House Of Sand And Fog Quotes

I was really surprised at the success of 'House of Sand and Fog,' because it is so awfully dark. Believe it or not, when writing it, I never had the word 'tragedy' in my head - I wasn't trying to write a dark book at all. ~ Andre Dubus III

It's easy K. on one side of the page you got your costs and on the other side your benefits. All you do is mark which one is which, then you weigh one side against the other and you get your decision just like that. that's all you ever have to do. i live by this."
"But what if you don't know the difference between a benefit and a cost? what if you've never been very good at telling a plus from a minus? ~ Andre Dubus III

I'm one of those writers who can't talk about what they're working on. The entire four years I was writing 'House of Sand and Fog,' my wife never saw a word of it. I just have to keep it in the womb, and then everyone can have a crack at it. ~ Andre Dubus III

As was the case in Requiem for a Dream, Pollock, A Beautiful Mind, House of Sand and Fog, The Hulk and Dark Water, Jennifer Connelly's mere presence in a film guarantees that things will turn out badly for the male lead, as Connelly is always cast as the Angel of Death. Fun to hang out with, great eyes, amazing eyebrows, but the Angel of Death. ~ Joe Queenan

You're sure you want to do this," Galen says, eyeing me like I've grown a tiara of snakes on my head.
"Absolutely." I unstrap the four-hundred-dollar silver heels and spike them into the sand. When he starts unraveling his tie, I throw out my hand. "No! Leave it. Leave everything on."
Galen frowns. "Rachel would kill us both. In our sleep. She would torture us first."
"This is our prom night. Rachel would want us to enjoy ourselves." I pull the thousand-or-so bobby pins from my hair and toss them in the sand. Really, both of us are right. She would want us to be happy. But she would also want us to stay in our designer clothes.
Leaning over, I shake my head like a wet dog, dispelling the magic of hairspray. Tossing my hair back, I look at Galen.
His crooked smile almost melts me where I stand. I'm just glad to see a smile on his face at all. The last six months have been rough. "Your mother will want pictures," he tells me.
"And what will she do with pictures? There aren't exactly picture frames in the Royal Caverns." Mom's decision to mate with Grom and live as his queen didn't surprise me. After all, I am eighteen years old, an adult, and can take care of myself. Besides, she's just a swim away.
"She keeps picture frames at her house though. She could still enjoy them while she and Grom come to shore to-"
"Okay, ew. Don't say it. That's where I draw the line."
Galen laughs and takes off his shoes. I forget all about Mom and Grom ~ Anna Banks

How to Perform Visualization

To practice visualization, sit in a comfortable position and relax any muscle tension. Once you feel relaxed, begin to visualize a pleasant scene. Imagine every aspect of the scene, using all of your senses. For instance, if you visualize sitting on a beach watching the ocean waves lapping against the shore, imagine first what the scene looks like, then imagine how the sand feels on your bare feet. Take a deep breath and imagine how the clean ocean air smells and tastes. Next, listen for the sounds of the waves and seagulls.
As you become more involved with your mental picture, your body will relax and you will be able to let go of your worrisome thoughts. It often helps to make positive, affirmative statements, such as "I feel calm and relaxed," while practicing to block negative thoughts more effectively. You could picture also an image that represents the tension you feel when you begin, such as a kite that is stuck in a tree getting more and more tangled. As you become relaxed, imagine the string loosening and the kite becoming free and soaring in the sky.
With practice, you will be able to use this technique to help yourself relax whenever you feel distressed.

Lori spent last Thanksgiving at her best friend Haley's house. Most of the members of Haley's large, extended family were there. Everyone was talking at once, the children were running around, and Lori felt completely overwhelmed. It was so different fro ~ Heather Moehn

The house had a private walk down to a private spit of beach, and in the mornings the four of them would troop downhill and swim - even he did, in his pants and undershirt and an old oxford shirt, which no one bothered him about - and then lie on the sand baking, the wet clothes ungluing themselves from his body as they dried. Sometimes Harold would come and watch them, or swim as well. In the afternoons, Malcolm and JB would pedal off through the dunes on bicycles, and he and Willem would follow on foot, picking up bits of shaley shells and the sad carapaces of long-nibbled-away hermit crabs as they went, Willem slowing his pace to match his own. In the evenings, when the air was soft, JB and Malcolm sketched and he and Willem read. He felt doped, on sun and food and salt and contentment, and at night he fell asleep quickly and early, and in the mornings he woke before the others so he could stand on the back porch alone looking over the sea. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

