Dragonfly Quotes

A young woman stood in the hallway, a suitcase at her feet, a cardboard carton in her hands. She wore a yellow cotton dress with a white flower print. The silver dragonfly on her necklace hung in the hollow of her collarbone and her thick red hair cascaded past her sunburned shoulders. She will tell you that she hadn't chosen that dress with any care, or the necklace, that she hadn't washed her hair or scrubbed her face, put a little red on her lips. Don't believe it. No one looks that good by accident. ~ David Benioff

A girl and a boy, sitting lazily cross-legged under a pale green willow, picking at the grass. She is lying with her head in his lap, long red hair fanned against his knee. Her skin is not my unnatural red but like honeyed cream. She grins up at him, his eyes the color of an evergreen forest, of dragonfly wings, his corn-gold, too-long hair falling over his forehead. And she laughs. When she does her back, her throat arches slightly, and he blushes. He smells of wheat fields and fallen autumn apples soft against the earth, and it is a smell she knows like her own. Under the filmy reed-curtain of the old willow tree, they hold hands and talk quietly, shoes discarded like peach pits. The sun is low in the sky, warm and orange-gold on their young faces, their strong white smiles and freshly washed hair. The light spills onto their shoulders like water from a well. There are sharp-smelling rosemary branches braided into her hair, with their little blue blossoms, and the oil is on their brown fingers. The boy whispers something in the girl's ear, and she closes her eyes, lashes smoking cheekbones like bundles of sage. ~ Catherynne M. Valente

Moonrise
settle back with muffins and tea
until the window empties ~ R. Willmott

It must have been spring because the big tree in front of the house was shedding pods with two wings like a dragonfly, On days when there wasn't any wind, they would spin around in the air as they drifted softly to the ground.
I watched them float all the way down, sitting with my neck craned back until my mouth opened and holding out my hand just in case, but they never landed on it. When one hit the ground I'd look up again, my eyes darting, waiting for the next magical event, the sun warming the yellow hairs on my head.
Waiting like that for the next magic was as good a moment as any other that I can remember in the last sixty -five years. ~ Marlon Brando

The fairy- again, Wendy assumed- was an angry tinkling ball of light with the prettiest girl imaginable inside. Diminutive but... solid, with a scandalous lack of decorous dress. All she wore was a ragged green shift which barely covered her hips and thighs and breasts and was gathered dangerously over only one shoulder. This was both shocking and delightful; it made the tiny creature resemble statues of ancient nymphs and nereids Wendy had seen. Her hair was even done up in classical style, a goddess-like bun of hair so golden it glowed. Tiny pointed ears curved their way through the few dangling tresses. Her eyes were enormous and not even remotely human: they were far apart and glaring.
The crowning glory was, of course, a pair of delicate iridescent wings sprouting from her back. Their shape was somewhere between butterfly and dragonfly. They were clear as glass and thin as onion skin. ~ Liz Braswell

When I was two, a dragonfly flew near me. A man knocked it to the ground and trod on it. I remember crying because I'd caused the dragonfly to be killed. ~ Jane Goodall

If you are old and you wish to be young again, if only for a moment, try and identify a dragonfly. ~ Simon Barnes

It's not about how women are deficient. It's more about how men are deficient. Our social deficiencies, lack of perspective, or whatever you want to call it, is what enables us to study one species of dragonfly for twenty years, or sit in front of a computer for a hundred hours a week writing code. This is not the behavior of a well-balanced and healthy person, but it can obviously lead to great advances in synthetic fibers. Or whatever. ~ Neal Stephenson

Perhaps there was a secret door down low in the wall, a door only large enough for a child. If I stepped through that door, I would be in another world, in fairyland perhaps. It would be warm and bright there, and I would have a magical wand to protect myself. I'd ride on the back of a dragonfly, swooping through the forest. I'd battle dragons and talk to birds and have all kinds of grand adventures.
Later, I found that small door into fairyland could be conjured any time I needed it. The world beyond the door was different every time. Sometimes, I found a little stone house in the woods where I could live with just Nanette and my sister, Marie, and a tabby cat who purred by the fire. Sometimes, I lived in a castle in the air with a handsome prince who loved me. Other times, I was the prince myself, with a golden sword and a white charger. ~ Kate Forsyth

She was young and lovely and surprised and dead. She was also blue. Blue as opals, pale blue. Blue as cornflowers, or dragonfly wings, or a spring - not summer - sky. ~ Laini Taylor

Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone's gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly. ~ Italo Calvino

I love you and I love you and I love you, on battlefields, in shadows, in fading ink, on cold ice splashed with the blood of seals. In the rings of trees. In the wreckage of a planet crumbling to space. In bubbling water. In bee stings and dragonfly wings, in stars. In the deapths of lonely woods where I wandered in my youth, staring up - and even then you watched me. You slid back through my life, and I have known you since before I knew you. ~ Amal El-Mohtar

It's very far away/It takes about a half a day to get there/ If we travel by-dragonfly. ~ Jimi Hendrix

