Dirt Quotes

He was beautiful.
Whatever else he was, Sage was by far the most magnetic man I had ever seen. I had felt it in my dreams, and it was even more true in real life. I welcomed the chance to study him without his knowledge.
He glanced up, and I quickly closed my eyes, feigning sleep. Had he seen me? The scratching stopped. He was looking at me, I knew it. I held my breath and willed my eyes not to pop open and see if he was staring.
Finally the scratching started up again. I forced myself to slowly count to ten before I opened my eyelids the tiniest bit and peeked through my lashes.
Good-he wasn't looking at me.
I opened my eyes a little wider. What was he doing? Moving only my eyes, I glanced down at the dirt floor in front of him…
…and saw a picture of me, fast asleep.
It was incredible. I could see his tools laid out beside the picture: rocks in several sizes and shapes, a couple of twigs…the most rudimentary materials, and yet what he was etching into the floor wouldn't look out of place on an art gallery wall. It was beautiful…far more beautiful than I thought I actually looked in my sleep. Is that how he saw me?
Sage lifted his head again, and I shut my eyes. I imagined him studying me, taking careful note of my features and filtering them through his own senses. My heartbeat quickened, and it took all my willpower to remain still.
"You can keep pretending to be asleep if you'd like, but I don't see a career for you as an actres ~ Hilary Duff

My dad had always said to not trust something unless it's taken a tumble in the dirt. He'd meant it for people, and for things. Shiny and new didn't exist for humankind any more. ~ Katherine McIntyre

Must the Earth forever be arranged like an ocean steamer, with large, luxurious rooms and luxurious food for a select few, and underneath in the steerage, where the great mass can barely breathe from dirt and the poisonous air? ~ Various

I honestly can't believe how people can think they can do dirt and not get dirty.

And for those slinging mud ...take a look at your hands. ~ Karen E. Quinones Miller

I can sometimes gaze out of the window, at the sheep, ponies, grazing deer, and numerous woodland folk. It's a wonderful setting in which to write. I live on a dirt road, miles from anywhere, with no neighbors. ~ Raymond Buckland

I am like a table cloth..sit ,eat,drink spread the dirt and through it..when you need it then wash it and do this again. ~ Sher E Yazdan

I read, go for walks and I love to garden. My hands are such a mess. People think I should have movie star hands, but they're just gardening ones. Always slightly grubby and with a bit of dirt under the fingernails. ~ Amanda Donohoe

Something's died in me," she goes. "It took a long time for it to do it, but it's dead. You've killed something, just like you'd took an axe to it. Everything is dirt now. ~ Raymond Carver

In the wake of my broken dreams
In the dirt and the dust and the days that felt like weeks.
I found the person that I'm meant to be
'Cause when I felt like giving up
When death was closing in
I shut my eyes
And black out the darkness with light from inside
I've given more
Than what I've got
I've given all
Of what I'm not
I've watched this war consume all that we could become
Facing my fears in the dark
But if I die
Before it's done
Please take these words
My final thoughts
The only way to shine your light is in the dark.
Never let life kill your spark
This is the fallout
Yeah it's the end of the world
We'll spread the noise to everyone and let them all know you heard
A system meltdown
It's time we expose
The 'cause of chaos is our own
I've given more
Than what I've got
I've given all
Of what I'm not
I've watched this war consume all that we could become
Facing my fears in the dark
But if I die
Before it's done
Please take these words
My final thoughts
The only way to shine your light is in the dark.
Never let life kill your spark
Never let life kill your spark
Never let life kill your spark
Facing my fears in the dark
I've given more
Than what I've got
I've given all
Of what I'm not
I've watched this war consume all that we could become
If I die
Befo ~ Crown The Empire

Native Soil

There's
Nobody simpler than us, or with
more pride, or fewer tears.
(1922)

Our hearts don't wear it as an amulet,
it doesn't sob beneath the poet's hand,
nor irritate the wounds we can't forget
in our bitter sleep. It's not the Promised Land.
Our souls don't calculate its worth
as a commodity to be sold and bought;
sick, and poor, and silent on this earth,
often we don't give it a thought.
Yes, for us it's the dirt on our galoshes,
yes, for us it's the grit between our teeth.
Dust, and we grind and crumble and crush it,
the gentle and unimplicated earth.
But we'll lie in it, become its weeds and flowers,
so unembarrassedly we call it - ours. ~ Anna Akhmatova

