Screeching Quotes

What a lucky thing the wheel was invented before the automobile; otherwise can you imagine the awful screeching? ~ Samuel Hoffenstein

Plutarch gave her nine languages, including Hebrew and Troglodyte, an Ethiopian tongue that - if Herodotus can be believed - was unlike that of any other people; it sounds like the screeching of bats. ~ Stacy Schiff

Was awakened abruptly just after dawn by a tiny stinging sensation on top of my head. I blinked and put up a hand to investigate. The movement startled a large gray jay who had been pulling hairs out of my head, and he shot up into a nearby pine tree, screeching hysterically. "Serve you right, mate," I muttered, rubbing the top of my head, but couldn't help smiling. I had been told often enough that my hair looked like a bird's nest first thing in the morning; perhaps there was something to it, after all. ~ Diana Gabaldon

The strange thing was how quiet everything became just in that moment. Everything. All of existence, covered in a thick, still blanket of complete silence. The screeching tires and the yelling all paused. And then it happened: the white flash. It was blinding, taking away all definition of earth and sky, leaving nothing visible but the awful purity of the white. I remember that I flinched instinctively. That was all I really had time to do. Then, as if to announce my passing and that of all three-hundred-and-fourteen other souls working the midnight shift at the plant, came the roar. It was a guttural thunderous growl, like some great evil had just been released into the world. After that ... ~ Dennis Sharpe

To stand in the pit, shoulder to shoulder, sweating and singing with people you hardly know is an amazing thing. "I'm such a bad singer that I hardly sing around my own home but I have no trouble screeching at the top of my lungs in a huge stadium. In that sense a Springsteen concert is kind of a religious thing. Everyone knows what and when to sing, when to raise their arms, to pogo-dance, when to be silent and respectful. The music of course also makes you feel connected to something 'higher'. ~ Greg Lewis

The racket reverberates down the second staircase and spills out into the kitchen, and the two screeching, running kids who are making it do laps around the island like a fucked-up Hunger Games version of ring-around-the-rosy. ~ Emma Chase

Imposing excessive new regulations, or closing coal-fired power plants, would produce few health or environmental benefits. But it would exact huge costs on society - and bring factories, offices and economies to a screeching halt in states that are 80-98% dependent on coal: Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming. ~ Paul Driessen

Many photographers are apt to confuse color with noise, and to congratulate themselves when they have almost blown you down with screeching hues alone-a bebop of electric blues, furious reds, and poison greens. ~ Walker Evans

Her fingers flew, her fiddle was an entire orchestra, and every note beautifully brought into being struck a chord of satisfaction within her. She wondered at the unfamiliar lightness in her chest and realised she was laughing.
So great was her focus, it took her a while to register the strange expression that crept to Brocker's face as he listened, finger tapping the armrest of his chair. His eyes were fixed behind Fire and to the right, in the direction of Archer's back doorway. Fire comprehended that someone must be standing in Archer's entrance, someone Brocker watched with startled eyes.
And then everything happened at once. Fire recognised the mind in the doorway; she spun around, fiddle and bow screeching apart; she stared at Prince Brigan leaning against the door frame. ~ Kristin Cashore

I lifted myself up to check behind us, but Sage pushed my back down. "Don't do that."
"I just want to know how many there are."
"Too many." Sage pushed the car to a breakneck pace, then screeched a U-ie and started twisting wildly through alleys, one hairpin turn after another.
I heard tires screeching, and a massive crash.
"WHOOOOO!" Sage laughed triumphantly. "Check it out!"
I spun around, and out the rear windshield I caught a glimpse of the seaming wreckage of two smashed cars receding into the distance. Other cars pulled around them, picking up the chase. I ducked back down into my seat.
"Not bad, right?" Sage asked.
He was grinning. The chase fueled him. Adrenaline lit up his eyes, and his muscles tensed as he pushed himself and the car to their limits.
I had never seen him look hotter. In a sick way, I kind of didn't want the chase to end.
"Hold on!" Sage cried. We were out of the alleys now. He raced the car to top speed before whirling a three-sixty, sending three more cars piling into one another.
Sage caught my eye. "Heart pounding yet?"
It was...and I got the sense that he knew exactly why. He smiled-the gunshots brought his attention back to the chase. I breathlessly watched him through several more minutes of death-defying driving until we'd lost every car that was after us. ~ Hilary Duff

Tinted windows rounded the corner, obviously chasing Kevin. It blew past us, screeching to a ~ Janet Evanovich

Paul Haggis, who's now a big movie guy, cast me as a lawyer in 'Family Law.' When that series ended, I thought that I would be going on more auditions and booking more jobs, but everything just came to a screeching halt. ~ Meredith Eaton

A divorce is like a symphony with a screeching sound at the end - the fact that it ended badly does not mean it was all bad. ~ Daniel Kahneman

Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish. ~ Peter Shaffer

I remember my mom threatening me, half-serious: 'You know what? I should take you to Pittsburgh and put you in dance lessons just to keep you occupied.' Well, that brought everything to a screeching halt. 'Jeeze, dance lessons.' In retrospect, it would have been awesome, but then, 'Ugh, dancing - dancing's for sissies.' ~ Michael Keaton

