Indecipherable Quotes

I like you so much, Marianne said. Connell felt a pleasurable sorrow come over him, which brought him close to tears. Moments of emotional pain arrived like this, meaningless or at least indecipherable. Marianne lived a drastically free life, he could see that. He was trapped by various considerations. He cared what people thought of him. He even cared what Marianne thought, that was obvious now. ~ Sally Rooney

Words, I've come to learn, are pulleys through time. Portals into other minds. Without words, what remains? Indecipherable customs. Strange rites. Blighted hearts. Without words, we're history's orphans. Our lives and thoughts erased ~ Alena Graedon

I've been reading all sorts of objects for years, and yet I feel as if I know nothing. An Earth shattered to pieces. Deliberately forgetful family spirits. Indecipherable Books. You. ~ Christelle Dabos

And I often dream of chemistry at night, dreams that conflate the past and the present, the grid of the periodic table transformed to the grid of Manhattan. [ ... ] Sometimes, too, I dream of the indecipherable language of tin (a confused memory, perhaps, of its plaintive "cry"). But my favorite dream is of going to the opera (I am Hafnium), sharing a box at the Met with the other heavy transition metals my old and valued friends Tantalum, Rhenium, Osmium, Iridium, Platinum, Gold, and Tungsten. ~ Oliver Sacks

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"


I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut < ~ Wallace Stevens

Boys! Are they always this impossible? Do they always say cryptic, indecipherable things? (Note
to self: work with Liz to adapt her boy-to-English translator into a more mobile form - like maybe a
watch or necklace.) ~ Ally Carter

She would sit with picture books in her little lap before she even knew how to read, studying the writing as though all the mystery and wonder of the world were contained in the strange, indecipherable symbols. ~ Molly Ringwald

But Miss Ferguson preferred science over penmanship. Philosophy over etiquette. And, dear heavens preserve them all, mathematics over everything. Not simply numbering that could see a wife through her household accounts. Algebra. Geometry. Indecipherable equations made up of unrecognizable symbols that meant nothing to anyone but the chit herself. It was enough to give Miss Chase hives.

The girl wasn't even saved by having any proper feminine skills. She could not tat or sing or draw. Her needlework was execrable, and her Italian worse. In fact, her only skills were completely unacceptable, as no one wanted a wife who could speak German, discuss physics, or bring down more pheasant than her husband. ~ Eileen Dreyer

My world foreshortened, flattening into a credit card. Seen head on, things seemed merely skewed, but from the side the view was virtually meaningless
a one-dimensional wafer. Everything about me may have been crammed in there, but it was only plastic. Indecipherable except to some machine. ~ Haruki Murakami

Better for real things to be uncontrollable, better for one's life to be undecipherable and intellectually impenetrable than to attempt to make casual sense of what is unknown with a fantasy that is mad. Better, I thought, that the events of these past three days should remain incomprehensible to me forever than to posit, as I had just been doing, a conspiracy of foreign intelligence agents who are determined to control my mind. We've all heard that one before. ~ Philip Roth

Nature is a vast tablet, inscribed with signs, each of which has its own significancy, and becomes poetry in the mind when read; and geology is simply the key by which myriads of these signs, hitherto indecipherable, can be unlocked and perused, and thus a new province added to the poetical domain. ~ Hugh Miller

Shahrzad closed her eyes in defeat and slid her palms to his chest. Then she reached behind him in an embrace of sandalwood and sun. Khalid wrapped both his arms around Shahrzad, and they stood together under the dome of the Grand Portico, with the indecipherable art of love poems giving silent testament. ~ Renee Ahdieh

Eudine did not reply. She was indecipherable, so ageless and immaculate. Her eyes were the same caramel shade as her skin. Her face was a placid lake, such depths. A woman with a face like that could be a confessor, could be told anything, no matter how awful, and remain steady as granite. ~ Ayana Mathis

No. Wait. I ... wait.
Damen stopped, and turned. Laurent's
gaze was edged with indecipherable
emotion, and his jaw was set
at a new angle. The silence stretched out
for such a long time that the words, when
they came, were a shock. ~ C.S. Pacat

