The Silver Metal Lover Quotes

I'm not very good at being alive. Sometimes I despair of ever mastering it, getting it right. When I'm old, perhaps. ~ Tanith Lee

Honours, like impressions upon coin, may give an ideal and local value to a bit of base metal; but Gold and Silver will pass all the world over without any other recommendation than their own weight. ~ Laurence Sterne

But it was the second guy who caught my eye. Like the girl, he, too, paused by the door, seeming even more wary than she looked. The sunlight streaming in through the windows highlighted the rich honey in his dark chocolate brown hair, even as it cast his face in shadow. The tan skin of his arms resembled marble - hard, but smooth and supple at the same time.
He must have passed through the mist spewed up by the fountain outside, because his black T-shirt was wet in places and the damp patches clung to his skin. The wetness allowed me to see just how muscled his chest was. Oh, yeah, I totally ogled that part of him, right up until I spotted the silver cuff on his right wrist.
Given the angle, I couldn't tell what crest was stamped into the metal, but I glanced at the others, who also wore cuffs. I sighed. So they belonged to some Family then. Wonderful. This day just kept getting better. ~ Jennifer Estep

Color - that's another thing people don't expect. In her imagination, in her dreams, everything has color. The museum buildings are beige, chestnut, hazel. Its scientists are lilac and lemon yellow and fox brown. Piano chords loll in the speaker of the wireless in the guard station, projecting rich blacks and complicated blues down the hall toward the key pound. Church bells send arcs of bronze careening off the windows. Bees are silver; pigeons are ginger and auburn and occasionally golden. The huge cypress trees she and her father pass on their morning walk are shimmering kaleidoscopes, each needle a polygon of light.
She has no memories of her mother but imagines her as white, a soundless brilliance. Her father radiates a thousand colors, opal, strawberry red, deep russet, wild green; a smell like oil and metal, the feel of a lock tumbler sliding home, the sound of his key rings chiming as he walks. He is an olive green when he talks to a department head, an escalating series of oranges when he speaks to Mademoiselle Fleury from the greenhouses, a bright red when he tries to cook. He glows sapphire when he sits over his workbench in the evenings, humming almost inaudibly as he works, the tip of his cigarette gleaming a prismatic blue. ~ Anthony Doerr

A permanent dull ache spread from my belly to my chest. I thought I could feel pinpricks of loneliness in the pads of my fingers, taste it in the back of my mouth. Clara Miller must have been lonely too, longing to be touched. One day as she sat before her metal tub filled to the rim with sweet corn, she reached behind her head and unpinned her silver hair. It tumbled down her back like creamy lace cloak. She hiked her skirts to her knees and I could see she had removed her stockings. Her legs were heavy and milk white, solid as columns. She hiked her skirts higher, until they bunched in her lap.

When I kissed the back of her neck she quivered, like the dying peasant I'd shot and killed a week before. Her silver hair smelled like smoke. Clara and I tangled together like the bale of wire resting beside the unrepaired chicken coop. We were shameless, falling to the ground, wading into the creek, making our way to her bed. ~ Susan Power

Has it ever occurred to you, Master Ninefingers, that a sword is different from other weapons? Axes and maces and so forth are lethal enough, but they hang on the belt like dumb brutes." He ran an eye over the hilt, plain cold metal scored with faint grooves for a good grip, glinting in the torchlight. "But a sword... a sword has a voice."

"Eh?"

"Sheathed it has little to say, to be sure, but you need only put your hand on the hilt and it begins to whisper in your enemy's ear." He wrapped his fingers tightly round the grip. "A gentle warning. A word of caution. Do you hear it?"

Logen nodded slowly. "Now," murmured Bayaz, "compare it to the sword half drawn." A foot length of metal hissed out of the sheath, a single silver letter shining near the hilt. The blade itself was dull, but its edge had a cold and frosty glint. "It speaks louder, does it not? It hisses a dire threat. It makes a deadly promise. Do you hear it?"