Matter doesn't disappear, it transforms. Energy is the same way. The Earth is layer upon layer of all that has existed, remembered by the dirt. ~ Adrienne Maree Brown

So you're met Finn. He's a dash, isn't he? If I weren't older than dirt and ugly as sin, I'd climb that like a French alp. ~ Kate Quinn

God's forgiveness is not just a casual statement; it is the complete blotting out of all dirt and degradation of our past, present, and future. ~ Billy Graham

When you are an actor, you have to stay inside this world, but when you are with the crew, on the outside, you are in the dirt, working through all the issues. It's just a different way of working, and I think I preferred it. ~ Angelina Jolie

The years of disillusion, the long debate of who-belongs-to-who, gathered at the mighty feet of the Bangladesh Liberation War like flood waters rising, gathering thick weeds and crusty dirt and pulling it all in one direction. At times, when the body count was high and the air tasted like bloody ash, the way mass graves smell, Sariyah had wondered what progress was supposed to taste like. Often it tasted like unanswered questions, stuck in the teeth. Bangladesh had given her the true answer, though: progress at its best is home-grown. It should taste like joy – pure, unhindered joy. Like the freshest sun-ripened mango on a tree, a little sunrise in her palm. ~ Katherine Russell

Eve was tall. Her face had cheekbones. Her shoulders slumped when she walked. The shelves in her living room were bent beneath the books. She worked for a publisher; oh, you've heard of him, she said.
Her life was one in which everything was left undone - letters unanswered, bills on the floor, the butter sitting out all night. Perhaps that was why her husband had left her; he was even more hopeless than she. At least she was gay. She stepped from her littered doorway in pretty clothes, like a woman who lives in the barrio walking to a limousine, stray dogs and dirt on the way. ~ James Salter

THIS TORTURE
Why should we tell you our love stories
when you spill them together like blood in the dirt?
Love is a pearl lost on the ocean floor,
or a fire we can't see,
but how does saying that
push us through the top of the head into
the light above the head?
Love is not
an iron pot, so this boiling energy
won't help.
Soul, heart, self.
Beyond and within those
is one saying,
How long before I'm free of this torture! ~ Rumi

Rule of religion: purpose breathes even in dirt and stones. ~ Mason Cooley

Reuss would spend the remainder of his meteoric life on the move, living out of a backpack on very little money, sleeping in the dirt, cheerfully going hungry for days at a time. ~ Jon Krakauer

No longer could I root happily into my mother's company and find comfort in her rounded shape. There was no one to tell me the facts. How much nutrition to pull from the dirt? Would the beetles bring harm? And what of the worms? Friends, foe, or nevermind? ~ Kate Bernheimer

Molly wondered if these boys really loved baseball, the sound and smell of it, the rhythm of it, the leather and wood, the grass and dirt, the story and surprise in a good game. ~ Mick Cochrane

Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt. ~ Johnny Cash

It was like archeology. There was digging and there was dirt. And there was broken things. ~ Louise Penny

You say cute. I say plague-carrying, sticky-fingered dirt monsters," Sheridan said slapping Eve on the shoulder as she passed her to leave the room. ~ Elizabeth C. Mock

I walked far down a dirt side road and into a farmer's field - some sort of cereal that was chest high and corn green and rustled as its blades inflicted small paper burns on my skin as I walked through them. And in that field, when the appointed hour, minute, and second of the darkness came, I lay myself down on the ground, surrounded by the tall pithy grain stalks and the faint sound of insects, and held my breath, there experiencing a mood that I have never really been able to shake completely - a mood of darkness and inevitability and facination - a mood that surely must have been held by most young people since the dawn of time as they have crooked their necks, stared at the heavens, and watched their sky go out. ~ Douglas Coupland

re: the US agriculture industry: " This puts us in the odd position of consuming fossil fuels --geologically one of the rarest and most useful resources ever discovered-- to provide a substitute for dirt --the cheapest and most widely available agricultural input imaginable. ~ David R. Montgomery