This case was too full of skewed, slippery parallels, and I couldn't shake the uneasy sense that they were somehow deliberate. Every coincidence felt like a sea-worn bottle slammed down on the sand at my feet, with my name engraved neatly on the glass and inside a message in some mockingly indecipherable code. ~ Tana French

- watching as a galaxy was born, cosmic events swirling in endless lines and patterns around it. Endless possibilities and explorations. I reached out with my other hand and grabbed Constantine's.
He didn't inhale at all. I looked over and saw that he was staring at me instead, gaze indecipherable. Then he looked upward, and I saw his lips part. ~ Anne Zoelle

No matter how clear things might become in the forest of story, there was never a clear-cut solution, as there was in math. The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a problem into another form. Depending on the nature and the direction of the problem, a solution might be suggested in the narrative. Tengo would return to the real world with that solution in hand. It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. It served no immediate practical purpose, but it contained a possibility. ~ Haruki Murakami

People were always saying how ugly Southern California was, especially when they came back from their summer vacations. They said it looked plastic or fake or whatever, and talked about all the cool things they saw in Ohio, where their grandparents lived. Or in Pennsylvania. The wall behind the arcade was made of giant sparkling white bricks, just like all the other buildings connected to it. There was graffiti on it, indecipherable gang writing. It was dark now and getting a little cold and then the super-bright lights they have behind stores to keep bums from sleeping by the dumpsters came on, and I thought, people who don't think Southern California is the most beautiful place in the world are idiots and I hope they choke on their tongues. ~ John Darnielle

It is useless to dream of revolution through content, useless to dream of a revelation through form, because the medium and the real are now in a single nebula whose truth is indecipherable. ~ Jean Baudrillard

The challenge, however, is that Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon do not publish their algorithms. In fact, the methods they use to filter the information you see are deeply proprietary and the "secret sauce" that drives each company's profitability. The problem with this invisible "black box" algorithmic approach to information is that we do not know what has been edited out for us and what we are not seeing. As a result, our digital lives, mediated through a sea of screens, are being actively manipulated and filtered on a daily basis in ways that are both opaque and indecipherable. ~ Marc Goodman

And so well did they hide themselves in their love that grass grew over their hearts and all their loud songs became indecipherable ribbons of air. ~ Jesse Ball

That's what this is about then? Some blasted grudge you harbor against my father?" She muttered something indecipherable beneath her breath in a language he suspected was not English. French, perhaps? Her words were too low for him to determine. "Has the world gone mad?"
"Has it ever been sane?" he asked. He ahd decided the world a far from logical place long ago, when he'd been lost to the streets at the tender age of eight. "When you mull it over, you and I marrying is scarcely absurd. Fitting perhaps. Face it, neither of us is a feted blueblood. ~ Sophie Jordan

I listen to the rain and the thunder, and I think I hear Jenna's voice in them, sounding out a warning. She's been gone for months now. But sometimes it feels like she's more alive than ever. She's one of the indecipherable things that make sounds in the wind, and she's in every kind of dream - the good and the awful. ~ Lauren DeStefano

Job tries to comfort himself with philosophical pessimism like the intellectuals of the nineteenth century. But God comforts Job with indecipherable mystery, and for the first time Job is comforted. . . . Job flings at God one riddle, God flings back at Job a hundred riddles, and Job is at peace. He is comforted with conundrums. ~ G.K. Chesterton

You don't mean to say that Hogan has turned into a woman? Why, yes, that's him all right, you can recognize him by the fact that he has two legs, two arms, and an indecipherable face. Man, woman, what difference does it make? Are they not all exactly the same, these little black insects with their rhythmic movements, the same eyes, the same thoughts? ~ Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

As I reach the grand foyer, I see Jean-Baptiste and Gaspard step through the front door.
"You're here!" I cry.
"I had planned on taking a couple more hours to rest up," Gaspard explains with a grin, "however, we received this almost indecipherable text message on our mobile telephone ... "
Jean-Baptiste holds up his cell phone like it's a piece of alien machinery. "And I quote, 'Dudes, it's going down now. Get your sorry asses over here stat.' With such an eloquent request, how could we resist?" he remarks drily. But there is a ghost of a smile at the edge of his lips, and I know that he and Gaspard wouldn't miss this for anything in the world. ~ Amy Plum

A man fell in love with a tree.

