Perched Crossword Quotes

Hello' said a vague and dreamy voice from behind them. Harry looked up: Luna Lovegood had drifted over from the Ravenclaw table. Many people were staring at her and few people openly laughing and pointing; she had managed to procure a hat shaped like a life-size lion's head, which was perched precariously on her head.
'I'm supporting Gryffindor' said Luna, pointing unnecessarily at her hat. Look what it does ... '
She reached up and tapped the hat with her wand. It opened its mouth wide and gave an extremely realistic roar that made everyone in the vicinity jump.
'It's good, isn't it?' said Luna happily. 'I wanted to have it chewing up a serpent to represent Slytherin, you know, but there wasn't time. Anyway ... good luck, Ronald! ~ J.K. Rowling

Letters to the Dead"

We read the letters of the dead like puzzled gods --
gods nevertheless, because we know what happened later.
We know what money wasn't repaid,
the widows who rushed to remarry.
Poor, unseeing dead,
deceived, fallible, toiling in solemn foolery.
We see the signs made behind their backs,
catch the rustle of ripped-up wills.
They sit there before us, ridiculous
as things perched on buttered bread,
or fling themselves after whisked-away hats.
Their bad taste -- Napoleon, steam and electricity,
deadly remedies for curable diseases,
the foolish apocalypse of St. John,
the false paradise on earth of Jean-Jacques . . .
Silently, we observe their pawns on the board
-- but shifted three squares on.
Everything they foresaw has happened quite differently,
or a little differently -- which is the same thing.
The most fervent stare trustingly into our eyes;
by their reckoning, they'll see perfection there. ~ Wisława Szymborska

Wouldn't it be wonderful if I won a helicopter in a crossword puzzle competition? There is not much hope though I am afraid, as they never give such practical prizes. ~ Leonora Carrington

At least that's what his note said, along with a scathing reminder that dishes didn't wash themselves and the fungus in the bathroom was one day away from evolving into sentient life. I folded the note into an airplane and sailed it across the room. It ended up perched jauntily on top of the ancient television. It looked good there and I left it as a tribute to freedom-loving fungi everywhere. ~ Rob Thurman

I'm patient with crossword puzzles and the most impatient golfer. ~ Brett Hull

We lived in places that we never knew. We could not name the birds perched on our sill, Or see the trees we cut down for our view. What we possessed we always chose to kill. We claimed the earth but did not hear her claim, And when we died, they laid us on her breast, But she refuses us until we earn Forgiveness from the lives we dispossessed. ~ Dana Gioia

In April, he perched on a witch hazel branch, shivering, one eye closed, waiting for the sun to warm his wings. The night had been particularly cold, the winter long, the fishing scarce.
He'd been alone all the time.
When the sun appeared, the warmth felt good on his wings. he lifted from his perch, wheeled, then cackled over the river, studying the surface for the slightest flash: a trout, a small shad, a frog. He lit on a willow snag downriver and sunned himself, raised his tail, shat, and called again. The days were growing longer now, the alewives ascending the streams. The year before, he'd built his nest near the estuary in a seam of clay, and soon - if she returned - the time would come for a new nest along the bank.
The kingfisher fished all morning. He returned to the willow snag at noon; slept, then woke shortly after, startled by the call. Was it she? They hadn't seen each other since the summer before.
He dropped from the branch, called, winged downriver, his image doubled in the water. He heard the call again, closer now. If she returned, he'd dive into the river, greet her with a fish, fly around her, feed her beak to beak. If she returned, he'd begin to exxcavate a new nest, claw clay out of the earth, arrange the perfect pile of fish bones to lay their eggs upon.
He pumped his wings harder now. He heard the cackle closer, louder more insistent. he recognized her voice. She was hurling her way upriver.
Any moment now: she'd fly int ~ Brad Kessler

After finishing my breakfast, I puttered around for the next hour and tried not to think about Daniel. I glared at the chair in the middle of the back room as if he were still perched in it, shirtless with that shit-eating grin plastered across his goddamned face. Once, I almost sat in the chair - after carefully locking the door, of course, so no one would accidentally wander in and find me with my nose pressed to the leather, trying to see if it still smelled like him. And then came the self-inflicted chiding and browbeating for even thinking about doing something as ridiculous and lame and downright girlie." ~Evelyn ~ Patricia Leever

My mom's smile is genuine,
A lilac beaming
In the presence of her Sun.