It was her plan to outrun all of that, and somewhere in that running she had started to fly. She no longer felt like touching all the dirt and the muck she had so patiently submitted herself to so that people would think she was a very nice girl. She was not such a very nice girl. Nobody who was very, very nice would ever work this hard to take something they wanted only for themselves. ~ Ann Patchett

I succeeded on my own, why can't you?" is a dispassionate call to the majority of Native people to forsake one another. The end results is each of us digging our own way out of the hole, filling up the path with dirt as we go. Such things as justice and principles prevent the whole people from becoming dispassionate. Until all of us are free, the few who think they are remain tainted with enslavement. ~ Lee Maracle

All our bright minds," Feynman said sardonically, "and we can't figure how to stop the enemy from dumping dirt on us." Freeman said with delicate precision, "We are hothouse flowers, really. Not made for the blunt edge of war." Nods ~ Gregory Benford

At Last It's a perfect winter day. No wind. No Arctic freeze. Cloudless azure sky. A day to fly. Snow drapes the mountain like ermine, fabulous feather- light powder coaxing me to flee the confines of my room, brave the mostly plowed road up to the closest ski resort. To run from the cloying silence connected Mom and Dad, into encompassing stillness far away from city dirt and noise Far above suburban gridlock. Far beyond the grasp of home. ~ Ellen Hopkins

Gold can gild a rotten stick, and dirt sully an ingot. ~ Philip Sidney

Vibrant red dirt stretched as far as the eye could see. ~ O.G. Gough

A bath is not enough to remove all your dirt if you are dirty from inside. ~ Hussain Rasheed

And Ulysses stopped up his ears against the siren's song," recited Victor, pulling the plugs from his own ears as Serena collapsed to the dirt lot, "for it was death. ~ V.E Schwab

It lies here deep in the heart, the small chest of pain
Sharp words like daggers placed it here
To fill with hurt
In filling it grew heavy and drug me down
For to not feel is not to live
Until I rest at last in dirt
The worst of you got the best of me ... ~ Neil Leckman

The ochre-yellow linoleum floor hasn't been scrubbed for some time; splotches of dirt bloom on it like grey pressed flowers. ~ Margaret Atwood

Reading is just as vital to my health as walking, eating, sleeping, laughing, and playing in the dirt. ~ HeadTalk

It's funny to me how a man can do all the dirt in the world and the only way they know how to fix it is with sex. ~ Demettrea

There is more mental health cure found in a pile of dirt than in all the behavioral therapy and drugs in modern medical science. ~ J.S.B. Morse

Fuming, I reach for the stick at my feet; however, this is the precise moment that a small black garter snake slithers out in front of me. I do what any normal fourteen-year-old girl would do: scream my head off, dance in spastic horror, and throw my tobacco knife into the dirt-completely missing the snake. I look to Luke for help, but he's laughing hysterically, which really gets my already hot blood boiling. Wrists on sweaty forehead, breathing totally out of control, I walk around in a circle until the disgusting little reptile slithers away.
I am-offically-over it. ~ Alecia Whitaker

We walk on the ground and give sparse recognition to the mud that will be the eternal homes for the bodies that we praise so much. Ground might not worth much but it holds billions of history and some of humanity's greatest treasures, One day it will become our permanent home. Maybe we should begin a mud religion and give reverence to the dirt, in the end, it is the dirt, ground and Mother Earth that wins and reigns supreme throughout the centuries. ~ Crystal Evans

It's in our nature. If you are a plumber, there is an objective way to establish whether you put together a great piping system or not. Art is a bit more slippery than that. So, when you fill a gallery with dirt and someone comes along waving wads of bills, it's difficult not to take them because they become a tangible acknowledgement that what you've been doing actually makes sense. ~ Maurizio Cattelan

Don't be frightened by your beauty, you haven't until now, known you had it, and so you're uncorrupted by it. You can never take any credit for it, or make it your aim. But it would be as much deceit to deny your beauty or tell yourself that what you see is not you. Beauty hovers around you wherever you go, which is why these two poor young men chase after you when you're covered in dirt and dressed in rags. Not beauty of the face or form. Something eternal. This beauty that comes from dresses and jewels is somewhat of an illusion. But even illusion has its place. And that's what parties and dancing are for. ~ Julie Berry