When she spread her wings and leaped screeching into the air she had not the slightest doubt that every hand below her would stretch to catch her. And if one could leap from a height with no fear of falling, could one not be said to possess the secret of flight? Just like a bird, just like a god. ~ David Anthony Durham

Somewhere, nearby voices filled with dusk, cabs and panhandlers and one drunken girl screeching like a wounded bird - all of it flushed with a warmth and sad beauty I'd never noticed before. ~ Marisha Pessl

If we don't readjust our perception in time, the screeching hinges in our mind may break for want of oil and our viewing angle narrow unremittingly, thus inducing blurred vision, misinterpretation and incomprehension. ( "Drunken sailor" ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

She wanted there to be more blood and screeching. She wanted each death to detonate before her like a little black firework. She wanted it to matter. There was bellowing all around her, but the killing itself was soft and quiet and matter of fact. Life to death, life to death, with no more drama than turning over a counterpane. ~ Frances Hardinge

One day I saw the big jaguar,Calypso, jump up from the sand and run quickly, snarling, into the jungle. I looked around and the monkeys were jumping and screeching in the trees. Gazing across the water I saw something moving out there, getting closer. It was a canoe with three men paddling towards my shore. I started to smile and then I worried that they might want to kill me. I ran to my house and brought out my bow and arrows. I stood there on the beach, with my feet shoulder-width apart, and prepared for their arrival. ~ Doug Hiser

And so Enoch held up Miss Peregrine's cage and she let out a great screeching cry. We answered with a cry of our own, both a victory yell and a lament, for everything lost and yet to be gained. ~ Ransom Riggs

Mikhail had come striding towards us with guardian efficiency, ready to find out what task I had in mind. He came to a screeching halt when he saw Sonya get out of the car. So did she. They both stood frozen, eyes wider that seemed physically possible. I knew then that the rest of us had ceased to exist, as had all our intrigue, missions, and ... well, the world. In that moment, only the two of them existed.
Sonya gave a strangled cry and then ran forward. This jolted him awake, in time to wrap her in his arms as she threw herself against him. She started crying, and I could see tears on his face too. He brushed her back and cupped her cheeks, staring down at her and repeating over and over, "It's you ... it's you ... it's you ... "
Sonya tried to wipe her eyes, but it didn't do much good. "Mikhail -I'm sorry-I'm sorry-"
"It doesn't matter." he kissed her and pulled back only enough to look into her eyes. "It doesn't matter. Nothing matters except that we're together again. ~ Richelle Mead

There is a tendency for people affected by this epidemic to police each other or prescribe what the most important gestures would be for dealing with this experience of loss. I resent that. At the same time, I worry that friends will slowly become professional pallbearers, waiting for each death of their lovers, friends, and neighbors, and polishing their funeral speeches; perfecting their rituals of death rather than a relatively simple ritual of life such as screaming in the streets. I worry because of the urgency of the situations, because of seeing death coming in from the edges of abstraction where those with the luxury of time have cast it. I imagine what it would be like if friends had a demonstration each time a lover or a friend or a stranger died of AIDS. I imagine what it would be like if, each time a lover, friend or stranger died of this disease, their friends, lovers or neighbors would take the dead body and drive with it in a car a hundred miles an hour to washington d.c. and blast through the gates of the white house and come to a screeching halt before the entrance and dump their lifeless form on the front steps. It would be comforting to see those friends, neighbors, lovers and strangers mark time and place and history in such a public way.

But, bottom line, this is my own feelings of urgency and need; bottom line, emotionally, even a tiny charcoal scratching done as a gesture to mark a person's response to this epidemic means whole worlds to me i ~ David Wojnarowicz

It generated horrific noises that sound like a TRex trapped in a tar pit screeching its dying screams. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

On an impulse he cannot explain, he buys himself a one-way ticket - and the evening of that very same day finds him wandering the streets of the old colonial quarter of the Colombian town. Girls in love with boys on scooters, screeching birds, tropical flowers on winding vines, saudade, and solitude, One Hundred Years of it; and then, as the tropical dusk darkens the corners of the Plaza de la Adana, he sees a woman, her fingers toying with a necklace of lapis lazuli, and they stand still as the world eddies about them. ~ David Mitchell

It was my grandfather's island. Looming and bleak, folded in mist, guarded by a million screeching birds, it looked like some ancient fortress constructed by giants.
As I gazed up at its sheer cliffs, tops disappearing in a reef of ghostly clouds, the idea that this was a magical place didn't seem so ridiculous. ~ Ransom Riggs

# The Star of Seagull
Once again I looked up to the outreach, the Seagull screeching along the blue line of the sky ,wondering no matter how devouring the beauty of a sky is , that is not enough for it . It's more than a call, that it can't be departed from the engulfing sea.The power of taking everything in and still looks so serene is a magnificent made .The star of the Seagull is now shining in the sea brighter and brighter up to the coast line and I can see Indeed the sea is waving a mystical muse at my solitary soul . Once again I hibernate within my restless rendezvous !! ~ Madhushree Das

I'm gonna have a baby, you son of a bitch - your baby. And guess what, if you haven't killed him from kicking the hell out of me every day, he'll never know what Islam is! I'll raise him to fight your kind. In fact ..." She leaned closer to spit again, her voice rising to a screeching crescendo. "I'm gonna name him Christian! ~ Marc Cameron