Indentions in the sand prove
Time's linear progression,

Her hair yet unblighted,
Carrying midnight's consistency.

Clear tracks fading as the
Movement slips further
In the past.

Cheekbones
High, soft,
In summer's hue,
Hopeful.

Each step's unknown impact,
A future looking back.

My father's strength:
One whose
Life is in his arms.

Squinting past the camera,
He rests upon a rock
Like caramel corn half eaten,

Just to the left
Of man-made concrete convention

Daylight's eraser
Removing color to his right.

Dustin sits
In my father's lap,
Open mouth of a drooling
Big mouth bass;

Muscle tone
Of a well exercised
Jelly fish,

He looks at me
Half aware;

His wheelchair
Perched at the edge
Of parking lot gravel grafted
Like a scar on nature's beach,

Opening to the ironic splendor
Of a bitter tasting lake.

I took the picture.

Age 11.

Capturing the pinnacle arc
Of a son
To my lilac
Who
Outlived him and weeps,

Still.

Their sky has staple holes –

Maybe that's how the
Light
Leaked out. ~ Darcy Leech

I would prefer to live forever in perfect health, but if I must at some time leave this life, I would like to do so ensconced on a chaise longue, perfumed, wearing a velvet robe and pearl earrings, with a flute of champagne beside me and having just discovered the answer to the last problem in a British cryptic crossword. ~ Olivia De Havilland

You're pleasing me already. Look at you. So lovely perched here in front of me, opening your legs for me. So quiet now. Obedient. Willing. Just the way I like it. ~ Primula Bond

Thank you for your attempt at trying to be thoughtful while stealing shit from me." He picked up a crossword booklet from a chair and tossed it into the trash. "And for filling out my fucking crossword puzzles without me having to ask. I'm not sure how I've ever survived this long without you. ~ Whitney G.

My hands were paralyzed, one wrapped around the handle of the Hyena's sword, spikes sticking through the flesh and out the back of hand, thumb and fingers, too painful for me to let go of it. The other hand was tangled by the locket and the cord that surrounded the imp's book, fingers bent back out of position. When I moved, it had been a jerky, frustrated movement, the length of the sword, the pain, and the weight of the sword and book all frustrating my attempts to interact with the world.

My arms were cracked open like a hard plastic doll, and all that was within were feathers of mixed, dull colors, sticking to one another. I couldn't move fast enough to catch up to anyone. I was too tired, too gaunt, an old man in a young-looking body, and the objects bound to my hands were too awkward to allow me to open doors easily or even walk through a crowded area without banging them on something.

I couldn't close my eyes, because something black and monstrous slithered beneath the surface every time I did. When I breathed, it was like I was having the heart attack again. The air I spent was air that I couldn't replenish by any means. I was deflating, losing substance.

There was nothing to do but stand there, too tired to move, arms spread like I was crucified, or a bird in mid-flight, staring at Rose and her gathered summonings, with Pauz perched on her shoulder. I somehow knew that words would cost me more of that vital substance than I could affo ~ Wildbow

Nice for Freddie," she said. "Whoever he is. I'm Sophie, Lulu's sister." "Nice for you," he said. "Are you the sister who's getting married?" "No, I'm the one who is still available." She perched herself on the counter and swung her legs. "So, it's your lucky day, isn't it?" "Do you know," he said slowly, "I'm beginning to think it is." It was the sort of thing that men were always saying to Sophie, but not, thought Lulu crossly, the sort that generally made her gape and goggle at Lulu like a demented hen who had just won the lottery ticket, It was a couple of moments before she realized that Liam was looking, not at Sophie, but at her. ~ Gabrielle Donnelly

Perched up on salvaged bricks, the half-pipes made perfect planters with an industrial edge that oddly complemented Sugar's pretty favorites: pansies, lantana, verbena and heliotrope.
She laid two of them by the long wall of the taller building next door and planted a clematis vine at one end and a moonflower vine at the other: the clematis because the variety she picked had the prettiest purple bloom and the moonflower because it opened in the early evening and emanated a heavenly scent just when a person most felt like smelling one. ~ Sarah-Kate Lynch

The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the shell of a giant turtle. That's the advantage of space. It's big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does.
People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood. It believes mere size is amazing.
There's nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. But the fact that there's a big turtle is far less amazing than the fact that there is a turtle anywhere. ~ Terry Pratchett