To most white people, jazz means black and jazz means dirt, and that's not what I play. I play black classical music. ~ Nina Simone

Suddenly William loomed over him, scowling, snarling and bloody, his suit dirt-stained and ripped. "Do you know. How many strands. Of hair I lost. On my way down?"
Whatever. "Math was never my thing, but I'm gonna say you lost…a lot."
Electric-blues glittered with menace. "You are a cruel, sadistic bastard. My hair needs TLC and you…you… Damn you! I've gutted men for less."
"I know. I've watched you." Paris lumbered to his feet and scanned the rocky bank they stood upon, the crimson ocean lapping and bubbling in every direction. The drawbridge was only a fifty-yard dash away. "Don't kill the messenger, but I'm thinking you should change your dating profile to balding."
Masculine cheeks went scarlet as the big bad warrior struggled for a comeback.
…
"One of these days you're going to wake up," William finally said, "and I will have shaved you. Everywhere."
"Won't make a difference. Women will still want me. But you know what else? What I did to you wasn't cruel, Willy." He offered the warrior a white-flag grin. A trick. A lie. "This, however, is."
He grabbed William by the wrist, swung the man around and around before at last releasing him and hurling his body directly onto the bridge. ~ Gena Showalter

I remember everything What have I become? My sweetest friend? E veryone I know goes away in the end You could have it all My empire of dirt I will let you down I will make you hurt. ~ Johnny Cash

Some revelations came only with the sound of dirt falling on a coffin:the ones that mattered, the ones that made for regrets. ~ John Connolly

I believe that antibacterial soap is destroying our resistance to dirt and disease so that one day we'll all be wiped out by the common cold ~ Neil Gaiman

Finally, on a windswept, befogged afternoon, the sort in which all of Delhi is wearing a sweater of atmospheric dirt, he went over with the driver to see the Khuranas. ~ Karan Mahajan

So I said, "Hey, Joe," and hoped it was a start. He was startled. He opened and closed his mouth a few times. He made a growling noise deep in his chest, a low rumble that made my skin itch. It was pleased, that sound, like even just me saying his name was enough to make him happy. For all I knew, it was. It cut off as quickly as it started. He looked faintly embarrassed. I scuffed my foot in the dirt, waiting. He said, "Hey, Ox." He cleared his throat and looked down. "Hi." It was weird, that disconnect between the boy I'd known and the man before me. His voice was deeper and he was bigger than he'd ever been. He radiated power that had never been there before. It fit him well. I remembered that day that I'd really seen him for the first time, wearing those running shorts and little else. I pushed those thoughts away. I didn't want him sniffing me out. Not yet. Because attraction wasn't the problem right now. Especially not right now. I ~ T.J. Klune

Mom said Dad was wasting his time, that nobody could talk Tyler out of anything once his mind was made up. 'You may as well take a broom and start sweeping dirt off the mountain,' she said. ~ Tara Westover

All gold and silver rather turn to dirt, An 'tis no better reckoned but of these Who worship dirty gods. ~ William Shakespeare

Man is made for something better than disturbing dirt. ~ Oscar Wilde

The Deadwood dirt they painted on us with powder. The air always smelled of livestock and something burning, gave a sooty, dense feel to the air. It was a mixture of odors. ~ Robin Weigert

One could see the full-page color pictures for oneself: the blue-eyed, blond-haired Aryan settlers who now industriously tilled, culled, plowed, and so forth in the vast grain bowl of the world, the Ukraine. Those fellows certainly looked happy. And their farms and cottages were clean. You didn't see pictures of drunken dull-wilted Poles any more, slouched on sagging porches or hawking a few sickly turnips at the village market. All a thing of the past, like rutted dirt roads that once turned to slop in the rainy season, bogging down the carts. ~ Anonymous

Franklin Delano Roosevelt is the new president. He won in a landslide. Landslide makes me think of rocks and dirt falling down a mountain. Not sure what that has to do with an election. But maybe it does. My papa voted. He is a pebble. Lots of pebbles make a landslide, right? His vote counted.