The Fourth Crown Princess of the blue Cresent Islands had sixteen rituals to observe from the moment of waking to when she broke her fast. ~ Julia Golding

You are in love, at a point where pride and apprehension scuffle within you. Part of you wants time to slow down: for this, you say to yourself, is the best period of your whole life. I am in love, I want to savour it, study it, lie around in languor with it; may today last forever. This is your poetical side. However, there is also your prose side, which urges time not to slow down but hurry up. How do you know this is love, your prose side whispers like a sceptical lawyer, it's only been around for a few weeks, a few months. You won't know it's the real thing unless you (and she) still feel the same in, oh, a year or so at least; that's the only way to prove you aren't living a dragonfly mistake. Get through this bit, however much you enjoy it, as fast as possible; then you'll be able to find out whether or not you're really in love. ~ Julian Barnes

Nina Simone Feeling Good

Birds flying high you know how I feel
Sun in the sky you know how I feel
Breeze driftin' on by you know how I feel


It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good

Fish in the sea you know how I feel
River running free you know how I feel
Blossom on the tree you know how I feel




Dragonfly out in the sun you know what I mean, don't you know
Butterflies all havin' fun you know what I mean
Sleep in peace when day is done
That's what I mean

And this old world is a new world
And a bold world
For me

Stars when you shine you know how I feel
Scent of the pine you know how I feel
Oh freedom is mine
And I know how I feel ~ Nina Simone

Baby Kochamma grudged them their moments of high happiness when a dragonfly they'd caught lifted a small stone off their palms with its legs, or when they had permission to bathe the pigs, or they found an egg hot form a hen. But most of all, she grudged them the comfort they drew from each other. She expected from them some token unhappiness. At the very least. ~ Arundhati Roy

The night-sylphs, all of them, were armed with what looked like swords of glass. The pixies and the tiny ones were armed too, if not with knives and miniature swords , then with their own long claws. The pixies were creatures the size of dolls, but with strange attenuated bodies and long limbs, mostly clothed in colourful rags, and with dragonfly wings. Their joints were knobby, and their faces more animalistic. The smaller ones were also winged, but looked half-human and half-insect, with touches of bat and bird. ~ Mercedes Lackey

I no longer hated the whining, menacing dragonfly we rode in, but admired its grace as we surged towards the clouds, the lights of Edinburgh twinkling below us like the starry constellations of a world upside down. ~ Rosie Pugh

IT WAS A HOT AND MUGGY DAY AS I looked up in the powder blue sky that covered the Port of San Pedro. The Bell helicopter circled above like a dragonfly in my Grandma Cholé's rose garden. I don't know if it was the unbearable humidity or the whoop- whoop- whoop of the chopper's rotor blades as they sliced through the air, but something was affecting me. ~ Jose N Harris

A dragonfly settles on a bulrush an inch from my nose. Its wings are like cellophane and Jonah says, "Its wings are like cellophane," and I say, "I was just thinking that," but Jonah says, "Just thinking what?" so maybe I just thought he'd said it. Valium rubs out speech marks and pops thought-bubbles. I've noticed it before. ~ David Mitchell

that he had to be respectful to his parents, and even if he wasn't a Christian, he couldn't make fun of people who went to church. He was also supposed to go to church, even if his parents didn't go - which lots of parents don't, and should. As you maybe know, if you've read some of the other stories about the Sugar Creek Gang, about half of us were not Christians at first. Little Jim had nearly all the religion there was in the whole gang, but most of us became Christians. Dragonfly was the last one of us to be saved - except for little red-haired Tom Till, whose father wouldn't believe in God and whose mother had never had a chance in life to be happy, which is maybe one reason Little Tom Till's big brother, Bob, had turned out to be such a bad boy. It is not easy for a boy to become a Christian unless his father is one too. Most boys do what their dads ~ Paul Hutchens

When a dragonfly flutters by, you may not realize, but it's the greatest flier in nature. It can hover, fly backwards, even upside down. ~ Louie Schwartzberg

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star ~ Joni Mitchell

Add a pair of wings to a pepper pod, you would make a dragonfly. ~ Chris Bradford

It might have been brief, but so much of a kiss - a first kiss especially - is the moment before your lips touch, and before your eyes close, when you're filled with the sight of each other, and with the compulsion, the pull, and it's like...it's like...finding a book inside another book. A small treasure of a book hidden inside a big common one - like...spells printed on dragonfly wings, discovered tucked inside a cookery book, right between the recipes for cabbages and corn. That's what a kiss is like, he thought, no matter how brief: It's a tiny, magical story, and a miraculous interruption of the mundane. ~ Laini Taylor

The wild abundance of air around her gave her a strange tingling feeling right in the places where shoulder blades end and before spine begins. -The Girl with Dragonfly Wings ~ Shilo Niziolek