Countess Judith kept her husband's head in a box. At night it perched on the pillow by her side, at meals it sat on the board by her plate, and her household feared it almost as much as they feared her. She talked to it, they whispered among themselves, and who was to say it didn't answer. ~ Sylvian Hamilton

To test. Would weightlessness put them off their game? It did. The turtles moved "slowly and insecurely" and did not attack a piece of bait placed directly in front of them. Then again, the water in which they swam was repeatedly floating up out of the jar and forming an "ovoid cupola." Who could eat? Von Beckh quickly moved on from turtles to Argentinean pilots. Under the section heading "Experiments with Human Subjects" - a heading that, were I a doctor previously employed by Nazi Germany, I might have rephrased - von Beckh reports on the efforts of the pilots to mark X's inside small boxes during regular and weightless flight. During weightlessness, many of the letters strayed from the boxes, indicating that pilots might experience difficulties maneuvering their planes and doing crossword puzzles during air battles. The following year, von Beckh was recruited by the Aeromedical Research Laboratory at Holloman Air Force ~ Mary Roach

Angela had done a marvelous job, I tell you. The puke was everywhere except the toilet. The walls, the floor, the sinks - even on the ceiling, though don't ask me how she did that. So there I was, perched on all fours, cleaning up the puke at the homecoming dance in my best blue suit, which was exactly what I had wanted to avoid in the first place. And Jamie, my date, was on all fours, too, doing exactly the same thing. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Mom perched on the edge of our sofa, her forehead etched with a line of concern I'd grown to know well. It was the same one she'd flashed at me when I pointed to the twisty slide, the same one she'd pulled out when I'd taken up Tae Kwon Do in third grade, and the same one that had frozen on her features all through driver's ed last spring. It was her SMother face. ~ Gemma Halliday

And I see the houses of the human race perched on the edge of the sea, shipwrecked in their false neighborliness. ~ Italo Calvino

I let my gaze travel out the picture window. Unlike at my old doublewide trailer perched on the fringe of a played out quarry, here I owned a real yard with real grass that screamed for mowing each Monday a.m. I sat at the kitchen table, cooling off from just having finished this week's job. Yes, here in 2005, I was a full-fledged suburbanite, but I'd been called worse. ~ Ed Lynskey

He was not her sole companion. She had her demons, too.

You can't run from them, as Lexi discovered. Changing cities doesn't help either; you carry them along inside you. You just wake up one day, fed up, and decide to snuggle with them instead. You invite them along as you go about your day, balancing them on your shoulder as you would a toddler, but with very strict conditions: You will not set fire to my hair. You will not take candy from strangers. You will not tie me up in chains while I sleep. You will behave.

And Lexi's demons, allowed to come close, sat on her shoulder. They waved to the angels perched on her other shoulder and struck up a conversation with Lexi.

'What's that noise?' her demons asked, sidling close to her ear.

'Oh, that?' Lexi massaged her temples. 'It's the air whistling through the hole in my heart.'

'You're afraid,' they taunted.

'I am,' she admitted. 'Afraid of the sky falling. Afraid of the tight-rope snapping. Afraid I can't dance well enough on the edge. Afraid there are no hands to steady my body. Afraid of hands that wish to cage my heart.'

'Coward,' the demons goaded. ~ Angela Panayotopulos

To the little girl the house seemed a gigantic head, and she only a morsel of meat conveniently positioned in its gaping mouth. The front porch was that grinning mouth, the white porch railing its lower teeth, the ornamental wooden frieze above its upper teeth, the painted wicker chair on which she perched its green wagging tongue. Frances sat and rocked and wondered when the jaws would clamp shut. ~ Michael McDowell

It's the boredom that kills you. You read until you're tired of that. You do crossword puzzles until you're tired of that. This is torture. This is mental torture. ~ Jack Kevorkian

Kathleen," he calls, his voice a groan.

There is magic in names. Can she hear him?

"Kathleen," he calls again, louder.

Behind him, the denizens of Twilight murmur.

"KATHLEEN," he cries. His anguish batters the shining wall, shifting the starstruck colors from rose and lapis to deep purple and bloody magenta, but it remains inviolable.

Shadowman drops his scythe in the waters. He'll scream forever, if need be, until the day the walls tumble into the ocean.

"Hey, you."

Shadowman's attention whips to the top of the wall some distance down the shoreline to his left. An angel is perched on the edge - fair hair, fair-eyed, skin a soft café. A recent crossing.

