The Worm Turns Quotes

You don't know what they do up there on that mountain, do you, Sheriff? It's tossing and turning. It eats the heart of the world, like a worm burrowing an apple! Maybe the preacher's right and my faith is just shivering, weak - is it wrong for me to try to keep them from hollowing me out from inside? I should just blow all of you stupid bastards back to Kingdom Come, while it's still there! Before they burn down Heaven and feast on the corpse. Maybe we should all die now, better that way! ~ R.S. Belcher

Self-awareness: there is the black worm in the apple. Our curse is to know there's something terribly wrong with us. ~ Grant Morrison

Dragons are notable for their lust for gold, not a bad quality taken in moderation. Dragons are immune to fire, obviously. All dragons are terrifically vain, indeed as to who is more vain, a dragon or an elf, I would not want to be the one to decide. Hint: an elf. A dragon should never be engaged in conversation as they are inveterate liars and tricksters, though if you're actually talking to a dragon, you're pretty much toast anyway. Never, ever call a dragon a worm, no matter how much they're asking for it. ~ John Stephens

Mothers are urgently trying to tell something to their daughters, and this urgency is precisely what repels their daughters, forcing them to turn away. Mothers are left stranded, madly holding a lump of London clay, some grass, some white tubers, a dandelion, a fat worm passing the world through itself. ~ Zadie Smith

People who love reading are often called bookworms - but that's the wrong way around. It's not you that worms into a book; it's books that worm into you." - Amanda Craig ~ Amanda Craig

Forcing youthful brains to become early birds will guarantee that they do not catch the worm, if the worm in question is knowledge or good grades. ~ Matthew Walker

In the quiet of the garden then the robin shook his worm, and swallowed its life from the light into darkness with the quick indifference of a god. ~ Chris Cleave

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough and was shot across the table and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a war-whoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out for half price if there was a bidder. ~ Mark Twain

The early bird gets the worm. The early worm ... gets eaten. ~ Norman Ralph Augustine

The early bird may get the worm, but it's the second mouse who gets the cheese. ~ Steven Wright

can. "New York City, huh?" "Yup." She rolled up her sleeves and dipped down into the water. And that was when I noticed the scar. "Jeez. What's that?" It started just inside her left elbow and ran down to the wrist like a long pink twisted worm. She saw where I was looking. "Accident," she said. "We were in a car." Then she looked back into the water where you could see her reflection shimmering. "Jeez." But then she didn't seem to want to talk much after that. "Got any more of 'em?" I don't know why scars are always so fascinating to boys, but they are, it's a fact of life, and I just couldn't help it. I couldn't shut up about it yet. Even though I knew she wanted me to, even though ~ Jack Ketchum

Wake early, take more! ~ Julie Elise Landry

I dance for a living. At the early bird special you can find me - doing the worm. ~ Jarod Kintz

O Light Invisible, we praise Thee!
Too bright for mortal vision.
O Greater Light, we praise Thee for the less;
The eastern light our spires touch at morning,
The light that slants upon our western doors at evening,
The twilight over stagnant pools at batflight,
Moon light and star light, owl and moth light,
Glow-worm glowlight on a grassblade.
O Light Invisible, we worship Thee!
We thank Thee for the light that we have kindled,
The light of altar and of sanctuary;
Small lights of those who meditate at midnight
And lights directed through the coloured panes of windows
And light reflected from the polished stone,
The gilded carven wood, the coloured fresco.
Our gaze is submarine, our eyes look upward
And see the light that fractures through unquiet water.
We see the light but see not whence it comes.
O Light Invisible, we glorify Thee! ~ T. S. Eliot

I got bloopers, loopers and droppers. I got a jump ball, a be ball, a screw ball, a wobbly ball, a whipsy-dipsy-do, a hurry-up ball, a nothin' ball and a bat dodger. My be ball is a be ball 'cause it 'be' right were I want it, high and inside. It wiggles like a worm. Some I throw with my knuckles, some with two fingers. My whips-dipsy-do is a special fork ball I throw underhand and sidearm that slithers and sinks. I keep my thumb off the ball and use three fingers. The middle finger sticks up high, like a bent fork. ~ Paige

