Gathering Blue Quotes

You will fail. Then they will kill you. - Vandara to Kira, following Kira's trial. ~ Lois Lowry

'Gathering Blue' was a separate book. I wanted to explore what a society might become after a catastrophic world event. Only at the end did I realize I could make it connect to 'The Giver.' ~ Lois Lowry

Furthermore, the sense of passion or of power, of depth and vibrancy, feeling and vision, we take away from any work is the result of the intermingling, balance, play, and antagonism between these: it is the arrangement of blues, not any blue itself, which lets us see the mood it formulates, whether pensive melancholy or thoughtless delight, so that one to whom aesthetic experience comes easily will see, as Schopenhauer suggested, sadness in things as readily as smoky violet or moist verdigris. ~ William H Gass

I'm not a fan of what we call 'friendly fire' or 'blue on blue.' We don't want to have that. ~ Tommy Franks

So they are even more frightened than we are,' he thought. 'Why, is this all that's meant by heroism? And did I do it for the sake of my country? And was he to blame with his dimple and his blue eyes? How frightened he was! He thought I was going to kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand trembled. And they have given me the St. George's Cross. I can't make it out, I can't make it out! ~ Leo Tolstoy

Young Sally Owens: He will hear my call a mile away. He will whistle my favorite song. He can ride a pony backwards.
Young Gillian Owens: What are you doing?
Young Sally Owens: Summoning up a true love spell called Amas Veritas. He can flip pancakes in the air. He'll be marvelously kind. And his favorite shape will be a star. And he'll have one green eye and one blue.
Young Gillian Owens: Thought you never wanted to fall in love.
Young Sally Owens: That's the point. The guy I dreamed of doesn't exist. And if he doesn't exist I'll never die of a broken heart. ~ Alice Hoffman

I got the fat poet into a corner and told him he was writing shit and couldn't get away with it

Now it is night and time
for sleep. Everyone is
tired

from garbage-glutting
lifting their snouts
from the trough
long enough
to ease their gut -
I won't urge the point.

Gold-plated poems
to stuff up
their mind's ass

or politics
watered down so as
not to scare the blue bloods
Boo! you well-fed bastards ~ Kenneth Patchen

I think they're here because I thought they ought to be here," Gansey said.
Blue replied sarcastically. "Okay, God. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Give me the judgment of balanced minds in preference to laws every time. Codes and manuals create patterned behavior. All patterned behavior tends to go unquestioned, gathering destructive momentum. - Darwi Odrade ~ Frank Herbert

I do not refuse the Blue-Pearmain, I fill my pockets on each side; and as I retrace my steps in the frosty eve, being perhaps four or five miles from home, I eat one first from this side, and then from that, to keep my balance. [17] ~ Henry David Thoreau

When I was small, I never wanted to step in puddles. Not because of any fear of drowned worms or wet stockings; I was by and large a grubby child, with a blissful disregard for filth of any kind.
It was because I couldn't bring myself believe that that perfect smooth expanse was no more than I thin film of water over solid earth. I believed it was an opening into some fathomless space. Sometimes, seeing the tiny ripples caused by my approach, I thought the puddle impossibly deep, a bottomless sea in which the lazy coil of a tentacle and gleam of scale lay hidden, with the threat of huge bodies and sharp teeth adrift and silent in the far-down depths.
And then, looking down into reflection, I would see my own round face and frizzled hair against a featureless blue sweep, and think instead that the puddle was the entrance to another sky. If I stepped in there, I would drop at once, and keep on falling, on and on, into blue space.
The only time I would dare walk though a puddle was at twilight, when the evening stars came out. If I looked in the water and saw one lighted pinprick there, I could slash through unafraid--for if I should fall into the puddle and on into space, I could grab hold of the star as I passed, and be safe.
Even now, when I see a puddle in my path, my mind half-halts--though my feet do not--then hurries on, with only the echo of the though left behind.
What if, this time, you fall? ~ Diana Gabaldon

She had lovely eyes - an odd, green-blue shade - and a really dirty, likeable smile. She was gorgeous, even with her hair scraped back and wearing that horrible overall thing in a nineteen-fifties blue check - Actually, she was gorgeous because of that. She was just an ordinary gorgeous working girl in a crap job in a small town in the north of England and that broke Given's heart, because he longed to be ordinary. He'd love to date a girl like that. ~ Michael Tyne

You cannot shake hands with the Devil and not get sulphur on your sleeve. ~ Nancy A. Collins

