Through Glass Quotes

Aubade Ending with the Death of a Mosquito"

- at Apollo Hospital, Dhaka

Let me break
free of these lace-frail
lilac fingers disrobing
the black sky
from the windows of this
room, I sit helpless, waiting,
silent - sister,
because you drew from me
the coil of red twine: loneliness -
spooled inside -
once, I wanted to say one
true thing, as in, I want more
in this life,
or, the sky is hurt, a blue vessel -
we pass through each other,
like weary
sweepers haunting through glass
doors, arcing across gray floors
faint trails
of dust we leave behind - he
touches my hand, waits for me
to clutch back
while mosquitoes rise like smoke
from this cold marble floor,
from altars,
seeking the blood still humming
in our unsaved bodies - he sighs,
I make a fist,
I kill this one leaving raw
kisses raised on our bare necks -
because I woke
alone in the myth of one life, I will
myself into another - how strange,
to witness
nameless, the tangled shape
our blood makes across us,
my open palm. ~ Tarfia Faizullah

If I could have any superpower, right now, I'd choose the ability to reach through glass. One thin, little pane is all that separates me from bliss ... of the midnight-snack variety, to be exact. The chocolate bar hangs halfway to freedom but refuses to take the plunge, as if the vending machine is mocking me, taunting me. As if it knows I'm powerless. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

I have great respect for writers who are humble, whose language allows the reader to see the story but doesn't get in the way. Language is a window, and if the window is clean, you shouldn't be aware you're looking through glass. ~ Jennifer Haigh

If I could, I'd press my fingers through this screen; hold my favorite parts of you. Force lips through glass to steal a kiss. ~ Amanda Oaks

You'll always meet someone new, encounter something odd. That's the peculiar thing about life. Everything will make sense after it happens in the end. Everything will be clear, fresh, as if looking through glass. Crazy, isn't it? ~ Serena Winter

I was working, but I didn't have anything like enough to do, and the bad times came in the evenings, when I went back to my room, sat on the couch and watched the world outside me going on through glass, a light bulb at a time. ~ Olivia Laing

I'm looking at you through the glass
Don't know how much time has past
Oh God it feels like forever
But no one tells that forever feels like home
Sitting all alone in your head ~ Stone Sour

We've been working out of our tin can for half a decade. Nobody suggests moving into a brick-and-mortar office; nobody wants to peer through glass windows, in a building with a foundation, and admit that the insomnia emergency is now a permanent condition. ~ Karen Russell

In the Village

III

Who has removed the typewriter from my desk,
so that I am a musician without his piano
with emptiness ahead as clear and grotesque
as another spring? My veins bud, and I am so
full of poems, a wastebasket of black wire.
The notes outside are visible; sparrows will
line antennae like staves, the way springs were,
but the roofs are cold and the great grey river
where a liner glides, huge as a winter hill,
moves imperceptibly like the accumulating
years. I have no reason to forgive her
for what I brought on myself. I am past hating,
past the longing for Italy where blowing snow
absolves and whitens a kneeling mountain range
outside Milan. Through glass, I am waiting
for the sound of a bird to unhinge the beginning
of spring, but my hands, my work, feel strange
without the rusty music of my machine. No words
for the Arctic liner moving down the Hudson, for the mange
of old snow moulting from the roofs. No poems. No birds. ~ Derek Walcott

Without running, I would have missed the joy of rain. What could be considered an inconvenience or a bummer to the inexperienced is actually a gift. Without running, I would miss a lot of things-like seeing cities in a certain way, or knowing certain people all the way to the core. I'm glad we don't experience life through glass, under cover, or from the sidelines. Good things take miles. ~ Kristin Armstrong

Some guarded their children when they saw me, as though congenital defects and loneliness were contagious, even at a distance and through glass. ~ Edward Fahey

To deal with the chaos of life, I escape into the prism of glass, dancing to the visual music in my mind. My photographs express my interior movement from darkness into light and back. ~ Polly Norman

I hope that nobody has ever had to look at anybody they love through glass. ~ James Baldwin