REALISM, n. The art of depicting nature as it is seem by toads. The charm suffusing a landscape painted by a mole, or a story written by a measuring-worm. ~ Ambrose Bierce

They say this fruit be like unto the world / So sweet. Or like, say I, the heart of man / So red without and yet within, unclue'd / We find the worm, the rot, the flaw. / However glows his bloom the bite / Proves many a man be rotten at the core. ~ Terry Pratchett

What a Chimera is man! What a novelty, a monster, a chaos, a contradiction, a prodigy! Judge of all things, an imbecile worm; depository of truth, and sewer of error and doubt; the glory and refuse of the universe. ~ Blaise Pascal

You can't tolerate a decent and swift conclusion to a skirmish between an individual and what you call society, as long as you have it in your power to turn it into a ghastly and prolonged struggle; the victim must squirm like a worm in your fingers, not for ten minutes, but for ten months. Pfui! I don't like the law. It was not I, but a great philosopher, who said that the law is an ass. ~ Rex Stout

Is it sin, which makes the worm a chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly, and the butterfly dust? ~ Max Muller

Elayne could not help herself. Nynaeve wielding her tongue like a needle, Cerandin stubborn as two mules, and now this. She threw back her head and screamed with frustration.
When the sound died, it seemed as if the animals had quieted. Horse handlers stood about, staring at her. Coolly, she ignored them. Nothing could worm its way under her skin now. She was as calm as ice, perfectly in control of herself.
"Was that a cry for help," Birgitte said, tilting her head, "or are you hungry? I suppose I could find a wet nurse in - "
Elayne strode away with a snarl that would have done any of the leopards proud. ~ Robert Jordan

And you probably have little idea of how delicious - how toothsome - how scrumptious - they are when eaten fresh. Of course, I have my worm larder -" He corrected himself. "Worm larders, well stocked, but the earthworm pursued, or promptly pounced upon, and eaten fresh - as I've said - Ah! the earthworm, there's nothing like it! You can have your slugs and your wireworms and your leatherjackets and as many ground beetles as you like to eat - snap! crackle! crunch! You can have them all! There's nothing to equal the near liquefaction of worm meat as I pass its length through my fingers, sieving out the earth granules from the creature's incessant feeding. Or alternatively tear it to eat at once in great guzzling, gulping chunks. ~ Philippa Pearce

Under the Mountain dark and tall The King has come unto his hall! His foe is dead, the Worm of Dread, And ever so his foes shall fall. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

We'll leave around six."
"Is that...morning, six-ish?"
"The early bird gets the worm. Not a bad deal, if you enjoy high-quality worm meat. ~ Lee DeBourg

For we were thinking of freedom. That's the word like a worm in my brain. Yes? No? How much? How little? The word is a signal for piracy and theft and cunning. We'll be free and the smartest will then be able to enslave the others. But! But there is another meaning to the word. Of all words this one is the most dangerous. We who know must be wary. The word makes us feel good - in fact the word is a great ideal. But it's with this ideal that the spiders spin their ugliest webs for us. ~ Carson McCullers

The going was rough, and it was time to get going. There was no time like the present, because the early bird catches the worm. ~ Nicholas Sparks

When evening closes Nature's eye, The glow-worm lights her little spark To captivate her favorite fly And tempt the rover through the dark. ~ James Montgomery

The worm does not his work more surely on the dead body, than does this slow creeping fire upon the living frame. ~ Charles Dickens

We have always heard it preached, „Love one another". What for? That doctrine was peached, but the explanation is here. Why should I love every one? Because they and I are one. Why should I love my brother? Because he and I are one. There is this oneness; this solidarity of the whole universe. From the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings that ever lived – all have various bodies, but are the one Soul. ~ Swami Vivekananda

What is the most resilient parasite? Bacteria? A virus? An intestinal worm? An idea. Resilient... highly contagious. Once an idea has taken hold of the brain it's almost impossible to eradicate. An idea that is fully formed - fully understood - that sticks; right in there somewhere. ~ Dominic Cobb