Mindy runs to the DVD player and delicately places the disk in the holder and presses play. "Will you sit in this chair, please, Princess Mindy?" I ask, bowing deeply at the waist.
Mindy giggles as she replies, "I guess so."
After Mindy sits down, I take a wide-tooth comb and start gently combing out her tangles.
Mindy starts vibrating with excitement as she blurts, "Mr. Jeff, you're gonna fix my hair fancy, ain't you?"
"We'll see if a certain Princess can hold still long enough for me to finish," I tease. Immediately, Mindy becomes as still as a stone statue. After a couple of minutes, I have to say, "Mindy, sweetheart, it's okay to breathe. I just can't have you bouncing, because I'm afraid it will cause me to pull your hair."
Mindy slumps down in her chair just slightly. "Okay Mr. Jeff, I was ascared you was gonna stop," she whispers, her chin quivering.
I adopt a very fake, very over-the-top French accent and say, "Oh no, Monsieur Jeff must complete Princess Mindy's look to make the Kingdom happy.
Mindy erupts with the first belly laugh I've heard all day as she responds, "Okay, I'll try to be still, but it's hard 'cause I have the wiggles real bad."
I pat her on the shoulder and chuckle as I say, "Just try your best, sweetheart. That's all anyone can ask."
Kiera comes screeching around the corner in a blur, plunks her purse on the table, and says breathlessly, "Geez-O-Pete, I can't believe I'm late for the makeover. I ~ Mary Crawford

Just shut up and start sucking each other's faces already," Vida grumbled, leaning awkwardly against the stump. She would never admit it aloud, but I knew the burns on her back her eating her alive with pain. "I'm trying to make up for the sleep I lost when you started screeching at each other like cats in heat."
"Miss Vida," Liam said, "has anyone ever told you that you are positively the whipped cream on the sundae of life?"
She glared at him. "Anyone ever told you your head is shaped like a pencil?"
"That is physically impossible," Chubs groused. "He'd be--"
"Actually," Liam began, "Cole once did try to-- What?"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Chub said, "apparently the middle of my sentence interrupted the beginning of yours. Do continue."
"I'm going to guess you probably don't want to hear about the time he pushed my head through the neighbours fence..."
"Was there a lot of blood?" Vida asked, suddenly interested. "Did you lose an ear?"
Liam held his hands up next to his ears, indicating both were firmly attached to his skull.
"Then, no" she said. "No one wants to hear your boring-ass story. ~ Alexandra Bracken

Journalism has become a sort of competitive screeching: what is trivial but noisy and immediate takes precedence over important matters that develop over time. ~ Ted Koppel

You've been quiet, lass. Are you alive back there?'
All she could do was grunt with exasperation through the tight gag that was pressing down on her tongue.
'Aye, I know.' He nodded, as if he had understood every word. 'I was thinking about removing it, but something tells me you've been working up a mountain of complaints, so if it's all the same to you, I'll wait till we're somewhere more remote before I release that mouth of yours, so no one will hear your screeching.'
'I won't screech,' she tried to say, but it came out as a muffled grumble.
'What was that? You think I'm very wise? Aye, I think so, too. ~ Julianne MacLean

When it came time for me to go to bed, my mother beckoned me to her, and kissed me, and whispered, "I know I'll never have another anxious moment with my own dear laddie." I pondered these words before I went to sleep. How could I reconcile this motherliness with the screeching fury who had pursued me around the kitchen with a whip, flogging me until she was gorged with - what? Vengeance? What was it? Once, when I was in my thirties and reading Freud for the first time, I thought I knew. I am not so sure I know now. But what I knew then was that nobody - not even my mother - was to be trusted in a strange world that showed very little of itself on the surface. ~ Robertson Davies

And when I say the Fashion Police, of course I'm speaking of the small group of screeching gay guys and fashion "experts" on that E! show led by the reanimated corpse of Joan Rivers. ~ Mindy Kaling

We've spoken of the Knights of the Holy Grail, Percival. Do you know what I was? The Knight of the Unholy Grail.
In times like these when everyone is wonderful, what is needed is a quest for evil.
You should be interested! Such a quest serves God's cause! How? Because the Good proves nothing. When everyone is wonderful, nobody bothers with God. If you had ten thousand Albert Schweitzers giving their lives for their fellow men, do you think anyone would have a second thought about God?
Or suppose the Lowell Professor of Religion at Harvard should actually find the Holy Grail, dig it up in an Israeli wadi, properly authenticate it, carbon date it, and present it to the Metropolitan Museum. Millions of visitors! I would be as curious as the next person and would stand in line for hours to see it. But what different would it make in the end? People would be interested for a while, yes. This is an age of interest.
But suppose you could show me one "sin," one pure act of malevolence. A different cup of tea! That would bring matters to a screeching halt. But we have plenty of evil around you say. What about Hitler, the gas ovens and so forth? What about them? As everyone knows and says, Hitler was a madman. And it seems nobody else was responsible. Everyone was following orders. It is even possible that there was no such order, that it was all a bureaucratic mistake.
Show me a single "sin."
One hundred and twenty thousand dead at Hiroshima? Where was ~ Walker Percy

