Rocking Chairs Quotes

After many years the woman died, of natural causes. And a few years after that, the ogre died. Eventually, his mistresses died, down on the ground, in the people village, over decades. The war men and women died. The human girl who had escaped her early death died, across the land, over by the ocean, in her shack of blue bowls and rocking chairs. The witch, who had originally made the cake and made up up the spell and given it as a gift to her beloved ogre friend, died.
The cake went on and on. Time passed...
And the cake, always wanting to please, the cake who had found a way to survive its endlessness by recreating its role over and over again, tried to figure out, in its cake way, what this light-dappled object might want to eat. So it became darkness, a cake of darkness. It did not have to be human food. It did not have to be digestible through a familiar tract. It lay there on the dirt, waiting, a simmering cake of darkness. Through time, and wind, and earthquakes, and chance. At last the cloak fell out of the tree and blew across the land and happened upon the cake where it ate its darkness and extinguished its own dappled light. The cloak disappeared into night and was not seen again, as it was only a piece of coat shaped darkness now and could not be spotted so easily, had there been any eyes left to see it. It floated and joined with nowhere.
Darkness was overtaking everything, anyway, pouring over the land and sky. The cake itself, still in the shap ~ Aimee Bender

I'm going to be singing Dreams and Rhiannon when I'm 75 - and that's just fine with me. I just hope my chiffon doesn't get tangled in my rocking chair. ~ Stevie Nicks

My life isn't over and I'm not going to sit in a rocking chair and take money from the government. ~ Colonel Sanders

Americans have a taste for ... rocking-chairs. A flippant critic might suggest that they select rocking-chairs so that, even when they are sitting down, they need not be sitting still. Something of this restlessness in the race may really be involved in the matter; but I think the deeper significance of the rocking-chair may still be found in the deeper symbolism of the rocking-horse. I think there is behind all this fresh and facile use of wood a certain spirit that is childish in the good sense of the word; something that is innocent, and easily pleased. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I'm not drunk onstage, although I've done that a couple of times when I was younger. It's partly just the way I talk - I talk like somebody in a rocking chair. I'm your 150-year-old grandmother. ~ Dylan Moran

I would never sit back in a rocking chair, waiting for someone to help me. ~ Grandma Moses

He sank into the rocking chair, the same one in which Rebecca had sat during the early days of the house to give embroidery lessons, and in which Amaranta had played Chinese checkers with Colonel Gerineldo Marquez, and in which Amarana Ursula had sewn the tiny clothing for the child, and in that flash of lucidity he became aware that he was unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

It just wasn't supposed to end like this." She looks at me with red-rimmed eyes and yellow skin. Colors should be a good thing, but now, they're marks, omens of bad tidings. "I was supposed to grow up, go to college, get a job," she continues in that gut-clenching croak. "Meet my dream guy, marry, have k-kids. You were going to live next door and we would grow old in the same nursing home. Chuck oatmeal at each other and watch soap operas all day in our rocking chairs. That was my daydream. My perfect life. I don't want to keep asking myself why until the end, but ... " A lone tear trails down her sunken cheek. This time I don't reach out to wipe the water away; I let it go. Down, down, until it drips off the side of her jaw. This is humanity. This is life and death in one room. ~ Kelsey Sutton

When I'm 80 and sitting in a rocking chair listening to the Rolling Stones, there is absolutely no way I'm going to feel old or forget my younger days. ~ Patty Duke

We don't propose to sit here in our rocking chair with our hands folded and let the Communists set up any government in the Western Hemisphere. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

I love you, Emily. You'll always be my best friend. You'll always be my...Molly. You're the mother of my child. You and Noah have brought color to my empty canvas, light into my darkened life. Let's paint the full picture together and light up the sky sweets. I love you both more than anything. I believe in forever, and that's what you and I are. We define eternity. This may sound cheese, but you make me go there. You give me butterflies, Emily Cooper. I've never had that before, and I don't want to let that go for anything. Ever. I asked you once to crash with me, and you did. Now...I'm asking you to take the full ride. Walk with me the rest of the way until we're old, sitting in rocking chairs and watching our sugar-high grandchildren play in our yard. I've seen this world a million times over, but I've never seen it with you by my side. I want you, no, I need you to be my wife. I need to wake up every morning knowing you're Mrs. Emily Michelle Blake. Please. Take this last step with me. ~ Gail McHugh

Worry is like a rocking chair-it keeps you busy but gets you nowhere. ~ Katie Dale

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar. A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable - not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate, too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather! ~ Truman Capote

There is a peacefulness, an air of reflection, about a rocking-chair that attaches to no other moving object ... ~ Wallis Simpson

I want to grow old with you," he whispers. "I want to let you win at bingo, I want you to help me find my dentures, and I want to spend the evening watching the sunset with you every night from our two rocking chairs."