Roosevelt will move into the White House and will have a fine supper to celebrate, I guess. Papa had cornbread and buttermilk and beans with his friends at my house. I bet papa enjoyed his celebration more. ~ Sharon M. Draper

Under all this dirt the floor is really very clean. ~ Lydia Davis

The time to clean our city of any dirt begins with individual action for collective clean communities. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I meet many a man, working ridiculous house for a wage that merely adds to their happiness, and if man can be so pre-occupied in waking for another's dream; than my experience has taught me one thing, the magic of our world exists in those who create alchemy from the dirt they have been shoved upon. ~ Nikki Rowe

When you set a story in a real place, it breathes differently. You can sink to your knees and feel the dirt on your palms. The shadows in the trees are alive. It's almost like your story interrupts the terrifying beauty that had already existed. ~ Layne Moore

A Sufi will say – Everything is beautiful, even the dirt that clings beneath my feet. ~ Zarina Bibi

M'sieur, I am as a slave to my wife." He kissed the tips of his fingers. "I am as the dirt beneath her feet." He clasped his hands. "I must bestow on her all that she desires, or die!"
"Pray make use of my sword, " invited his Grace. "It is in the corner behind you. ~ Georgette Heyer

Shadows ran all around her and someone was talking to her but it was all just white noise. Goodbye solo she would never perform. Goodbye perfect night that never got the chance to end in Garrett's arms. Garrett, oh god. Goodbye love of her life, she had loved him and with the thought of never seeing him again her body gave up a single tear. It escaped her eye and coursed through the blood and dirt on her cheek making a single clean streak as the blackness took over. ~ Renee Jean

I've seen marvelous things, Sunday. I've looked back from the edge of the system and seen this planet, this Earth, reduced to a tiny dot of pale blue. I know what that feels like. To think that dot is where we came from, where we evolved out of the chaos and the dirt. And I know what it feels like to imagine going further. To hold that incredible, dangerous thought in my mind, if only for an instant. To think: what if I don't go home? What if I just keep traveling? Watching that pale-blue dot fall ever further away, until the darkness swallowed it and there was no turning back. Until Earth was just a blue memory. ~ Alastair Reynolds

The 9th chamber, leave you trapped inside my hallway
You try to flee but you got smoked up by the doorway (blaow! blaow! blaow!)
No question, I send your ass back, right to the essence
Your whole frame is smothered in dirt, now how you restin ~ Ghostface Killah

I hate the countrie's dirt and manners, yet I love the silence; I embrace the wit; A courtship, flowing here in full tide. But loathe the expense, the vanity and pride. No place each way is happy. ~ William Habington

This is my real bed-rock objection to the eastern systems. They decry all manly virtue as dangerous and wicked, and they look upon Nature as evil. True enough, everything is evil relatively to Adonai; for all stain is impurity. A bee's swarm is evil - inside one's clothes. "Dirt is matter in the wrong place." It is dirt to connect sex with statuary, morals with art.
Only Adonai, who is in a sense the True Meaning of everything, cannot defile any idea. This is a hard saying, though true, for nothing of course is dirtier than to try and use Adonai as a fig-leaf for one's shame.
To seduce women under the pretense of religion is unutterable foulness; though both adultery and religion are themselves clean. To mix jam and mustard is a messy mistake. ~ Aleister Crowley

You've been given status today, but never forget where you came from. You came from dirt and will return to dirt. You will be on that day as you began: just you and Him. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

She found half of a sea biscuit and offered it to Sus. The young girl held it between two fingers and licked a corner. "It tastes like dirt." "And how would you know?" Felissa said, putting her fists on her hips. "You eat dirt often, do you? Snacking on mud pies when our backs are turned?" "It tastes how dirt smells," Sus said. ~ Shannon Hale

I dreamed that Curran and I killed a dinosaur and then had sex in the dirt. ~ Ilona Andrews

We sealed my father's grave on a day of stark contrasts, of black against white, and it was the last time I'd ever find myself in a place of such extremes. Because in the months after the dirt fell on the coffin, my life began to shift to shades of gray, almost like the universe had taken a big stick and stirred up the whole scene at that cemetery, mixing up everything and repainting my world. ~ Beth Fantaskey

Felicity looks like a girl whose lollipop has just landed in the dirt. ~ Anonymous

You can count on one hand the white rappers that have made it. So I just wanted to show the point of view of an actor in Hollywood, because what could be more soft than that. Rapping about auditions and acting and stuff. I thought it was just uncharted territory to clown on, so that pushed through with Dirt Nasty. ~ Simon Rex

It is the first act. The primal thrust and scream.
Which is why the newborn's immediate deed and concern
Is to cry out. To release with great violence from
Its tiny throat exploding with fire and caked blood,
A name to walk upon the earth.

