Lake Michigan Quotes

Spending time with people who have dementia has made me a more patient parent, friend, daughter, sister, wife. It has made me notice and be endlessly thankful for things like the horizon of Lake Michigan, gray storm clouds, three or four well-chosen notes on a cello, and breathing.

Anne Davis Basting in Forget Memory p.160 ~ Anne Davis Basting

Imagine a single drop of water: that's the protest. Now put that drop of water into a bucket: that's the protest movement. Now drop that bucket into Lake Michigan: that's Reality. But old Cronkite knows the danger of television is that people begin seeing the entire world through that single drop of water. How that one drop refracts the light becomes the whole picture. For ~ Nathan Hill

Shortly before school started, I moved into a studio apartment on a quiet street near the bustle of the downtown in one of the most self-conscious bends of the world. The "Gold Coast" was a neighborhood that stretched five blocks along the lake in a sliver of land just south of Lincoln Park and north of River North. The streets were like fine necklaces and strung together were the brownstone houses and tall condominiums and tiny mansions like pearls, and when the day broke and the sun faded away, their lights burned like jewels shining gaudily in the night.
The world's most elegant bazaar, Michigan Avenue, jutted out from its eastern tip near The Drake Hotel and the timeless blue-green waters of Lake Michigan pressed its shores. The fractious make-up of the people that inhabited it, the flat squareness of its parks and the hint of the lake at the ends of its tree-lined streets squeezed together a domesticated cesspool of age and wealth and standing. It was a place one could readily dress up for an expensive dinner at one of the fashionable restaurants or have a drink miles high in the lounge of the looming John Hancock Building and five minutes later be out walking on the beach with pants cuffed and feet in the cool water at the lake's edge. ~ Daniel Amory

Pike County, which now has Pittsfield as its seat, was once so large that it included Chicago, which was then a tiny settlement on Lake Michigan. ~ Troy Taylor

Would this make sense to the TV audience? That a thing like a protest expands and draws everything into it. He wants to tell his audience that the reality they are seeing on television is not Reality. Imagine a single drop of water: that's the protest. Now put that drop of water into a bucket: that's the protest movement. Now drop that bucket into Lake Michigan: that's Reality. But old Cronkite knows the danger of television is that people begin seeing the entire world through that single drop of water. How that one drop refracts the light becomes the whole picture. For many people, whatever they see tonight will cement in place everything they think about protest and peace and the sixties. And he feels, pressingly, that it's his job to prevent this closure. ~ Nathan Hill

I had woven a tapestry of obscenity that as far as I know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan. ~ Jean Shepherd

I grew up on Lake Michigan during the PCB explosion, and I remember seeing the sick, dead fish with tumors, the weird deformed seagulls, the scum and the filth floating. We couldn't go swimming. ~ Mark Ruffalo

The warehouse was a part of the wharves down at the lakeside, and even the chill waters of Lake Michigan were warmer than usual. They filled the air with more than the average water-scent of mud and mildew and eau de dead fishy. ~ Jim Butcher

WHAT WAS LOST IN THE COLLAPSE: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. Twilight in the altered world, a performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream in a parking lot in the mysteriously named town of St. Deborah by the Water, Lake Michigan shining a half mile away. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

The great packing machine ground on remorselessly, without thinking of green fields; and the men and women and children who were part of it never saw any green thing, not even a flower. Four or five miles to the east of them lay the blue waters of Lake Michigan; but for all the good it did them it might have been as far away as the Pacific Ocean. They had only Sundays, and then they were too tired to walk. They were tied to the great packing machine, and tied to it for life. ~ Upton Sinclair

A few days before the [Mr. America] contest we heard rumors about a man who had throngs of people following him along the Lake Michigan Beach front, and we couldn't imagine who could draw crowds by merely walking along the beach! ~ George Eiferman

