This Sky Quotes

The first thing I notice is the sky, so full of blue and the kind of brilliant white clouds that make you ecstatic to have eyes. Nothing can go wrong under this sky ... ~ Jandy Nelson

She could no longer understand the Faith from the night of the ratting, who had believed that the world was only teeth and hunger, nothing but killing and dead bones in the dust. Hunger cannot explain why I love the blue of this sky, she thought. ~ Frances Hardinge

Whatever Juice this sky will pour this gaping parched old throat will drain; What time the Harper harps I'll dance: 'tis He, not I, who shall complain. Meal may be scarce and cakes be burnt, yet I weep not nor even scold: The sun is food enough for me, 't is large, and has not yet grown cold. ~ Ridgely Torrence

When the laughing stops, we're looking out at the farm, over Valley Drive, up those craggy mountains and the biggest, starriest sky I have ever seen. I bet that someday, when someone says the words New Mexico, this will be the image in my mind. This night. This sky. And Wendy. ~ Patrick Flores-Scott

… Could I return, I will not say to revel, but breath this sky, under which I was born: to rejoice with sea views and gardens; to consol me with your kindness; to drink this wine or this water, that might reduce my illness… ~ Torquato Tasso

I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I can not appropriate the snow field where i slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Each year, thousands of UFOs are sighted and reported, which is an impressive tally of unidentified aerial phenomena. Surveys show that roughly one-third of the populace believes that at least some of this sky show is due to extraterrestrial spacecraft, here to probe our airspace and, when that proves boring, our bodies. ~ Seth Shostak

Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple, great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked - this sky and the light, this body and the life and the mind - saving me from perils of overmuch desire. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

I hate the rain. When your heart is in chaos, this sky becomes terribly easily. Can you understand... the horror of being pelted by rain in this solitary world? If only to stop the rain, I shall lend you any strenght. If you trust in me. I will let no rain fall in this world. Trust me. Your not fighting alone. ~ Zangetsu

That's how happiness comes. It comes in bits and pieces, at different times. When we're children we hope for great happiness, some enormous, total happiness. And as we wait for this phenomenon to take place we let the little happinesses, the only real ones, pass us by, or fail to appreciate them.

They seem to be mere trifles. A quiet conversation with a friend. Those seagulls wheeling about perhaps. This sky. The beer we drank a while ago.

Sometimes I think that these little happinesses exist precisely because they're little ones. Like those mere nobodies passing by that no one ever notices. ~ Ernesto Sabato

What right has the unclean and stupid farmer, whose farm abutted on this sky water, whose shores he has ruthlessly laid bare, to give his name to it? Some skinflint, who loved better the reflecting surface of a dollar, or a bright cent, in which he could see his own brazen face; who regarded even the wild ducks which settled in it as trespassers; his fingers grown into crooked and horny talons from the long habit of grasping harpy-like; so it is not named for me. I go not there to see him nor to hear of him; who never saw it, who never bathed in it, who never loved it, who never protected it, who never spoke a good word for it, nor thanked God that He had made it. Rather let it be named from the fishes that swim in it, the wild fowl or quadrupeds which frequent it, the wild flowers which grow by its shores, or some wild man or child the thread of whose history is interwoven with its own; not from him who could show no title to it but the deed which a like-minded neighbor or legislature gave him--him who thought only of its money value. ~ Henry David Thoreau

I take in a huge breath and look at the sky as hard as I can. I feel like I'm trying to eat it with my eyes. I wish there would be certain things you come across and you could say, Okay, that's one. Put that away for me to pull out later just exactly as it is now. My dream is for me to be a poet who could make things like this sky come to life for someone else. If you see a sunset and try and describe it to someone in normal words, all you can say is, "Boy, I saw a great sunset last night." but if you are a poet, you give it to someone to feel for themselves. Like you make a little seed of what you say, they swallow it, and it blooms again inside their own heart. ~ Elizabeth Berg

What song, what home,
what calm or one clarity
can I not quite come to,
never quite see:
this field, this sky, this tree. ~ Christian Wiman

It's all very fine down East there, and the hills are great, but one gets mighty homesick for this sky, the old intense blue of it, you know. Down there the skies are all pale and smoky. And this wind, this hateful, dear, old everlasting wind that comes down like the sweep of cavalry and is never tamed or broken, O Joe, I used to get hungry for this wind! I couldn't sleep in that lifeless stillness down there. ~ Willa Cather

Holden Caulfield people are the bane of my existence. ~ Autumn Doughton

Like A Hanged Pitcher
Like a hanged pitcher,
No drink is pouring off me
It's natural to get numbed gradually.

