Grape Quotes

When I was a little girl my mom would make us peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch at least three times a week, crusts cut off, sliced twice on the bias for triangles for me, and into long fingers for Gilly. I eventually moved from smooth peanut butter and grape jelly to chunky peanut butter and strawberry preserves to fresh natural peanut butter with homemade damson plum jam or peach coriander confiture. ~ Stacey Ballis

Snagged a Tootsie Pop - then saw that it was orange, and traded that for a grape one. ~ J.R. Ward

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about.

They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three.

There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another ~ Cormac McCarthy

Christ used the flesh and blood of Mary for his life on earth, the Word of love was uttered in her heartbeat. Christ used his own body to utter his love on earth; his perfectly real body, with bone and sinew and blood and tears; Christ uses our bodies to express his love on earth, our humanity. A Christian life is a sacramental life, it is not a life lived only in the mind, only by the soul ... Our humanity is the substance of the sacramental life of Christ in us, like the wheat for the host, like the grape for the chalice. ~ Caryll Houselander

On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once. It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth year today; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been saved, is immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values, the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer - all presents of this year, indeed of its last quarter! How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life? - and so I tell my life to myself. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Sleeping Wrestler

You are a murderer
No you are not, but really a wrestler
Either way it's just the same
For from the ring of your entangled body
Clean as leather, lustful as a lily
Will nail me down
On your stout neck like a column, like a pillar of tendons
The thoughtful forehead
(In fact, it's thinking nothing)
When the forehead slowly moves and closes the heavy eyelids
Inside, a dark forest awakens
A forest of red parrots
Seven almonds and grape leaves
At the end of the forest a vine
Covers the house where two boys
Lie in each others arms: I'm one of them, you the other
In the house, melancholy and terrible anxiety
Outside the keyhole, a sunset
Dyed with the blood of the beautiful bullfighter Escamillo
Scorched by the sunset, headlong, headfirst
Falling, falling, a gymnast
If you're going to open your eyes, nows the time, wrestler ~ Mutsuo Takahashi

Consider how textbooks treat Native religions as a unitary whole. ... "These Native Americans ... believed that nature was filled with spirits. Each form of life, such as plants and animals, had a spirit. Earth and air held spirits too. People were never alone. They shared their lives with the spirits of nature." ... Stated flatly like this, the beliefs seem like make-believe, not the sophisticated theology of a higher civilization. Let us try a similarly succinct summary of the beliefs of many Christians today: "These Americans believed that one great male god ruled the world. Sometimes they divided him into three parts, which they called father, son, and holy ghost. They ate crackers and wine or grape juice, believing that they were eating the son's body and drinking his blood. If they believed strongly enough, they would live on forever after they died."

Textbooks never describe Christianity this way. It's offensive. Believers would immediately argue that such a depiction fails to convey the symbolic meaning or the spiritual satisfaction of communion. ~ James W. Loewen

O, Winter! Put away thy snowy pride;
O, Spring! Neglect the cowslip and the bell;
O, Summer! Throw thy pears and plums aside;
O, Autumn! Bid the grape with poison swell. ~ Thomas Chatterton

The sweet, lovely voices of the children were like honey, like grape wine, intoxicating him, entrancing him, so he couldn't tell heaven from earth. ~ Lin Zhe

We do eventually get dressed and look for food, although we only make it to the dining room in time for lunch. Egeria accepts her ousting as Alpha Sinta without a hint of anger or regret. Clearly, it's what she was expecting all along. Piers is away on a recruitment trip, but the rest of the family is here and overjoyed by our wedding announcement. Jocasta decrees that we have to go shopping, now, and Kaia bounces in her seat, beyond excited about any outing that will actually get her on the other side of the castle gate.

Shopping requires money, so I dig around in Griffin's pocket under the table, letting my fingers wander enough for him to nearly choke on his stew. I find four gold coins and hold on to them. "You never pay me."

He looks aghast. "I can't pay you anymore."

"We're about to get married. No one's going to confuse me with a prostitute."

Kaia spits out a grape. It bounces across the table and then lands in her mother's lap. Kaia slaps her hand over her mouth, her blue-gray eyes huge, and Nerissa gives her a quelling look. The look finishes on me, and I might have felt a little quelled myself if Carver hadn't suddenly made a noise like a donkey, finally belting out the laugh he'd been holding back.