Logen nodded again, his eye fastened on that glittering edge. "Now compare it to the sword full drawn." Bayaz whipped the long blade from its sheath with a faint ringing sound, brought it up so that the point hovered inches from Logen's face. "It shouts now, does it not? It screams defiance! It bellows a challenge! Do you hear it?"

"Mmm," said Logen, leaning back and staring slightly crosseyed at the shining point of the sword.

Bayaz let it drop and slid it gently back into its scabbard, something ~ Joe Abercrombie

What is God doing in my life? In the mornings, I wake to find that he has traced the world in silver. Every blade of grass. Each pumpkin on the porch. In the afternoons, I find him washing these fields with the mellow sunlight of autumn. He has gilded every rail in the fence and the sheet metal roof of the old red barn. He has transformed familiar trees into something otherworldly. ~ Christie Purifoy

Beyond the River of the Blessed, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Avalon. Our swords were shattered in our hands and we hung our shields on the oak tree. The silver towers were fallen, into a sea of blood. How many miles to Avalon? None, I say, and all. The silver towers are fallen.
... waters,where the stars shone like bonfires at night and the green of day was always the green of spring. Youth, love, beauty-I knew them in Avalon. Proud steeds, bright metal, soft lips, dark ale. Honor ... ~ Roger Zelazny

This relentless bonhomie of yours, I knew it would wear out in the end. It is a coin that has changed hands so often. And now the small silver is worn out and we see the base metal. ~ Hilary Mantel

Money is a matter of belief, even faith: belief in the person paying us; belief in the person issuing the money he uses or the institution that honours his cheques or transfers. Money is not metal. It is trust inscribed. And it does not seem to matter much where it is inscribed: on silver, on clay, on paper, on a liquid crystal display. ~ Niall Ferguson

His expression was perturbed, as if he'd been reminded of something he had wanted to forget. But as his gaze slid over her bewildered face, his mouth curved a little, and he settled into the cradle of her body with an insolent familiarity that temporarily robbed her of breath.
"Mr. Rohan … how … why … what are you doing here?"
He replied without moving, as if he were planning to lie there and converse all day. His infinitely polite tone was an unsettling contrast to the intimacy of their position. "Miss Hathaway. What a pleasant surprise. As it happens, I'm visiting friends. And you?"
"I live here."
"I don't think so. This is Lord Westcliff's estate."
Her heart thundered in her breast as her body absorbed the details of him. "I didn't mean precisely here, I meant over there, on the other side of the woods. The Ramsay estate. We've just taken up residence." She couldn't seem to stop herself from chattering in the aftermath of nerves and fright. "What was that noise? What were you doing? Why do you have that tattoo on your arm? It's a pooka - an Irish creature - isn't it?"
That last question earned her an arrested stare. Before Rohan could reply, the other two men approached. From her prone position, Amelia had an upside-down view of them. Like Rohan, they were in their shirtsleeves, with waistcoats left unbuttoned.
One of them was a portly old gentleman with a shock of silver hair. He held a small wood-and-metal sextant, which had been ~ Lisa Kleypas

The pallbearers lowered the casket onto a metal stand, then moved to their seats. Thomas, James's brother, slid into the front pew beside Claire, who was dressed in a black suit with her silver hair coiled as tight and rigid as her posture. Phil, James's cousin, moved into the pew to stand on her other side. He turned and looked at me, dipping his head in acknowledgment. I swallowed, inching back until my calves pressed into the wood bench. Claire ~ Kerry Lonsdale

They dug up so much silver to pay for their wars of conquest that the metal itself dramatically declined in value - that is to say, in its purchasing power with respect to other goods. ~ Niall Ferguson

She wasn't looking at herself in the glass, but out at a great silver moon hanging beyond a thin metal balcony that looked over the grey towers of a human city. ~ Denny B. Reese