On the back part of the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of almost unbearable brilliance. At first I thought it was revolving; then I realised that this movement was an illusion created by the dizzying world it bounded. The Aleph's diameter was probably little more than an inch, but all space was there, actual and undiminished. Each thing (a mirror's face, let us say) was infinite things, since I distinctly saw it from every angle of the universe. I saw the teeming sea; I saw daybreak and nightfall; I saw the multitudes of America; I saw a silvery cobweb in the center of a black pyramid; I saw a splintered labyrinth (it was London); I saw, close up, unending eyes watching themselves in me as in a mirror; I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me; I saw in a backyard of Soler Street the same tiles that thirty years before I'd seen in the entrance of a house in Fray Bentos; I saw bunches of grapes, snow, tobacco, lodes of metal, steam; I saw convex equatorial deserts and each one of their grains of sand; I saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget; I saw her tangled hair, her tall figure, I saw the cancer in her breast; I saw a ring of baked mud in a sidewalk, where before there had been a tree; I saw a summer house in Adrogué and a copy of the first English translation of Pliny -- Philemon Holland's -- and all at the same time saw each letter on each page (as a boy, I used to marvel that the letters in a closed book did not ge ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Sand
And she frequently forgot,
That her body (all our bodies) is a house of sand.
That it had shattered and is shattering still.
Slipping stubbornly through fingers. ~ Han Kang

The sand was smooth. The damp morning fog had hardened its top layer and the heat of the day had set it so that with every footstep the surface cracked, the crunch almost audible. The heels and balls of their shoes made a path of shallow divots, but it was far easier to walk on than the usual loose and gritty beach.
In minutes, the wind worked to sweep their footprints clean and offer a flat, clear expanse all the way to the ocean where the sand became wet and sparkled invitingly with seawater. ~ Victoria Kahler

All persons are contained within a single individual, just as all time is in a moment, and the entire universe is in a grain of sand. ~ Brian Herbert

God will forgive you if you ask him to. Though your sins be numerous as the grains of sand on the shore, God's merciful forgiveness is far greater than your sins. Do not be afraid. Trust in his love. Repent of your sins without delay and return to the house of the Father. He is waiting for you. ~ Patrick Madrid

To be oneself on a basis of gold
is no better than founding one's house on the sand.
For your watch, and your ring, and the rest of your trappings
the good people fawn on you, grovelling to earth;
they lift their hats to your jewelled breast-pin;
but your ring and your breast-pin are not your person.- ~ Henrik Ibsen

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that can ~ G.K. Chesterton

...there was no escaping the monsters, not even on this island, no bigger on a map than a grain of sand, protected by mountains of fog and sharp rocks and seething tides. Not anywhere. That was the awful truth... ~ Ransom Riggs

I tried to turn my heart to the living, to the place I was, but putting seed in land not owned by me or my family seemed alien. The sandy, gray-white soil looked like dirty beach sand, not fit for growing anything. It smelled like dust. Yet weeds and trees and wildflowers grew along the roads. When we drove into town, we passed dense, impenetrable woods and fields of corn, peas, and peppers. Such new combinations of seemingly poor soil and happy flora puzzled me. Everywhere I went, I picked up the dirt, examining it for clues. Bringing anything out of such soil would require a whole new language on my part. I imagined there must be something richer and darker under the gray sand, or some trick the farmers all knew. Trick or no trick, what I had always been able to do well now seemed inaccessible. Still, I searched the yard around our house for the best spot to plant my fall garden. ~ Rhonda Riley

Sand from the Urns
Green as mould is the house of oblivion.
Before each of the blowing gates your beheaded minstrel turns blue.
For you he beats his drum made of moss and of harsh
pubic hair;
With a festering toe in the sand he traces your eyebrow.
Longer he draws it than ever it was, and the red of your
lip.
You fill up the urns here and nourish your heart. ~ Paul Celan

Distances"

Swifts turn in the heights of the air;
higher still turn the invisible stars.
When day withdraws to the ends of the earth
their fires shine on a dark expanse of sand.

We live in a world of motion and distance.
The heart flies from tree to bird,
from bird to distant star,
from star to love; and love grows
in the quiet house, turning and working,
servant of thought, a lamp held in one hand. ~ Philippe Jaccottet

Your gravity, your grace have turned a tide
In me, no lunar power can reverse;
But in your narcoleptic eyes I spied
A sightlessness tonight: or something worse,
A disregard that made me feel unmanned.
Meanwhile, insomniac, I catch my breath
To think I saw my future traced in sand
One afternoon "as still, as carved, as death,"
And pray for an oblivion so deep
It ends in transformation. Only dawn
Can save me, flood this haunted house of sleep
With light, and drown the thoughts that nightly warn:
Another lifetime is the least you'll need, to trace
The guarded secrets of her gravity, her grace. ~ Jonathan Coe