It was as simple as that. He went into the forest to cut wood and he found a tree and he knew then that he loved it. He forgot about his axe. It fell from his hand and he knew it not. He forgot about the village that he had come from, forgot the path along which he had come, forgot even the brave ringing voices of his fellows, which sounded even then in the broad wood as they called his name, seeking after him. He sat down there before the tree and he made a place for himself and soon no one passing there could even see that he was lying between the roots.

It was for him as though a blade of grass had turned to reveal a map of broad longing and direction and over it he could pass - and did.

He and his love then sought what they would with nothing asked of anyone. Asking no permission, they devised all manner of delights and found in each other everything that the world lacked. You are as bright as a coin. You are as tall as a grove. You are as swift as a thought. And so well did they hide themselves in their love that grass grew over their hearts and all their loud songs became indecipherable ribbons of air.

But then one day, the man awoke. He found himself again in front of a tree, but it was one he had never seen before. He had never seen the forest either--and the clothes he wore were worn almost to shreds. Where have I been, he asked himself, and stumbled out of the woods to where others waited ~ Jesse Ball

The Templars' mental confusion makes them indecipherable. That's why so many people venerate them. ~ Umberto Eco

The role of a story was, in the broadest terms, to transpose a single problem into another form ... It was like a piece of paper bearing the indecipherable text of a magic spell. ~ Haruki Murakami

The light is amber, the air still; the daylilies have folded in on themselves. Soon, the hooded blue of dusk will fall, followed by the darkness of night and the sky writing of the stars, indecipherable to us mortals, despite our attempts to force narrative upon them. ~ Elizabeth Berg

The text also just grows increasingly garbled. For instance, here it says that our new subway system will streamline the rush-hour commute, but about halfway down, it's a series of nearly indecipherable glyphs our experts insist hint at "non-Euclidian emotions" and "appeasement" (though we think this may be a euphemism for "fares"). ~ Joseph Fink

What does a car bomb say about poverty, or the execution of a rural mayor explain about disenfranchisement? ...
The war had become, it it wasn't from the beginning, an indecipherable text. ~ Daniel Alarcon

History is the product of vast, amorphous and indecipherable social movements. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The cadence, that indecipherable, insignificant something that makes someone walk a certain way, speak in a certain tone, look with a certain pause, caress with a certain exactitude. ~ Angeles Mastretta

Lost things. They claw through the membranes, attempting to summon our attention through an indecipherable mayday. Words tumble in helpless disorder. The dead speak. We have forgotten how to listen. ~ Patti Smith

But Shunt, he thirsted for understanding with obsessive perseverance. It was a pathology in this way, and pathologies aren't hobbies to be entertained through the inclination of the willing. With some assertion, you certainly can't direct a pathology: it directs, contorts, warps, wears you. Shunt walked through school, down his bedroom corridor, high-ceiling'd and close-panelled, over asphalt as hot as holiday sex, in his head, always relegated to a realm of internal mystery, a sphere of indecipherable symbols that were filtered in, held fast to, but never understood. He saw things or deduced things, and they were there for eternity. Once Shunt had them inside, it was impossible to divorce or expunge them, and so there they remained, infecting his peace and placidity of mind, thoughts like foreign bodies entering a gaping, unquenched wound, and after that Shunt's life devolved into the gangrene set in by these unpurged foreign bodies. Shunt suffered from epilepsy and a panic disorder. He didn't know who he was. He was not a funny person, a wise person, a valorous person, a soft person. Shunt was epilepsy and a panic disorder, and that's as encompassing as his personality had ever been. When you suffer a pathology it directs, contorts, warps, wears you. ~ Kirk Marshall

Get up," James finally said, his tone indecipherable. "I don't need a patient dying from pneumonia on me tonight. ~ L. Jayne