Burning It Down Quotes & Sayings

a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. The — Lewis Carroll

WATCH OUT OF ITS WAISTCOAT-POCKET, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. In another moment — Lewis Carroll

I'm giving up acting ... I'm 66 and there are a number of celebrations I've got to get down on paper, and acting doesn't allow me to do that. It was a hell of a drug, performance. It's a great thrill, especially for a storyteller. But it can go. Directing can go. Writing can't go. And in terms of what lies ahead, I want to have a burning focus - almost like smoke coming up from the paper as I write. — Athol Fugard

There was more than one way to think about Mike Burry's purchase of a billion dollars in credit default swaps. The first was as a simple, even innocent, insurance contract. Burry made his semiannual premium payments and, in return, received protection against the default of a billion dollars' worth of bonds. He'd either be paid zero, if the triple-B-rated bonds he'd insured proved good, or a billion dollars, if those triple-B-rated bonds went bad. But of course Mike Burry didn't own any triple-B-rated subprime mortgage bonds, or anything like them. He had no property to "insure" it was as if he had bought fire insurance on some slum with a history of burning down. To him, as to Steve Eisman, a credit default swap wasn't insurance at all but an outright speculative bet against the market - and this was the second way to think about it. — Michael Lewis

Eventually, he found the bed too comfortable for his state of mind, so he lay down on his back, his legs sprawled across the carpet. He anagrammed "yrs forever" until he found one he liked: sorry fever. And then he lay there in his fever of sorry and repeated the now memorized note in his head and wanted do cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something. He kept thinking about one word - forever - and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage.
It hurt like the worst ass-kicking he'd ever gotten. And he'd gotten plenty. — John Green

There was the Bible, of course, but the Bible was a book, and so were Bleak House, Treasure Island, Ethan Frome and The Last of the Mohicans. Did it indeed seem probable, as he had once overheard Dunbar ask, that the answers to the riddles of creation would be supplied by people too ignorant to understand the mechanics of rainfall? Had Almighty God, in all His infinite wisdom, really been afraid that men six thousand years ago would succeed in building a tower to heaven? Where the devil was heaven? Was it up? Down? There was no up or down in a finite but expanding universe in which even the vast, burning, dazzling, majestic sun was in a state of progressive decay that would eventually destroy the earth too. — Joseph Heller

Col,
Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go And here's me, whispering again and again and again and again: iloveyou. yrs forever, K-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e
Eventually, he found the bed too comfortable for his state of mind, so he lay down on his back, his legs sprawled across the carpet. He anagrammed "yrs forever" until he found one he liked: sorry fever. And then he lay there in his fever of sorry and repeated the now memorized note in his head and wanted to cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus somthing. He kept thinking about one word -forever-and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage.
It hurt like the worst ass-kicking- he'd ever gotten. And he'd gotten plenty."
1.Greek: "I have found it."
2.More on that later. — John Green

She'd never encountered any stories as intricate or compelling as the stories he gave her, nor anything that made her sigh when she read it. She liked best the stories about people becoming other things. Stories where women became swans or echoes. In the evenings, when Finn disappeared into the mysterious recesses of the laboratory, Cat went out to the garden or down to the river and wondered what it would be like to be a stream of water, a cypress tree, a star burning a million miles away. — Cassandra Rose Clarke

True story: Some homeowner's burning a yard pile just like this one. And he goes inside for lemonade and opens the cabinet under the sink to toss something in the trash, and this rat's down in the bottom, gnawing a chicken bone. The rat had been driving the guy crazy for months, living in the walls and scampering through the attic at night like it had combat boots. So the guy grabs a rolling pin and beats it to death. Then he takes it outside and throws it on the burning pile." "Good story," said Coleman. "What's the problem?" "The rat's not dead. The heat wakes him up. It jumps off the pile and makes a beeline for the house. Except now its fur's on fire. The homeowner tries to intercept, but it zips between his legs, runs back inside and gets in the walls. Ignited the insulation. Whole place burned down. — Tim Dorsey