... and for the first time in his life the possibility of death presented itself, not in relation to the living world, or any effect it might have on other people, but purely in relation to himself and his own soul, and it seemed so vivid, almost a dependable certainty, stark and terrible. And from the heights of this vision everything that had once tormentingly preoccupied him seemed suddenly bathed in a cold, white light with no shadows, no perspective, no outline. His whole life seemed like a magic-lantern show that he had been staring at through glass by artificial light. Now suddenly the glass was gone, and he could see those awful daubings in the clear light of day. 'Yes, yes, here they are, these false images that I used to find so worrying, enthralling and agonizing,' he told himself, giving his imagination a free rein to run over the main pictures in the magic lantern of his life, looked anew in the cold, white daylight brought on by a clear vision of death. 'Here they are, these crudely daubed figures that used to seem so magnificent and mysterious. Honour and glory, philanthropy, love of a woman, love of Fatherland -- how grand these pictures used to seem, filled with such deep meanings! And now it all looks so simple, colourless and crude in the cold light of the morning I can feel coming upon me. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Growing up is like walking through glass doors that only open one way
you can see where you came from but can't go back. ~ Meg Medina

I hate flatscreens. I don't want to see anything in that much pixilation. I don't need to see the pimple on someone's face. I love the world through glass. The more old, dusty and tainted that glass is, the prettier and more impressionistic that is to me. I don't need to see everything perfectly. I don't like it. ~ Drew Barrymore

Just suppose that the dead do revisit the living. That something approximately to be described as Jim can return to see how George is making out. Would this be at all satisfactory? Would it even be worthwhile? At best, surely, it would be like the brief visit of an observer from another country who is permitted to peep in for a moment from the vast outdoors of his freedom and see, at a distance, through glass, this figure who sits solitary at the small table in the narrow room, eating his poached eggs humbly and dully, a prisoner for life. ~ Christopher Isherwood

Sometimes it made her want to put her fist through glass; other times, it made her cry a river. ~ Jodi Picoult

It is a wan morning, low unbroken cloud; the light, filtering sparely through glass, is the color of tarnished pewter. How brightly colored the king is, like the king in a new pack of cards: how small his flat blue eye. There ~ Hilary Mantel

It was through this viewer that he got his first reply from Tralfamadore. The reply was written on Earth in huge stones on a plain in what is now England. The ruins of the reply still stand, and are known as Stonehenge. The meaning of Stonehenge in Tralfamadorian, when viewed from above, is: Replacement part being rushed with all possible speed. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I can't work out much about myself or what I see in the world around me unless I do it through writing. ~ Kathryn Harrison

Wilderness holds an original presence giving expression to that which we lack, the losses we long to recover, the absences we seek to fill. Wilderness revives the memory of unity. Through its protection we can find faith in our humanity. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

I walked through the valley of my fate, is all, and learned to love what I could lose. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

I am a believer in nutrient timing and supplementation, through 8Zone. I love eggs, apples, wild fish, leafy greens, brown rice, pasta, oatmeal, home grown Washington Potatoes, and cooking with coconut and olive oils. ~ Apolo Ohno

All our works must pass through fire. Some of them will be burnt out and those that are left will be our good and useful works for the Kingdom of God ~ Sunday Adelaja

A religion is really a moral code that is expressed through legends, myths or any type of literary device in order to establish a system of beliefs, values and rules with which to regulate a culture or society ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

When we came back to the sun deck, the party talk had swung around to the bones found at the end of the street. Carey was saying the police had been to ask her if there was anything she remembered that might help to identify the bones as her husband's. "I told them," she was saying, "that that rascal had run off and left me, not been killed. For weeks after he didn't come back, I thought he might walk back through that door with those diapers. You know," she told Aubrey parenthetically, "he left to get diapers for the baby and never came back." Aubrey nodded, perhaps to indicate understanding or perhaps because he'd already heard this bit of Lawrenceton folklore. ~ Charlaine Harris

I never outline. I don't work from an outline. I have no idea where the book is going. I mean, even two-thirds of the way through, I don't know how it's going to end. ~ Tom Robbins

You can read all the books in the world on the Nazi concentration camps and the gas chambers, and yet reality will draw upon you only when you are put through that yourself. It is a law of God, or nature, if you prefer, that pain, suffering and grief cannot be transferred or known by proxy. Neither empathy nor sympathy but experience alone is a valid currency of affliction. It alone makes you a card-holding member all allows you to join the club of the wretched of the earth. All else is counterfeit. ~ Kiran Nagarkar