Exercise is really important to me - it's therapeutic. So if I'm ever feeling tense or stressed or like I'm about to have a meltdown, I'll put on my iPod and head to the gym or out on a bike ride along Lake Michigan with the girls. ~ Michelle Obama

Yes, I was standing on nothing but congealed starlight. Yes, I was walking up through a savage storm, the wind threatening to tear me off and throw me into the freezing waters of Lake Michigan far below. Yes, I was using a legendary and enchanted means of travel to transcend the border between one dimension and the next, and on my way to an epic struggle between ancient and elemental forces.
But all i could think to say, between panting breaths, was, Yeah. Sure. They couldn't possibly have made this an escalator. ~ Jim Butcher

It's a strange thing. I hardly find anybody today who doesn't agree that the ledger should not determine how we live. Most people think it's terrible that the pollution in Lake Michigan is being decided by how much it'll cost companies to cure it. People are realizing that an environment is being created that will be as dangerous for capitalists to live in as well as for the working people...that it's insane to let major things be decided on the basis of black figures and red figures. I find temperate people saying today that the business-motivated system isn't a safe thing to have around. ~ Fred W. Thompson

I wanted to get from 4th street to 8th ... Then I remembered Einstein postulating that parallel lines eventually meet. They're dredging my car from Lake Michigan as we speak. ~ Emo Philips

A star is born in the teeth of the Lake Michigan wind. ~ Brent Musburger

Is it an endearing quirk among European explorers to imagine that every geographical feature they clap eyes on for the first time is in need of a new name, or is if just a plain silly one? As far as I understand, humans have been knocking around this part of Africa for - give or take a birthday candle- three million years. The existence of a large wet patch smack in the middle of them had not gone unnoticed. How large? Bigger than Lake Michigan, bigger than Tasmania, bigger than Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont and Rhode Island all rolled into one. It is so big that people on one side gave it one name, people on the other side gave it another, and people in between gave it several more. But that didn't matter to Dr Livingstone. Along he came and he didn't ask the locals what they called this large lake at the top end of the Nile. He gave it yet another name, in honour of the elder of a tribe of white people on a small island five thousand miles away. ~ Nicholas Drayson

Traffic's not too bad on Sheridan, and I'm cornering the car like it's the Indy 500, and we're listening to my favorite NMH song, "Holland, 1945," and then onto Lake Shore Drive, the waves of Lake Michigan crashing against the boulders by the Drive, the windows cracked to get the car to defrost, the dirty, bracing, cold air rushing in, and I love the way Chicago smells - Chicago is brackish lake water and soot and sweat and grease and I love it, and I love this song, and Tiny's saying I love this song, and he's got the visor down so he can muss up his hair a little more expertly. ~ John Green

What is Chicagoness? What is the city made of? Why is it different from any other city? What are the things that are here and only here and compose the here of here? He leaned back in his lawn chair and thought a bit and then he said, "The prevalence of the lake. The way the lake is a sea and not a lake. The way the lake shoulders the city. The cutting of wind off the lake and the whirl of snow. ~ Brian Doyle

During heavy rains, river water flowed in a greasy plume far out into Lake Michigan, to the towers that marked the intake pipes for the city's drinking water. ~ Erik Larson

Whether or not we can save Lake Michigan, whether or not we can avoid a breakdown in our criminal justice system are more important than whether or not I'm going to be governor. ~ Bill Scott

My paintings repeat a feeling about Lake Michigan, or water, or fields ... it's more like a poem ... and that's what I want to paint. ~ Joan Mitchell

Have you ever been approached by a grim-looking man, carrying a naked sword with a blade about ten miles long in his hand, in the middle of the night, beneath the stars on the shores of Lake Michigan? If you have, seek professional help. If you have not, then believe you me, it can scare the bejeezus out of you. ~ Jim Butcher

Birth equals create. ~ Ricki Lake

Living in New York, you get a lot of confidence; when I go back to Michigan, I realise how obnoxious and demanding and straightforward I am. ~ Angel Haze