Anatole bangs his hand down on the table and bursts out laughing. He sounds like a donkey, too. It's contagious, and the whole table erupts, snorting and braying until most of us are wiping tears from our eyes. I sha ~ Amanda Bouchet

All that comes to pass is as familiar and well known as the rose in spring, and the grape in summer. Of like fashion are sickness, death, calumny, intrigue, and all that gladdens or saddens the foolish. ~ Marcus Aurelius

We are custodians. We are stewards. Our actions are being watched by others around us. Someone is looking up to us as we take each breath. We can be just a grape or we can be the juice that offers simplicity, nourishment and refreshment. Extract and empty your goodness. Pass it into the hearts of the people looking up to you. It will multiply beyond your highest good. ~ Angie Karan

A raisin is a grape that's had to many worries ~ Mary Jane Remole

Mom! Look. This one is my favorite," Devin said, pulling out a faded pink dress with a red plaid sash. The crinoline petticoat underneath was so old and stiff it made snapping sounds, like beads or fire embers. She dropped the dress over her head, over her clothes. It brushed the floor. "When I'm old enough for it to fit me, I'm going to wear it with purple shoes," she said.
"A bold choice," Kate said as Devin dove back into the trunk. The attic in Kate's mother's house had always fascinated Devin with its promise of hidden treasures. When Kate's mother had been alive, she had let Devin eat Baby Ruth candy bars and drink grape soda and play in this old trunk full of dresses that generations of Morris women had worn to try entice rich men to marry them. Most of the clothes had belonged to Kate's grandmother Marilee, a renowned beauty who, like all the rest, had fallen in love with a poor man instead. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

At the end of the day, it's just grape juice. No one needs anything that I make. The last thing we need is another wine on the shelf. So that just makes me grateful for the people who do enjoy it. ~ Andre Hueston Mack

I was fine till the finger, I say to myself, as I shift to reverse. You don't flip off Gilbert Grape. Let that be known. ~ Peter Hedges

She gave me another of those long keen looks, and I could see that she was again asking herself if her favourite nephew wasn't steeped to the tonsils in the juice of the grape. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

How do I stop eleven million people from buying the grape? ~ Dolores Huerta

The god entered some women so completely that they became immortal, or very close to it. Bacchus was the god of the grape, of course, so bars are very interesting to maenads. In fact, so interesting that they don't like other creatures of darkness becoming involved. Maenads consider that the violence sparked by the consumption of alcohol belongs to them; that's what they feed off, now that no one formally worships their god. And they are attracted to pride. ~ Charlaine Harris

For a few moments I want to be 5 years old again. I want someone to plunk me down in front of a Disney movie and ask me if I want apple juice or grape. ~ Jennifer Richard Jacobson

The culture of the hop ... so analagous to the culture and uses of the grape, may afford a theme for future poets. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Culture is a vulture but there's also vulture culture and cultured vultures and cultured yougurt (cherry, peach, pear, pineapple, grape, vanilla, plain, cherry vanilla, pineapple orage, cranberry, orange, mandarin orange, coffee, apricot, raspberry, blueberry, boysenberry, prune). And speaking of vulture culture there's counter-culture and under-the-counter culture, too. But whether you call it kulchur with a k and a ch and without the e it's still the same thing and you can't disguise it with pretty frills and a gallon of dog sweat. It still has two syllables and TWO-SYLLABLE WORDS SUCK so you can just forgetit, man. It's no fun at all and even fun wouldn't be fun if it was called funjure or funion or funching. But somehow fucking is still loads of fun even though there's that extra 3-letter cluster of vowels and consonants. Proof positive that there are exceptions everywhere you look. But don't look too hard, you might get eyestrain. ~ Richard Meltzer

Good oil, like good wine, is a gift from the gods. The grape and the olive are among the priceless benefactions of the soil, and were destined, each in its way, to promote the welfare of man. ~ George Ellwanger

Fucking hell. "Did you guys plan that out?"
"Yeah, and if you don't fight us"
Hollywood bit down on his grape Tootsie-Pop
"we'll do it again
only with dance moves this time."
"Spare me."
"Fine. Unless you agree to home it, we will rock the dance moves.". To prove the point, the moron linked his palms behind his head and started doing something obscene with his hips. Which was backed up by a series of, "Uh-huh, uh-huh, ohhh, yeeeeeeaaaah, who's your daddy ... ~ J.R. Ward

January?
The month is dumb.
It is fraudulent.
It does not cleanse itself.
The hens lay blood-stained eggs.
Do not lend your bread to anyone
lest it nevermore rise.
Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out.

Do not rely on February
except when your cat has kittens,
throbbing into the snow.
Do not use knives and forks
unless there is a thaw,
like the yawn of a baby.
The sun in this month
begets a headache
like an angel slapping you in the face.

Earthquakes mean March.
The dragon will move,
and the earth will open like a wound.
There will be great rain or snow
so save some coal for your uncle.
The sun of this month cures all.
Therefore, old women say:
Let the sun of March shine on my daughter,
but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law.
However, if you go to a party
dressed as the anti-Christ
you will be frozen to death by morning.