That first winter, when it was time for her friends to leave, the girl ventured out into the show to say goodbye, and the stunning raven-haired Squaller handed her another gift.
"A blue kefta," said the math teacher, shaking her head. "What would she do with that?"
"Maybe she knew a Grisha who died," replied the cook, taking note of the tears that filled the girl's eyes. They did not see the note that read, You will always be one of us. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Whenever I'm a little blue I think about cyanide, whose color so perfectly reflects my mood. It is pleasant to think that the manioc plant, which grows in Brazil, contains enormous quantities of the stuff in its thirty-pound roots, all of which, unfortunately, is washed away before the residue is used to make our daily tapioca. ~ Alan Bradley

Admittedly, guilt can be my default setting. After a social gathering, I'm often left with a vague sense of wrongdoing that I try to pinpoint the source of. Had I laughed insensitively or slighted someone unintentionally? And I always feel accused in Nordstrom. The saleswomen look at my jeans and inexpensive haircut and I'm sure they're thinking I'm about to slip a pair of earrings into my purse. I feel guilty when I eat white bread and when I don't recycle. ~ Deb Caletti

Who can even imagine what that would mean, for blue to be - well, more? All ~ Mark Doty

Dear Mother,
. . . We have been putting in our time here at very hard drilling, and are supposed to have learned in six weeks what the ordinary recruit, in times of peace, takes all his two years at. We rise at 5, and work stops in the afternoon at 5. A twelve hours day at one sou a day. I hope to earn higher wages than this in time to come, but I never expect to work harder. The early rising hour is splendid for it gives one the chance to see the most beautiful part of these beautiful autumn days in the South. We march up to a lovely open field on the end of the ridge behind the barracks, walking right into the rising sun. From this panorama, spread about on three sides is incomparably fine - yellow cornfields, vineyards, harvest-fields where the workers and their teams can be seen moving about in tiny figures - poplars, little hamlets and church-towers, and far away to the south the blue line of the Pyrenees, the high peaks capped with snow. It makes one in love with life, it is all so peaceful and beautiful. But Nature to me is not only hills and blue skies and flowers, but the Universe, the totality of things, reality as it most obviously presents itself to us; and in this universe strife and sternness play as big a part as love and tenderness, and cannot be shirked by one whose will it is to rule his life in accordance with the cosmic forces he sees in play about him. I hope you see the thing as I do, and think that I have done well, being without responsibilities a ~ Alan Seeger

Sweet May lies fresh before us, To life the young flowers leap, And through the Heaven's blue o'er us The rosy cloudlets sweep. ~ Heinrich Heine

Jocelyn put out her hand, took Luke's, and kissed the back of it lightly. Clary averted her eyes. Her mother turned back to her a moment later. "God, the Clave - if only they would listen." She blew out a frustrated breath. "Clary, we understand why you did what you did last night, but we thought you were safe. Then Helen showed up on our doorstep and told us you'd been injured in the Citadel battle. I nearly had a heart attack when we found you in the square. Your lips and fingers were blue. Like you'd drowned. If it hadn't been for Magnus - " "Magnus healed me? What's he doing here, in Alicante? ~ Cassandra Clare

I like to drop in on people who picked on me in high school or whatever, just out of the blue, and chat with them to see how they think of me now that I'm a big star. Usually they're a lot nicer. After about half an hour, I excuse myself to go to the bathroom, and leave a few DVDs or pictures there. Then when I come out, I say good-bye and leave. Then I call the cops. ~ Zach Braff

Drugs?"
"Rituals. Are you messing around with drugs?"
"No. But maybe rituals."
"Drugs might be better. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

We must cease to think of the church as a gathering of institutions and organizations, and we must get back to the notion that we are the people of God. ~ David Lloyd-Jones

We are staring at each other, forgetting about the harsh reality and I can feel my heart reacting. He touches my cheek and the familiar electric current runs through me. His hands are warm, caressing my pale skin. His deep-blue eyes are filled with serenity and passion. I keep telling myself to breathe, but I am unable to exhale the air from my lungs. Then he leans forward and his lips touch mine, increasing the temperature in my body. He kisses me gently, trying to break his way through, testing to see if I let him in. His lips are sweet and warm. A few seconds later it is all over and he disappears once again, leaving me uncontrollably awake and trying to gather my wild thoughts. ~ Joanna Mazurkiewicz

The insidious reasons for a brown girl's self-loathing won't be surprising to any woman of color. I cannot rightly compare my own struggles to those of another minority, as each ethnicity comes with its own baggage and the South Asian experience is just one variation on the experience of dark-skinned people everywhere. As parents and grandparents often do in Asian countries, my extended family urged me to avoid the sun, not out of fear that heatstroke would sicken me or that UV rays would lead to cancer, but more, I think, out of fear that my skin would darken to the shade of an Untouchable, a person from the lowest caste in Indian society, someone who toils in the fields. The judgments implicit in these exhortations - and what they mean about your worth - might not dawn on you while you're playing cricket in the sand. What's at stake might not dawn on you while, as a girl, you clutch fast to yourself your blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll named Helen. But all along, the message that lighter skin is equivalent to a more attractive, worthier self is getting beamed deep into your subconscious. Western ideals of beauty do not stop at ocean shores. They pervade the world and mingle with those of your own country to create mutant, unachievable standards. ~ Padma Lakshmi