I remember, around age ten, beholding the scene in The Shining in which the hot young woman whom Jack Nicholson is lewdly embracing in the haunted hotel bathroom ages rapidly in his arms, screeching from nubile chick to putrefying corpse within seconds. I understood that the scene was supposed to represent some kind of primal horror. This was The Shining, after all. But the image of that decaying, cackling crone, her arms outstretched in desire toward the man who is backing away, has stayed with me for three decades, as a type of friend. She's part baths-ghost, part mad-Naomi. She didn't get the memo about being beyond wanting or being wanted. Or perhaps she just means to scare the shit out of him, which she does. ~ Maggie Nelson

He was rowed down from the north in a leather skiff manned by a crew of trolls. His fur cape was caked with candle wax, his brow stained blue by wine - though the latter was seldom noticed due to the fox mask he wore at-all times. A quill in his teeth, a solitary teardrop a-squirm in his palm, he was the young poet prince of Montreal, handsome, immaculate, searching for sturdier doors to nail his poignant verses on.
In Manhattan, grit drifted into his ink bottle. In Vienna, his spice box exploded. On the Greek island of Hydra, Orpheus came to him at dawn astride a transparent donkey and restrung his cheap guitar. From that moment on, he shamelessly and willingly exposed himself to the contagion of music. To the secretly religious curiosity of the traveler was added the openly foolhardy dignity of the troubadour. By the time he returned to America, songs were working in him like bees in an attic. Connoisseurs developed cravings for his nocturnal honey, despite the fact that hearts were occasionally stung.

Now, thirty years later, as society staggers towards the millennium - nailing and screeching at the while, like an orangutan with a steak knife in its side - Leonard Cohen, his vision, his gift, his perseverance, are finally getting their due. It may be because he speaks to this wounded zeitgeist with particular eloquence and accuracy, it may be merely cultural time-lag, another example of the slow-to-catch-on many opening their ears belatedly to what the fe ~ Tom Robbins

You think if you sit there, looking petrified and tense, I'll offer a blowjob to distract you from it all."
My humiliation comes to a screeching halt upon hearing the word blowjob. "What?"
"Well, it's not going to happen."
Ignore the cock. Ignore him. He's an idiot. Focus on the problem at hand. "You are deranged. Completely deranged. ~ Kristen Callihan

I don't think any of my books tell the reader anything new. But they do remind, in a time that is strident and screeching about the limitations of this world and all the trouble we can get ourselves into. ~ Richard Bach

Even the evil-looking bird perched on a rod in the bar had stopped screeching out the names and addresses of local contract killers, which was a service it provided for free. ~ Douglas Adams

My world grinds to a loud, screeching halt. Big Red? What the ever-loving knuckle f**k?
I gape up at him, too shocked to even form a proper glare. And he squints back, that inane smile still in place, as if he's waiting for me to answer. My mind is stuck on one thing.
He'd called me Big Red. Big Fucking Red. ~ Kristen Callihan

What if I told you, I'm a sliver of a breath away from hauling you behind that barricade." He indicated a low wall away from the crowds with a thrust of his chin. His voice thickened. "Hitching your skirts and taking you against the timbers."

"I would tell you to remember to cover my mouth so I don't embarrass us both by screeching your name from the pleasure of it. ~ Grace Draven

It just took all of that to come to a screeching halt, to get to the point of having nothing, for me to finally realize, Hey, what are you fighting with this for? Until then, I hadn't claimed my faith as my own; I had just grown up with it. ~ Scott Stapp

- so much more opportunity now." Her voice trails off.

"Hurrah for women's lib, eh?"

"The lib?" Impatiently she leans forward and tugs the serape straight. "Oh, that's doomed."

The apocalyptic word jars my attention.

"What do you mean, doomed?"

She glances at me as if I weren't hanging straight either and says vaguely, "Oh …"

"Come on, why doomed? Didn't they get that equal rights bill?"

Long hesitation. When she speaks again her voice is different.

"Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like - like that smoke. We'll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You'll see."

Now all this is delivered in a gray tone of total conviction. The last time I heard that tone, the speaker was explaining why he had to keep his file drawers full of dead pigeons.

"Oh, come on. You and your friends are the backbone of the system; if you quit, the country would come to a screeching halt before lunch."

No answering smile.

"That's fantasy." Her voice is still quiet. "Women don't work that way. We're a - a toothless world." She looks around as if she wanted to stop talking. "What women do is survive. We live by ones and twos in the chink ~ James Tiptree Jr.

You will learn, deekra. You never marry just a person. You always marry a family.
They walk in total silence. But this silence is screaming, screeching, and filled with sounds
the thudding of Bhima's heart; the clawing, tearing fear that is choking Maya's throat; ... Inside this silence the two women walk, afraid of touching its contours, because to break the dam of silence would mean to allow the waters of anger, rage, fury to come rushing, would allow the tidal wave of the recent past
the past that they have ignored, aborted, killed
to come roaring in to destroy their tenuous present. But quiet, like love, doesn't last forever. ~ Thrity Umrigar

I like to quote the verse, "I can do all things through Him who gives me strength." I kind of envision me skiing and God is kind of like an eagle right next to me screeching in my ear that everything is going to be all good. I just try my best and that's all I can ask for. ~ Nick Goepper

She cupped my face. "Wilbur, you are so sexy when you're not pretending to be an eighties butt-rocker."

"You know what's not sexy?"

"What?" she said on a breath between laying kisses on my cheek.

"June pooping on the floor."