During the rainstorms of April
the oyster rises from the sea
and opens its shell -
rain enters it -
when it sinks the raindrops
become the pearl.
So take a picnic,
open your body,
and give birth to pearls.

June and July?
These are the months
we call Boiling Water.
There is sweat on the cat but the grape
marries herself to the sun.

Hesitate in August.
Be shy.
Let your toes tremble ~ Anne Sexton THE SERMON OF THE TWELVE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Lysandra's smile grew. "I like your fangs," she said sweetly.
Aelin choked on her grape. Of course Lysandra did.
Rowan gave a little grin that usually sent Aelin running. "Are you studying them so you can replicate them when you take my form, shape-shifter?"
Aelin's fork froze in midair.
"Bullshit," Aedion said. ~ Sarah J. Maas

In a matter of seconds, the sky darkened and the first fat drops of rain splashed around us. We went from table to table to gather our guests, smiling to mask our nervousness as the wind blew harder. As I watched the empty chairs overturning and the linens on the grape arbor flapping like sails, I was seized with a sudden fear. The wind whipped the trees; the creak of branches presaged the first sharp flash of lightning, followed by a thunder crack that set my heart pounding. ~ Rosie Genova

Should everything pass away,
it couldn't happen without You.
This heart of mines bears Your imprint;
it has nowhere else to turn.
The eye of the intellect is drunk with You,
the wheeling galaxy is humble before You,
the ear of ecstasy is in Your hand;
nothing happens without You.
The soul is bubbling with You,
the heart imbibes from You,
the intellect bellows in rapture;
nothing happens without You.
You, my grape wine and my intoxication,
my rose garden and my springtime,
my sleep and repose;
nothing happens without You.
You are my grandeur and glory,
you are my possessions and prosperity,
you are my purest water;
nothing happens without You ~ Rumi

Nay, in death's hand, the grape-stone proves
As strong as thunder is in Jove's. ~ Abraham Cowley

When I was younger we had a grape arbor, and my mom would go out and pick grapes and make grape jam in the sink - boil it, put it in jars, and give it away as gifts. ~ Taylor Swift

After all, the sanitation and the agriculture of today are still in the rudimentary stage. The science of our time has attacked but a little department of the field of human disease, but even so, it spreads its operations very steadily and persistently. Our agriculture and horticulture destroy a weed just here and there and cultivate perhaps a score or so of wholesome plants, leaving the greater number to fight out a balance as they can. We improve our favourite plants and animals--and how few they are--gradually by selective breeding; now a new and better peach, now a seedless grape, now a sweeter and larger flower, now a more convenient breed of cattle. We improve them gradually, because our ideals are vague and tentative, and our knowledge is very limited; because Nature, too, is shy and slow in our clumsy hands. Some day all this will be better organized, and still better. That is the drift of the current in spite of the eddies. ~ H.G. Wells

He watched the sun rise beyond the grape arbor. In the thin golden light the young leaves and tendrils of the Scuppernong were like Twink Weatherby's hair. He decided that sunrise and sunset both gave him a pleasantly sad feeling. The sunrise brought a wild, free sadness; the sunset, a lonely yet a comforting one. He indulged his agreeable melancholy until the earth under him turned from gray to lavender and then to the color dried corn husks. ~ Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Randy Shilts mentions that Kool-Aid packets were scattered in the bay with Milk's ashes, but he gives no indication of what it meant. Interviews conducted for this book revealed that Milk's friends added the grape Kool-Aid in a light-hearted attempt at making fun at the relationship between Milk and the Temple. ~ Michael Bellefountaine

He played with the idea, and grew wilful; tossed it into the air and transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy, and winged it with paradox. The praise of folly, as he went on, soared into a philosophy, and Philosophy herself became young, and catching the mad music of Pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her wine-stained robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a bacchante over the hills of life, and mocked the slow Silenus for being sober. Facts fled before her like frightened forest things. Her white feet trod the huge press at which wise Omar sits, till the seething grape-juice rose round her bare limbs in waves of purple bubbles, or crawled in red foam over the vat's black, dripping, sloping sides. ~ Oscar Wilde

Herbs carried in special baskets, bread wrapped in knotted, muslin cloths, thick stews soured with unripe grape juice, carrots boiled with sugar and rosewater, yoghurt hung from dripping bags, its whey dried in sheets on trays in the sun. ~ Jennifer Klinec

The intoxication of anger, like that of the grape, shows us to others, but hides us from ourselves. ~ John Dryden

I went to the juice isle, I learned something. Cranberries are taking over everything. What do you got, apples? Put some cranberrise in there, make it 50/50. Cran-apple. Grapes? Cran-grape. Mangos? Cran-mango. Pork chops? Cran-chop! ~ Brian Regan

Love never lies and it never tries, it's unafraid and heaven made.

