Shovel Quotes

When I'm at the bottom looking up, the main question may not be 'how do I get out of this hole?' In reality, the main question might be 'how do I get rid of the shovel that I used to dig it? ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Even in the republic of virtue you need a man who will shovel up the shit. ~ Hilary Mantel

You're beautiful, every part of you. I love your hair, the way it looks, the way it feels. I love touching it, smelling it. I love the way you wrinkle your nose when you laugh. It makes me laugh, too, every time. And I love watching you eat. Sometimes you can't shovel it in fast enough, but when you get interested in a conversation, you forget there's anything in front of you. God knows, I love making love with you. I can't even talk about that without wanting you. I love your pathetic attachment to those seniors. I love how hard you work. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Anything that just adds information you can't use is plain dangerous. Anyway, there's too much of everything of this kind, that's come home to me, too much history and culture to keep track of, too many details, too much news, too much example, too much influence, too many guys who tell you to be as they are, and all this hugeness, abundance, turbulence, Niagara Falls torrent. Which who is supposed to interpret? Me? I haven't got that much head to master it all. I get carried away. It doesn't give my feelings enough of a chance if I have to store up and become like an encyclopedia. Why, just as a question of time spent in getting prepared for life, look! a man could spent forty, fifty, sixty years like that inside the walls of his own being. And all high conversation would take place within those walls. And all achievement would stay within those walls. And all glamour too. And even hate, monstrousness, enviousness, murder, would be inside them. This would be only a terrible, hideous dream about existing. It's better to dig ditches and hit other guys with your shovel than die in the walls. ~ Saul Bellow

Listen, Bob. A gun is just a tool. No better and no worse than any other tool, a shovel- or an axe or a saddle or a stove or anything. Think of it always that way. A gun is as good- and as bad- as the man who carries it. Remember that. ~ Jack Schaefer

This better be shit you can handle without Merry gettin' a pissed off look, Cher. 'Cause you pissed off gives me a quiver. Merry pissed off might mean I'm in the dark with a shovel and a flashlight, coverin' a brother's ass by buryin' bodies. ~ Kristen Ashley

be good to yourself
you're the only you
you'll ever get ~ R H Sin

The things you experience," she continued, "are written on your cells as memories and patterns, which are reprinted again on the next generation. And even if you never lift a shovel or plant a cabbage, every day of your life something is written upon you. And when you die, the entirety of that written record returns to the earth. All we have on this earth, all we are, is a record. Maybe the only things that persist are----copies of things. The original has long since passed away from this universe, but on and on we copy. I have devoted my miniscule life to the act of copying. ~ Madeleine Thien

Sales is a business of relationships, and you must cultivate customers with tenderness and love, like cabbages in winter, even if the customer is an egomaniacal asshole you want to hit with a shovel. ~ Max Barry

There was something sly about his smile,
his eyes so black and sharp, his rufous hair. Something
that sent her early to their trysting place,
beneath the oak, beside the thornbush,
something that made her climb the tree and wait.
Climb a tree, and in her condition.
Her love arrived at dusk, skulking by owl-light,
carrying a bag,
from which he took a mattock, shovel, knife.
He worked with a will, beside the thornbush, beneath the oaken tree,
he whistled gently, and he sang, as he dug her grave,
that old song ...
shall I sing it for you, now, good folk? ~ Neil Gaiman

The child affixes one of her little pictures to my refrigerator.
She asks, Can you detect the radiation?

There is a house, one tree, and grass in dark slashes. A sun
shining. Beneath, in her child letters, she has written Chernobyl.

At kindergarten they must be having nuclear energy week.

One could look at the picture and say everything is in order.
No, I say, I cannot see the radiation.

The radiation poison, she says, sits
inside the apple and the apple looks pretty. Then singsongs,

Bury the apple and bury the shovel that buried the apple
and put the apple-burier person in a closet forever.

We are both thinking Then bury the burier.
Both thinking of her picture with no people.