It is the naming of paradisal beasts, the first duty
Of man upon rising from the dirt and God's holy spittle.

But I did not know this at first. ~ Ramil Digal Gulle

A flower earns its honor in the dirt. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The river of his youth had been diverted and poured out broadly across the land to seep through dirt to the roots of crops instead of running in its bed. The river was no longer a river, and the desert was no longer a desert. Nothing was as it had been.
He knew what had happened to the sagelands. He himself had helped burn them. Then men like his father had seized the river without a trace of evil in their hearts, sure of themselves but ignorant, and children of their time entirely, with no other bearings to rely on. Irrigators and fruit-tree growers, they believed the river to be theirs. His own life spanned that time and this, and so he believed in the old fast river as much as he believed in apple orchards, and yet he saw that the two were at odds, the river defeated that apples might grow as far as Royal Slope. It made no more sense to love the river and at the same time kill it growing apples than it made sense to love small birds on the wing and shoot them over pointing dogs. But he'd come into the world in another time, a time immune to these contradictions and in the end he couldn't shake old ways any more than he could shake his name. ~ David Guterson

I can't tell you what I look like. I look in the mirror and see
nothing but space. Space reflecting space, that's what the
mirror shows. It figures because Grandmamma said I was
nothing but dirt. Dirt under her feet she'd say. Dirt she needed
to keep kicking out of the way. Grandmamma said I wasn't
sweeping-up kind of dirt; I was the kind of dirt you needed to
kick and scrape off the bottom of your shoes. ~ Jan Fink

in the most decent sometimes sun
there is the softsmoke feeling from urns
and the canned sound of old battleplanes
and if you go inside and run your finger
along the window ledge you'll find
dirt, maybe even earth.
and if you look out the window
there will be the day, and as you
get older you'll keep looking
keep looking
sucking your tongue in a little
ah ah no no maybe

some do it naturally
some obscenely
everywhere. ~ Charles Bukowski

Tell me!" Cecily insisted later, shaking Colby by both arms.
"Cut it out, you'll dismember me," Colby said, chuckling.
She let go of the artificial arm and wrapped both hands around the good one. "I want to know. Listen, this is my covert operation. You're just a stand-in!"
"I promised I wouldn't tell."
"You promised in Lakota. Tell me in English what you promised in Lakota."
He gave in. He did tell her, but not Leta, what was said, but only about the men coming to the reservation soon.
"We'll need the license plate number," she said. "It can be traced.
"Oh, of course," he said facetiously. "They'll certainly come here with their own license plate on the car so that everyone knows who they are!"
"Damn!"
He chuckled at her irritation. He was about to tell her about his alternative method when a big sport utility vehicle came flying down the dirt road and pulled up right in front of Leta's small house.
Tate Winthrop got out, wearing jeans and a buckskin jacket and sunglasses. His thick hair fell around his shoulders and down his back like a straight black silk curtain. Cecily stared at it with curious fascination. In all the years she'd known him, she'd very rarely seen his hair down.
"All you need is the war paint," Colby said in a resigned tone. He turned the uninjured cheek toward the newcomer. "Go ahead. I like matching scars."
Tate took off the dark glasses and looked from Cecily to Colby without smiling. "Holden ~ Diana Palmer

Not until Theodore Roosevelt resigned his prestigious position as assistant secretary of the navy in 1898 to fight with the Rough Riders in the Cuban dirt would there be a rich man as weirdly rabid to join American forces in combat as Lafayette was. The two shared a child's ideal of manly military glory. Though in Lafayette's defense, he was an actual teenager, unlike the thirty-nine-year-old TR. ~ Sarah Vowell

You know what I love best about baseball? The pine tar, the resin, the grass, the dirt - and that's just in the hot-dogs. ~ David Letterman

I have told people that writing this book has been like brushing away dirt from a fossil. What a load of shit. It has been like hacking away at a freezer with a screwdriver. ~ Amy Poehler