My parents kept a small cabin the mountains. It was a simple thing, just four walls, and very dark inside. A heavy felt curtain blotted out whatever light made it through the canopy of huge pines and down into the cabin's only window. There was a queen-size bed in there, an armchair, and a wood-burning stove. It wasn't an old cabin. I think my parents built it in the seventies from a kit. In a few spots the wood beams were branded with the word HOME-RITE. But the spirit of the place me think of simpler times, olden days, yore, or whenever it was that people rarely spoke except to say there was a store coming or the berries were poisonous or whatnot, the bare essentials. It was deadly quiet up there. You could hear your own heart beating if you listened. I loved it, or at least I thought I ought to love it - I've never been very clear on that distinction. — Ottessa Moshfegh

It isn't the smallness of this place that bothers me. It's the grey that's worked its way into the walls. It's the stains on the carpet from some other life that came and left before ours. Bert always said he'd give me a good deal on paint but some places take burning down and rebuilding to make them shiny."
-Ed, page 10 — Cath Crowley

The humans aren't stupid, no matter what the purebloods say; they're just blind, and sometimes, that's worse. They put their fear in stories and songs, where they won't forget it. "Up the airy mountains and down the rushy glen, I dare not go a-hunting for fear of little men." We've given them plenty of reasons to fear us. Even if they've almost forgotten - even if they only remember that we were beautiful and not why they were afraid - the fear was there before anything else. There were reasons for the burning times; there's a reason the fairy tales survive. And there's a reason the human world doesn't want to see the old days come again. — Seanan McGuire

In any case, fire burns; that's its nature, and you can't expect to change that. You can use it to cook your meat or to burn down your neighbor's house. And is the fire you use for cooking any different from the one you use for burning? And does that mean you should eat your supper raw?"
Maddy shook her head, still puzzled. "So what you're saying is ... I shouldn't play with fire," she said at last.
Of course you should," said One-Eye gently. "But don't be surprised if the fire plays back. — Joanne Harris

There is a dark resource within all of us, a reservoir of hurt and pain and anger upon which we can draw when the need arises. Most of us rarely, if ever, have to delve too deeply into it. That is as it should be, because dipping into it costs and you lose a little of yourself each time, a small part of all that is good and honorable and decent about you. Each time you use it you have to go a little deeper, a little further down into the blackness. Strange creatures move through its depths, illuminated by a burning light from within and fueled only by the desire to survive and to kill. The danger in diving into that pool, in drinking from that dark water, is that one day you may submerge yourself so deeply that you can never find the surface again. Give in to it and you're lost forever. — John Connolly

But just as the orchestra begins to play, an odd taste sweeps across my tongue from front to back. Like a volatile mixture of sulfur and ammonia, hot and burning as it trickles down the inside of my throat. A vile swear almost escapes my lips. There's a faery here. — Elizabeth May

An indigenous culture with sufficient territory, and bilingual and intercultural education, is in a better position to maintain and cultivate its mythology and shamanism. Conversely, the confiscation of their lands and imposition of foreign education, which turns their young people into amnesiacs, threatens the survival not only of these people, but of an entire way of knowing. It is as if one were burning down the oldest universities in the world and their libraries, one after another - thereby sacrificing the knowledge of the world's future generations. — Jeremy Narby

He thought the feud was live ash a boot heel could stomp out. He didn't notice it burning down both their houses. — Anna-Marie McLemore

Win," Leo said, "you'll burn the house down, just after it's been rebuilt. Give me the bloody matchbox."
She shook her head resolutely.
Are we starting a new springtime ritual?" Leo demanded. "The annual burning-of-the-manse?" Come to your senses, Win. — Lisa Kleypas

Our house is burning down and we are blind to it. The earth and humankind are in danger and we are all responsible. It is time to open our eyes. Alarms are sounding across all continents. We cannot say we did not know! Climate warming is still reversible. Heavy would be the responsibility of those who refuse to fight it. — Jacques Chirac

I have waited twenty years for this phone call . . . and all this time I thought it would go away. I knew I would always be sad for my sister. But I thought the other would go away."