Society established gold and silver as a circulating medium and as a legal tender in order that exchanges of commodities might be facilitated; but society blundered in so doing; for, by this very act, it gave to a certain class of men the power of saying what exchanges shall, and what exchanges shall not, be facilitated by means of this very circulating medium. The monopolizers of othe precious metals have an undue power over the community: they can say whether money shall, or shall not, be permitted to exercise its legitimate functions. ~ William Batchelder Greene

Even in the domain of conventional currencies, this trend is in evidence. Today, 14 U.S. states, namely, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, have taken action to create their own state currency, usually backed by a precious metal such as gold or silver.24 In the case of Utah, for example, the Utah Legislature has passed a bill allowing gold and silver coins to be used as legal tender in the state - and for the value of their precious metal, not just the face value of the coins. Utah's bill allows stores to accept gold and silver coins as legal tender. It also exempts gold and silver transactions from the state's capital gains tax, though that does not shield exchanges from federal taxes. ~ Bernard A. Lietaer

Thus you may multiply each stone 4 times & no more for they will then become oyles shining in ye dark and fit for magicall uses. You may ferment them with gold and silver, by keeping the stone and metal in fusion together for a day, & then project upon metalls. This is the multiplication of ye stone in vertue. To multiply it in weight ad to it of ye first Gold whether philosophic or vulgar. ~ Isaac Newton

His skin was furred like that of a horse. Snakes danced and hissed from his head, their thin bodies acting as his hair. Two long fangs protruded over his bottom lip. He had human hands, but his feet were hooves. Muscle was stacked upon muscle on his torso, and his nipples were pierced by two large silver rings. Metal chains circled his neck, wrists and ankles, and those chains kept him tethered to the pillars. "Who are you?" Strider demanded. No need to ask what the thing was. Ugly as shit covered it. He ~ Gena Showalter

Why, Yrael?" it said, as the last of the dark gave way to silver, and the shining sphere of metal sank slowly to the ground. "Why?"
"Life," said Yrael, who was more Mogget than it ever knew. "Fish and fowl, warm sun and shady trees, the field mice in the wheat, under the cool light of the moon. ~ Garth Nix

[Concerning] phosphorescent bodies, and in particular to uranium salts whose phosphorescence has a very brief duration. With the double sulfate of uranium and potassium ... I was able to perform the following experiment: One wraps a Lumière photographic plate with a bromide emulsion in two sheets of very thick black paper, such that the plate does not become clouded upon being exposed to the sun for a day. One places on the sheet of paper, on the outside, a slab of the phosphorescent substance, and one exposes the whole to the sun for several hours. When one then develops the photographic plate, one recognizes that the silhouette of the phosphorescent substance appears in black on the negative. If one places between the phosphorescent substance and the paper a piece of money or a metal screen pierced with a cut-out design, one sees the image of these objects appear on the negative. One can repeat the same experiments placing a thin pane of glass between the phosphorescent substance and the paper, which excludes the possibility of chemical action due to vapors which might emanate from the substance when heated by the sun's rays. One must conclude from these experiments that the phosphorescent substance in question emits rays which pass through the opaque paper and reduces silver salts.

[Although the sun is irrelevant, and he misinterprets the role of phosphorescence, he has discovered the effect of radioactivity.] ~ Henri Becquerel

People adored Element 13's color and luster, which reminded them of the sparkle of gold and silver - a brand-new precious metal. In fact, aluminum became more precious than gold and silver in the 19th century because it was harder to obtain. ~ Sam Kean

I continue coupling a plate of silver with one of zinc, and always in the same order ... and place between each of these couples a moistened disk. I continue to form a column. If the column contains about twenty of these couples of metal, it will be capable of giving to the fingers several small shocks. ~ Alessandro Volta

In the water-thickets, the path wound tortuously between umber iron-bogs, albescent quicksands of aluminum and magnesium oxides, and sumps of cuprous blue or permanganate mauve fed by slow, gelid streams and fringed by silver reeds and tall black grasses. The twisted, smooth-barked boles of the trees were yellow-ochre and burnt orange; through their tightly woven foliage filtered a gloomy, tinted light. At their roots grew great clumps of multifaceted translucent crystal like alien fungi.