-Jackson 'Blame It on the Pain ~ Ashley Jade

[On her 101-year-old sister and herself, at 103:] We have a lot to do ... People don't understand this. They think we're sitting around in rocking chairs, which isn't at all true. Why, we don't even own a rocking chair. ~ Sarah Louise Delany

I am a book.

Sheaves pressed from the pulp of oaks and pines
a natural sawdust made dingy from purses, dusty
from shelves.
Steamy and anxious, abused and misused,
kissed and cried over,
smeared, yellowed, and torn,
loved, hated, scorned.

I am a book.

I am a book that remembers,
days when I stood proud in good company
When the children came, I leapt into their arms,
when the women came, they cradled me against their soft breasts,
when the men came, they held me like a lover,
and I smelled the sweet smell of cigars and brandy as we sat together in leather chairs,
next to pool tables, on porch swings, in rocking chairs,
my words hanging in the air like bright gems, dangling,
then forgotten, I crumbled,
dust to dust.

I am a tale of woe and secrets,
a book brand-new, sprung from the loins of ancient fathers clothed in tweed,
born of mothers in lands of heather and coal soot.
A family too close to see the blood on its hands,
too dear to suffering, to poison, to cold steel and revenge,
deaf to the screams of mortal wounding,
amused at decay and torment,
a family bred in the dankest swamp of human desires.

I am a tale of woe and secrets,
I am a mystery.

I am intrigue, anxiety, fear,
I tangle in the night with madmen, spend my days cloaked in black,
hiding from myself, from dark angels,
Lise McClendon

It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness, of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable. It is contentment ... the contentment of the quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is negation canonized as the one positive virtue. It is the prohibition of happiness. It is slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the greatest race in the world. ~ Sinclair Lewis

What is it?" Lend asked, noticing my stare as he wrapped his scarf around my neck. I was far, far from cold right now, but it was sweet of him. "And why is your voice different?"
"You really are beautiful. And I really want to kiss your brains out. But I've got to make a gate and save the world and stuff first."
"Kiss my brains out after?"
I bit my lip. "Are you going to . . . will there be an after?"
"Hurry, please," Reth said.
Lend ignored him and pulled me closer, his lips touching my ear. "The only world for me is the one you're in. Let's make the best life we can here and not worry about what comes after. I want to grow old with you."
"Really? We'll get rocking chairs and be all cute and wrinkly!"
"You'll be wrinkly. I'll just pretend to be."
I punched him lightly in the stomach, but closed my eyes, my own soul once again singing out louder than the others in me. "Best plan I've heard this week. And, trust me, I've heard a lot."
"I love you forever, Evie."
I pulled back and kissed him, all the energy and light in me springing up in joy and passion and happiness. "I love you forever, too, my Lend."
"Wow, your lips are really hot. Literally and metaphorically. But mostly literally. ~ Kiersten White

The forest of Compiegne. Look at it. Like a kind grandmother dozing in her rocking chair. Old trees practicing curtsies in the wind because they still think Louis XIV is king. ~ Billy Wilder

I don't like to dwell on the past. ~ Tina Turner

I used to think that elder love, if it even existed, was confined to rocking chairs or golf carts, that it had to be a dull business because of the physical limitations of age. ~ Nora Johnson

Chad, honey, are you still here?"
"I'm waiting with bated breath."
She listened for a moment, then smiled and said, "He's as anxious as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. ~ Ashlyn Chase

Are broken windows a new decorating theme around here?" Archer asked, coming up behind Jenna and me and poking his head into the parlor.
"So it would seem," I said. I was still looking outside when a faint light appeared in the gloom. It took me a minute to realize that it was from Cal's cabin. Was someone out there? Was Cal out there?
But just as quickly as it had appeared, the light went out again. Frowning, I turned from the doorway, and I went to slip my arm through Archer's. Then I remembered what Nausicaa had said earlier. Now wasn't exactly the best time for PDA, probably.
The three of us trailed behind everyone else into the ballroom. Here, at least, things looked more or less the same. Of course, the ballroom had always been one of the more bizarre rooms at Hex Hall, so that didn't say much. Still, I was relieved to see the familiar jumble of tables and chairs and not, like, tree stumps or whatever. ~ Rachel Hawkins

I like Billy Beane for his idiosyncrasies - that he can't watch the games without getting too emotional, that he often has food down his shirt, that he tends to break a few chairs now and then.These things make him human. ~ Brad Pitt

Ah, I'm a woman that's been clear around the world in my rocking chair, and I tell you we all get surprises now and then. ~ Eudora Welty