"What is the other, Henrik?" Though he knew the answer.

"Anger . . . I am still angry, Detective Bosch."

Bosch nodded. He looked down at his desk, at the photos of all the victims under the glass top. Cases and faces. His eyes moved from the photo of Anneke Jespersen to some of the others. The ones he had not yet spoken for.

"So am I, Henrik," he said. "So am I."

- "The Burning Room" by Michael Connelly — Michael Connelly

At the water's edge, barrels of pitch blazed like huge bonfires. Their reflection, crimson as the rising moon, crept to meet us in long, wide stripes. The burning barrels threw light on their own smoke and on the long human shadows that flitted about the fire; but further to the sides and behind them, where the velvet ringing rushed from, was the same impenetrable darkness. Suddenly slashing it open, the golden ribbon of a rocket soared skywards; it described an arc and, as if shattering against the sky, burst and came sifting down in sparks.
- Easter Night — Anton Chekhov

I'm fat," she blurted out.
"You are not fat. You're the most beautiful, voluptuous woman I know." His eyes moved down her body, deliberately, slowly, then back up to her face. What she saw in them sent fire squirming through her stomach and lower.
"I want every inch of you," he said, growling it. "I want to fall on my knees and worship at your hips." He reach out, shaped her curves from breast to hips with a burning sweep of his hand that a man was allowed to give only his wife. — Eloisa James

But on Thursday only the committed regulars are there, and they do what they do on Thursday, delving into pagan rituals of worship to the amber gods that let you see to the lurching anger that spins you round and round at the center of things beyond lines and angles and the very floorboards become crazy under your feet so that the floor goes YAAAWW up again down again and suddenly tunk! it hits you on the forehead and your nose bleeds and you cling to it so that you don't begin to slip down it and fetch up against the wall where you were dancing before with all the women in your life who have now vanished and left you alone here and the swaying candelabra are like careening galaxies burning into the back of your head; you don't dare to roll over on your back and look straight into all those stars or you will be blinded; and from the cool floor and the smell of your own puke you gain more and more understanding of the universe. — William T. Vollmann

Stand back, akri-wolf! The Simi's gonna huff and puff and melt that door down. And you might not want to be too close when I do it, 'cause melted wolf is tough on the enamel and akra-Aimee might not like it if you turn into a puddle of bloody goo. Besides, burning wolf is kind of smelly to the Simi's delicate nostrils. (Simi) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

It was only when the giant got halfway down the incline that he suddenly, happily, burst into flame and continued his trip saying, "NO SURVIVORS, NO SURVIVORS!" in a manner that could only indicate deadly sincerity.
It was seeing him happily burning and advancing that startled the Brute Squad to screaming. And once that happened, why, everybody panicked and ran ... — William Goldman

Irma, she said. But I had started to walk away. I heard her say some more things but by then I had yanked my skirt up and was running down the road away from her and begging the wind to obliterate her voice. She wanted to live with me. She missed me. She wanted me to come back home. She wanted to run away. She was yelling all this stuff and I wanted so badly for her to shut up. She was quiet for a second and I stopped running and turned around once to look at her. She was a thimble-sized girl on the road, a speck of a living thing. Her white-blond hair flew around her head like a small fire and it was all I could see because everything else about her blended in with the countryside.
He offered you a what? she yelled.
An espresso! I yelled back. It was like yelling at a shorting wire or a burning bush.
What is it? she said.
Coffee! I yelled.
Irma, can I come and live
I turned around again and began to run. — Miriam Toews