Charcoal grey frogs with viridescent eyes croaked as the column floundered between the pools. Beneath the greasy surface of the water unidentifiable reptiles moved slowly and sinuously. Dragonflies whose webby wings spanned a foot or more hummed and hovered between the sedges: their long, wicked bodies glittered bold green and ultramarine; they took their prey on the wing, pouncing with an audible snap of jaws on whining, ephemeral mosquitoes and fluttering moths of april blue and chevrolet cerise.

Over everything hung the heavy, oppressive stench of rotting metal. After an hour, Cromis' mouth was coated with a bitter deposit, and he tasted acids. He found it difficult to speak. While his horse stumbled and slithered beneath him, he gazed about in wonder, and poetry moved in his skull, swift as the jewelled mosquito-hawks over a dark slow current of ancient decay. ~ M. John Harrison

I had woken into a metal world. The smooth unflawed slopes of snow on the mountain across the valley were iron. The deeper moonshadows had a tinge of steel blue to them. Otherwise, there was no true colour. Everything was greys, black, sharp silver-white. Inclined sheets of ice gleamed like tin. The hailstones lay about like shot, millions of them, grouped up against each rock and clustered in snow hollows. The air smelt of minerals and frost. ~ Robert Macfarlane

She lifter the shade and bathed the room in silver. Moonlight glinted off the glass and metal instruments on her desk and vanished into the eaves. Moonlight skimmed over her floorboards and made Nero's eyes a shimmering green. It wasn't enough to work by. It wasn't enough to read by. But who needed to read? She knew them by heart. ~ Diana Peterfreund

True love is like a metal tested in a fire. Fires of adversity surround us daily. Are we to love only when it is merely convenient? Like gold or silver, which very hot fire must heat to purge them of impurities, love must be thrust into the fire from time to time to make it purer, stronger and more resilient. And in the same way, live shines its brightest right out of the flames. ~ James Michael Pratt

Many progressive economists insist that gold is now in essentially the same position as silver and that the arguments the simon-pure gold advocates use against the white metal can be directed with equal effect against their own fetish. ~ Benjamin Graham

Some of them are mech," said Zita, nimbly picking her high heels through the steaming pools of red goo and severed, wriggling limbs. She was splattered with blood and grinning as she came to them, but she frowned to see the utter bafflement on Rose's face. "Hey, snap out of it. Haven't you seen mech before?" She kicked a man's severed head, and Rose gasped when his face slid off, revealing a skull of gleaming silver metal.

Rose shook her head. "Mech are illegal. The government s-said they feared a robot war!" she insisted, turning to follow as Zita limped past her.

Zita laughed dryly, folding up her rifle and tucking it under her skirt. "Is it so hard to imagine your government lied? Governments tend to do that. ~ Ash Gray

I'm supposed to trust you?"
"No," he said. He picked up the phone. "Put her sister on." A second later he
handed the small silver device to her.
Summer felt a second of panic - after all, this tiny piece of metal and circuitry
unlocked doors, turned off death traps and blew up houses. God knows what would
happen if she pushed the wrong button. ~ Anne Stuart

You could say I am flawed. Marked. A malfetto. While my sister emerged from the fever unscathed, I now have only a scar where my left eye used to be. While my sister's hair remained a glossy black, the strands of my hair and lashes turned a strange, ever-shifting silver, so that in the sunlight they look close to white, like a winter moon, and in the dark they change to a deep gray, shimmering silk spun from metal. ~ Marie Lu

By now the moon was well down. Over the tree tops they had seen her cruise across the heavens to strike on a reef of jagged clouds, and now she foundered among them in the semblance of a ruined galleon, the sails lost overboard, the belly-shaped hull punctured; and just above her there swung a single red star, like a riding light set on an invisible spar to mark the wreck.