Mia jumped off my lap and darted over to the kitchen, screeching in her highest voice. "No, no, no, Juney." She caught our little puppy mid-poop and picked her up, held her arms out and screamed, "What do I do?"

There was no way Mia would be able to get June outside without leaving a trail of poop in her wake. "Put her over the toilet!"

I followed her as she ran down the hallway and into our tiny bathroom at the end. She held the squirming puppy over the toilet until the doggie business was complete.

Setting June on the ground, she glanced up at me, frowned, and then mumbled, "I'm gonna be a terrible mother."

I helped her up and then stood behind her at the sink as she washed her hands. "No, you're going to be perfect." I smirked when she looked at me in the mirror. "You did exactly the right thing. First you screamed and charged at her with your arms flailing around, and then you basically held her by the neck while you ran around in a circle yelling. That is exactly what you will probably do if the same situation happens to play out with one of our babies."

"Thanks a lot. ~ Renee Carlino

Raucous heavy metal of punk guitars screeching like robots put to the rack ... ~ Elizabeth George

Grabbing a scarf off the chair, I threw it at him.
He caught it, clutching it to his chest as he flew into the air. "You gave Tink a scarf. Tink is free!" He flew out into the hallway like a little cracked-out fairy, screeching, "Tink is freeeeee!"
Ren looked at me. "What the actual f**k?"
I sighed. "He's obsessed with Harry Potter. I'm sorry."
Tink darted back into the room, holding the scarf to his bare chest. "There is no reason to apologize when it comes to Harry Potter."
"You do remember what happened to Dobby, right?" I said.
"S**t." Tink's eyes widened and he dropped the scarf. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

AND NOW HERE I WAS IN THE LAP OF LUXURY, FAR FROM THE hooting and screeching and dirty socks of my normal domestic life. It probably wasn't fair to compare, of course, which was a good thing. This hotel made even my new, swimming-pooled house seem squalid - made my whole little life seem just a bit less bright and shiny. ~ Jeff Lindsay

when i love, it happens almost all at once.
it is inconsiderate, unrefined -
a child screeching in a supermarket
it's a thunderclap.
it is a small village blackout.
it is aphrodite rising from the sea foam, fully formed. ~ Salma Deera

Ten feet from the car, a man stepped directly into our path. We came to a screeching halt, and I jerked Lissa back by her arm. It was him, the guy I'd seen across the street watching me. He was older than us, maybe mid-twenties, and as tall as I'd figured, probably six-six or six-seven. And under different circumstances–say, when he wasn't holding up our desperate escape–I would have thought he was hot. Shoulder-length brown hair, tied back in a short ponytail. Dark brown eyes. A long brown coat–a duster, I thought it was called.
But his hotness was irrelevant now. He was only an obstacle keeping Lissa and me away from the car and our freedom. The footsteps behind us slowed, and I knew our pursuers had caught up. Off to the sides, I detected more movement, more people closing in. God. They'd almost sent a dozen guardians to retrieve us. I couldn't believe it. The queen herself didn't travel with that many. ~ Richelle Mead

And there is one disconcerting thing about working with a computer – it's likely to talk back to you. You make some tiny mistake in your FORTRAN language – putting a letter in the wrong column, say, or omitting a comma – and the 360 comes to a screeching halt and prints out rude remarks, like "ILLEGAL FORMAT," or "UNKNOWN PROBLEM," or, if the man who wrote the program was really feeling nasty that morning, "WHAT'S THE MATTER STUPID? CAN'T YOU READ?" Everyone who uses a computer frequently has had, from time to time, a mad desire to attack the precocious abacus with an axe. ~ John Drury Clark

Ash!" I called. "What are you doing? Come on!"
"Meghan." Ash's voice despite the pain below the surface, was calm. "I hope you find your brother. If you see Puck again tell him I regret having to step out of our duel."
"Ash, no! Don't do this!"
I felt him smile. "You made me feel alive again," he murmured.
Screeching, the greemlins attacked. ~ Julie Kagawa

We have to start thinking of America as a family. We have to stop screeching screeching at each other, stop hurting each other, and instead start caring for, sacrificing for and sharing with each other ... We cannot move forward if cynics and critics swoop down and pick apart anything that goes wrong, to a point where we lose sight of what is right, decent and uniquely good about America. ~ Colin Powell

Sybil and Nancy leaned over to catch a glimpse of the sun sparkling on the muddy waters of the River Plate. The skyscrapers stood proudly in clumps and Sybil assumed that the patches of green were parks. In no time the plane was screeching to a halt and they had arrived in Buenos Aires. ~ Phyllis Goodwin

I cough, swirling, trying to gain my bearings. It is all black. There are footfalls around me, random screams followed by a blast of a gun. Falling to both knees, I crawl through the soft powder that had moments before been living, my hand outstretched in search of a wall so that I might ground myself. There is a swish overhead, and a screeching sound like a door needing oil. A tusk rolls to me, and I realize it had been thrown my way. ~ Lindsay Anderson

All right. What do you want me to do?' 'Go out there and look at him,' Lucas said. 'Go out where and look at who?' he said. But he understood all right. It seemed to him that he had known all the time what it would be; he thought with a kind of relief So that's all it is even while his automatic voice was screeching with outraged disbelief: 'Me? Me? ~ William Faulkner