If you put a spoonful of salt in a cup of water it tastes very salty. If you put a spoonful of salt in a lake of fresh water the taste is still pure and clear. Peace comes when our hearts are open like the sky, vast as the ocean. ~ Jack Kornfield

Can I go home now? Please?"
He grinned slightly. "No. Not until you acknowledge your pain and move passed it."
"This is crap, Oliver. I don't want to face anything. I don't need to be fixed. ~ Brynn Myers

I want to rest, "Alice said, and she meant it with all her heart. "Once I lived in a cage, and before that a different kind of cage. I tried to break free from the first one and they put me in one that was much, much worse. All I want is to find a place I have dreamed of, a little cottage in a green field by a lake. ~ Christina Henry

I'll be the bastard you need me to be, Lucy. Whatever darkness you crave, I'll give that to you. But no matter what, you're still my light. ~ Keri Lake

I want to express my deepest apology to the athletes, the people of Salt Lake City in Utah and the millions of citizens worldwide who love and respect the games. ~ Juan Antonio Samaranch

Standing on the shore, I prayed for my dead. I praised them. I stupidly hoped that the lake would heal my small wounds. Then I stripped off my clothes and waded naked into the water.

Jesus, I don't want to die today or tomorrow, but I don't want to live forever. ~ Sherman Alexie

When I was a kid in Michigan, I used to play ball with a town team on Sunday. Of course, I'd go to church first. Played the church organ, as a matter of fact. ~ Larry MacPhail

We arrived in Vermont expecting to fix up the old lake house. But in the end, it was the house that fixed us. ~ Sarah Ockler

You know, I have to tell you"
I tried to make my voice bright to lighten the moo
"this ring of yours has got to be the ugliest thing I have ever seen."
"I'm insulted." He held his hand up to the moonlight and straightened the monstrosity on his finger. "My dad gave this to me when we moved to Michigan.'To remember the old life' he said. I've never taken it off. I look at it and see California."
"Remind me never to visit California. ~ Linda Gerber

Opening and closing the pages of a celestial dictionary at will and always falling upon the words hair fur and sex until a bunch of distant images arise at the same time as June when she kneels in front of me her tongue making little cross-strokes in my full-moon fur my enchanted-lake fur we should do it again so that I too can stroke through June's fur. ~ Nicole Brossard

And so he had begun his adulthood, the last three years spent bobbing from bank to bank in a muck-bottomed pond, the trees above and around him blotting out the light, making it too dark for him to see whether the lake he was in opened up into a river or whether it was contained, its own small universe in which he might spend years, decades - his life - searching bumblingly for a way out that didn't exist, had never existed. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Keys parachuted down into one of the exact seats he purchased that he and his father sat in as season ticket holders in the Old Barn on Grand River Avenue. Keys slipped his arm around the empty chair dressed with his father's withering Tiger's baseball cap, secured to the seat with a quarter inch drywall screw. Keys reflected upon his father, who chauffeured Keys and other players, every weekend, to a hockey tournament somewhere, "You know pop…every kid you gave a ride too game or practice, came to your funeral. When this hat falls away, no more screws, pop. I'm gonna branch out…make new friends. Soon as these gypsy moths get a hold of your precious, Old English "D", here--turn your glory years, Kaline and Mclain into tree threads. ~ Kevin Moccia

And there she was, still not moving, staring at the walls with an unnatural devotion. ~ Shaine Lake

A bolt of lightning speared down into the lake, followed by a clap of thunder so loud Norah swore she felt the lighthouse quake.
"Jeez," she said, shrinking back against Trip and not feeling stupid about it because it was nice to have a strong man around at a time like this. "Did you feel that?"
"Like the earth moved? That was nothing." And he spun her around and took her mouth. ~ Penny McCall