Pig-headed seashells!
This boasting sky,
Is an anchor
which has fallen on my lap
This dizzy sky!
The moon's been cleared
A shadow's coming after me
Barefooted on my dreams
You used to run!

Enjoyed?!
Numb!

All my veins are connected to this land...

Like a hanged pitcher
Joyful of this sky
One day a huge whale swallowed it as a whole.

And it was over!
The Gulf was over!
You waved hands.

Like a hanged pitcher,
It's simple!
I lost the game
And gambled away...

(TRANSLATED FROM ORIGINAL PERSIAN TO ENGLISH BY ROSA JAMALI) ~ Rosa Jamali

Waiting in Red
It is me,
a lonely woman
at the doors of a cold season,
and discovery of the soiled soul of this Earth,
the sad despair of this Sky,
and the inability of my frozen hands. ~ Forugh Farrokhzad

This sky, Sid.It's the sky of the great epics.The great Polish epics. Of Pan Tadeusz ~ Esi Edugyan

Not that one must be an
animal, but I find no meaning in the happiness of angels. I know
simply that this sky will last longer than I. And what shall I call
eternity except what will continue after my death? ~ Albert Camus

I move like I'm gravity, like it's not a decision.
Standing on my toes, on the edge of the high dive, the water looks as clear and blue as the sky.
In my head there's the possibility that this moment isn't here yet, that maybe I'm not born. I could be an idea. Or I could be realized, and life is standing still. For this moment, the world has stopped.
I have a perfect balance. The wind moves around me. My heart is as light and bright as the sun. I am as light as a sparrow bone, and for one moment I am everything that can't be caught and held.
Then I'm passing through the air, turning, arms drawn in, toes pointed. My chin rests on my chest. I believe I have a chance at anything: one full revolution.
I spread my wings. I arch my back. I remember why swans are graceful, why someone would name this for something beautiful.
I think I'm touching the clouds. For a long time they keep me from breaking the blue. I don't hear the shattering surface. I belong behind this sky, all-silent and calm, and part of the world where butterflies live after they give up their feet and dream of flight. I can stay, if I pretend the fire in my chest doesn't burn, if I pretend the world is upside down, if I pretend water is the air I breathe. ~ Suzanne Marie Phillips

Rome has been called the "Sacred City": - might not our Oxford be called so too? There is an air about it, resonant of joy and hope: it speaks with a thousand tongues to the heart: it waves its mighty shadow over the imagination: it stands in lowly sublimity, on the "hill of ages"; and points with prophetic fingers to the sky: it greets the eager gaze from afar, "with glistering spires and pinnacles adorned," that shine with an internal light as with the lustre of setting suns; and a dream and a glory hover round its head, as the spirits of former times, a throng of intellectual shapes, are seen retreating or advancing to the eye of memory: its streets are paved with the names of learning that can never wear out: its green quadrangles breathe the silence of thought. ~ William Hazlitt

I had the impulse to look over my shoulder, to make sure he was not striding across the sky already, his gilded arrow pointed at my heart. But there was something in me that was sick of fear and awe, of gazing at the heavens and wondering what someone would allow me. 'Come in,' I said, and led him through my door. ~ Madeline Miller

Overhead the sky was melting, the cracked cream color rubbing off in cogs of brine.
The fields far ahead of me in endless pudding, studded here and there with what had been: homes and houses, hair and heirlooms, habits, hallways, hauntings, hope. ~ Blake Butler