A Bookworm
A moth ate a word. To me that seemed
A curious happening when I heard of that wonder,
That a worm should swallow the word of a man,
A thief in the dark eat a thoughtful discourse
And the strong base it stood on. He stole, but he was not
A whit the wiser when the word had been swallowed. ~ Anonymous

The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval. ~ Thomas Harris

He that will not set himself proudly at the top of all things, but will consider the immensity of this fabric, and the great variety that is to be found in this little and inconsiderable part of it which he has to do with, may be apt to think that, in other mansions of it, there may be other and different intelligent beings, of whose faculties he has as little knowledge or apprehension as a worm shut up in one drawer of a cabinet hath of the senses or understanding of a man; such variety and excellency being suitable to the wisdom and power of the Maker.
1690 ~ John Locke

I feel like a pink worm in the core of this green room, as though I have eaten my way in and should be working on becoming a butterfly, or something. I'm not real awake, here, at the moment. I hear somebody coughing. I hear my heart beating and the high-pitched sound which is my nervous system doing its thing. Oh, God, let today be a normal day. Let me be normally befuddled, normally nervous; get me to the church on time, in time. Let me not startle anyone, especially myself. Let me get through our wedding day as best I can, with no special effects. Deliver Clare from unpleasant scenes. Amen. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

A forty-foot worm?" Will muttered to Jem as they moved through the Italian garden, their boots - thanks to a pair of Soundless runes - making no noise on the gravel. "Think of the size of the fish we could catch."
Jem's lips twitched. "It's not funny, you know."
"It is a bit. ~ Cassandra Clare

What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This mawky worm-bent tabernacle. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Envy, like the worm, is always attracted to the fairest apple ~ Og Mandino

I made $3,000 opening for the Neville Brothers, and they paid me in cash. That was a bad situation, because I bought ridiculous stuff. I bought a snake bite emergency kit. Then I said to my friends, "Don't even worry about snakes anymore". My friend stepped on a worm, and I said, "Lay down!" ~ Mitch Hedberg

How do we know that the creation of worlds is not determined by the fall of grains of sand? Who knows the reciprocal ebb and flow of the infinitely great and the infinitely little, the reverberations of causes in the precipices of being, and the avalanches of creation? The tiniest worm is of importance; the great is little, the little is great; everything is balanced in necessity; alarming vision for the mind. There are marvelous relations between beings and things; in that inexhaustible whole, from the sun to the grub, nothing despise the other; all have need of each other. The light does not bear away terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths, without knowing what it is doing; the night distributes stellar essences to the sleeping flowers. All birds that fly have round their the thread of the infinite. Germination is complicated with the bursting forth of a meteor and with the peck of a swallow cracking its egg, and it places on one level the birth of an earthworm and the advent of Socrates. Where telescopes end, the microscopes begin. Which of the two possesses the larger field of vision? Choose. A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant hill of stars. ~ Victor Hugo

The Worm at the Bottom of the Bottle
Blue agave, spiny like the desert cacti,
once fermented in the mesquite barrels of Jalisco, Mexico,
is now manifest in the liquid smoke of my Tequila bottle.
By the third shot, I think I'm in love with the gusano,
the red caterpillar people mistake for a worm, pickling
intact, attesting to the purity of the holy spirits.
I shake the bottle and the worm falls like the fresh powder
in my Montreal snowglobe of an ice skater,
the globe's Christmas melody replaced by La Cucaracha
playing convivially on my mind's soundtrack
(in a bit in a rut because I've forgotten the second stanza).
The worm has hit bottom, and so have I.
I don't take this an ominous portent,
but as a sign it's time to ditch the glass
and drink straight from the bottle. ~ Beryl Dov

If your Olympic Hero were to use the Worm in the 1996 Olympic Games, it would be so embarassing to all the other atheletes - and our country, mind you- that the USA would have finished behind Guam. ~ Kurt Angle