But the moon had come up, not as a ship but as a tipsy tile-layer. First, across her contract, she flung a long stepladder of celestial gold; then so wrought that the waves all turned to silver scallops with a separate bright rime for each separate tessellation. But the job was done only to be undone. As the wind went down with her, the water was smoothing out; the checkers were vanishing, the paved surface, between the shores, changing and tarnishing to a duller metal. Catching tone from this, the woodland grew denser and darker. Open spaces which ten minutes before had been glades for the fairies to dance in were mysteries for witchcraft now. ~ Irvin S. Cobb

No surprise, China leads the world in the consumption of steel, copper, aluminum, lead, stainless steel, gold, silver, palladium, zinc, platinum, rare earth compounds, and pretty much anything else labeled "metal." But China is desperately short of metal resources of its own. For example, in 2012 China produced 5.6 million tons of copper, of which 2.75 million tons was made from scrap. Of that scrap copper, 70 percent was imported, with most coming from the United States. In other words, just under half of China's copper supply is imported as scrap metal. That's not a trivial matter: copper, more than any other metal, is essential to modern life. It is the means by which we transmit power and information. ~ Adam Minter

Time is an illusion, say the scientists. It is molecular, it is bendable or liquid, it is soldered metal; or it is droplets of memory. I imagine it looks like mercury, silver and elusive...Burn all the clocks. I am free. ~ Yrsa Daley-Ward

The Fallen

It was the night
a comet with its silver tail
fell through darkness
to earth's eroded field,
the night I found
the wolf,
starved in metal trap,
teeth broken
from pain's hard bite,
its belly swollen with unborn young.

In our astronomy
the Great Wolf
lived in the sky.
It was the mother of all women
and howled her daughter's names
into the winds of night.

But the new people,
whatever stepped inside their shadow,
they would kill,
whatever crossed their path,
they came to fear.

In their science,
Wolf as not the mother.
Wolf was not wind.
They did not learn healing
from her song.

In their stories
Wolf was the devil, falling
down an empty,
shrinking universe,
God's Lucifer
with yellow eyes
that had seen their failings
and knew that they could kill the earth,
that they would kill each other.

That night
I threw the fallen stone back to sky
and falling stars
and watched it all come down
to ruined earth again.

Sky would not take back
what it had done.
That night, sky was a wilderness so close
the eerie light of heaven
and storming hands of sun
reached down the swollen belly
and dried up nipples of a hungry world.

That night,
I saw the trapper's shadow
and it had four legs. ~ Linda Hogan

I built Rubicon from ashes,' said the other man. 'Ashes of war. I have worked hard to raise myself up from the poverty I was born into. Believe me when I tell you I have seen every kind of injustice, all across the heartland of my mother Africa. And now I have made billions of dollars from land and mining and technology. Now I can do something about it. As Lucy says, I am a very rich man.' He reached up to his neck and pulled out the silver chain between his fingers. 'I see you looking at this. Do you recognize it?'
Marc gave a slow nod. Now it was clear to him, he could see that the odd bit of discoloured metal was actually part of a weapon. It was the trigger from an AK-47 assault rifle. ~ James Swallow

We've dug our holes and hallowed caves Put goblin foes in shallow graves This day our work is just begun In the mines where silver rivers run
Beneath the stone the metal gleams Torches shine on silver streams Beyond the eyes of he spying sun In the mines where silver rivers run
The hammers chime on Mithral pure As dwarven mines in days of yore A craftsman's work is never done In the mines where silver rivers run
To dwarven gods we sing or praise Put another orc in a shallow grave We know our work has just began In the mines where silver rivers run ~ R.A. Salvatore

Seine and Piave are silver spoons,
But the spoonbowl-metal is thin and worn ~ Stephen Vincent Benet