How does it taste?" Carter wondered.
Zia smiled. "Stick out your tongue."
To answer Carter's question, the tattoo tasted like burning car tires.
"Ugh." I spit a blue gob of "order and harmony" into the fountain. ~ Rick Riordan

She didn't look like anyone else Marsha had ever seen, and she lived in New York where eventually you saw everyone, more or less. Her pale hair; her skin was practically albino; those strange silvery blue-green eyes . . . You didn't quite notice her at first glance; she was average . . . then you took a closer look and she was extremely striking. Her voice when she spoke wasn't always easy to understand, but it sounded to Marsha like music. Please, she thought to herself. Let her be kind. But not too kind. ~ Jenny Colgan

Dee's natural colouring looks like an American landscape - country-sky-blue eyes and hair the colour of Tennessee wheat fields, golden strands with darker undertones. My hair is nearly black, and I have jealous green eyes.

In a fairytale she'd play the good fairy. I'd be the evil witch's screwup second cousin. ~ Emery Lord

The radio is at the root of the evil, their rule is: No silence, ever. When anything happens, the commentator has to speak without a moment's pause for gathering wisdom. Falsehood and inanity are preferable to silence. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Contentedly sat the old woman. Soon now, the sea would hold no terrors, and the blinds wouldn't have to be down, nor the windows shut; she would even be able to walk along the shore at midnight as of old; and they, whom she had deserted so long ago, would once more shrink from the irresistable energy aura of her new, young body.
The sound of the sea came to her, where she sat so quietly; calm sound at first, almost gentle in the soft sibilation of each wave thrust. Farther out, the voices of the water were louder, more raucous, blatantly confident, but the meaning of what they said was blurred by the distance, a dim, clamorous confusion that rustled discordantly out of the gathering night.
Night!
She shouldn't be aware of night falling, when the blinds were drawn.
("The Witch") ~ A.E. Van Vogt

By the end of the week, clouds darker still had arrived and with them hot, damp air. Turner could smell the coming storm. The darkness of it gathering an hour or so away, racing ahead of dusk - the edges of the cloud through the wide skylight, deep in the West. Bruised. Fractious. Rising up to smother the slowly sinking sun. And now it was all but upon him, this vast wave of vapour, tumbling overhead.
A deep violet shadow poured down through the glass, its false twilight drowning everything. There came the first shudderings of thunder. And, all around, a dangerous stormlight. Carravaggian. ~ John A. Scott

From the days of our ancestors, those forgotten few who birthed us all, mankind has gazed awestruck into the heavens above. Night falls and the brilliant blue sky rolls away, allowing us a brief glimpse into a universe we will never fully understand. Yet we do not need its secrets to bathe in its beauty. Its empty blackness resonates in the depths of our souls, kindling a longing in our hearts that we can never fill. ~ Taylor P. Davidson

You must know, my loved one, that there are beings in the elements which almost appear like mortals, and which rarely allow themselves to become visible to your race. Wonderful salamanders glitter and sport in the flames; lean and malicious gnomes dwell deep within the earth; spirits, belonging to the air, wander through the forests; and a vast family of water spirits live in the lakes and streams and brooks. In resounding domes of crystal, through which the sky looks in with its sun and stars, these latter spirits find their beautiful abode; lofty trees of coral with blue and crimson fruits gleam in their gardens; they wander over the pure sand of the sea, and among lovely variegated shells, and amid all exquisite treasures of the old world, which the present is no longer worthy to enjoy; all these the floods have covered with their secret veils of silver, and the noble monuments sparkle below, stately and solemn, and bedewed by the loving waters which allure from them many a beautiful moss-flower and entwining cluster of sea grass. Those, however, who dwell there, are very fair and lovely to behold, and for the most part, are more beautiful than human beings. Many a fisherman has been so fortunate as to surprise some tender mermaid, as she rose above the waters and sang. He would then tell afar of her beauty, and such wonderful beings have been given the name of Undines. You, however, are now actually beholding an Undine. ~ Friedrich De La Motte Fouqué

A house that lacks, seemingly, mistress and master,
With doors that none but the wind ever closes,
Its floor all littered with glass and with plaster;
It stands in a garden of old-fashioned roses.