The poison sits inside the people and the people
still look pretty, she says. ~ Darcie Dennigan

Running a close second [as a writing lesson] was the realization that stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when it feels like all you're managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position. ~ Stephen King

After the last shovel of dirt was patted in place, I sat down and let my mind drift back through the years. I thought of the old K. C. Baking Powder can, and the first time I saw my pups in the box at the depot. I thought of the fifty dollars, the nickels and dimes, and the fishermen and blackberry patches.
I looked at his grave and, with tears in my eyes, I voiced these words: You were worth it, old friend, and a thousand times over. ~ Wilson Rawls

Okay, our next stop is the hardware store." Marin's lips curved into a hint of a smile. "Yippee. Axes, duct tape, lamp oil, and a shovel, here we come." "It's disturbing how quickly you came up with that shopping list." And that made her grin outright. ~*~ ~ Kate Baray

Perhaps if the fathers of the two babies born had been present, they would have thought to shovel. But the storm had prevented their return, and neither had been home. ~ Lynda Cohen Loigman

The government are considering spending £3million on a state funeral for Margaret Thatcher when she dies. For £3million they could buy everyone in Scotland a shovel, and we'll dig a hole deep enough to deliver her to Satan ourselves. ~ Frankie Boyle

I was intending to trip on my way back, making her the clear winner, when she whimpered, "I can't believe your not going to let me win, especially after the other night." Her face suddenly fell and I stopped what I was doing for a second when out of nowhere she grabbed my shovel and threw it to the ground before turning to run back to the hutch. "Sucker," she called over her shoulder. ~ Leah Spiegel

Your fork is my shovel. I eat real estate and I drink coffee. ~ Jarod Kintz

As with so many child-related problems, I blame the parents. Many, I'm afraid, are simply too lazy, too stupid or too uncaring to cook properly; it's much easier to shovel sugary, salty 'convenience food' into your kids from an early age. Food habits are built early in life and a poor start is impossible, or at least extremely difficult, to correct, once an addiction has set in. ~ Frank Chalk

Everybody has their shit to shovel,Callahan.Everybody.Now,yours is right up front where everybody can see it.I don't envy you that.But everybody has some,whether you can see it or not. ~ Sarina Bowen

What's up?' he said, like the church was always burning down and I always called him on a school night, telling him to come over after dark and bring a shovel. ~ Brenna Yovanoff

Only if you're a numbskull."

"Numbskull yourself! Want me to numb your skull with this shovel? ~ John Flanagan

Sometimes it ain't the drunk or the sinner who needs a shovel across the rear, it's the ones who could quote you chapter and verse about grace, but don't hand it out. ~ Lisa Wingate

The world is full of abundance and opportunity, but far too many people come to the fountain of life with a sieve instead of a tank car ... a teaspoon instead of a steam shovel. They expect little and as a result they get little. ~ Ben Sweetland

I didn't get fired."
"You didn't punch your boss and get fired from the Tribune? That's what I heard."
"I punched what could loosely be called a colleague for cribbing my notes on a story and since the editor–who happened to be the asshole's uncle–took his word over mine, I quit."
"To write books. Is it fun?"
"I guess it is."
"I bet you killed the asshole in the first one you wrote."
"You'd be right. Beat him to death with a shovel. Very satisfying. ~ Nora Roberts

City of Percepliquis

Ever sought, forever missed

Pick and shovel, dig and haul

Search forever, fall the wall.



Gala halted, city's doom

Spring warmth chilled with dust and gloom

Darkness sealed, blankets all

Death upon them, fall the wall.



Ancient stones upon the Lee

Dusts of memories gone we see

Once the center, once the all

Lost forever, fall the wall ~ Michael J. Sullivan

The Germans have an inhuman way of cutting up their verbs. Now a verb has a hard time enough of it in this world when it's all together. It's downright inhuman to split it up. But that's just what those Germans do. They take part of a verb and put it down here, like a stake, and they take the other part of it and put it away over yonder like another stake, and between these two limits they just shovel in German.
from Disappearance of Literature ~ Mark Twain

When I found him lying in the ditch holding a shovel, I thought he was sleeping on the job. Turns out he was being even lazier, and he was in fact dead. ~ Jarod Kintz