People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die. ~ Plato

Each beautiful thing
we love
starts first as the dirt
of dust
and
stars. ~ Atticus Poetry

Of course the dust is building up unseen, but you learn to repress this for as long as it goes unnoticed by guests. And then one day someone moves a piece of furniture without your say-so, and everything comes into plain view. Dirt and scratch marks. Permanent damage to the parquet floor. By then it's too late. ~ Fredrik Backman

You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won't tell you that he loves you, but he loves you. And you feel like you've done something terrible, like robbed a liquor store, or swallowed pills, or shoveled yourself a grave in the dirt, and you're tired. You're in a car with a beautiful boy, and you're trying not to tell him that you love him, and you're trying to choke down the feeling, and you're trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you've discovered something you didn't even have a name for. ~ Richard Siken

It wasn't only my friends who suffered from female rivalry. I remember when I was just sixteen years old, during spring vacation, being whisked off to an early lunch by my best friend's brother, only to discover, to my astonishment and hurt, that she was expecting some college boys to drop by and didn't want me there to compete with her. When I started college at Sarah Lawrence, I soon noticed that while some of my classmates were indeed true friends, others seemed to resent that I had a boyfriend. It didn't help that Sarah Lawrence, a former girls' school, included very few straight men among its student body--an early lesson in how competing for items in short supply often brings out the worst in women.

In graduate school, the stakes got higher, and the competition got stiffer, a trend that continued when I went on to vie for a limited number of academic jobs. I always had friends and colleagues with whom I could have trusted my life--but I also found women who seemed to view not only me but all other female academics as their rivals.

This sense of rivalry became more painful when I divorced my first husband. Many of my friends I depended on for comfort and support suddenly began to view me as a threat. Some took me out to lunch to get the dirt, then dropped me soon after. I think they found it disturbing that I left my unhappy marriage while they were still committed to theirs. For other women, the threat seemed more immediate--twice I was told in ~ Susan Shapiro Barash

Joe Lon and Willard slipped out of their shirts. Willard flipped over and walked around in the dirt on his hands. Joe Lon took the bottle of whiskey out of his back pocket, set it carefully on the step of the Winnebago, checking out Susan Gender's red pants again as he did. Then he went into a steady handstand and did six dips, his nose just short of the dirt each time he went down. They both came off their hands and looked at Duffy.
"I'm impressed," said Duffy, shortly. "What the hell are you, gymnasts?"
"Drunks," said Joe Lon picking up the bottle. ~ Harry Crews

For a moment, half blinded by dirt, I couldn't see Jamie at all. Then I spotted him. He was under the bear, one arm locked around its neck, his head tucked into the joint of the shoulder just under the drooling jaws. ~ Diana Gabaldon

As DH Lawrence said, the Protestant societies do dirt on sex, it is their dirty mind which aligns sex and a woman's genitals with the debased and soiled. This is something terrible, I think, and to be contended with head-on in art. ~ Micheline Aharonian Marcom

I got my face close up to the man still standing. I let him understand that there was oodles of danger in me; my head wobbled loose, three ticks off center. This scary face is all them such as me has to show this other world, the world in charge of our world, that musters any authority, gets any reluctant respect at all. If us lower elements didn't show our teeth plenty and act fast to bite, we'd just be soft, loamy dirt anybody could walk on, anytime, and you know they would, too, since even with a show of teeth there's a grassless path worn clear across our brains and backs. ~ Daniel Woodrell

People were leaping off La Bestia and running as if chased by demons spilling from hell. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Melquis and Edith jump together; I could tell Solyapa was still in front of me. I let go more out of reflex than plan, and regretted it that instant, thinking that perhaps I should have helped Solyapa first. No matter, I was surprised by the jerky scrape of dirt against my flesh as it tugged and wrestled against me as I kept moving forward despite being on the ground. The dirt itself was surprisingly hot; there was red in my eyes, nothing was clear; I felt a pain over the front of my head and my right eye was throbbing. ~ -Milan Sime Martinic, Ironway: Watching Over Benjamin Hill -