I pass by that way in the gloaming with Mary;
'I wonder,' I say, 'who the owner of those is.'
'Oh, no one you know,' she answers me airy,
'But one we must ask if we want any roses.'

So we must join hands in the dew coming coldly
There in the hush of the wood that reposes,
And turn and go up to the open door boldly,
And knock to the echoes as beggars for roses.

'Pray, are you within there, Mistress Who-were-you?'
'Tis Mary that speaks and our errand discloses.
'Pray, are you within there? Bestir you, bestir you!
'Tis summer again; there's two come for roses.

'A word with you, that of the singer recalling--
Old Herrick: a saying that every maid knows is
A flower unplucked is but left to the falling,
And nothing is gained by not gathering roses.'

We do not loosen our hands' intertwining
(Not caring so very much what she supposes),
There when she comes on us mistily shining
And grants us by silence the boon of her roses. ~ Robert Frost

Hearts don't start out frozen," Cassandra said wisely. "Something happened to you."
Mr. Severin gave her a slightly mocking glance. "How do you know so much about the heart?"
"I've read novels-" Cassandra began earnestly, and was disgruntled to hear his quiet laugh. "Many of them. You don't think a person can learn things from reading novels?"
"Nothing that actually applies to life." But the blue-green eyes contained a friendly sparkle, as if he found her charming.
"But life is what novels are about. A novel can contain more truth than a thousand newspaper articles or scientific papers. It can make you imagine, just for a little while, that you're someone else- and then you understand more about people who are different from you."
The way he listened to her was so very flattering, so careful and interested, as if he were collecting her words like flowers to be pressed in a book. "I stand corrected," he said. "I see I'll have to read one. ~ Lisa Kleypas

about Tiffany's, that the famous little blue box was almost a by-word for true New York-style fairy-tale romance. According to her, there wasn't a woman in the world who could resist it;, the store and its wares enchanting the dreams of millions. ~ Melissa Hill

Heavens, how charming it is! There is now in the sky only the soft vaporous color of pale citron - the last reflection of the sun which plunges into the dark blue of the night, going from green tones to a pale turquoise of an unheard-of fineness and a fluid delicacy quite indescribable ... ~ Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot

Whenever I am feeling blue, I like to go to the Balzar and watch a waiter gravely transfer a steak au poivre and its accompaniments from an oval platter to a plate, item by item. It reaffirms my faith in the sanity of superfluous civilization. ~ Adam Gopnik

I didn't really like reading much before I did 'The Golden Compass'. But then my teacher told me to read it. And I thought, 'Oh God, I'm going to have to read a whole book by myself!' It's not that I couldn't read, it's just that I didn't really like books very much. But the book that she lent me I really enjoyed. ~ Dakota Blue Richards

I was actually hoping the Royals would pick me. It was the main team I wanted to go to. Their colors are Royal blue and that's my favorite color.? ~ Zack Greinke

This morning, that morning, was honeycombed with personal restlessness. Evening swells up in lavender, blue, black in these parts, the twenty-thousand-fathom sea of acceptance and a sort of timeless soothing, only to be worried out of its mind by a scratch-rash epidemic of star-white. ~ Thea Astley

All my life I've always been so blue, born to lose, and now I'm losing you. ~ Ray Charles

Christ can forgive you," he whispered, though he didn't believe it. There wasn't a hint of compassion in those ice-blue eyes.
"That's grand," she said.
Her features became again those of the pleasant brown-haired nurse. She smiled, pulled the pillow from under his head, and covered his face. ~ Stephen M. Irwin

Jason shot to his feet, nostrils flaring. Ben stopped dead.
The cafeteria went still. Everyone watched the boys square off.
"Im not a violent person, Blue." Jason bit off the words. "But Ive had enough of your mouth. Ill kick your ass right here."
Ben's jaw tightened. "You think so, rich boy?"
"You heard me." A vein was bulging in Jason's neck.
Ben's breathing quickened. The tiniest spark of gold flickered in his irises.
My stomach backflipped.
Oh my God! He's going to flare!
"Get him out of here!" I hissed at Shelton and Hi. "Hurry!"
Recognizing the danger, Hi jumped to his feet, planted both hands on Ben's chest and pushed him towards the door, whispering, "Use your head, use your head, use your head!"
Ben tried to hold his ground, but Shelton joined the effort. "Get it together! People are watching. Dont lose control!"
Slowly, the duo managed to back Ben away, but his glare never strayed from Jason. At the exit, Ben shrugged free, and stalked down the hall alone.
I took my first breath since Jason stood.
Crisis averted, but only barely. ~ Kathy Reichs

Many blue-collar families struggling to pay rent would be happy to skip paying optional union dues. ~ Kevin O'Leary