Keep the faith, surrender the time, just like a grape we need to ripen on the vine.

Be like a fairy, constantly glow, leave a trail of love wherever you go.

Do not try to make sense of this world. Do try to know yourself and to grow yourself while in it.

The more you are, the more you have.

Rather than make the best of a situation, make the best situation. Create, don't negate.

Keep the dream alive and the heart open.

Be your most glorious self, and even better, be indifferent to what anyone may think of it.

Don't fear the dark, it's helping you find the light. We wouldn't know morning, if we didn't see night.

Never give to say you've given, never shy away from a good cry, never stop a laugh from happening, and always wonder, why?

Don't get mad, get motivated! ~ Allyson Giles

None who has known the charity of wine, Its pity, the cool logic of its spell Will waver in his loyalty, or dwell In any heaven where the grape lacks a shrine. ~ Donald Evans

2 grilled chicken breasts, diced 1 avocado, peeled and diced 5-6 green lettuce leaves, cut in stripes 3-4 green onions, finely chopped 5-6 radishes, sliced 7-8 grape tomatoes 2 tbsp lemon juice 3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 1 tsp dried mint salt and black pepper, to taste ~ Alissa Noel Grey

The ripe, the golden month has come again, and in Virginia the chinkapins are falling. Frost sharps the middle music of the seasons, and all things living on the earth turn home again ... the fields are cut, the granaries are full, the bins are loaded to the brim with fatness, and from the cider-press the rich brown oozings of the York Imperials run. The bee bores to the belly of the grape, the fly gets old and fat and blue, he buzzes loud, crawls slow, creeps heavily to death on sill and ceiling, the sun goes down in blood and pollen across the bronzed and mown fields of the old October. ~ Thomas Wolfe

The social prestige of wine at table and at the club must be destroyed through lofty example and polite ridicule; forces which are not always available, and for whose successful operation much time will be required. But the outstanding fact remains, that the world has come to regard liquor in a new and clearer light. Our next generation of poets will contain but few Anacreons, for the thinking element of mankind has robbed the flowing bowl of its fancied virtues and fictitious beauties. The grape, so long permitted to masquerade as the inspirer of wit and art, is now revealed as the mother of ruin and death. The wolf at last stands divested of its sheep's clothing. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

That inasmuch as any man adrinketh bwine or strong drink among you, behold it is not good, neither meet in the sight of your Father, only in assembling yourselves together to offer up your sacraments before him. 6 And, behold, this should be wine, yea, apure wine of the grape of the vine, of your own make. 7 And, again, astrong drinks are not for the belly, but for the washing of your bodies. 8 And again, tobacco is not for the abody, neither for the belly, and is not good for man, but is an herb for bruises and all sick cattle, to be used with judgment and skill. 9 And again, hot drinks are not for the body or belly. ~ The Church Of Jesus Christ Of Latter-day Saints

Each grape she pulled off grew back again on the cluster. In the dream it was evident that the girl had spent many years at that infinite window trying to finish the cluster, and was in no hurry to so because she knew that in the last grape lay death. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Against the grape-flushed sky perfect amethyst night. ~ Anne Rivers Siddons

Young man,
two are the forces most precious to mankind.
The first is Demeter, the Goddess.
She is the Earth
or any name you wish to call her
and she sustains humanity with solid food.
Next came Dionysus, the son of the virgin,
bringing the counterpart to bread: wine
and the blessings of life's flowing juices.
His blood, the blood of the grape,
lightens the burden of our mortal misery.
Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour out
to offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed. ~ Euripides

How I like claret! ... It fills one's mouth with a gushing freshness, then goes down to cool and feverless; then, you do not feel it quarrelling with one's liver. No; 'tis rather a peace-maker, and lies as quiet as it did in the grape. Then it is as fragrant as the Queen Bee, and the more ethereal part mounts into the brain, not assaulting the cerebral apartments, like a bully looking for his trull, and hurrying from door to door, bouncing against the wainscott, but rather walks like Aladdin about his enchanted palace, so gently that you do not feel his step. ~ John Keats

The Worm's Waking
by Rumi
This is How a Human Being Can Change:

There's a worm addicted to eating
grape leaves.

Suddenly, he wakes up,
call it grace, whatever, something
wakes him, and he's no longer
a worm.

He's the entire vineyard,
and the orchard too,
the fruit, the trunks,
a growing wisdom and joy
that doesn't need
to devour. ~ Rumi

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 Drunken Gnat

You are the soul of the soul,
a door that opens into existence.

When separation makes us angry,
you strike with a sword.

When union becomes vague,
you feed it with a vast nothing.

Old civilizations start to flourish again.
The March sun warms the world with singing.

Tambourine and harp, branches covered with buds.
Is anyone sober enough to speak with the king?