Eight o'clock, no later,
You light the lamps,
The big one by the large window,
The small one on your desk,
They are not to see by--
It is still twilight out over the sand,
The scrub oaks and cranberries.
Even the small birds have not settled
For sleep yet, out of the reach
Of prowling foxes. No,
You light the lamps because
You are alone in your small house
And the wicks sputtering gold
Are like two visitors with good stories
They will tell slowly, in soft voices,
While the air outside turns quietly
A grainy and luminous blue.
You wish it would never change--
But of course the darkness keeps
Its appointment. Each evening,
An inscrutable presence, it has the final word
Outside every door. ~ Mary Oliver Rotman

Out there, in the open desert, men can walk for days without passing a single house, seeing a well, for the desert is so vast that no one can know it all. Men go out into the desert, and they are like ships at sea; no one knows when they will return. Sometimes there are storms, but nothing like here, terrible storms, and the wind tears up the sand and throws it high into the sky, and the men are lost. They die, drowned in the sand, they die lost like ships in a storm, and the sand retains their bodies. Everything is so different in that land; the sun isn't the same as it is here, it burns hotter, and there are men that come back blinded, their faces burned. Nights, the cold makes men who are lost scream out in pain, the cold breaks their bones. Even the men aren't the same as they are here...they are cruel, they stalk their pray like foxes, drawing silently near. They are black, like the Hartani, dressed in blue, faces veiled. They aren't men, but djinns, children of the devil, and they deal with the devil; they are like sorcerers... ~ J M G Le Clezio

Clearly, it's time to lay down the ground rules and let her know she can't order me around. This is my life, and I'm going to be in control of it.
"I can train with you in the afternoons, as long as we go somewhere with air-conditioning. But before we do that, you're explaining everything. Got it?"
Personally I'm pretty proud of the line I just drew in the sand.
But Audra's eyes narrow and her jaw sets, turning her face into a series of hard lines. "You seem to be under the misimpression that you're in charge here, so let me correct that right now." She whips her arms in front of her and whispers, "Rush."
A blast of wind slams against my chest and sends me flying backward. I grunt as my back crashes into one of the remaining walls of the fire-scarred house. The wind pins me to the scratchy stucco and my eyes water from the racing air.
Audra steps toward me, the glare in her eyes leaving no doubt that she can end me right here, right now.
"Let's get a few things straight," she says, her voice deadly serious. "We're in a tremendous amount of danger, and I am responsible for keeping everyone in this valley alive - including you. No one will be making greater sacrifices than I will, so you will do what I say when I say it - and you will do it without complaint. Is. That. Understood? ~ Shannon Messenger

The sidewalks were haunted by dust
ghosts all night as the furnace wind summoned them up,
swung them about, and gentled them down in a warm spice on
the lawns. Trees, shaken by the footsteps of late-night strol-
lers, sifted avalanches of dust. From midnight on, it seemed a
volcano beyond the town was showering red-hot ashes every-
where, crusting slumberless night watchmen and irritable
dogs. Each house was a yellow attic smoldering with spon-
taneous combustion at three in the morning.

Dawn, then, was a time where things changed element for
element. Air ran like hot spring waters nowhere, with no
sound. The lake was a quantity of steam very still and deep
over valleys of fish and sand held baking under its serene
vapors. Tar was poured licorice in the streets, red bricks were
brass and gold, roof tops were paved with bronze. The high-
tension wires were lightning held forever, blazing, a threat
above the unslept houses.
The cicadas sang louder and yet louder.
The sun did not rise, it overflowed. ~ Ray Bradbury

Nothing truly beautiful without its element of strangeness, nothing whole without its own incongruity, these (Jacksonville-area pioneer house) ruins sand up from the earth in sacred conjunction. These ruins conjoin the earth and the manmade, moving from one to the other and back again. The Browards built their house out of shell and limestone, and limestone forms naturally from the shells and skeletons of miniscule sea creatures over great periods of time. The Browards shaped the earth upright toward the sky. THey shaped it with doorframes and windows and chimneys. THey shaped the earth up around them as a shelter. But shaped earth was always the earth. Now the walls fall back down and join once again the ground, taken over by roots of ferns and weeds and small trees. The house was always the ground, only contained in an upward suspension. The house was always the earth, but brought up into architecture, and now the house that was always the earth crumbles back into the earth and nourishes new green things -- dog fennel and morning glories and palmettoes and cabbage palms and cedars. A true symbol of sacredness of the earth is earth's reclaiming of human ingenuity. ~ Tim Gilmore

The Fever Bird

The fever bird sand out last night.
I could not sleep, try as I might.

My brain was split, my spirit raw.
I looked into the garden, saw

The shadow of the amaltas
Shake slightly on the moonlit grass

Unseen, the bird cried out its grief,
Its lunacy, without relief:

Three notes repeated closer, higher,
Soaring, then sinking down like fire

Only to breathe the night and soar,
As crazed, as desperate, as before.

I shivered in the midnight heat
And smelt the sweat that soaked my sheet.

And now tonight I hear again
The call that skewers though my brain,

The call, the brain-sick triple note--
A cone of pain stuck inits throat.

