiddles with its insides until he has grasped its workings, and then sets it up in recording mode and records himself into the scene in a desperate last-ditch attempt to join the dancers. Which works, and there he stays: trapped there amongst them in a virtual dimension, forever young, forever re-enacting the same little loop of life, over and over. ~ A.P. .

People slice up tree trunks, nail the pieces together into boxy shapes, and then go inside to sleep. Trees use the wood in their trunks for a different purpose - namely, they use it to fight with other plants. From dandelions to daffodils, from ferns to figs, from potatoes to pine trees - every plant growing on land is striving toward two prizes: light, which comes from above, and water, which comes from below. Any contest between two plants can be decided in one move, when the winner simultaneously reaches higher and digs deeper than the loser. Consider the tremendous advantage that wood confers to one of the contestants during such a battle: armed with a stiff-yet-flexible, strong-yet-light prop that separates - and connects - leaves and roots, trees have dominated the tournament for more than four hundred million years. ~ Hope Jahren

We reach the trailer and Shane digs through the pockets of the cargo pants slung over his arm until he finds the key. He pushes open the door and waits for me to pass through. Maybe later I'll tell myself I should have thought long and hard about what I was going to do, that I should have counted to ten and waited until I regained my sanity before stepping over the threshold, evaluated the pros and cons like a thoughtful, rational adult. But I do no such thing. Shane's eyes are on mine as I step out of my wet sneakers, drop my damp clothes in a ball on the porch, and walk inside. He follows right behind me, and even through my wet shirt I can feel the heat radiating off his bare chest. The man is a furnace.
Every warning about playing with fire zings through my mind, but I dismiss them. I want this. I'm not playing games, and neither is Shane as he grips my shoulders and turns us so my back is to the door and he's pressed up against me. He lowers his head so our eyes are inches apart and looks at me more closely and thoughtfully than anyone ever has. He's checking to make sure I'm okay, that my expectations are in line with what today is about. And they are. Just once, we agreed. And that will be enough. ~ Julianna Keyes

Imagine you are tied to a chair with your hands tightly bound behind you, preventing you from covering your ears. Before you is a giant chalkboard. A woman enters the room. Her fingernails are long, hard, and ready for attack. You follow her with your eyes as she saunters to the chalkboard and raises her hand to make a claw. She looks at you with a blank stare as she digs her fingernails into the chalkboard and drags downward. As the harsh sound hits your ears, you squeeze your eyes shut in an instinctive yet vain effort to shut out the noise, but the absence of sight only magnifies the vile sound. Your ears have become hypersensitive, and you feel an unpleasant chill shoot through your body down to the toes of your feet. Finally, the sound stops as she removes her nails from the board, and a wave of relief passes over you. But the reprieve is short-lived. Again, the nails dig into the board and screech all the way down. The process repeats itself several times, and each time she stops dragging, you think it has ended for good, but soon she starts all over again. You frantically call out to her and ask her why she is doing this. You wonder what you have done to earn this perpetual torture. But she only looks back at your with a blank, almost quizzical stare, and that is when you realize that she is unaware of the pain she is causing. You feel the hopelessness pass over you. You squirm to free yourself from the chair, but it's no use. This is your life now, listening to this t ~ Rachel Cinelli

my digs look as if they've been dug ~ David Nicholls

There is, of course, a gold mine or a buried treasure on every mortgaged homestead. Whether the farmer ever digs for it or not, it is there, haunting his daydreams when the burden of debt is most unbearable. ~ Fawn M. Brodie

Nature is unselfish," she says. "It only wishes to survive. Humanity inflicts harm on it, digs up the earth, poisons the waters, harnesses rock and metal and stone for its own purposes. We are the protectors. We are the connection between humanity and nature. Nature is always searching for balance. ~ Amy Ewing

You were in business making meth? Do you have any idea what that drug does to people?"

We weren't givin' it away," Concise snaps. "If someone was fool enough to mess himself up, that was his problem."

I shake my head, disgusted. "If you build it, they will come."

If you build it," Concise says, "you cover your rent. If you build it, you pay off the loan sharks. If you build it, you put shoes on your kid's feet and food in his belly and maybe even show up every now and then with a toy that every other goddamn kid in the school already has." He looks up at me. "If you build it, maybe your son don't have to, when he grow up."

It is amazing -- the secrets you can keep, even when you are living in close quarters. "You didn't tell me."

Concise gets up and braces his hands against the upper bunk. "His mama OD'd. He lives with her sister, who can't always be bothered to take care of him. I try to send money so that I know he's eatin' breakfast and gettin' school lunch tickets. I got a little bank account for him, too. Jus' in case he don't want to be part of a street gang, you know? Jus' in case he want to be an astronaut or a football player or somethin'." He digs out a small notebook from his bunk. "I'm writin' him. A diary, like. So he know who his daddy is, by the time he learn to read."