I can still only see a dragonfly, its wings as thin and light as silk and its body the color of rainbow. But on the wings of this dragonfly I take off and fly, for my soul carries no weight. It is our bodies – these borrowed vehicles of flesh and bone – that weigh us down. Our spirits are eternally free and invincible. ~ Daniela I. Norris

The other day, I tried to remember what was the word for 'dragonfly' and couldn't. ~ Donna Tartt

The old woman had been bent over a patch of heirloom tomatoes, their aroma seeping up into the air, making indiscernible patterns on the sky. -The Girl with Dragonfly Wings ~ Shilo Niziolek

Who would deduce the dragonfly from the larva, the iris from the bud, the lawyer from the infant? ... We are all shape-shifters and magical reinventors. Life is really a plural noun, a caravan of selves. ~ Diane Ackerman

He knew it would take as many years as could think of now to forget the tracks, no matter how deeply buried. Some morning in autumn, spring, or winter he kn he'd wake and, if he didn't go near the window, if he just lay deep and snug and warm, in his bed, he would hear it, faint and far away.
And around the bend of the morning street, up the avenue, between the even rows of sycamore, elm and maple, it the quietness before the start of living, past his house h would hear the familiar sounds. Like the ticking of a doe the rumble of a dozen metal barrels rolling, the hum of single immense dragonfly at dawn. Like a merry-go-round like a small electrical storm, the color of blue lightning, coming, here, and gone. The trolley's chime! The hiss like a sc fountain spigot as it let down and took up its step, and starting of the dream again, as on it sailed along its way, traveling a hidden and buried track to some hidden and buried destination. ~ Ray Bradbury

A dragonfly arrives and leaves like a change of mind. ~ David Mitchell

Bound by Blood, Marked by the Dragonfly. ~ Lisa Akers

Hate dissevers takin and goral, black bear and beaver, deer, leopard and dragonfly harboured by this hermitage, hate blanches your still- human eyes, flows down larynx and pharynx and trachea, leadens the breath and whirlpools memory's voice till all you know all you feel all you seek is nothingness. ~ Karthika Nair

Smile / to see the lake / lay / the still sky / And / out for an easy / make / the dragonfly. ~ Lorine Niedecker

The girls chirped and chatted like uncaged warblers. They were delirious with joy ... Intoxications of life's morning! Enchanted years! The wing of a dragonfly trembles! Oh, reader, whoever you may be, do you have such memories? Have you walked in the underbrush, pushing aside branches for the charming head behind you? Have you slid laughing, down some slope wet with rain, with the woman you loved? ~ Victor Hugo

Awakening is a bound, not weighted down with the past that inculpates the present and demands compensation from the future, a bound out of the drunkenness of remorse and resentment. Awakening is a commencement. It is a point of departure. We come alive; we become alive
to the dragonfly, to the twisted grain of the porch railing. Awakening is a birth. Awakening is joyous. The innocence of awakening, the active disconnection from the past, make possible this joy. How good to be alive! How refreshing is this silence! How calm the morning is! How pungent it smells! In every joy there is an awakening. ~ Alphonso Lingis

Go to sleep, baby, Mama will sing. Of blue butterflies, and dragonfly wings. Moonlight and sunbeams, raiment so fine. Silver and gold, for baby of mine. Go to sleep, baby. Sister will tell, of wolves and of lambs, and demons who fell. ~ Kim Harrison

Shuttered like a fan no-one suspects your shoulder blades of wings. While you lay on your belly I kneaded the hard edges of your flight. You are a fallen angel but still as the angels are; body light as a dragonfly, great gold wings cut across the sun. ~ Jeanette Winterson

This dragonfly came up to me. He was hovering right in front of my face, and I was really examining him, thinking, How does he see me? I became enlightened. ~ Ziggy Marley

The dragonfly is an exceptionally beautiful insect and a fierce carnivore. It has four wings that beat independently. This gives it an ability to maneuver in the air with superb dexterity. A dragonfly can put on a burst of speed, stop on a dime, hover, fly backward, and switch direction in a flash. This is a hunting behavior known as hawking. ~ Richard Preston

Their love as a dragonfly, skimming over echo park, stoppin to visit the lotus. Eating dreams and drinking blue sky. ~ Janet Fitch

But for the hours of the night, I was helpless; powerless to move as a dragonfly in amber. ~ Diana Gabaldon

A red dragonfly hovers above a backwater of the stream, its wings moving so fast that the eye sees not wings in movement but a probability distribution of where the wings might be, like electron orbitals: a quantum-mechanical effect that maybe explains why the insect can apparently teleport from one place to another, disappearing from one point and reappearing a couple of meters away, without seeming to pass through the space in between. There sure is a lot of bright stuff in the jungle. Randy figures that, in the natural world, anything that is colored so brightly must be some kind of serious evolutionary badass. ~ Neal Stephenson

We were totally high and we had Quiet Riot play at our after-show party at the Dragonfly. I think we reunited them, just like we did W.A.S.P. We take sole responsibility for the return of retro heavy metal, and I'm ashamed. But ~ Marilyn Manson