Dogs are loyal, patient, fearless, forgiving, and capable of pure love. Virtues that few people get through life without abandoning, at least once. ~ M.K. Clinton

You growing up to be who you are is like a flower growing through a crack in the sidewalk. ~ Anne Malcom

You don't necessarily have to do anything once you acknowledge your privilege. You don't have to apologize for it. You need to understand the extent of your privilege, the consequences of your privilege, and remain aware that people who are different from you move through and experience the world in ways you might never know anything about. ~ Roxane Gay

We all have personal brands and most of us have already left a digital footprint, whether we like it or not. Proper social media use highlights your strengths that may not shine through in an interview or application and gives the world a broader view of who you are. Use it wisely. ~ Amy Jo Martin

The acts of daily forbearance, the headache, or toothache, or heavy cold; the tiresome peculiarities of husband or wife, the broken glass ... all of these sufferings, small as they are, if accepted lovingly, are most pleasing to God's Goodness. ~ Francis De Sales

Every family is different. I am mom and I am dad and I'm going to do my best. You should be proud, walk through life saying I have the coolest family. I am part of a modern family. ~ Ricky Martin

Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The morning service was over, I was walking through the roads to clear my brain for the afternoon, and then - fire, earthquake, death! As if it were Sodom and Gomorrah! All our work undone, all the work - What are these Martians?
What are we? I answered, clearing my throat. ~ H.G.Wells

You just, like, hate yourself? You hate being yourself?"
"There's no self to hate. It's like, when I look into myself, there's no actual me - just a bunch of thoughts and behaviors and circumstances. And a lot of them just don't feel like they're mine. They're not things I want to think or do or whatever. And when I do look for the, like, Real Me, I never find it. It's like those nesting dolls, you know? The ones that are hollow, and then when you open them up, there's a smaller doll inside, and you keep opening hollow dolls until eventually you get to the smallest one, and it's solid all the way through. But with me, I don't think there is one that is solid. They just keep getting smaller. ~ John Green

Once a month, ripe with psychic energy, the moon grows to Her zenith. Blazing full with the sun's rays through the night sky, it is with great compassion and love for her children that she luminesces. ~ Lawren Leo

Yes, genuine pain and loss coexisted with the deliverance, but it did not have the last word. Its power to hurt him was weakened because he could see the bigger things God was doing in, for, and through him. You can probably find similar events in your life. Hard things persisted, there was no apparent deliverance, but, with closer inspection, you notice a deliverance that went much deeper. And these are eleventh-hour deliverances on this side of death and eternity. Imagine if you gradually developed the spiritual skill to see beyond the immediate moment and catch a glimpse of the glories to come. The basic outline is clear: if you have thrown your lot in with Jesus, everything he has is yours, even the kingdom itself. It would be impossible to ask for more. Those who imitate Abraham's faith are always pushing the last minute farther out until it comes even after physical death. Such a person is fearless. A ~ Edward T. Welch

That isn't how I've always felt. As a congressman, and more recently as a senator, I opposed marriage for same-sex couples. Then something happened that led me to think through my position in a much deeper way. ~ Rob Portman

I love math because there's always a right answer. It's not interpretive; it's not subjective. There is a correct destination, even if you have to hack through confusing parts to get there. That's not always true in life. ~ Emery Lord

All attempts to appease the Nazis between 1934 and 1939 through various agreements and pacts were morally unacceptable and politically senseless, harmful and dangerous. ~ Vladimir Putin

The calf is capable of walking quite well now," Dazu said. "He never stumbles."

"But I told you to carry him back here," the teacher said. "The first thing a soldier must learn is to obey orders."

Every day, the calf grew a little heavier, and every day, Dazu had to struggle a little harder. He would collapse, exhausted, when he finally got to the ranch, and the calf would bound out of his arms, glad to be able to walk on his own and stretch out.

When winter rolled around again, Médo handed him a wooden sword and asked him to strike as hard as he could at the practice dummy. Dazu looked with distaste at the crude weapon with no edge, but he swung obediently.

The wooden dummy fell in half, cut clean through. He looked at the sword in his hand with wonder.

"It's not the sword," his teacher said. "Have you looked at yourself lately?" He brought Dazu to stand in front of a brightly polished shield.