It is always easier to judge someone than to figure out what might have pushed him to the point where he might do something ille ~ Jodi Picoult

IBM uses what I like to call the 'hole-in-the-ground technique' to destroy the competition ... IBM digs a big HOLE in the ground and covers it with leaves. It then puts a big POT OF GOLD nearby. Then it gives the call, 'Hey, look at all this gold, get over here fast.' As soon as the competitor approaches the pot, he falls into the pit ~ John C. Dvorak

That's what a story must feel like to me. It's not, "I want to write about a gravedigger." But you're walking along and - boop! shovel. "Ok, what does one do with a shovel? Digs a hole. Why? I don't know yet. Dig the hole! Oh, look a body." ~ George Saunders

Likewise, every disturbance, whether resolved or not, is making space for an inner engagement. As a shovel digs up and displaces earth, in a way that must seem violent to the earth, an interior space is revealed for the digging. In just this way, when experience opens us, it often feels violent and the urge, quite naturally, is to refill that opening, to make it the way it was. But every experience excavates a depth, which reveals its wisdom once opened to air. ~ Mark Nepo

When he says
He doesn't love you anymore,
Roll your shoulders back
And look him in the eye
Even when it feels like your ribs
Are breaking inward, like spider legs.
When he digs up old aches
That he swore he forgave you for,
Smile
And ask him why he didn't leave you sooner.
Ignore the way the words feel like sandpaper
Running all the way up your throat to your mouth.
When he blames you
For mistakes that wear his face,
Do not scream.
Do not cry.
Tell him that there are boys
Who would be proud to say they'd loved you.
Tell him that in two years
You won't even remember his name
And don't let him see the way you can taste your own lie.
When he leaves
Ignore the howling in your blood
And do not get up after him.
Not even to lock the door.
Do not, do not
Do not.
Smell his shirts when you box them up
To give them back.
Not one.
Swear off dating when you realize
You're chasing ghosts that wear his smile.
It's okay to cry over him.
It's even okay to forgive him.
But do not go back to him.
If he did not know how to love you the first time,
He won't know how to do it the next. ~ Ashe Vernon

Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that's sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair. ~ Sonya Hartnett

I bite off the fingers and spit them out. Lord Loss screams obligingly. One of the snakes digs its fangs into my bald skull and rips out a chunk of flesh. I snatch the snake from its heartless home and chew its head off. I'm starting to enjoy this biting business. ~ Darren Shan

One who hesitates, digs himself a grave. ~ Jan Guillou

Where does it come from, this sickliness? For man is more sick, uncertain, changeable, indeterminate than any other animal, there is no doubt of that - he is the sick animal: how has that come about? Certainly he has also dared more, done more new things, braved more and challenged fate more than all the other animals put together: he, the great experimenter with himself, discontented and insatiable, wrestling with animals, nature, and gods for ultimate domination - he, still unvanquished, eternally directed toward the future, whose own restless energies never leave him in peace, so that his future digs like a spur into the flesh of every present - how should such a courageous and richly endowed animal not also be the most imperiled, the most chronically and profoundly sick of all sick animals? ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Wow," I said as we came to a stop. "These aren't really tents. They're more like cabins. Or like a tent and a cabin had a baby. A 'tenbin.'"
It was a bad joke. A stupid one, and my heart wasn't even a little bit in it. Archer would've laughed at it anyway, I thought, and once again, pain slammed into my chest, nearly leaving me breathless.
Cal didn't say anything, so I just swung my arm out, gesturing to the tents. "Pick any of them. They're all empty."
Still not looking at me, Cal moved toward the tent directly in front of us, and pushed back the flap. It occurred to me that I probably should have just given him the lantern instead of following him inside, but by the time I'd had that thought, he was already in the tent.
I climbed the steps and ducked through the canvas doorway. "Wow," I said to his back. "Not exactly the digs we had at Thorne, huh? ~ Rachel Hawkins

Kids and cameras are a big things with me. Find a kid who digs cameras and share one simple photo tip with her. ~ Nick Kelsh

Normally, the mortal would be emptied of his soul. His truest essence, which, if the bastard was lucky, would be released to be recycled by the cosmos. The 'investor' would then take hold, snuggling in tightly to his host body. At first it's kind of like when you purchase a new pair of shoes. How the hard leather around the opening digs into the flesh it surrounds. Then, after a short period of breaking them in, it begins to only feel uncomfortable when you move a certain way. Soon enough though, you forget that you even have them on. They eventually seem to fit as if you've always worn them. The truly unlucky, though, they are left inside. Paralyzed and powerless to do anything but watch their lives be lived by someone… something, else. ~ Angel Rosa

I had this idea that I could hire myself out as a person to go on archeological digs and dig, without any training! I actually wrote to a number of archeology departments and offered up my services. ~ Jennifer Egan

A poet is an unpaid laborer of a mine where he digs into the mountain to find rough diamonds. He then polishes them with his imagination and emotion to share with everyone. ~ Debasish Mridha

"I always read everything when I was a kid-and I do mean everything, from Nancy Drew to Dickens to my dad's John D. MacDonald-but then I went to regular school and the English teachers started telling me to read 'real' books, so I tried. And you know, I kinda went off reading for a while. I had already been reading literary novels and the classics mixed in with whatever else, but-" She waved a hand. "So I went back to reading whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted to-reading had been my greatest pleasure in all the world. I mean I never really watched all that much television, because we were moving around, never really had solid digs until I was thirteen, so reading was everything. ~ Barbara O'Neal

What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry's tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? ~ Rob Bell

Isaiah opens the door to the bathroom, and steam pours out. He sports a pair of jeans and no shirt.
"Wear some clothes around my girl."
Isaiah digs through his duffel bag. "Why? She already knows I'm the better-looking one. Echo chose you because you've got that smooth mouth." ~ Katie McGarry