I am so tired I could weep.
Mad bird, for God's sake let me sleep

Why do you cry like one possessed?
When will you rest? When will you rest?

Why wait each night till all but I
Lie sleeping in the house, then cry?

Why do you scream into my ear
What no one else but I can hear? ~ Vikram Seth

As one can hardly find any thing in a house where nothing keeps its place, but all is cast on a heap together; so it is in the heart where all things are in disorder, especially when darkness is added to this disorder: so that the hear t is like an obscure cave or dungeon, where there is but a little crevice of light, and a man must rather grope than see No wonder if men mistake in searching such a heat, sand so miscarry in judging of their estate (304). ~ Richard Baxter

The moon rose up that evening and shot her silver arrows at the house under the artu tree. The house was empty. Then the moon came across the sea and across the reef. She lit the lagoon to it's dark, dim heart. She lit the coral brains and sand spaces, and the fish casting their shadows on the sand and the coral. The keeper of the lagoon rose to greet her, and the fin of him broke her reflection on the mirror-like surface into a thousand glittering ripples. She saw the white staring ribs of the form on the reef. Then, peeping over the trees, she looked down into the valley, where the great stone idol had kept it's solitary vigil for five thousand years, perhaps, and more.

At this base, in his shadow, looking as if under his protection, lay two human beings, naked, clasped in each other's arms and fast asleep. One could scarcely pity his vigil, had it been marked sometimes through the years by such an incident as this. The thing had been conducted just as the birds conduct their love affairs. An affair absolutely natural, absolutely blameless and without sin. A marriage according to Nature, without feasts or guests, consummated with accidental cynicism under the shadow of a religion a thousand years dead. ~ Henry De Vere Stacpoole

I was Uhtred, Lord of Bebbanburg, in my war-glory. The arm rings of fallen enemies glinted on my forearms, my shield was newly painted with the snarling wolf's head of my house, while another wolf, this one of silver, crouched on the crest of my polished helmet. My mail was tight, polished with sand, my sword belt and scabbard and bridle and saddle were studded with silver, there was a gold chain at my neck, my boots were panelled with silver, my drawn sword was grey with the whorls of its making running from the hilt to its hungry tip. I was the lord of war mounted on a great black horse, and together we would make panic. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Let each of us accept the truth of the following statement and try to make it our most fundamental principle: Christ's teaching will never let us down, while worldly wisdom always will. Christ Himself said that this sort of wisdom was like a house with nothing but sand as its foundation, while His own was like a building with solid rock as its foundation. ~ Vincent De Paul

To and fro, to and fro over the fine red sand on the floor of the dove house, walked the two doves. One was always in front of the other. One ran forward, uttering a little cry, and the other followed, solemnly bowing and bowing. "You see," explained Anne, "the one in front, she's Mrs. Dove. She looks at Mr. Dove and gives that little laugh and runs forward, and he follows her, bowing and bowing. ~ Katherine Mansfield

The heart must be renewed by divine grace, or it will be in vain to seek for purity of life. He who attempts to build up a noble, virtuous character independent of the grace of Christ is building his house upon the shifting sand. ~ Ellen G. White

How many people came and stayed a certain time,
Uttered light or dark speech that became part of you
Like light behind windblown fog and sand
Filtered and influenced by it, until no part
Remains that is surely you. ~ John Ashbery

For the next hour, the subject of Pandora's board game business was discarded as the group worked on the sandcastle. They paused at intervals to drink thirstily from jugs of cold water and lemonade that had been sent down from the house. Pandora threw herself into the project with enthusiasm, consulting with Justin, who had decided the castle must have a moat, square corner towers, a front gatehouse with a drawbridge, and battlement walls from which the occupants could drop scalding water or molten tar onto the advancing enemy.
Gabriel, who'd been instructed to dig the moat, stole frequent glances at Pandora, who had enough energy for ten people. Her face glowed beneath her battered straw hat, which she had managed to pry away from Ajax. She was sweaty and covered in sand, a few escaped locks of hair trailing over her neck and back. She played with the unselfconscious ease of a child, this woman of radical thoughts and ambitions. She was beautiful. Complex. Frustrating. He'd never met a woman who was so wholly and resolutely herself.
What the devil was he going to do about her? ~ Lisa Kleypas

I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself!.. And several other times in my life, when I was swimming far out, or lying alone on a beach, I have had the same experience, became the sun, the hot sand, green seaweed anchored to a rock, swaying in the tide. Like a saint's vision of beatitude. Like the veil of things as they seem drawn back by an unseen hand. For a second you see, and seeing the secret, you are the secret. For a second there is meaning! Then the hand lets the veil fall and you are alone, lost in the fog again, and you stumble on towards nowhere for no good reason. ~ Eugene O'Neill