Patina Quotes

He sees his world in black and white: Filthy snow, a hollow sky, the gray cement of the walls - water stains, like giant ink spills, eating into them - and his own skin, an ashy patina enveloping his body. Even the wounds on his feet, hardened and crusted, have lost their red. He has come to think of colour as something fantastic that exists only in his mind - the red of a tomato sliced and salted at the lunch table, the deep blue of a lapis lazuli on Farnaz's finger, the honey hue of his daughter's hair in the sun. ~ Dalia Sofer

Narrative storytelling enables us to derive ideas from the disparate facts, incongruent motives, conflicting emotions, and other absurdities inherent in living dynamically. The narrative that we select to tell our life story acts as a lens that assigns value to our shape shifting experiences: it pulls humor from catastrophes; it places a patina of irony over our checkered history; it allows us to explore our pessimism; and it provides a platform from which vantage point we can optimistically view the future. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Here you found a homeless guy wearing a decade's patina of grime and sweat, in for trying to beat up a dumpster (and losing); a street performer coated from head to toe in metallic spray paint, caught trying to fondle a nine-year old; two Elvis impersonators of the pudgy era, apprehended in the midst of a fistfight over who was the real deal (tidbit: one of them was); and a gaggle of drunks in a holding cell, all in varying stages of undress - one of whom wore only a traffic pylon on his head. ~ Daniel Younger

When I started performing in public, I was probably around 10 or 11. ~ Patina Miller

There is probably no way of explaining Project Koschei, or XK-PLUTO, or MK-NIGHTMARE, or the gates, without watering them down into just another weapons system -- which they are not. Weapons may have deadly or hideous effects, but they acquire moral character from the actions of those who use them. Whereas these projects are indelibly stained by a patina of ancient evil ... ~ Charles Stross

For 350 years we have been taught that reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man and writing an exact man. Football's place is to add a patina of character, a deference to the rules and a respect for authority. ~ Red Smith

I got into hula hooping at age six - I hula hooped all day, every day. That was something I was comfortable with, but I never tried walking or singing while hula hooping! It's actually pretty difficult and tiring. But I like challenging myself. It's hard, but it's really fun. ~ Patina Miller

Sloppy language and sloppy ways go together. Those who are truly educated have learned more than the sciences, the humanities, law, engineering, and the arts. They carry with them a certain polish that marks them as loving the better qualities of life, a culture that adds luster to the mundane world of which they are apart, a patina that puts a quiet glow on what otherwise might be base metal. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

The greater involution and deeper patina of her left tooth in comparison to the right, the skeptical cast ~ Michael Chabon

'Sister Act' was my first audition out of school. I was 21 and cast as the understudy. It was non-Equity, so I lived in L.A. on $300 a week. I did that for a month and then came to New York to do a couple of gigs, including 'Hair' in the park, before going to London with 'Sister Act,' where I played the lead. ~ Patina Miller

She didn't know what to say to this, or how to tell him she wasn't strong, the patina of her resolve was made of soft metal. She wasn't strong, but had become good at pretending – so good that only she knew it. She had developed a chameleon's skin; she could change colour hide behind a false facade. She wasn't made of steel. She still sometimes slept with a light on, and still sometimes heard a small child crying. ~ Charlie Laidlaw

Time gives growth, it gives continuity and it gives change. And in the case of some sculptures, time gives a patina to them. ~ Andy Goldsworthy

I always tell friends you can't judge your success by someone else's. You can't be afraid to fail. ~ Patina Miller

Why did I feel warmed by imperfections, discomfort, and patina?
Because intense living leaves scars, and I could not find such scars anywhere in America. Inner scars, softened, human wear and tear. ~ Anais Nin

She was dark-haired, fierce; she wore two drop earrings made of crystal; her face was a pure oval tickled with dimples; her skin was golden; and her laugh was like a fire in the night. But on her face you could also read the concentration of a soul whose life is entirely inward, and a mischievous gravity which acquires a silver patina with age. ~ Muriel Barbery

( ... ) [H]e removed his shoe and discovered a flattened black mass of chewing gum embedded deep in the zig-zag tread of the sole. Upper lip arched in disgust, he was still picking, cutting and scraping away with a pocket knife as the train began to move. Beneath the patina of grime, the gum was still slightly pink, like flesh, and the smell of peppermint was faint but distinct. How appalling, the intimate contact with the contents of a stranger's mouth, the bottomless vulgarity of people who chewed gum and who let it fall from their lips where they stood. ~ Ian McEwan

At the time that they were shown, the Brillo Boxes were underappreciated. It's only now, with the patina of history, that we can really see these masterpieces in a clear light. ~ Mike Bidlo