The weight of the old world is stifling, and trying to shovel its weight off your life is tiring just to think about. The constant shuttling of opinions is tiring, and the shuffling of papers across desks, the chopping of logic and the trimming of attitudes. There must, somewhere, be a simpler, more violent world. ~ Hilary Mantel

Soetsu Yanagi, in the "Unknown Craftsman", writes, "Man is most free when his tools are proportionate to his needs." For example, for optimal productivity, a carpenter needs woodworking tools and an environment conducive to his work, not a steam shovel or army tank. ~ Jeff Davidson

I employ this thing I called The Shovel List."
"A shovel..?"
"No, a shovel list. It's more of a conceptual thing. It's a list of all the people and things I hate so much I want to hit them in the face with a shovel. ~ Marian Keyes

The world, with all its impossible variegation and the basic miracle of its existence, draws most mourners out of their grief and back into itself. The homosexual forsythia blooms; the young Irish dancers in Killarney dance, their arms as rigid as shovel handles; secret deals are done involving weapons or office space or crude oil or used cars or drugs; new lovers, believing they will never really have to get up, lie down together; the Large Hadron Collider smashes the Higgs boson into view; snow drapes its white stoles on the bare limbs of winter; the crack of the bat swung by a hefty Dominican pulls a crowd to its feet in Boston; bricks for the new hospital in Phnom Penh are laid in true courses; the single-engine Cessna lands safely in an Ohio alfalfa field during a storm. How can you resist? The true loss in only to the dying, and even the won't feel it when the dying's done. ~ Daniel Menaker

Maybe the reason we like stories so much is because they deliver wish fulfillment. Maybe we sit in the dark and shovel sugar into our mouths because in so many stories everything is made right, and we secretly long for that ourselves. ~ Donald Miller

Some of us have great runways already built for us. If you have one, take off. But if you don't have one, realize it is your responsibility to grab a shovel and build one for yourself and for those who will follow after you. ~ Amelia Earhart

He didn't like causing her discomfort. "How are your hands?" He held his out, palm up.

Rounding the bed slowly, she placed hers in them.

Stanislav sat up straighter and examined them closely, then swore. Raw, open blisters marred the skin at the crooks of her thumbs and the base of every finger. She had gripped that shovel for so long that the blisters had all popped and the flap of loose skin on each had torn away. It looked painful. And she had said nothing, not even complaining when she had held one hand over the steaming pot of pasta while stirring it, something that must have made her hand hurt even more.

"Stop beating yourself up about it," she ordered softly.

He raised his head, on a level with hers though he sat and she stood.

"I wasn't intentionally listening to your thoughts," she told him. "You were sort of broadcasting them. And it wasn't your fault."

"I beg to differ. Had I not compelled you to dig me up - "

"You would probably be dead right now," she finished for him. Withdrawing one hand, she drew it over his hair. "It was worth it."

His pulse raced at her touch. His gaze dropped to her lips. He heard her heartbeat pick up. ~ Dianne Duvall

Movie directors often shoot funerals in the rain. The mourners stand in their dark suits under large black umbrellas, the kind you never have handy in real life, while the rain falls symbolically all around them, on grass and tombstones and the roods of cars, generating atmostphere. What they don't show you is how the legs of your suit caked with grass clippings, cling soaked to your shins, how even under umbrellas the rain still manages to find your scalp, running down your skull and past your collar like wet slugs, so that while you're supposed to be meditating on the deceased, instead you're mentally tracking the trickle of water as it slides down your back. The movies don't convey how the soaked, muddy ground will swallow up the dress shoes of the pallbearers like quicksand, how the water, seeping into the pine coffin, will release the smell of death and decay, how the large mound of dirt meant to fill the grave will be transformed into an oozing pile of sludge that will splater with each stab of the shovel and land on the coffin with an audible splat. And instead of a slow and dignified farewell, everyone just wants to get the deceased into the ground and get the hell back into their cars. ~ Jonathan Tropper

I once said, 'We will bury you,' and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you. ~ Nikita Khrushchev