Our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connexions they have found worth marketing, in the lifetimes of many generation; these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of thee survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our arm-chairs of an afternoon-the most favoured alternative method. ~ J.L. Austin

Carefree Scamps are unconventional to the extreme but they get better results, and frequently their employers, who were often in two minds about offering them the position in the first place, eventually realise they've found a diamond, yet not only are they unsure how to handle them, they can seldom work out how specifically they accomplish their objectives because in one way or another they're always rocking the bloody boat. The Carefree Scamp takes quite a bit of 'managing ~ Karl Wiggins

We must be willing to change chairs if we want to grow. There is no permanent compatibility between a chair and a person. And there is no one right chair. What is right at one stage may be restricting at another or too soft. During the passage from one stage to another, we will be between two chairs. Wobbling no doubt, but developing. ~ Gail Sheehy

A guy who makes a new chair doesn't owe money to everyone who ever built a chair. ~ Mark Zuckerberg

Satin occupied a couple of rooms which a chemist had furnished for her in order to rescue her from the clutches of the police; but in little over a year she had broken the furniture, knocked in the chairs and dirtied the curtains in such a frenzy of filth and disorder that the two rooms looked as if they were inhabited by a pack of mad cats. ~ Emile Zola

She promised herself that from now on she would try to sit as close to Neal as possible. She could not kick someone eight chairs away. ~ Tamora Pierce

The band in the ballroom announced the cover of a special request, and after a pause, the woman's voice sang out the breathy first line of Etta James's "At Last." Chairs barked as guests rose to greet the champion of all wedding songs, the one that always brought indifferent or fighting or estranged couples to the dance floor for momentary reconciliation. ~ Mira Jacob

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world's most influential living moral philosophers. He has written 30 books on ethics and held a variety of professorial chairs over the past four decades in North America. ~ John Cornwell

I go to the chair of government with feelings not unlike those of a culprit who is going to the place of his execution. ~ George Washington

Soothe! soothe! soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
And again another behind embracing and lapping, every one close,
But my love soothes not me, not me."
-from "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking ~ Walt Whitman

They were rocking back and forth, dancing to the tune of death. They were not shadows he realised, they were large animals. ~ Stephen Craig

Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. If you, dear reader, have an African hue and find yourself led toward water with vanishing shores, seize your freedom by any means necessary. And cultivate distrust of the colour pink. Pink is taken as the colour of innocence, the colour of childhood, but as it spills across the water in the light of the dying sun, do not fall into its pretty path. There, right underneath, lies a bottomless graveyard of children, mothers and men. I shudder to imagine all the Africans rocking in the deep. Every time I have sailed the seas, I have had the sense of gliding over the unburied.
Some people call the sunset a creation of extraordinary beauty, and proof of God's existence. But what benevolent force would bewitch the human spirit by choosing pink to light the path of a slave vessel? Do not be fooled by the pretty colour, and do not submit to its beckoning. ~ Lawrence Hill

My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. ~ Ray Bradbury

I WAS ON A SMALL ISLAND ONCE, IN THE MIDDLE OF a great big lake, mountains all over the place, and as I watched the floating dock the wind kicked up, the waves rose from nowhere, and I imagined myself lying there and the dock suddenly breaking loose, carried away by the storm. I wondered if I could lie still and enjoy the sensation of rocking, after all I wouldn't be dead yet, I wouldn't be drowning, just carried off somewhere that wasn't part of my plan. The very thought of it gave me the shivers. Still, how great to be enjoying the ride, however uncertain the outcome. I'd like that. It's what we're all doing anyway, we just don't know it. ~ Abigail Thomas

Crush, Infatuation & Love are like Musical Chairs...we keep running around it until we realize that it was just one of those little feeling that kept us running around it!! ~ Kalyan Varadarajan

Let you always remain strong enough to handle all your challenges, wise enough to find solutions to your difficult situations, capable enough to do everything that needs to be done & have so much to look forward that you are left with no reason to look back. Let there be peace in your world & love in every heart around you. Let God make all your good efforts & deeds successful. Let you have a blissful, awesome, magnificent, cheerful & rocking day ahead. Stay Blessed! ~ Rajesh Goyal

He started to apologize for the fact that there were no chairs in his son's room
only floor cushions
but I quickly gave him to believe that for me this was little short of a godsend. (In fact, I think I said I hated chairs. I was so nervous that if he had informed me that his son's room was flooded, night and day, with a foot of water, I probably would have let out a little cry of pleasure. I probably would have said I had a rare foot disease, one that required my keeping my feet wet eight hours daily.) ~ J.D. Salinger