No one. All right. Remember how a gnat
once got drunk and walked into the ear
of a terrible tyrant, then from there
into his brain and killed him?

Grape-wine can do that to a gnat.
What will the wine of infinity do for us?

A cave dog watched over the sleepers.
If a dog can be a shepherd,
what could the spirit-lion of a human being become?

Sparks from a fire lift in the sky
and turn to stars.

Shams is now a depth of truth
that rises every morning in the east. ~ Rumi

He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a straitjacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life. 'Would you like to test me, child?' he said quietly. 'No. No, sir. ~ Rick Riordan

It was with good reason that God commanded through Moses that the vineyard and harvest were not to be gleaned to the last grape or grain; but something to be left for the poor. For covetousness is never to be satisfied; the more it has, the more it wants. Such insatiable ones injure themselves, and transform God's blessings into evil. ~ Martin Luther

The best description of this book is found within the title. The full title of this book is:

"This is the story my great-grandfather told my father, who then told my grandfather, who then told me about how The Mythical Mr. Boo, Charles Manseur Fizzlebush Grissham III, better known as Mr. Fizzlebush, and Orafoura are all in fact me and Dora J. Arod, who sometimes shares my pen, paper, thoughts, mind, body, and soul, because Dora J. Arod is my pseudonym, as he/it incorporates both my first and middle name, and is also a palindrome that can be read forwards or backwards no matter if you are an upright man in the eyes of God or you are upside down in a tank of water wearing purple goggles and grape jelly discussing how best to spread your time between your work, your wife, and the toasted bread being eaten by the man you are talking to who goes by the name of Dendrite McDowell, who is only wearing a towel on his head and has an hourglass obscuring his "time machine"--or the thing that he says can keep him young forever by producing young versions of himself the way I avert disaster in that I ramble and bumble like a bee until I pollinate my way through flowery situations that might otherwise have ended up being more than less than, but not equal to two short parallel lines stacked on top of each other that mathematicians use to balance equations like a tightrope walker running on a wire stretched between two white stretched limos parked on a long cloud that looks like ~ Jarod Kintz

I followed Aiden into the kitchen. My steps slowed as I saw everyone gathered around the table. "What's going…?"

Deacon and Luke stepped to the side. "Happy Birthday!" they cried in unison.

My gaze fell to the table. There sat a birthday cake, decorated with eighteen burning candles and… Spider-man? Yep, it was Spider-man. Red and blue tights and all.

"It was either that or My Little Pony," Luke said, grinning. "We figured you'd appreciate Spider-man more."

"Plus he's all wicked cool with the whole climbing buildings stuff," Deacon added. "Maybe one day, when you decide to Awaken, you'll be just as cool."

"I lit the candles," Solos said, shrugging. "All by myself."

"I gave them the money." Marcus folded his arms. "Therefore I was the key part of all of this."

"And we got grape soda." Luke gestured at the bottles of soda. "It's your favorite."

"This… this is… wow. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

No," I said and smiled. "I just happen to like the taste of that particular grape." "Oh?" "Yeah. I think chardonnays are too oaky and heavy and German wines are too sweet. But if my roommate and I are sharing a bottle of something, it's usually on sale ~ Dorothea Benton Frank

It's just that the grape has me down. ~ Charles Bukowski

Knowing that there was such a thing as outdoors bred in us a hunger for property, for ownership. The firm possession of a yard, a porch, a grape arbor. Propertied black people spent all their energies, all their love, on their nests. Like frenzied, desperate birds, they overdecorated everything; fussed and fidgeted over their hard-won homes; canned, jellied, and preserved all summer to fill the cupboards and shelves; they painted, picked, and poked at every corner of their houses. And these houses loomed like hothouse sunflowers among the rows of weeds that were the rented houses. ~ Toni Morrison

Nevertheless"

you've seen a strawberry
that's had a struggle; yet
was, where the fragments met,

a hedgehog or a star-
fish for the multitude
of seeds. What better food

than apple seeds - the fruit
within the fruit - locked in
like counter-curved twin

hazelnuts? Frost that kills
the little rubber-plant -
leaves of kok-sagyyz-stalks, can't

harm the roots; they still grow
in frozen ground. Once where
there was a prickley-pear -

leaf clinging to a barbed wire,
a root shot down to grow
in earth two feet below;

as carrots from mandrakes
or a ram's-horn root some-
times. Victory won't come

to me unless I go
to it; a grape tendril
ties a knot in knots till

knotted thirty times - so
the bound twig that's under-
gone and over-gone, can't stir.