Mother, are you there? I love you. I never meant to hit you over the head with that shovel. ~ Eminem

If you want to marry me, here's what you'll have to do:
You must learn how to make a perfect chicken-dumpling stew.
And you must sew my holey socks,
And soothe my troubled mind,
And develop the knack for scratching my back,
And keep my shoes spotlessly shined.
And while I rest you must rake up the leaves,
And when it is hailing and snowing
You must shovel the walk ... and be still when I talk,
And-hey-where are you going? ~ Shel Silverstein

What restless woman can resist a man with a shovel in one hand and a glowing rose bush in the other, and a moderately crazed glitter in his eyes that might be mistaken for love? ~ Margaret Atwood

God is not remote from us. He is at the point of my pen, my (pick) shovel, my paint brush, my (sewing) needle - and my heart and thoughts. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

On the way over, however, it slid off the shovel and onto Henry's shoes.
Pity, that.
She whirled around. He waited for her to burst out with, "You did that on purpose!" but she kept silent, motionless except for a slight narrowing of her eyes. Then, with a flick of her ankle, the slop spattered onto his trousers.
She smirked, waiting for him to say, "You did that on purpose!" but he also remained silent. Then he smiled at her, and she knew she was in trouble. ~ Julia Quinn

Despite what you've read, your sadness is not beautiful. No one will see you in the bookstore, curled up with your Bukowski, and want to save you.
Stop waiting for a salvation that will not come from the grey-eyed boy looking for an annotated copy of Shakespeare,
for an end to your sadness in Keats.
He coughed up his lungs at 25, and flowery words cannot conceal a life barely lived.
Your life is fragile, just beginning, teetering on the violent edge of the world.
Your sadness will bury you alive, and you are the only one who can shovel your way out with hardened hands and ragged fingernails, bleeding your despair into the unforgiving earth.
Darling, you see, no heroes are coming for you. Grab your sword, and don your own armor. ~ Emily Palermo

Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature. ~ O. Henry

You may pray to God to remove the hills on your way and fill every pothole on your path; but don't be surprised if God gives you a shovel to do so! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

My final word: don't follow your dreams ... chase them. With a stick, or a shovel, or whatever you have handy. Get that [bleep]ing dream! ~ Maureen Johnson

I guess all I can do is ignore her. If that fails, I have rat poison and a shovel. ~ Suzanne Wright

They would go about town sighing and talking to themselves. "I love you," they would say to the imagined beloved, though it might have appeared to someone else that they were speaking to a snow shovel or an egg crate. ~ Mark Helprin

Where do we have it? Do we do the whole nine yards or shorten the ceremony? Do we try to make it religious or keep it nondenominational? Do you have a best man or do you ask Annie to stand with you? Do we involve our families, make one of them travel? Does Chester get to put a corsage on his shovel? If we have to go to Texas, can I put Barnum in a bow tie and have him be the bouncer for the reception? ~ Abigail Roux

So, really," continued Jacob as if this were perfectly normal to expound on art in these circumstances, "when you think about it, the artists who make people stop and think, who push the form, who make you uncomfortable, who are laughable, well, they're the ones who get remembered." Idly, Jacob dug a hole in the snow with his shovel and then another one next to it. "So why wouldn't you want to join the ranks of the ridiculed? ~ Justina Chen

Entitlement is the shovel that digs a grave of greed. And there are those of us who stand at the bottom of such a grave having thrown out the last shovel full of dirt, never realizing that the grave that we've dug is our own until the same shovel suddenly starts backfilling the hole. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

No matter who you are, you will be put abed at last with a shovel. ~ Austin O'Malley

Now we are going to make a new-way path. So you take a shovel, you take a ground-haker, you take a hairpin and you start digging. And you dig in all directions: up and down, in and out, right and left. Not in a straight line. Nothing natural or interesting goes in a straight line. As a matter of fact, it is the quickest way to the wrong place. And don't pretend you know where you are going. Because if you know where you are going, that means you've been there, and you are going to end up exactly where you came from. ~ Sherry Ruth Anderson