The young man could hardly recognize the reflection. His shoulders filled the frame of the mirror. His arms and thighs were twice as thick as he remembered, and his chest bulged over his narrow waist.

"A great warrior trusts not his weapons, but himself. When you possess true strength, you can deal a killing blow even if all you have is a blade of grass.

"Now you're finally ready to learn from me. But first, go thank the calf for making you strong. ~ Ken Liu

A mother's death also means the loss of the consistent, supportive family system that once supplied her with a secure home base, she then has to develop her self-confidence and self-esteem through alternate means. Without a mother or mother-figure to guide her, a daughter also has to piece together a female self-image of her own. ~ Hope Edelman

Look, if you don't believe that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world, that's fine. That's fine. No biggie. Go your way. I'm going my way. I happen to believe it. And there is no doctorate that could ever be given to me that would actually prove otherwise. Because you learn that through faith. You learn that through an individual testimony. I got one. You don't have one, you should find one. You don't want one, that's fine. I don't really care. ~ Glenn Beck

PRAYER THOUGHT: Through Your mercy and grace, Lord, I truly and completely yield myself to You. ~ Oswald Chambers

Most of the planet's terrestrial surfaces are visually accessible through video cameras and satellite imagery, if not physically within reach. Even the approaches to Mount Everest are now littered with human debris. One can drive to Timbuktu, which for centuries was synonymous with inaccessibility. ~ Alan Huffman

Persevering through something that is drudgery to you in the name of perseverance alone isn't commendable; it's senseless stubbornness. Even if you stick with it long enough to make good money, you won't be truly happy. ~ Tony Robbins

But for the first time, I wanted to believe in the things that outlasted us: the stories that came to life in a child's head, the fear of the dark, the hunger to live. Those were the footsteps that not even Time could discover and erase, because they lived far out of reach, in the song of blood coursing through veins and in the quiet threads that made up dreams. I wanted to hold the hope of those tales within me and follow it like a lure all the way back to myself. ~ Roshani Chokshi

the First Salmon Ceremony, in all its beauty, reverberates through all the domes of the world. The feasts of love and gratitude were not just internal emotional expressions but actually aided the upstream passage of the fish by releasing them from predation for a critical time. Laying salmon bones back in the streams returned nutrients to the system. These are ceremonies of practical reverence. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

True peace can rarely be imposed from the outside; it must be born within and between communities through meetings and dialogue and then carried outward. ~ Jean Vanier

What you can't go through on your own, God will help you fly over. ~ Woodrow Kroll

By the way, leafing through my dictionary I am struck by the poverty of language when it comes to naming or describing badness. Evil, wickedness, mischief, these words imply an agency, the conscious or at least active doing of wrong. They do not signify the bad in its inert, neutral, self-sustaining state. Then there are the adjectives: dreadful, heinous, execrable, vile, and so on. They are not so much as descriptive as judgmental. They carry a weight of censure mingled with fear. Is this not a queer state of affairs? It makes me wonder. I ask myself if perhaps the thing itself - badness - does not exist at all, if these strangely vague and imprecise words are only a kind of ruse, a kind of elaborate cover for the fact that nothing is there. Or perhaps words are an attempt to make it be there? Or, again, perhaps there is something, but the words invented it. Such considerations make me feel dizzy, as if a hole had opened briefly in the world. ~ John Banville

You get to be wiser by storying the world and seeing it through other forms of consciousness than your own. ~ Aidan Chambers

Girls ... were allowed to play in the house ... and boys were sent outdoors ... Boys ran around in the yard with toy guns going kksshh-kksshh, fighting wars for made-up reasons and arguing about who was dead, while girls stayed inside and played with dolls, creating complex family groups and learning how to solve problems through negotiation and roleplaying. Which gender is better equipped, on the whole, to live an adult life, would you guess? ~ Garrison Keillor

Art is excitement which if we can't create ourselves, we can at least, through love of it, make available to others. ~ Vincent Price

I remember realizing, when I did Little Women [1994], that that was the only time girls that age were being written about. It was always boys - from David Copperfield to Lord of the Flies to Holden Caulfield. There were never young women going through adolescence or teen years; there were only little girls. ~ Winona Ryder