Anything. I'll give her anything she asks for: Diamonds, marriage, screeching kids, an ugly white fucking picket fence - all of it hers if she has me.. and keeps me. ~ Rachel Robinson

People ask me about all sorts of sounds. There's a sound of a screeching toy or a rubber duck and everybody asks me about that, but it was an absolutely random thing, just a cool sound. ~ Kieran Hebden

Now, all of a sudden, she had an overwhelming urge to talk to Finn. She turned and, out of habit, walked over to the shed, not even thinking about the fact that he had been banned from his home-away-from-home. One push opened the door and Megan's entire world came to a screeching stop.
Standing on the easel directly across from her was her own image. Finn's painting of her. Completed to the last eyelash. It took her breath away.
Slowly Megan approached the painting. It was unlike anything else Finn had ever painted. He hadn't painted her profile or her shoulder or her hands or her ear. It was the only painting in the room that was a full, face-forward portrait, and it was amazing how much it looked like her. Only softer somehow. Prettier. More open. Her lips were pulled up on one side in a sort of knowing smile. Her skin practically glowed, and the smattering of freckles across her nose actually looked sweet to her. But it was the eyes that killed her. They swirled with at least five shades of green and had delicate gold flecks painted subtly through them. Was this what she really looked like to Finn? Did he really think she was this…beautiful?
Megan reached out and touched the edge of the canvas. The paint was completely dry.
When had he had time to finish this? She remembered suddenly that he had been grounded for the past few days. He must have been sneaking out here all week to work on it. And he had finished it. He had actually finished a painting. ~ Kate Brian

Honey, we have other things to think about," I said, forcing myself to smile, forcing myself to sound calm. One corner of my brain pictured a pink ambulance screeching to a halt outside to disgorge emergency beauticians with cases of scissors, combs, and hair spray. "Dealing with a little hair damage can wait until tomorrow. It's a lot more important to find out who did this and why. ~ Charlaine Harris

Callistanas aren't so bad either," I said, looking down at my satchel. "That 'pain in the ass' screeching saved me from a face full of acid."
Adrian put his hand to his heart in mock horror. "Sage, did you just swear? ~ Richelle Mead

Our lips just trespassed on those inner labyrinths hidden deep within our ears, filled them with the private music of wicked words, hers in many languages, mine in the off color of my own tongue, until as our tones shifted, and our consonants spun and squealed, rattled faster, hesitated, raced harder, syllables soon melting with groans, or moans finding purchase in new words, or old words, or made-up words, until we gathered up our heat and refused to release it, enjoying too much the dark language we had suddenly stumbled upon, craved to, carved to, not a communication really but a channeling of our rumored desires, hers for all I know gone to Black Forests and wolves, mine banging back to a familiar form, that great revenant mystery I still could only hear the shape of, which in spite of our separate lusts and individual cries still continued to drive us deeper into stranger tones, our mutual desire to keep gripping the burn fueled by sound, hers screeching, mine – I didn't hear mine – only hears, probably counter-pointing mine, a high-pitched cry, then a whisper dropping unexpectedly to practically a bark, a grunt, whatever, no sense any more, and suddenly no more curves either, just the straight away, some line crossed, where every fractured sound already spoken finally compacts into one long agonizing word, easily exceeding a hundred letters, even thunder, anticipating the inevitable letting go, when the heat is ultimately too much to bear, threatening to burn, scar, tea ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Gripped with bitter cold, ice-locked, Petersburg burned in delirium. One knew: out there, invisible behind the curtain of fog, the red and yellow columns, spires, and hoary gates and fences crept on tiptoe, creaking and shuffling. A fevered, impossible, icy sun hung in the fog - to the left, to the right, above, below - a dove over a house on fire. From the delirium-born, misty world, dragon men dived up into the earthly world, belched fog - heard in the misty world as words, but here becoming nothing - round white puffs of smoke. The dragon men dived up and disappeared again into the fog. And trolleys rushed screeching out of the earthly world into the unknown. ("The Dragon") ~ Yevgeny Zamyatin

Civilization is only a pretense; in the crisis, we become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and becoming instead the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy, wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone that we'll use the moment it comes close enough. ~ Orson Scott Card

A fat Reichian wife screeching over potatoes Get a job!
And five nose running brats in love with Batman ~ Gregory Corso

There will be a meeting of the great powers who will disagree, and the next noise we hear will be the screeching of elevators going up and down from heaven to hell. ~ Mordecai Wyatt Johnson

behind her out in their yard screeching and laughing. Their dad was yelling: "Don't eat the ~ Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

Nursing a bottle from a half-floor above, Johnny Jukes stared at her and knew. She was all edges. She stood erect on the wall, like the scabbard of a sword. She did not slouch. Her clothes were crisp, like whole numbers. They were dark, except for her boots, which were red. Thorn of love. A screeching solo tore off a dozen dancers' heads. (67) ~ Michael Blumlein

The only good thing was that by midnight, even most of the bums had gone home to sleep it off. That was lucky for them, because Ray was the worst damn driver I'd ever seen. And that was after I jerked his head out of the duffel and parked it on the dashboard.
"Gah! That makes it worse!" he told me, as I tried to get the eyes facing forward.
"How can it possibly be worse?"
"Because I got double vision now! Get it off! Get it off!"
He batted at his own head and succeeded in sending it tumbling into Christine's lap. She immediately went into hysterics and slapped it away. The head fell out of the car; Ray hit the brakes and we came to a screeching halt.
"What are you doing?" I screeched, as he hopped out. "There are people firing at us!"
"Tough!" came from somewhere under the car. ~ Karen Chance