The weak overcomes its
menace, the strong over-
comes itself. What is there

like fortitude! What sap
went through that little thread
to make the cherry red! ~ Marianne Moore

It's the struggle that refines them," he explained, "the challenge. Give them too much water, sunshine, and fertile soil and they grow fat and tasteless, like a Concord grape, appetizing only when saturated with sugar and made into jelly. Or they wither and die of boredom. Like people. The best ones are survivors. Stripped of chaff, refined by struggle and hardship, they're rendered complex and potent by their very endurance and ability to thrive in spite of deprivation. ~ J.T. Geissinger

If life hands you lemons turn around and make grape juice then stand back and watch while everyone try's to figure out how the fuck you did it. ~ Emma O'Connor

As far as I knew, no kingdom had ever gone to war with another over fermented grape juice. Though ~ Lisa Shearin

The rest of my days I'm going to spend on the sea. And when I die, I'm going to die on the sea. You know what I shall die of? I shall die of eating an unwashed grape. One day out on the ocean I will die
with my hand in the hand of some nice looking ship's doctor, a very young one with a small blond moustache and a big silver watch. "Poor lady," they'll say, "The quinine did her no good. That unwashed grape has transported her soul to heaven. ~ Tennessee Williams

Red wine is different from white. Removing the grape skin does all the difference. ~ Viola Soul Calibur

Then he took the pages, smoothed them with the palm of his hand, and fixed them with pins to the walls. So that now, if he sat looking down upon Grape Street, the letters and images encircled him. And it was while he sat here, scarcely moving, that he was in hell and no one knew it. At such times the future became so clear that it was as if he were remembering it, remembering it in place of the past which he could no longer describe. But there was in any case no future and no past, only the unspeakable misery of his own self. ~ Peter Ackroyd

Bubble-gum angels swooped from top margins, or scraped their wings between teeming paragraphs. Maidens with golden hair dripped sea-blue tears into the books spine. Grape-colored whales spouted blood around a newspaper item (pasted in) listing arrivals to the endangered species list. Six hatchlings cried from shattered shells near an entry made on Easter. Cecilia had filled the pages with a profusion of colors and curlicues, Candyland ladders and striped shamrocks. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

A Knock On The Door

They ask me if I've ever thought about the end of
the world, and I say, "Come in, come in, let me
give you some lunch, for God's sake." After a few
bites it's the afterlife they want to talk about.
"Ouch," I say, "did you see that grape leaf
skeletonizer?" Then they're talking about
redemption and the chosen few sitting right by
His side. "Doing what?" I ask. "Just sitting?" I
am surrounded by burned up zombies. "Let's
have some lemon chiffon pie I bought yesterday
at the 3 Dog Bakery." But they want to talk about
my soul. I'm getting drowsy and see butterflies
everywhere. "Would you gentlemen like to take a
nap, I know I would." They stand and back away
from me, out the door, walking toward my
neighbors, a black cloud over their heads and
they see nothing without end. ~ James Tate

A vine bears three grapes, the first of pleasure, the second of drunkenness, and the third of repentance. ~ Diogenes Laertius

I grew up on a Christmas tree farm in Reading, PA. It was the most magical fun childhood. We had grape arbours and we would make jam with my mom. My dad would go to work and he'd come home. He'd clean out stalls and fix split-row fences. ~ Taylor Swift

Before garden, vine or grape was in the world," writes one, "our soul was drunken with immortal wine. ~ Idries Shah

Nico leaned over and plucked a grape. Probably that was the guy's entire diet for the day. ~ Rick Riordan

What is wine? It is the grape present in another form; its essence is there, though the fruit which produced it grew thousands of miles away, and perished years ago. So the object of many a tender thought may be spiritually present, in defiance of space - and fond recollections cherished in defiance of time. ~ Samuel Lover

Jelly beans! Millions and billions of purples and yellows and greens and licorice and grape and raspberry and mint and round and smooth and crunchy outside and soft-mealy inside and sugary and bouncing jouncing tumbling clittering clattering skittering fell on the heads and shoulders and hardhats and carapaces of the Timkin works, tinkling on the slidewalk and bouncing away and rolling about underfoot and filling the sky on their way down with all the colors of joy and childhood and holidays, coming down in a steady rain, a solid wash, a torrent of color and sweetness out of the sky from above, and entering a universe of sanity and metronomic order with quite-mad coocoo newness. Jelly beans! ~ Harlan Ellison