Very few entities are powerful enough to create Patinas, and those that can guard them closely. The library is here. But Arriane's right. We'll need to figure out the way in."
"I heard you need an Announcer to get through one," Arriane said.
"Cosmic legend." Annabelle shook her head. "Every Patina is different. Access is entirely up to the creator. They program the code."
"I once heard Cam tell a story at a party about how he accessed a Patina," Rolan said. "Or was that a story about a party that he threw in a Patina?"
"Luce!" Daniel said suddenly, making all of them startle in midair. "It's you. It was always you."
Luce shrugged. "Always me what?"
"You're the one who always rang the bell. You're the one who had entry to the library. You just need to ring the bell."
Luce looked at the empty street, the fog tinting everything around them brown. "What are you talking about? What bell?"
"Close your eyes," Daniel said. "Remember it. Pass into the past and find the bellpull-"
Luce was already there, back at the library the last time she'd been in Vienna with Daniel. Her feet were firmly on the ground. It was raining and her hair splayed all across her face. Her crimson hair ribbons were soaked, but she didn't care. She was looking for something. There was a short path up the courtyard, then a dark alcove outside the library. It had been cold outside, and a fire blazed within. There, in the musty corner near the door, was a woven cord em ~ Lauren Kate

Where the differences came in was the patina of ideology which the news media laid over everything. There's certainly a bias, to some degree, in the way the media portrays the military. I'm not saying that's entirely wrong - the Fourth Estate is there to hold generals and colonels accountable for their actions and decisions - but having reporters on the scene, reporting in real time certainly complicates things for the military mission. ~ Dave Abrams

The desktop held a patina of hieroglyphs representing years of student boredom - names and initials gouged into the wood, blackened by grime and pencil, shellacked over, then cobwebbed again with another generation's imprint. ~ Chris Offutt

Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents pots and pans - the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum. ~ Susan Sontag

I went to Carnegie Mellon. ~ Patina Miller

I am convinced that a good building must be capable of absorbing the traces of human life and taking on a specific richness ... I think of the patina of age on materials, of innumerable small scratches on surfaces, of varnish that has grown dull and brittle, and of edges polished by use. ~ Peter Zumthor

That, of course, was the thing about the fifties with all their patina of familial bliss: A lot of the memories were not happy, not mine, not my friends'. That's probably why the myth so endures, because of the dissonance in our lives between what actually went on at home and what went on up there on those TV screens where we were allegedly seeing ourselves reflected back. ~ Anne Taylor Fleming

I live alone, so I don't really talk to anyone once I'm home. I have some silent nights. ~ Patina Miller

Although erotica authors are being targeted, this is an issue that should concern all indie authors. It affects indies disproportionately because indies are the ones pushing the boundaries of fiction. Indies are the ones out there publishing without the (fading) protective patina of a "traditional publisher" to lend them legitimacy. We indies only have each other. ~ Mark Coker

Taking the time to write in our lives gives us the time of our lives. As we describe our environments, we begin to savor them. Even the most rushed and pell-mell life begins to take on the patina of being cherished. ~ Julia Cameron

The Sick Woman begins to see that life is wilder, more chaotic, harsher and more loving, paradoxical, and downright strange than she was ever taught. She discovers for herself the power of moon and the tides, the shifting of the stars and the seasons, the haze of pollen and shift in air pressure and how they impact her dreams, her moods, her body processes. She learns that she is not an independent automaton but a wild being woven of life and death, a chaos of magic, not a machine of logic. She learns that the outer impacts the inner in myriad ways. And vice versa. She learns that she is simultaneously weaker and yet more powerful than she ever knew. She is dangerous with this knowledge which does not appear in the medical books and bibles except as anomalies. She's singing from the wrong hymn sheet and messing up the patina of perfection that the patriarchy is aiming for. In a display of a million marching soldiers with polished boots, gleaming medals and straight legs, there is the sick woman, bare breasted, hair loose, scars showing, shameless, dancing to her own tune. ~ Lucy H. Pearce

My book might be seen as a search for lower consciousness, an attempt to remove the patina of abstraction or glassy-eyed piety from religious words, by telling stories about them, by grounding them in the world we live in as mortal and often comically fallible human beings. ~ Kathleen Norris

The girls looked aghast. I watched them cast baleful looks their mother's way, and saw, in their silky, seamless faces, the thick patina so many years of privilege had left behind. Suddenly I was enraged - enraged at both of them for not knowing what these privileges had cost. ~ Jennifer Egan

Only Zionists get to proclaim their fear of a brown planet while simultaneously maintaining a patina of liberal respectability. ~ Max Blumenthal

I should probably introduce myself. My name is Patina Jones. And I ain't no junk. I also ain't no hair flipper. And most of the girls at Chester Academy are hair flippers who be looking at me like my mom some kind of junk maker. ~ Jason Reynolds

That's been the most exciting part of the show - incorporating the magic and the acrobats and the singing and dancing to make our 'Pippin.' ~ Patina Miller

Suddenly the air got colder, and a black cloud appeared - the black cloud that you saw before, since Snodrog was, at bottom, a cheapskate. Only this time the cloud looked like an overdone hamburger, and it hovered low over the Shuffly's head. Then Snodrog's devious machine spread under the Shuffly's unsuspecting feet a glistening patina of Generalizations, and the immobilized hulk slid the hill into the valley below, ricocheting off trees with a sound like wet sponges being slapped on kitchen sinks. ~ John Bellairs