Missy

I was sixteen and Jason (known on TV as Jase) was eighteen when we started dating. One of my friends--we'll call her Christy--was actually interested in him, and the two of them had started seeing each other. Jase did not know Christy was already dating someone else and had been for quite some time. He found this out at her house one Sunday afternoon when she ran down the stairs telling him he had to leave immediately. About that time, he heard the screeching of tires from the front of her house. Her boyfriend had arrived. The boyfriend (we'll call him Greg) was obviously not happy with the current arrangement and was there to set things straight with Jason. He told Jason eh wanted to talk inside his truck. Jase ended up getting into Greg's vehicle, which he quickly regretted, and Greg proceeded to drive to an undisclosed location to fight it out. Quickly, Jase realized the situation and told Greg that if all of this was over Christy, he could have her. She was not worth it to him.
Since Greg did not seem to respond to this direction in the conversation, Jase switched gears and started preaching to him. He proceeded to tell Greg that Jesus died for him and for all the rotten things he had done in his life. He told him God would forgive him if he would turn his life over to Jesus, be baptized for his sins, and start living a life that reflected Jesus' love for him.
Since Greg did not seem to respond to this dialogue either, Jase told him simply, "Jus ~ Missy Robertson

Nonna likes Halloween, but draws the line at a costume, although she's been known to scare small children as she looms over them in her stark black, screeching at them to have some M&M's. ~ Melissa Jensen

I wondered if maybe this kind of thing happened all the time in Vegas
cars full of late-arriving passengers screeching desperately across the runway, dropping off wild eyed Samoans clutching mysterious canvas bags who would sprint onto planes at the last possible second and then roar off into the sunrise. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

A wave formed, swelling around Ariel's body. It lifted her up higher and higher- or maybe she herself was growing: it was hard to tell. She held the trident aloft. Storm clouds raced to her from all directions like a lost school of cichlid babies flicking to their father's mouth for protection. Lightning coursed through the sky and danced between the trident's tines.
Ariel sang a song of rage.
Notes rose and fell discordantly, her voice screeching at times like a banshee from the far north.
She sang, and the wind sang with her. It whipped her hair out of its braids and pulled tresses into tentacles that billowed around her head. She sang of the unfairness of Eric's fate and her own, of her father's torture as a polyp, even of Scuttle's mortal life, slowly but visibly slipping away.
Mostly she sang about Ursula.
She sang about everyone whose lives had been touched and destroyed by evil like coral being killed and bleached, like dead spots in the ocean from algae blooms, like scale rot. She sang about what she would do to anyone who threatened those she loved and protected.
And then, with her final note, she made a quick thrust as if to throw the trident toward the boats in the bay, pulling it back at the last moment.
A clap louder than thunder echoed across the ocean. A wave even larger than the one she rode roared up from the depths of the open sea. It smashed through and around her, leaving her hair and body white with foam. She grinned fie ~ Liz Braswell

I keep my kindness in my eyes
Gently folded around my iris
Like a velvety, brown blanket
That warms my vision

I keep my shyness in my hair
Tucked away into a ponytail
Looking for a chance to escape
On a few loose strands in the air

I keep my anger on my lips
Just waiting to unleash into the world
But trust me; it's never in my heart
It evaporates into words

I keep my dignity upon my chin
Like a torch held up high
For those who have betrayed me
Radiating a silent, strong message

I keep my gratitude in my smile
A glistening waterfall in the sun
Gently splashing at that person
Who made me happy for some reason

I keep my sensitivity in my hands
Reaching out for your wet cheek
Holding you, with all the love
The love I want to share, and feel

I keep my passion in my writing
My words breathing like fire
Screeching against an endless road
As I continue to be inspired

I keep my simplicity in my soul
Spread over me like a clear sky
Reflecting all that I am
And all that's ever passed me by

And I hope you will look
Beyond my ordinary face
My simple, tied hair
My ordinary tastes
And I hope you will see me
From everyone...apart
As I keep my beauty
in my heart. ~ Sanober Khan

During the whole of the fucking Middle Ages, the place where they had it off most of all was the cemeteries! ... people don't face up these odd little sides of things, leave a lot of naughty little facts in the dark out of human decency! A mistake! wrong! ... human decency never holds up! ... with me it's my enemas! the toilet! after two weeks without an enema I have nothing against dying ... and they give it to me so hot that I scream ...
And in Claunau? [i.e. Dachau]
You're right, you're right! I whimper, but I'm spoiled! but were you there, in Claunau? ... My ass you were! doesn't stop you from screeching your fucking lungs out as if you were the first one in and the last one out! ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Opera?" Trelon asked tiredly, "What the hell is opera?" "I'll tell you what it is! It is the screeching of the death birds, that what it is!