There is more simplicity in the man who eats caviar on impulse than in the man who eats Grape-Nuts on principle. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Don't be an asshole"
Rhage summed up the regurgitation with two words: "Kettle.Black."
Fucking hell. "Did you guys plan that out?"
"Yeah and if you don't fight us"- Hollywood bit down on the grape Tootsie Pop-"we'll do it again- only with the dance moves this time"
"Spare me."
"Fine.Unless you agree to home it,we WILL rock the dance moves." To prove the point ,the moron linked his palms behind his head and started doing something obscene with his hips. Which was backed up by a series of,"Uh-huh,uh-huh,ohhhh, yeeeeeeah,who's your daddy..."
The others looked at Rhage like he'd grown a horn in the middle of his forehead. Nothing unusual there. And Tohr knew that, in spite of this ridiculous diversion,if he didn't cave,the lot of them would crawl so far up his ass,he'd be coughing up shitkickers.
Rhage wheeled around,shoved out his butt,and started slapping his moneymaker like it was bread dough.
"For the love of the Virgin Scribe,"Z muttered "put us out of this misery, and go the fuck home"
Someone else chimed in, "You know, I never thought there were advantages to being blind..."
"Or deaf"
"Or mute," somebody added ~ J.R. Ward

Since the discovery of the fermented grape, humans have experienced the pain and the frustration of addiction. ~ David W. Earle

If there are occasions when my grape turned into a raisin and my joy bell lost its resonance, please forgive me. Charge it to my head and not to my heart. ~ Jesse Jackson

The humble little grape is an amazing fruit –one of the most potent in history. ~ Mathilde Thomas

Beulah, peel me a grape ~ Mae West

Bring me wine, but wine which never grew
In the belly of the grape ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

FALL, SIERRA NEVADA

This morning the hermit thrush was absent at breakfast,
His place was taken by a family of chickadees;
At noon a flock of humming birds passed south,
Whirling in the wind up over the saddle between
Ritter and Banner, following the migration lane
Of the Sierra crest southward to Guatemala.
All day cloud shadows have moved over the face of the mountain,
The shadow of a golden eagle weaving between them
Over the face of the glacier.
At sunset the half-moon rides on the bent back of the Scorpion,
The Great Bear kneels on the mountain.
Ten degrees below the moon
Venus sets in the haze arising from the Great Valley.
Jupiter, in opposition to the sun, rises in the alpenglow
Between the burnt peaks. The ventriloquial belling
Of an owl mingles with the bells of the waterfall.
Now there is distant thunder on the east wind.
The east face of the mountain above me
Is lit with far off lightnings and the sky
Above the pass blazes momentarily like an aurora.
It is storming in the White Mountains,
On the arid fourteen-thousand-foot peaks;
Rain is falling on the narrow gray ranges
And dark sedge meadows and white salt flats of Nevada.
Just before moonset a small dense cumulus cloud,
Gleaming like a grape cluster of metal,
Moves over the Sierra crest and grows down the westward slope.
Frost, the color and quality of ~ Kenneth Rexroth

I buried my father in my heart.
Now he grows in me, my strange son,
my little root who won't drink milk,
little pale foot sunk in unheard-of night,
little clock spring newly wet
in the fire, little grape, parent to the future
wine, a son the fruit of his own son,
little father I ransom with my life ~ Li-Young Lee

Of course, we can't visit every place or meet every person or do every job, yet most of what we'd feel in any life is still available. We don't have to play every game to know what winning feels like. We don't have to hear every piece of music in the world to understand music. We don't have to have tried every variety of grape from every vineyard to know the pleasure of wine. Love and laughter and fear and pain are universal currencies. We just have to close our eyes and savour the taste of the drink in front of us and listen to the song as it plays. We are as completely and utterly alive as we are in any other life and have access to the same emotional spectrum. ~ Matt Haig

As a nine-year-old, I was sorry for everything. "Sonie, you left the refrigerator open!" "Sorry." "Sonya, why is your coat on the couch?" "Sorry." "Sonya, did you get grape jelly on the white pantsuit I paid good money for?" "Sorry, sorry, sorry..." A litany of apologies for my ever clumsy, messy, forgetful self, who spilled evidence of such all over the house. "Sorry" was my way of gathering up the spill. ~ Sonya Renee Taylor

So, of course Rose decided this would be a good time to discuss such matters. "I would also like to know if you know ways to prevent pregnancy."
He choked on a grape. She lurched toward him, but he coughed and spat the villainous fruit on the grass. He wiped at his watery eyes with the back of his hand as he turned his face to her once more. "That will teach me not to chew sufficiently."
Rose smiled shakily, her heart skipping. "You scared me." What if he had choked to death right in front of her?
She couldn't even begin to contemplate life without him.
"You stunned me. That's not exactly something you bring up out of the blue." His eyes twinkled. "Was it the mention of your puppy? Are you frightened of having a litter?"
When he looked at her like that-like they were friends and so much more-it made her insides feel like leaves blowing in the wind. Her gaze slid to her lap. "I would like us to have some time together before we have children."
Some of the tenderness drained from his expression. "I should have taken precautions last night. I'm sorry. I didn't think of children, only…"
"Only what?" If it made his eyes warm like that, she wanted to know what he'd been thinking.
His gaze locked with hers, so sharp and hot. "I thought only of how it felt to be naked inside you."
A hard throb pulsed low and deep inside her, bringing sexual awareness speeding to the surface. It had been different without the "French Letter." It had been b ~ Kathryn Smith