Jem leaned closer against the chair, staring into the fire. "Better it were my hands," he said.
Will shook his head. Exhaustion was muting the edges of everything in the room, blurring the flocked wallpaper into a single mass of dark color. "No. Not your hands. You need your hands for the violin. What do I need mine for? ~ Cassandra Clare

No front porches. My uncle says there used to be front porches. And people sat there sometimes at night, talking when they wanted to talk, rocking, and not talking when they didn't want to talk. Sometimes they just sat there and thought about things, turned things over. My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong KIND of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches. ~ Ray Bradbury

I'm one of those passengers who arrives at the airport five or six hours early so I can throw back a few drinks and muster up the courage to board the plane. Apparently I'm not alone because I've never been in an empty airport bar. I don't care what time you get there. Even at 8:00 a.m. you have to fight your way to the bar. At that hour, everyone drinks Bloody Marys so no one can tell it's booze- at least until they fall off their chair. ~ Bob Newhart

I get a feeling of peace from a low so high, as I sit in my chair and watch life go by. ~ Kid Rock

Sardar Harbans Singh passed away peacefully in a wicker rocking-chair in a Srinigar garden of spring flowers and honeybees with his favourite tartan rug across his knees and his beloved son, Yuvraj the exporter of handicrafts, by his side, and when he stopped breathing the bees stopped buzzing and the air silenced its whispers and Yuvraj understood that the story of the world he had known all his life was coming to an end, and that what followed would follow as it had to, but it would unquestionably be less graceful, less courteous and less civilized than what had gone. ~ Salman Rushdie

When the time comes, everybody's got to end up where they belong. Only me, I didn't have a place to call my own. It's like musical chairs. ~ Haruki Murakami

The word 'however' is like an imp coiled beneath your chair. It induces ink to form words you have not yet seen, and lines to march across the page and overshoot the margin. There are no endings. If you think so you are deceived as to their nature. They are all beginnings. Here is one. ~ Hilary Mantel

When my kids were toddlers, they had all these rotomolded plastic things. My life became surrounded by big, hollow plastic toys - from the scale of playhouses down to rocking horses, and everything in between - which we would then take to the secondhand store. But we'd get sentimentally attached and hate to see them go. ~ Greg Lynn

One's need for loneliness is not satisfied if one sits at a table alone. There must be empty chairs as well. ~ Karl Kraus

Journalists are in the same madly rocking boat as diplomats and statesmen. Like them, when the Cold War ended, they looked for a new world order and found a new world disorder. If making and conducting foreign policy in today's turbulent environment is difficult, so is practicing journalism. ~ Henry Grunwald

When the windowpanes start to turn from black to gray, my sisters cradle themselves around me, rocking me like the sea until I can taste the salt of our tears ~ Sarah Miller

The grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt - industrial - modern - all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos - all these
entangled in your mummied roots - and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form! ~ Allen Ginsberg

You rarely get satisfaction sitting in an easy chair. If you work in a garden on the other hand, and it yields beautiful tomatoes, that's a good feeling. ~ Dan Buettner

Why bother choosing a certain chair? Because that chair says something about you. ~ David Bowie

Unfortunately, however, weapons of mass destruction tend to attract maniacs: men - it's almost always men - who want to jab the red button and yell "Take that, you heathen infidel bastards!" and sit in their revolving chairs in underground lead-lined bunkers or caves, watching on their monitors World War III or the Final Jihad or whatever. ~ Mal Peet

My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie. ~ Diane Setterfield

The oversized chairs are white; the walls, covered with occasional landscape paintings, are white; and the plush carpet is the whitest of all. I'm insanely glad I didn't bring a cup of grape juice with me. ~ Wendy Mass

Sighing, he rubbed his forehead, leaving a smear of black ash. "I've temporally blocked the collective because I can't answer that many calls at once, but pretty soon, I'm going to be entertaining. Lots and lots of irate, angry demons in my tiny little living room. It will be embarrassing. My reputation will be utterly ruined. I don't have enough chairs," he finished nlightly, turning his lip in and chewing on it. (Al) ~ Kim Harrison

Love is blind. Love of money is blind. Greed and money make people forfeit the quiddity of life, banish them from what is essential and alienate them from themselves. They lose their identity and become drifting exiles. ( "Money rocking and rolling" ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

Places ain't home. People is. Bricks and chairs is nothing. ~ Paul Kearney

couple of small suites, all nicely furnished. There was a small sitting area with a gas fireplace, lush carpeting and deep leather chairs. She tiptoed in, enjoying ~ Ana Meadows

And you you
bitch no irritating
questions re love and permanence only
an unrolling lifetime here
between your rocking thighs
and the semblance of motion ~ Al Purdy

Okay, I'll move the lawn chairs. (Axel) ~ Robert Kirkman