"Trade you," Custo says.

Shadowman has no words.

"You want in or don't you? Heaven's no place for me, and I'm not hanging around until they figure it out." The angel glances over his shoulder.

The murmurs of Twilight grow louder, sharper, but Shadowman pays them no mind. Not anymore. They've already done their worst.

"I do," Shadowman says.

Custo flashes a grin. "Meet me at the wall. ~ Erin Kellison

She saw that Devin's bedroom door was still closed, and a sudden, irrational fear gripped her that Devin might not be there. But she opened her door and saw her sleeping on her back, her limbs spread out like points of a star. Her glasses were perched on her bedside table as if watching her, as if lonely for her. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

But are you glad you went to college? Was it a good experience?"
I suppose it was. Althought I can't remember a single thing I learned. Except for Latin, and that's only because the nuns literally beat it into us and I use it sometimes for the crossword."
There were nuns at Radcliffe?"
Yes, it was all nuns."
Are you sure? At Radcliffe?"
Maybe it was high school."
But you aren't Catholic," I said. "I don't think you ever went to a parochial school."
Well, I distinctly remember nuns with sticks walking up and down the aisles as we recited Latin. Maybe it was a show I was in, but I doubt it because nuns don't beat children in musicals. ~ Peter Cameron

But we must accept one central truth and responsibility as participants in a democracy: Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. ~ John Lewis

The bird of hope sings
Perched on the branches of twilight;
Never grieve for anything
For, the day always follows the night! ~ Neelam Saxena Chandra

So I just live with my insomnia. I do crossword puzzles, or wander out to the music room and fool around on the piano, or read. Those late hours when the world is completely still, when the only sound is the rustle of the air in the vents and the wind visiting the trees outside, when the darkness is tucked tight around the house and you feel as life itself the movements of your own consciousness-these are wonderful hours to read. There is no interruption. ~ Stephen Goodwin

Revolutions and their aftermaths, of course, are always fluid and fickle times, and the outcome is often perched on a knife's edge. ~ Sri Mulyani Indrawati

The Fox And The Crow
A CROW having stolen a bit of meat, perched in a tree and held it in her beak. A Fox, seeing this, longed to possess the meat himself, and by a wily stratagem succeeded. "How handsome is the Crow," he exclaimed, in the beauty of her shape and in the fairness of her complexion! Oh, if her voice were only equal to her beauty, she would deservedly be considered the Queen of Birds!" This he said deceitfully; but the Crow, anxious to refute the reflection cast upon her voice, set up a loud caw and dropped the flesh. The Fox quickly picked it up, and thus addressed the Crow: "My good Crow, your voice is right enough, but your wit is wanting. ~ Aesop

At high school I was never comfortable for a minute. I did not know about Lonnie. Before an exam, she got icy hands and palpitations, but I was close to despair at all times. When I was asked a question in class, any simple little question at all, my voice was apt to come out squeaky, or else hoarse and trembling. When I had to go to the blackboard I was sure - even at a time of the month when this could not be true - that I had blood on my skirt. My hands became slippery with sweat when they were required to work the blackboard compass. I could not hit the ball in volleyball; being called upon to perform an action in front of others made all my reflexes come undone. I hated Business Practice because you had to rule pages for an account book, using a straight pen, and when the teacher looked over my shoulder all the delicate lines wobbled and ran together. I hated Science; we perched on stools under harsh lights behind tables of unfamiliar, fragile equipment, and were taught by the principal of the school, a man with a cold, self-relishing voice - he read the Scriptures every morning - and a great talent for inflicting humiliation. I hated English because the boys played bingo at the back of the room while the teacher, a stout, gentle girl, slightly cross-eyed, read Wordsworth at the front. She threatened them, she begged them, her face red and her voice as unreliable as mine. They offered burlesqued apologies and when she started to read again they took up rapt postures, mad ~ Alice Munro

Baby?" She perched beside him in the chair. "You're kidding me right?" "I was trying it out, no?" "no," she said firmly Simon & Clary ~ Cassandra Clare

Sundown had bloodied the horizon over the uneven rooftops of South Boston. Birds were perched on every roof and seemed to be watching the girl walking slowly below. - Cradle and All ~ James Patterson

Digger stood and ambled toward the balcony. "This explains so much. I feel like I've just finished a crossword puzzle."
"How do you know what that feels like?" Kelly asked ~ Abigail Roux