I am certain that the good Lord never intended grapes to be made into grape jelly. ~ Fiorello H. La Guardia

The grapes that my hands wouldn't reach were undoubtedly sour.
But I didn't need sweet fruits that were like a lie. I didn't need things like a fake understanding and a deceptive relationship.
What I wanted was that sour grape.
Even if it's sour, even if it's bitter, even if it's disgusting, even if it's full of poison, even if it didn't exist, even if I couldn't lay my hands on it, even if I wasn't allowed to wish for it. ~ Wataru Watari

My favorite fruit is grapes. Because with grapes, you always get another chance. 'Cause, you know, if you have a crappy apple or a peach, you're stuck with that crappy piece of fruit. But if you have a crappy grape, no problem - just move on to the next. 'Grapes: The Fruit of Hope.' ~ Demetri Martin

Was to filter hair tonic through bread and then mix it with grape juice. Like virtually every other drink devised in the Pacific, it was known as Jungle Juice. ~ Stephen E. Ambrose

Assisi was like something, but like what? Like something one had always known, but never seen. Something perceived from afar, like a wind from the promised land that greeted the stranger and sojourner coming up out of bondage from Egypt. It was joy, no doubt about that. But a joy unlike any other joy he had ever experienced. Unexpected joy in a dark time. Curious joy. There was no other word that approximated it. A taste of sweetness like the fecundity of grape arbors in the terraces below, ~ Michael D. O'Brien

To the pure blood of the grape! ~ Darin Gibby

Wine came from grapes and grapes were fruit. If you were going to judge every wine connoisseur, you would also have to walk around the playground and slap the box of grape juice out of every child's chubby little hands as well. ~ Eric Dimbleby

You know the type: loud as a motorbike but wouldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight. ~ Jay-Z

Pedialyte's a super-Gatorade that they give infants when they're dehydrated. It's on all our riders now. Drink a liter of grape Pedialyte and no hangover. The guys from Pantera taught us that trick. ~ Sully Erna

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stained With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest, And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe; And all the daughters of the year shall dance! Sing now the lusty song of fruit and flowers. ~ William Blake

I don't know what in the hell's going on with cranberries, but they're getting in all the other juices. Whoever the salesman is for cranberries is doing a great job. He's showing up everywhere. Hey, what do you got, some apples? Put some cranberries in there. We'll call it cran-apple and go 50-50. What do you got grapes? How about cran-grape. What do you got mangos? Cran-mango. What do you got pork chops? Cran-chops. Why don't you back off, cran-man. Why don't you take your sales trophy and have a vacation. ~ Brian Regan

Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung. ~ John Keats

She nodded anxiously. Kyle sucked on his Popsicle, assessing her eagerness, wondering if he should tell her she was the best sex he's ever had. She would never believe him anyways, so instead, he told her where to improve as she asked. "You can get ahead if you give better head. Got me?"

"Ah, okay. What would you suggest?"

He stared at her mouth as it moved up and down the frozen treat. "Want to practice?"

She gave him a cynical look. "I'm eating my dessert right now."

"Okay, practice on that. See how deep you can go."

She looked at the sweet treat in her hand and back at him. "I'll choke."

"I know CPR. Don't worry. I won't let you. Pretend it's me. I'll be able to direct you better if I'm not the test subject."

She shrugged and inserted the Popsicle in her mouth.

"Wait," he said, knocking it out of her hand.

"Why did you do that?"

He took the discarded Popsicle and ran to the kitchen. He retrieved a new one that wasn't broken in halves. "If you're going to pretend it's me, we should be more realistic," he said, unwrapping it for her. "At least in terms of girth. The length... well, you'll have to use your imagination."

"Um...grape," she replied and licked the edge.

He sat down and rested his chin on his hands to watch her. She licked it a few times and then shocked him by taking a small bite off the top. She gave him an amused smile. Kyle shook ~ M.K. Schiller

Unlike every other product that is now manufactured for the table, wine exists in as many varieties as there are people who produce it. Variations in technique, climate, grape, soil and culture ensure that wine is, to the ordinary drinker, the most unpredictable of drinks, and to the connoisseur the most intricately informative, responding to its origins like a game of chess to its opening move. ~ Roger Scruton

Yours is ... il sent comme lavande."
Is that French for 'You stink'?"
It means 'lavender'."
Huh." She sniffed at her wrist. "I thought I smelled more like a grape Popsicle. ~ Lynn Viehl

A grape falls off a vine...and dries. Everything happens for a raisin ~ Jomny Sun