I shovel out the money, and God shovels it back - but God has a bigger shovel. - R. G. LeTourneau ~ Randy Alcorn

The questions that creep around at four thirty in the morning are not the kind that can be easily dismissed. You can beat them with a shovel, and they'll just keep getting back up. ~ Maureen Johnson

Have you heard the saying 'The reward you get for digging holes is a bigger shovel'? ~ Terry Pratchett

The shovel is the brother to the gun. ~ Carl Sandburg

It's a messy business, dying,' he said. 'As time goes on there's just less and less of you. It happens quickly for some; for others it can drag on. Starting from birth you keep losing one thing after another: first a finger, than an arm, first a tooth, then a whole set of teeth, first one memory, then all your memory, and so on and so forth, until one day there's nothing left. Then they chuck what's left of you in a hole and shovel it in and that's your lot. ~ Robert Seethaler

Stopping a piece of work just because it's hard, either emotionally or imaginatively, is a bad idea. Sometimes you have to go on when you don't feel like it, and sometimes you're doing good work when if feels like all you're managing is to shovel sh*t from a sitting position. ~ Stephen King

At thirty-nine, I learned how to change a tyre, how to shovel snow, how to stack wood. I learned how to meet a deadline without a shoulder to whine on. I became obsessed with firewood. If only there was alsways a fire in the fireplace, I knew that everything would be all right. (Prometheus must have been a women. I reverted to my ancient nature: inventing fire all day, having my liver plucked out all night.) ~ Erica Jong

Bearing in his right paw the shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances, cut the roots of useless attachments, and flings damp sand on the fires of greed and war; His left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display - indicating that all creatures have the full right to live to their limits and that deer, rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizards all grow in the realm of the Dharma ... ~ Gary Snyder

Frank tried to look like he was wrestling with his conscience, although he couldn't have found his conscience without a shovel and an exhumation order. ~ John Connolly

I work mornings only. I go out to lunch. Afternoons I play with the baby, walk with my husband, or shovel mail. ~ Annie Dillard

and the moon passes over the sun and nothing changes and nothing is learned because you have lost your bucket and shovel and no longer care. What if you regain the surface and open your sack and find, instead of treasure, a beast which jumps at you? Or you may not come back at all. The winches may jam, the scaffolding buckle, the air conditioning collapse. You may glance up one day and see by your headlamp the canary keeled over in its cage. You may reach into a cranny for pearls and touch a moray eel. You yank on your rope; it is too late. ~ Annie Dillard

Vimes stared. It was true about the dogs. There didn't seem to be quite so many mooching around these days, and that was a fact. But he'd visited a few dwarf bars with Carrot, and knew that dwarfs would indeed eat dog, but only of they couldn't get rat. And ten thousand dwarfs eating continuously with knife, fork, and shovel wouldn't make a dent in Ankh-Morpork's rat population. It was a major feature in dwarvish letters back home: come on, everyone, and bring the ketchup. ~ Terry Pratchett

We are all born with an innate understanding of interpersonal equity - the idea that if you lend me your rake today, I'll respond in kind when you come to borrow my shovel tomorrow. Or nearly all of us are born with that. Psychopaths aren't. ~ Jeffrey Kluger

If he lived by a simple code of ethics, it was not an end in itself, but a way to get something done without selling his soul or destroying his reputation. It was a tool to be wielded like a shovel or a stick of dynamite. ~ Neal Stephenson

Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel. By virtue of this curious loophole in the rules, any clodhopper may say: Let there be a tree - and there will be one. ~ Aldo Leopold

Trudeau valued performance above image. He Knew he could give me a shovel if there was a mess to clean up, and he kept moving me from one mess to another. ~ Jean Chretien

I built a baseball field in the lower part of our property and I'm always working on that. I got a wheelbarrow, a pick and a shovel, and I started to build a baseball field during writers' strike. We have boys and girls come over and we have clinics in the spring. It's called The Strike because it's named for the writers' strike. ~ John C. McGinley

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and the passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work. ~ Carl Sandburg