Capturing Cara (Dragon Lords of Valdier, #2) ~ S. E. Smith

Cars frighten me. They look vicious. Growling, screeching, fast-moving assassins.
-Bec ~ Darren Shan

I hear myself laughing, screeching, cackling. The world is red hot and pulsing. On fire [...] I stroll down the corridor and the flickering fluorescents celebrate my passing, humming in praise. I spin, bow and hum along. Bloody footprints trail; bloody fingers smear the walls. ~ Eliza Crewe

Toddlers were running the place like some miniature version of Lord of the Flies, complete with weapons made from blocks and tinker toys. One of them came at me, charging my knees and the pink pod that held my precious baby. I screamed and made a run for the front door, flip-flops sticking to squelchy dried puddles of juice. I let out a relieved sigh when we were outside breathing fresh air. The near-deafening roar of the highway was a lark song compared to the screeching we'd just escaped. ~ Piper Vaughn

When I burst into the terminal, my eyes swept around, bouncing from person to person in the crowded, bustling space. My stomach fell a little when I didn't see him, but I knew he probably couldn't come this far. He was probably at baggage claim.
I looked around for a sign to point me in the right direction and finally saw one labeled Baggage Claim with an arrow pointing off to the left.
But I didn't follow the arrow.
My eyes fixed on someone standing beneath the sign.
His hands were jammed into the pockets of his well-worn slouchy jeans. The relaxed action pulled the waistband low, highlighting his flat, narrow waist his Henley tee molded to. As usual, he was wearing his varsity jacket and his blond hair was a mess.
My gaze locked on his sapphire-blue eyes and didn't let go. His eyes, ohmigod, his eyes. The blue was so intense it served as an emergency brake on everything in my life. The second I looked at him, everything else came to a screeching halt. I no longer noticed the huge crowd rushing around.
The anxiety-causing flight was just a distant memory, and the two weeks I spent longing for his touch became something I would live through ten times over just to be in this moment with him again.
His lips pulled into a smile and the charm that oozed from every pore in his body made me almost lightheaded. Romeo pulled his hands out of his pockets and straightened, motioning for me.
I rushed across the space separating us, my bag ~ Cambria Hebert

She slowly began to hum her personal favorite,not even realizing when instinctively she began to sing the lyrics:"hush,little baby,don't say a word.If that mockingbird don't sing,papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring.If that diamond ring don't" "Do me a favor.Pretend you're that mockingbird and shut up" one angry,bloodshot eye glared at her. "I was just trying to help" "Help what? bring down the walls of the hut with your screeching? ~ Jill Barnett

An ear-splitting screech pierced the silence, followed by another, striking his ears like metal against a hollow bell. The woosh woosh of wind being displaced brought Andrew's attention skyward, and a glacial gust of paralyzing terror raced up his spine. The creature opened its mouth, and a blazing shaft of fire bellowed from above. Andrew barely had enough time to back beneath an awning for protection. Egnatious and Sebastian dove to the side while Firen sidestepped her impending doom, raising the katana in challenge.
The screeching returned, except now the howls were coming from every direction.
Firen's chest heaved. "Did you see that?" she asked, her stormy eyes glinting with rapture and daring as she held her katana out, preparing for the next attack.
"Did I see the dragon?" Sebastian asked, hysteria dangerously rising to the surface. He stood and brushed himself off. "Yes, I bloody well did see that enormous, scaly, fire-breathing dragon. ~ Laura Kreitzer

But that is love, isn't it? It's terribly inconvenient. It sweeps you up and stales your attention and slows down your work. our labors fall behind, our friends report us missing, and everything comes to a screeching halt! Everything, that is, except what truly matters in this life
true love. We've all been there. We know the feelings. So when we see it in a friend, a dear, dear friend, we throw down our work and we celebrate. We rejoice. We raise a glass. Because when we recognize it in the hearts of friends, it reminds us of how important it is in our own. Mr. Seven, you are and always have been my companion and friend. You have made me a better man, and almost on a daily basis you have reminded me that I too need to celebrate the love in my life. - William Charming ~ Michael Buckley

He was walking down a narrow street in Beirut, Lebanon, the air thick with the smell of Arabic coffee and grilled chicken. It was midday, and he was sweating badly beneath his flannel shirt. The so-called South Lebanon conflict, the Israeli occupation, which had begun in 1982 and would last until 2000, was in its fifth year.
The small white Fiat came screeching around the corner with four masked men inside. His cover was that of an aid worker from Chicago and he wasn't strapped. But now he wished he had a weapon, if only to have the option of ending it before they took him. He knew what that would mean. The torture first, followed by the years of solitary. Then his corpse would be lifted from the trunk of a car and thrown into a drainage ditch. By the time it was found, the insects would've had a feast and his mother would have nightmares, because the authorities would not allow her to see his face when they flew his body home.
He didn't run, because the only place to run was back the way he'd come, and a second vehicle had already stopped halfway through a three-point turn, all but blocking off the street.
They exited the Fiat fast. He was fit and trained, but he knew they'd only make it worse for him in the close confines of the car if he fought them. There was a time for that and a time for raising your hands, he'd learned. He took an instep hard in the groin, and a cosh over the back of his head as he doubled over. He blacked out then.
The makeshift ce ~ Gary Haynes

Milrose Munce had watched his unbridled mouth screeching ahead of him down the track, as his mind flew into the dust like a wheel from a broken axle. ~ Douglas Anthony Cooper

A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Sometimes I feel like tap-dancing, screeching, unscrewing light bulbs, pulling curtains, combing hair, doing knee bends, handstands and turning somersaults out there. ~ Ilie Nastase