Weakness or strength: there you are, strength. You do not know where you are going, nor why you are going; enter anywhere, reply to anything. They will no more kill you than if you were a corpse. In the morning I had a look so lost, a face so dead, that perhaps those whom I met did not see me.
In cities, suddenly, the mud seemed red and black like a mirror when the lamp moves about in the adjoining room, like a treasure in the forest! Good luck, I cried, and I saw a sea of flames and smoke in the sky; to the right, to the left all the riches of the world flaming like a billion thunder-bolts. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Why must Justice have a color? Is it the same "REASON" that the sky are "BLUE? ~ Henry Johnson Jr

Romance was different in her world. In our world. She believed it lived all around us. In the trees, the blue sky hiding behind rain clouds, snow flakes clinging to windshields, squirrels hiding their food, blades of grass catching drops from a misty morning, and in every person to walk the earth. Ella loved to sit on city benches and make up stories about passing strangers. Since meeting her my entire world changed. I always turned life into strands of color on an empty canvas. People blurred by like flashes of light. Just blurs. Then Ella walked into my life and everything slowed down. The blurs of color became people with stories. People with hearts. People. Like me. ~ Marilyn Grey

Paint the sky of life with colors that only you can create! ~ H. L. Balcomb

Ellen had said that her mother was afraid of the ocean, that it was too cold and too big. The sky was, too, thought Annemarie. The whole world was: too cold, too big. And too cruel. ~ Lois Lowry

Not bad? The hot Calvin Klein models we taped in our lockers in high school were not bad."

Lily inclined her head in Thayer's direction.

"That's look-at-the-sky-and-scream, 'Thank you God', as loud as you can! ~ Calia Read

A simple dream, set in a city park, along an avenue of mature elms, whose overarching branches turned the avenue into a green tunnel into which the sky and the sunlight were dripping, here and there, through the perfect imperfections in the canopy of leaves. ~ Salman Rushdie

He danced with the sky instead, and the sky dropped him like a rotten plum. ~ Laini Taylor

It isn't that it's too soon, you're on the back of my bike, it ain't too soon. You can buy sheets. You cannot install blinds."
"um ... " I mumbled. "Can you explain the difference?"
"Sheets are chick territory," he said without delay. "You gotta use tools, that's dick territory."
"Oh," I whispered.
"Don't tread on dick territory," he advised.
"So, um ... is a paintbrush a tool?" I asked cautiously.
"If you're paintin' the side of the house, yeah. If you're painting mud colored paint in a room, no."
"It's terracotta," I said softly.
"Whatever," he muttered, his mouth twitching.
"Or, the paint chip called it Mexican horizon. The blue is dawn sky."
"Definitely chick territory," Tate replied, losing the fight with his grin.
"What about ... pictures for the walls?" I asked.
"Chick," he answered instantly.
"Um ... could I ask that, instead of you getting angry and being a jerk, maybe you give me a head's up when I'm doing something stupid? ~ Kristen Ashley

Applauds of the ignorant majority are worthless; applauds of the wise minority are priceless! Look carefully, who are applauding you? Look carefully, who are blessing you? Mud in the ground or stars in the sky? ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

She walked down the lawn and surveyed the world as they'd both seen it--the wild limbs of the leaning apple tree, the golden-brown evening sky, the black silhouettes of the mountains. The trunk and the branches of the tree had bent over the years, under the weight of the heavy fruit. One of the biggest branches had grown down from the canopy of the leaves, all the way to the ground and straight along the grass...the end of that same branch had begun growing up again, at a right angle, the wood bending toward the sky. ~ Jonathan Corcoran

Sculpting them in a drizzle shawl,
I would have have weaved your dreams
in my distinct eyes;
I would have taken your cheeks,
and decorated them with full moon sights,
writing verses with starry eyes;
I would have invented diction suiting
your stammering tongue,
writing stories about your happy childhood;
I would have traveled beside western winds,
bringing roses from far lands, from Samarkand,
from the rose gardens touching Turkish valleys,
from mountains smelling of Azerbaijan.
I would have portrayed you a an honest mother,
buying your children a happy house, a giant sky;
I would have made orchards of your ripe smiles,
tending rains and sunlight into their broad borders;
Ah, I would have sown your braided hair
into almonds, saffron and homegrown walnuts,
into tufts of a lifelong breeze. ~ Ashfaq Saraf