The only footwear I need is an inexpensive pair of blue sneakers. They have soft fabric tops and soft rubber-like soles. I get them one size too large so I can wiggle my toes. I feel as free as though I were barefoot! And I can usually get 1,500 miles to a pair. I wear a pair of navy blue socks.There's a reason why I chose navy blue for my wearing apparel-it's a very practical color, doesn't show dirt, and the color blue does represent peace and spirituality. ~ Peace Pilgrim

Perhaps I won't tire of her," Gray protested, just to be contrary. Because, apparently, that was how brothers behaved.
"Perhaps a dolphin will fly out of your arse. And here's an argument even you can't refuse. Grayson Shipping doesn't need a reputation for delivering damaged goods. You want me to hand George Waltham an impregnated governess?"
"I wouldn't get her with child. Give me that much credit, at least."
"I give you credit for nothing. Let's try this one last time, shall we? You made me this ship's captain. If I'm the captain, what I say goes. And I say you don't touch her. If you can't abide by my orders, take command of the ship yourself and let me go home."
"Go home and do what? Squander your fortune and talent on dirt farming?"
"Go home and take care of my own family. Go home and do what I damn well please, for once."
Cursing, Gray leaned against the wall. He knew Joss would make good on that threat, too. It hadn't been easy, coaxing his brother out of mourning. Gray had resorted to outright bullying just to convince him to take command of the Aphrodite, threatening to cut off his income unless he reported to London as agreed. But he needed Joss, if this shipping concern was to stay afloat. He'd worked too hard, sacrificed too much to see it fail.
And if Joss didn't become a willing partner, it all would have been in vain.
"Stay away from the girl, Gray."
Gray sighed. "We're on the same ship. I can't help but be near her ~ Tessa Dare

He is tangled in Isabelle's arms, he is curtained by Isabelle's hair, he is touching Isabelle's body, he is lost in Isabelle, in her smell and her taste and the silk of her skin.
He is onstage, the music pounding, the floor shaking, the audience cheering, his heart beating beating beating in time with the drumbeat.
He is laughing with Clary, dancing with Clary, eating with Clary, running through the streets of Brooklyn with Clary, they are children together, they are one half of a whole, they hold hands and squeeze tight and pledge never to let go.
He is going cold, stiff, the life draining out of him, he is below, in the dark, clawing his way to the light, fingernails scraping dirt, mouth filled with dirt, eyes clogged with dirt, he is straining, reaching, dragging himself up toward the sky, and when he reaches it, he opens his mouth wide but does not breathe, for he no longer needs to breathe, only to feed. And he is so very hungry.
He is sinking his teeth into the neck of an angel's child, he is drinking the light.
He is bearing a Mark, and it burns.
He is raising his face to meet the gaze of an angel, he is flayed by the fury of angel fire, and yet still, impudent and bloodless, he lives.
He is in a cage.
He is in hell.
He is bent over the broken body of a beautiful girl, he is praying to whatever god that will listen, please let her live, anything to let her live.
He is giving away that which is most precious to him, ~ Cassandra Clare

They didn't want to take the crew-cab back to town, because they didn't want to sit where those guys had sat, so they rode the backhoe, as before, Westwood driving, Reacher and Chang face to face above his head, but this time on the dirt road. Which was slow, but more comfortable. They parked in the dealer's lot. The salesman came out. The backhoe was examined. It was a little stained by crushed wheat, and a little scratched on the sides. There was a little dirt caked on. And the front bucket had a dimple, where the bullet had struck. Not new anymore. Not exactly. Reacher gave the guy five grand from their leftover money. Easy come, easy go. Then ~ Lee Child

Apparently, what differentiates the mere rich from the filthy rich is a servant who treats you like dirt. ~ Paula Wall

Speed is relative. Does it feel fast going 70 miles per hour down an eight lane highway? No, probably not, but I bet it does if you are going down some single lane dirt road. It's the same in a race car. It depends on the track. ~ Kyle Petty

Any time I'm 'bout to judge, I think about the dirt I done. ~ K-Rino

After the last shovel of dirt was patted in place, I sat down and let my mind drift back through the years. I thought of the old K. C. Baking Powder can, and the first time I saw my pups in the box at the depot. I thought of the fifty dollars, the nickels and dimes, and the fishermen and blackberry patches.
I looked at his grave and, with tears in my eyes, I voiced these words: You were worth it, old friend, and a thousand times over. ~ Wilson Rawls