We need to understand that the suffering people cause themselves and others comes from this primitive aspect of human nature and isn't a reflection of their true nature or value as a human being. The only thing that allows us to hurt or go to war with others is the belief that they are evil rather than that they, like us, are driven by a primitive aspect of themselves that perpetrates evil. ~ Gina Lake

Every city has a town outside with a lake. I pull out my fishing pole and fish. I've been doing that for a long time. ~ Brandi Carlile

They lay there like that, in a different kind of silence now, watching the lake and the stars, listening to the night, each basking in the warmth of the other. ~ Kimberly Derting

When a Christian tries to live by reason he is moving out of God's country into the enemy's land. We belong in the miraculous and the supernatural realm. ~ John G. Lake

Before there is peace, blood will spill blood, and the lake will run red. ~ Erin Hunter

Men have said that the cross of Christ was not a heroic thing, but I want to tell you that the cross of Jesus Christ has put more heroism in the souls of men than any other event in human history. ~ John G. Lake

Idea for a short story. The shore of a lake, a young girl who's spent her whole life beside it, a girl like you She loves the lake the way a seagull does, and she's happy and free as a seagull. Then a man comes along, sees her, and ruins her life because he has nothing better to do. Destroys her like this seagull here. ~ Anton Chekhov

Progressive music probably wouldn't even really exist if not for the people of the United States having picked up on it and nurtured it in the way they did. It really is an American form of music in the sense that it was nurtured here. So it belongs here. It has become part of the fabric of American musical culture. ~ Greg Lake

Blaming the library for exposure to pornography is like blaming the lake if your child walks up to it alone, falls in and then drowns. – David Sawyer, Spokesman-Review, 18 December 2000 ~ Tatyana Eckstrand

In an instant, five harlequin-like clowns emerged and began to perform all kinds of acrobatic tricks, encircling us––correction...corralling us. They were graceful but a little creepy too. They were wearing black and white costumes that were form fitting and appeared to move like some psychedelic drug trip when they flipped around. That of course was odd, but not nearly as odd as the chant they were singing as they continued to perform their tricks.
See us dance.
Watch us flip.
Care to take a chance?
We'll only need a sip.
Come to see our mistress?
Or come to see our master?
She can be quite viscous.
But he is a disaster.
We love them both, and we'll let you choose.
Either way, we wouldn't want to be in your shoes. ~ Brynn Myers

You've mistaken the stars reflected on the surface of the lake at night for the heavens. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

The loveliness of the day was enough to knock you down. Swallows rioted above the calm green lid of the lake. Birch trees gleamed like filaments among the dark evergreens. No planes disturbed the sky. I felt dead to it, though I did take a kind of comfort that all of this beauty was out here, persisting like mad, whether you hearkened to it or not. ~ Wells Tower

I came up with a new reason
To write your name today
I plagiarized each letter
From a love note you wrote me.
The scent of ink was sacred to me
In that relapsed moment…
For a minute I could pretend
The paper reminded me of your skin;
I could pretend the glimmering ink
Was the moonlit lake
Of our summer night.
But the pretending crumpled with paper
And I threw us into the trash can
For the bridge between us is long burned
And it's time I accepted that. ~ Justin Wetch

the middle of the guest room at the Blue Lake Historical ~ Kristin Miller

I love touring in the United States. It's dramatically different wherever you go. North to south, you're going from snow to palm trees. ~ Greg Lake

Hadrian turned to look out at the lake. "I hear they have good fishing."

Royce lifted his head to look at him. "You're a very odd man."

"You were the one talking about evil geese . ~ Michael J. Sullivan

I'm an old-fashioned guy ... I want to be an old man with a beer belly sitting on a porch, looking at a lake or something. ~ Johnny Depp

Lake quiets, tired of my lies. ~ Deborah Ager

Sometimes you have to grit your teeth and remain tenacious and just believe the end will come. Other times it's not an issue. You just write on and the end comes naturally. ~ Greg Lake