Oh, my mom. She's one of my biggest fans. ~ Patina Miller

Stories are a kind of thing, too. Stories and objects share something, a patina. I thought I had this clear, two years ago before I started, but I am no longer sure how this works. Perhaps a patina is a process of rubbing back so that the essential is revealed, the way that a striated stone tumbled in a river feels irreducible, the way that this netsuke of a fox has become little more than a memory of a nose and a tail. But it also seems additive, in the way that a piece of oak furniture gains over years and years of polishing, and the way the leaves of my medlar shine. ~ Edmund De Waal

Jacob thought about going home. He still had some American change, which he kept in an empty matchbox in his sock drawer, and one night, after he had finished his pancakes and jam, he took the coins out, spread them on the kitchen table, and admired the burnt sienna patina of one of the pennies, which in the candlelight was iridescent with violet and green where people's touch had salted it. The portrait of Lincoln was ugly and noble, and Jacob took off his glasses to look more closely. On the other side, an erratic line of shrubbery was engraved beside the Lincoln monument's steps. The idealism seemed to be in Lincoln rather than in the coin's design, which was homely. It was so homely, in fact, that there was a kind of democratic grandeur to it. It was the most beautiful currency in the world. Jacob was on the verge of tears. ~ Caleb Crain

There are lots of special places and special jobs, but for me being a Las Vegas dice dealer was pretty sublime. It was somehow timeless. Timeless and imbued with the corrosive and bland patina of a mundane evil, a venality, a soulless mockery of human aspirations. What could be more useless than playing with money? ~ Jesse Kaellis

This kind of nostalgia characterizes national and nationalist revivals all over the world, which engage in the antimodern myth-making of history by means of a return to national symbols and myths and, occasionally, through swapping conspiracy theories. Restorative nostalgia manifests itself in total reconstructions of monuments of the past, while reflective nostalgia lingers on ruins, the patina of time and history, in the dreams of another place and another time. ~ Svetlana Boym

The patina is the history of an object and shows what has happened over time. A cracked finish, a nick, a scratch - all these things give a piece character. The patina is what makes the piece truly valuable. ~ Belinda Alexandra

Sure, I have nice shoes. They're in my closet, collecting a patina of dust. My shoes were made for dancing, and that's why they're dusty, because my feet, unfortunately, were not made for dancing. My feet were made for making wine, and that's why my walk is intoxicating. ~ Jarod Kintz

It was a lot to carry out of a childhood
all those textured layers of thwarted dreams rumbling under the fifties patina
but a lot of us did it. In those manicured lives and choreographed marriages there was an often-pronounced loneliness, an emptiness that we would try to fill with our own accomplishments. And our role, the one we would have so much trouble trying to shed later, was simply to be the best little girls in the world, the high- achieving, make-no-waves, properly behaved little kittens. ~ Anne Taylor Fleming

Dr. Johann Pryce, he said, and there was a certain spurious slickness to his carriage and his smile that brought to mind the rainbow patina of oil on a puddle. ~ Brian McGreevy

I've been doing lots of trapeze, and so much of it is holding your own weight. ~ Patina Miller

A new patina whitening the walls with marks of memories, all running together as if the memories themselves aspired to be the walls in which I was imprisoned ... ~ Kevin Powers

Later in my room, I lift up my dress and twist to see the rainbow splotch of lotus on my side. And it occurs to me, what if I stopped hating it? What if the tattoo and the scar and this summer's freckles are my patina? Wabi-Sabi says rust and faded paint hold beauty. So what if I let these marks be passport stamps from where I've been - one's that don't determine a damn thing about where I'm going next? ~ Emery Lord

Oh, the sudden change of perspective brought about by travel and absence! How different everything was here: the people in the streets, the houses, the color of the air, the sky above the roofs, a low sky, very close, with molded clouds, and which looked as if it had come out of a painting. A unique setting, a subtle atmosphere of silvery greys, the patina of centuries on the old walls - a shimmering marvel for the eyes of a painter. ("The Dead Town") ~ Georges Rodenbach

Hence also the weird viewer complicity behind TV's sham "breakthrough programs": Joe Briefcase needs that PR-patina of "freshness" and "outrageousness" to quiet his conscience while he goes about getting from television what we've all been trained to want from it: some strangely American, profoundly shallow, and eternally temporary reassurance. ~ David Foster Wallace

Life is one long decay, no? There's a lot of beauty in it. Like the patina in an old city. ~ Urs Fischer

There is something about you, Etta. Something in you that cannot be quenched, by hardship or ill treatment. Your soul gleams like silver beneath a patina of hard use. He is right to love you. Any man would love you. ~ Robin Hobb

Each tile is curved and has an attractive rough texture. The colour varies from bright vermilion to dull Venetian red. They have the patina of almost two centuries of English sunshine and rain and are patterned with mosses in a wide range of emerald, apple and viridian greens. Any one of them, tastefully framed and hung in a London art gallery, would get rave notices from the critics. ~ Norman Thelwell