It's quite ironic that by being a romantic asexual, you are eternally screwed. See, it's extremely difficult to meet somebody who wants a romantic relationship without any sex. Wanting a romantic relationship without sex is like offering non-alcoholic beer at a house party. They'll laugh at you, call you a socially-awkward dork, they'll ask you why you don't just go with soft drinks... people generally don't drink booze for the colour or flavour (although I suppose you could count those hipsters who hang out at craft breweries debating over the nutty undertaste of it or whatever hipsters debate about). I've come to the conclusion that I am probably better off alone. Lonely at times maybe, but that's what friends are for. Solitude can be wonderfully liberating, anyway. Not having to share belongings or property, having your own time and privacy... and in any case, if you ever feel the need to be anchored by something or someone, material items and hobbies and states of being, those all last indefinitely. They won't go away until you do. It's a kind of freedom that most people don't have access to unless they become divorced or widowed, or if they choose to remain single on purpose. The gilded wings of solitude that probably look ugly and tarnished to everyone standing below them as they gaze up to the sky. The sun shining down on them, wind through silken feathers, that's always brilliant. There are bouts of rain and darkness, but you get that on the ground just as much as you ~ Rebecca McNutt

We have to hear again and again who God is for us and what God has done on our behalf. We must free each other from bondage through our confession and forgiveness. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

Through the ages, many different groups have called themselves victims. Some came through wars and massacres. Some were slaves or minorities. But the Jews, who have always been victimized throughout history, don't see themselves as victims. We see ourselves as survivors. The difference between survivors and victims is that survivors go on with their lives after a tragedy, whereas victims continue to wallow in self-pity. ~ Celso Cukierkorn

But another part of me wanted him to sense that there was no point trying to catch up now - we'd traveled and been through too much without each other for there to be any common ground between us. Perhaps I wanted him to feel the sting of loss, and grieve. But in the end, and by way of compromise, perhaps, I decided that the easiest way was to show I'd forgotten none of it. I made a motion to take him to the empty lot that remained as scorched and fallow as when I'd shown it to him two decades before. I had barely finished my offer - 'Been there, done that,' he replied. It was his way of telling me he hadn't forgotten either. 'Maybe you'd prefer to make a quick stop at the bank.' He burst out laughing. 'I'll bet you they never closed my account.' 'If we have time, and if you care to, I'll take you to the belfry. I know you've never been up there.'

'To-die-for?'

I smiled back. He remembered our name for it. ~ Andre Aciman

What - ? In one movement, Thorne lifted her onto the desk and pressed her back against an enormous potted fern and - oh. Cress had built a thousand fantasies around their rooftop kiss, but this kiss was something new. Where before, the kiss had been gentle and protective, now there was something passionate. Determined. Cress's body dissolved into nothing but sensation. His hands burned her waist through the skirt's thin fabric. Her knees pressed against his hips, and he pulled her closer, closer, like he couldn't get her close enough. A whimper escaped her mouth, only to be swallowed by his. She heard a moan, but it could have come from either of them. ~ Marissa Meyer

My time in camp with Kaden had become awkward several times, or perhaps I was just more self-conscious now.

I had known he cared about me. It was hardly a secret. It was the reason I was still alive, but I hadn't quite grasped how much he cared. And in spite of myself, I knew in my own way, I cared about him too. Not Kaden the assassin, but the Kaden I had known back in Terravin, the one who had caught my attention the minute he walked through the tavern door. The one who was calm and had mysterious, but kind, eyes.

I remembered dancing with him at the festival, his arms pulling me closer, and the way he struggled with his thoughts, holding them back. He didn't hold back the night he was drunk. The fireshine had loosened his lips and he laid it all out quite blatantly. Slurred and sloshy but clear. He loved me. This from a barbarian who was sent to kill me.

I lay back, staring into the cloudless sky, a shade bluer and brighter than yesterday.

Did he even know what love was? For that matter, did I? Even my parents didn't seem to know. I crossed my arms behind my head as a pillow. Maybe there was no one way to define it. Maybe there were as many shades of love as the blues of the sky.

I wondered if his interest had begun when I tended his shoulder. I remembered his odd look of surprise when I touched him, as if no one had ever shown him a kindness before. If Griz, Finch, and Malich were any indication of his past, maybe no ~ Mary E. Pearson