At night the sky is pure astronomy. ~ Nicole Krauss

The sky is freckled with stars. ~ Swati Avasthi

If you cannot come, if you fear
What music might wind your feet
In the moss and migrant roots,
What drink will score your throat
Like a sky scratched
By the claw-end of leaves
What wheels will drive you
Home at dawn, where the dew-blades
Bear up the infancies of light -
Then send, in the tremble
Of your own cold hand,
Regrets only, nothing but regrets. ~ Elton Glaser

The sky was incredible that night, the moon nearly full and the stars littering the sky like tossed stones. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

I don't know / desire other than the need / to be shattered & rebuilt ~ Ocean Vuong

Alene looked out toward the fading sky. There was only a little light remaining. It would turn nighttime now and soon they would return to the house. I would be too cool to sit outside. It would get dark out. I'm so lonely, she said. I had my chance and I lost it. ~ Kent Haruf

People's eyes are blobs of jelly. That's what the medic told me one I'd lost my right eye. But her eyes? Her eyes were limitless, like the night sky. Her gaze dissolved into space, as though all human experience could be found in her glassy eyes. I ~ Fran Seen

When I was born, the man in the sky pointed to me and said, 'That's the guy.' ~ Romario

THE TRUTH OF THE VERY SMALL
When he is born, a baby's head is filled with the knowledge of space. The circumference of his skull is as infinite as the twirlings of the universe. His eyes look out with the blur of eyes which see for all species. He has remembered his own nature from past patterns. Now his heart beats through rock, sky, oceans. He feels the silence and the sound all around the world beneath his skin.
We all hold somewhere deep within us the truth we accepted in innocence. The seas, the forests, the soil, the atmosphere, are all vital parts of an ongoing system. By harming any part of it we must ultimately harm ourselves. It is that simple. ~ Jay Woodman

The whole earth is full of His glory. Sky, land, and sea, heavy and saturated with God
why do I always forget? ~ Ann Voskamp

You are the trip I did not take, you are the pearls I could not buy,
you are my blue Italian lake, you are my piece of foreign sky.
You are my Honolulu moon, you are the book I did not write,
you are my heart's unuttered tune, you are a candle in my night.
You are the flower beneath the snow, in my dark sky a bit of blue,
answering disappointment's blow with I am happy! I have you! ~ Anne Campbell

It's dark out. The sky is crazy, more stars than dark. So many more than I can ever remember seeing. ~ Amy McNamara

The restless spirit never loses its wings. If sometimes it cannot fly, it is because during those moments the sky vanishes. ~ R.N. Prasher

Flowers open every night
across the sky, a breathing peace,
and sudden flame catching. ~ Rumi

Rapunzel:I've been looking out of a window for eighteen years, dreaming about what I might feel like when those lights rise in the sky. What if it's not everything I dreamed it would be?
Flynn Rider: It will be.
Rapunzel: And what if it is? What do I do then?
Flynn Rider: Well,that's the good part I guess. You get to go find a new dream. ~ Tangled

Every object in nature is impressed with God's footsteps, and every day repeats the wonders of creation. There is not an object, be it pebble or pearl, weed or rose, the flower-spangled sward beneath, or the star-spangled sky above, not a worm or an angel, a drop of water or a boundless ocean, in which intelligence may not discern, and piety adore, the providence of Him who took our nature that He might save our souls. ~ Thomas Guthrie

Have you ever stepped outside and looked around, and even though it's very familiar territory - you've seen it a dozen times before - it instantly looks different? The trees are more vibrant, the view is clearer, the sky is bluer, and everything is just brighter. That's what I feel right now. It's soothing and breathless and beautiful. ~ E.L. Montes

On Drinking Alone by Moonlight


Here are flowers and here is wine,
But where's a friend with me to join
Hand in hand and heart to heart
In one full cup before we part?