When one wants to become cognizant of the color and the texture of the soil, one does not get a ladder; one gets a shovel. When one wants to get into touch with the texture of the universal mind, one does not go to Boston; one goes to the Bowery. ~ Djuna Barnes

Baby, your nothing but too much trouble. Gotta bury this love and bury the shovel. ~ Clay Walker

I don't give a rat's warty ass she's dead. It only means she's a dead cunt."
"That's a strong opinion."
"And the only kind worth having. I threatened to shove a stick up her twat and light it on fire just yesterday. Maybe the day before. I lose track as there was rarely a day that went by she didn't make me want to strangle her with my bare hands after I'd beaten her in the face with a rusty shovel. ~ J.D. Robb

I groaned my good humor beginning to fade. Nothing good could come from such a wager. If I lost I'd have to drive for the entire five-and-a-half-hour trip home. But if I won Marc would drive which was much much worse. With him in the driver's seat I'd be afraid to blink much less sleep. Marc's favourite travel game was highway tag which he played by getting just close enough to passing semi trucks to
reach out his window and touch their rear bumpers. Seriously. The man thought the inevitability of death didn't apply to him simply because it hadn't happened yet.
Marc laughed at my horrified expression and sank his shovel into the earth at the end of the black plastic cocoon. With a sigh I joined him trying to decide whether I'd rather risk falling asleep at the wheel or falling asleep with Marc at the wheel.
It was a tough call. Thankfully I had three solid hours of digging during which to decide. Lucky me. ~ Rachel Vincent

During the gold rush its a good time to be in the pick and shovel business ~ Mark Twain

When, lo, there came about them all a great brightness and they beheld the chariot wherein He stood ascend to heaven. And they beheld Him in the chariot, clothed upon in the glory of the brightness, having raiment as of the sun, fair as the moon and terrible that for awe they durst not look upon Him. And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And he answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle of fortyfive degrees over Donohoe's in Little Green street like a shot off a shovel. ~ James Joyce

I think Michigan keeps you sane and on an even keel through the ups and downs. In Michigan, I do fireworks, shovel snow and live life. ~ Jeff Daniels

It [retirement] was absolutely boring. You can't go and say, 'I'm retired now. That's it!' It won't take long and you're really gone for good and someone throws the last shovel of dirt on a coffin with your name on it. That's the moment you're really retiring - when you die. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

The rules also explicitly stated that carrying a shovel, standing on a rooftop while speaking on a cell phone, or holding binoculars or being out after curfew constituted hostile intent, and we were authorized to use deadly force. ~ Iraq Veterans Against The War

It's nice to have money, but the first thing I did with money was buy my father a snow-blower, because my job was to shovel snow, and I wasn't there to do it any more, so I was able to buy him a blower. ~ Richard Gere

The young man was sort of ... well ... peering at this shovel, and Lisey knew not by his face but by the whole awkward this-way-n-that jut of his lanky body that he didn't have any idea what he was seeing. It could have been an artillery shell, a bonsai tree, a radiation detector, or a china pig with a slot in its back for spare silver; it could have been a whang-dang-doodle, a phylactery testifying to the pompetus of love, or a cloche hat made out of coyote skin. It could have been the penis of the poet Pindar. This guy was too far gone to know. ~ Stephen King

Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanter and more beneficial to take it with a spoon than a shovel. ~ Mark Twain

Francis, I need to borrow your car. Bring gloves."
He laughed hysterically over the line. "why? Are you trying to hide evidence?" I didn't bother laughing with him.
"Shit" Francis cursed. "Please don't tell me I need to bring a shovel. ~ Amber Kell

But other people fast or walk long pilgrimages to honor the spirit of what they believe makes our world whole and lovely. If we gardeners can, in the same spirit, put our heels to the shovel, kneel before a trench holding tender roots, and then wait three years for an edible incarnation of the spring equinox, who's to make the call between ridiculous and reverent? ~ Barbara Kingsolver

