Abrade Quotes & Sayings

Say what you want. Being a psychotic asshole has it's perks. — Jamie McGuire

Literature destabilizes thought by breaking open language and smuggling in sound, rhythm, and image--an invasion of aesthetics. More easily than analytic writing, poetry can emancipate itself from the standard definitions of words, enabling a breakthrough to new (and perhaps wayward or even nonsensical) meaning, which can then develop after the fact--different at each new reading. Literary language is presumptuous. It dips into the unknown in order to get nearer to a truth different from that of the superficially visible. As the poet Franz Josef Czernin described it, it is as though one step after another into emptiness could become a ladder. Literary writing can take the writers themselves by surprise; it can disturb and disappoint them--for stirring up turmoil is inherent in metaphor. Thus with every flash of understanding that comes from hearing or reading a poem, the fundamental work of thinking is taken up anew. — Marie Luise Knott

...It had been the Frenchwoman's idea to send Gideon as a gift.

It should rankle, it should abrade his pride, to have been given as a gift. To be chosen like one would choose a necklace or a bauble. A shiny trinket to brighten a lady's day. But it didn't. He cocked his head, searching for any hint of wounded male pride. Nothing. In fact, he was pleased. — Evangeline Collins

In other countries, congenital introverts simply remain introverts all their lives, neither advancing nor retreating, but America's commitment to extroversion as a national art form can abrade some naturally aloof personalities until they flower into deadly nightshade. — Florence King

If going east or west, or back and forth
It always pays to keep in sight true north — John Bryden

Occasionally, in the stillness of a taxi or an airplane, she would catalog the pleasures she had lost. Cigarettes. Chewing gum. Strong mint toothpaste. Any food with hard edges or sharp corners that could pierce or abrade the inside of her mouth: potato chips, croutons, crunchy peanut butter. Any food that was more than infinitesimally, protozoically, spicy or tangy or salty or acidic: pesto or Worcestershire sauce, wasabi or anchovies, tomato juice or movie-theater popcorn. Certain pamphlets and magazines whose paper carried a caustic wafting chemical scent she could taste as she turned the pages. Perfume. Incense. Library books. Long hours of easy conversation. The ability to lick an envelope without worrying that the glue had irritated her mouth. The knowledge that if she heard a song she liked, she could sing along to it in all her dreadful jubilant tunelessness. The faith that if she bit her tongue, she would soon feel better rather than worse. — Kevin Brockmeier

I cannot wait to see the day that one day we will have a chef that will become the secretary of food of the United States of America. — Jose Andres

You're not caught in a dilemma?" he asked. I looked at my feet. I didn't know what a dilemma was, but it didn't look like I was caught in anything, so I shook my head no. — Lenore Look

We're like coke heads or chronic masturbators, aren't we? Attempting to crank the last iota of abandonment out of an instrinsically empty and mechanical experience. We push the plunger home, we abrade the clitoris, we yank the penis and we feel nothing. Not exactly nothing, worse than nothing, we feel a flicker or a prickle, the sensual equivalent of a retinal after-image. That's our fun now, not fun itself, only a tired allusion to it. Nevertheless, we feel certain that if we can allude to fun one more time, make a firm statement about it, it will return like the birds after winter. — Will Self

When the game is over it is really just beginning. — Jerry Kramer