Rather than to drink alone,
I'll make bold to ask the moon
To condescend to lend her face
The hour and the scene to grace.

Lo, she answers, and she brings
My shadow on her silver wings;
That makes three, and we shall be.
I ween, a merry company

The modest moon declines the cup,
But shadow promptly takes it up,
And when I dance my shadow fleet
Keeps measure with my flying feet.

But though the moon declines to tipple
She dances in yon shining ripple,
And when I sing, my festive song,
The echoes of the moon prolong.

Say, when shall we next meet together?
Surely not in cloudy weather,
For you my boon companions dear
Come only when the sky is clear. ~ Li Bai

Like a blood-red sky that warns the passerby, "There is a fire over there," certain blazing looks often reveal passions that they serve merely to reflect. They are flames in the mirror. ~ Marcel Proust

She watches him for hours. She wants to be the sheets that cover his toes. She wants to be the ceiling separating him from the sky: above him, the first thing he sees before and after dreams. She wants to be the open window letting in the light for him. ~ Natalia Jaster

On the other hand the machine does not bleed, ache, hang for hours in the empty sky in a torment of hope to learn the fate of another machine, nor does it cry out with joy nor dance in the air with the fierce passion of a bird. ~ Loren Eiseley

The sound of wings flapping pulled me from my moment of relieved euphoria, and I looked up to see a massive black raven standing at the end of the alley. It was roughly the size of a bobcat, larger than any raven I'd ever seen before, and its beady eyes were locked right on me.
Even though the purple light from Sigrún had all but gone out, the light somehow seemed to linger on the bird's black feathers. It titled its head as it watched me, squawking once.
"What do you want?" I demanded, but the raven had no reply. It just flapped its wings and disappeared into the night sky. ~ Amanda Hocking

What, man, do you mistake the hollow sky For a thronged tavern ... ? ~ John Keats

Stars poked through like holes in the cloth of the sky and shed no light on anything. ~ Elizabeth Wein

Just get out your magic pencil and erase the cloudy skies, and just draw a picture of me saying, I apologize. ~ Bill Anderson

Because they were frightened of me." She crossed her arms as best she could. "Not because they respected me."
"I think we can both agree that fear is a type of respect."
"Perhaps." She looked slightly placated. "Everyone I meet who knows of my power fears me. Maybe I'm the most respected person in the world."
"Maybe," I agreed, and thunder rolled overhead. Ilsa glanced upwards, her features illuminated by a flicker of lightning.
We sat in silence for a few minutes longer, before I jumped down from the wagon.
"You don't fear me, though," Ilsa called as I searched for another stick. "I can tell. You think yourself more powerful."
She jumped as lightning cracked through the sky overhead. I heard several prisoners further back, exclaiming loudly.
"Maybe," I repeated, and started work on another dance as Ilsa watched. ~ Aprille Legacy

In Isleta the rainbow was a crack in the universe. We saw the barest of all life that is possible. Bright horses rolled over and over the dusking sky. ~ Joy Harjo

So near the track of the stars are we,
That oft, on night's pale beams,
The distant sounds of their harmony
Come to our ears, like dreams.

The Moon, too, brings her world so nigh,
That when the night-seer looks
To that shadowless orb, in a vernal sky,
He can number its hills and brooks.

To the Sun god all our hearts and lyres,
By day, by night, belong;
And the breath we draw from his living fires
We give him back in song, ~ Thomas Bulfinch

Marcus gave her a slow, wicked smile, feeling the smoldering heat rise to the surface like molten lava, irresistible as a force of nature. "If you insist," he whispered, and bent his head to capture her lips with his own. He put all his yearning, all his gratitude for the gifts she'd given him, all that heat bubbling up within him into the kiss, feeling her lips yield beneath his.
She returned his fire with fire, kissing him back with a wild abandon that left them both trembling and enraptured, wrapped around each other in the midst of a crowd, focused only on each other.
Overhead, fireworks lit the sky, but neither of them noticed. ~ Deborah Blake

The sun of a prince's good graces resembles that in the skies in that it shines most kindly upon the blackest people. ~ Franz Grillparzer