Sadie scooped up a big pile of crap and placed it in the wheelbarrow. Royce turned to leave, but then she said, "You know, when I quit my last job, I told my boss I'd rather shovel horseshit than work for him." ...
Damn, damn, damn. He wanted to stay mad at her
to hold on to how badly the girl had hurt him when she'd left him the way she had. But years had passed, and here she was, thanking him for the opportunity to shovel shit. ~ Cindi Madsen

Behind every death lay a set of questions. To move on was to agree to not disturb these questions, to let them settle with the body under the earth. Yet some questions so thoroughly dismantled the terms of your own life, turning away was gravitationally impossible. So she would not be moving on. She would keep disturbing and disturbing. She imagined herself standing over a grave with a shovel and hacking away at the soil. ~ Laura Van Den Berg

Nobody wants to hear that you will try your best. It is the wrong thing to say. It is like saying 'I probably won't hit you with a shovel.' Suddenly everyone is afraid you will do the opposite. ~ Lemony Snicket

I went out in my yard and saw a snake, so I got really scared, and I came back inside to get a shovel, and beat the hell out of that snake. Then I didn't have cable for a week. ~ Charlie Viracola

I had an absurd desire to go down to her and make sure she was all right, and stay with her until dawn. I also had a fierce wish to bludgeon the two frat boys to death with a shovel. ~ Molly Ringle

There are a lot of things I can't control. I don't know what's going to happen in the next few days.I don't want what I am going to face, what kind of choices I am going to have to make. I can't predict it. I can't control it. It's too big.' I nodded at my shovel. 'But that, I can predict. I know that if I pick up that shovel and clear the snow from the walkways, it's going to make my neighbors safer and happier.' I glanced at him and shrugged. 'It's worthwhile to me. ~ Jim Butcher

Her dad's voice boomed from inside the house. "I've got a Glock, a shovel, and five acres of woods, Johnson! ~ Melissa Landers

Each line she etched into the metal was another life cut off, another heart stopped at the slice of this very blade.
A hundred lives to cover up the pain of the very first. A hundred more to shovel away the hurt into a place that was dark and deep. ~ Sasha Alsberg

An architect doesn't go off with a shovel and dig his foundation and lay every brick. He's still an artist. ~ Sol LeWitt

I wanted to make sure you were fine ... and that he was okay, too. You didn't, like, stab the boy, did you? I mean, I totally disapprove of murdering hotties, but if you need help burying the body, you know I'll bring the shovel. ~ Kody Keplinger

Honour is kind of what you get when you weaponise manners, but if you're brought up in a system where honour is valued more than life itself it makes a lot more sense. Some. A bit. Anyway: they attacked me as they were honour bound to do, and I defended myself as I was bound to do, but killed them in self-defence. I think it was what Gareth had planned. He had dishonoured himself by kidnapping Perkins in the first place and causing our tribes to fall out, then been the cause of me dishonouring myself, which then brought dishonour upon himself. By attacking me, he allowed me to restore my lost honour by killing him, and, odd as it might seem, his honour as well. He died with honour, and I thank and respect him for it. We didn't leave them to the slugs at all, and instead buried them with tribal honours, which is why we were kind of delayed. The ground was hard and we had to ride for miles to find a shovel. ~ Jasper Fforde

My next-door neighbor's two dogs have created more shovel-ready jobs than this current administration. ~ Gary Johnson

I keep thinking someone's gonna show up and say, 'There's been a big mistake. The guy next door is supposed to be drawing the cartoon. Here's your shovel.' ~ Gary Larson

To find my mistakes, you're going to need a shovel - and a missing person's list. ~ Jarod Kintz

Leon's life was all about discipline. He'd heard a weight-loss guru once explain that the key to maintaining a slim figure was to really "listen to your body" and only eat until it signaled that it was full. Leon had listened to his body. It wanted three entire pepperoni and mushroom pizzas every single day, plus a rather large cake. And malted milkshakes, the old fashioned kind you could make in your kitchen with an antique Hamilton Beech machine in avocado-colored plastic, served up in a tall red anodized aluminum cup. Leon's body was extremely verbose on what it wanted him to shovel into it. So Leon ignored his body. ~ Cory Doctorow