When the spent sun throws up its rays on cloud
And goes down burning into the gulf below,
No voice in nature is heard to cry aloud
At what has happened. Birds, at least must know
It is the change to darkness in the sky.
Murmuring something quiet in her breast,
One bird begins to close a faded eye;
Or overtaken too far from his nest,
Hurrying low above the grove, some waif
Swoops just in time to his remembered tree.
At most he thinks or twitters softly, 'Safe!
Now let the night be dark for all of me.
Let the night be too dark for me to see
Into the future. Let what will be, be. — Robert Frost

From her father, Anna-Sophia had inherited a love of burning down houses. Dutch remembered exactly the first words he'd said to her. 'This is somebody's home.' Anna-Sophias face had been puzzled. 'Of course it is.' And then she dropped the burning rag onto the couch. — Maggie Stiefvater

One day I'll give birth to a tiny baby girl
and when she's born she'll scream
and I'll tell her to never stop
I will kiss her before I lay her down at night
and will tell her a story so she knows
how it is and how it must be for her to survive
I'll tell her to set things on fire
and keep them burning
I'll teach her that fire will not consume her
that she must use it — Nicole Blackman

Rose," said my mother. For once in my life, she sounded unsure about herself. Scared, maybe. "Mia said you wanted to see me." I didn't answer. I didn't look at her. "What ... what do you need?" I didn't know what I needed. I didn't know what to do. The stinging in my eyes grew unbearable, and before I knew it, I was crying. Big, painful sobs seized my body. The tears I'd held back so long poured down my face. The fear and grief I'd refused to let myself feel finally burst free, burning in my chest. I could scarcely breathe. My mother put her arms around me, and I buried my face in her chest, sobbing even harder. "I know," she said softly, tightening her grip on me. "I understand. — Richelle Mead

Here's my love, not in little droplets, but from the very river of my being. It reaches all the way down to the roots of my being, tangling my heart in its burning mesh. For you. Drink deep. — Anne Rice

Those who cannot conquer must bend the knee. They must find strength, or serve those of us who have. You are my generals. I will send you out: my hunting dogs, my wolves with iron teeth. When a city closes its gates in fear, you will destroy it. When they make roads and walls, you will cut them, pull down the stones. When a man raises a sword or bow against your men, you will hang him from a tree. Keep Karakorum in your minds as you go. This white city is the heart of the nation, but you are the right arm, the burning brand. Find me new lands, gentlemen. Cut a new path. Let their women weep a sea of tears and I will drink it all. — Conn Iggulden

It's easy to feel like the bunny rabbi frozen in terror. And it's easy to feel like one of the fire balloons, at the whim of the wind, either rising up out of sight or burning down. Blow one direction or another. — Ava Dellaira

Prophet finally breathed when the forceps came off - how long he'd been holding it, he had no idea, but fuck, everything was reduced to the feeling of the piercing, the burning throb in his nipple, and that made it hard to focus on anything else. A long moment later, the ring was locked firmly in place, and Tommy was sinking to his knees in front of him, unzipping his pants and taking his hard cock down his throat. Prophet shot immediately - and Tom had to know that would happen. Prophet knew he'd no doubt have come as he was being pierced . . . if he'd had Tom sucking him while Ray did the piercing. But that was interesting as a fantasy only. Because this wasn't about sharing. Or payback. This was Tom showing him that he understood. That, no matter what, no matter how pissed they got, how much they fucked up . . . Prophet was his. Which was Tom's way of assuring that he wasn't going anywhere. — S.E. Jakes

I mean, I'd like to see (Mitt Romney's) house burn, one of his millions of houses burning down. It would be kind of cool - the Mormon fire patrol. — Joy Behar

They came out into the open, and it was the grimy backwaters of Jersey City now. Tall factory stacks, and fires burning, and spreads of stagnant stinking water.
On and on the ride went. On and on and on.
They turned north soon and left the big city and all its little satellites behind them, and after a while even the rusty glow on the horizon died down and was gone. Then trees began, and little lumpy hills, and there was nothing but the darkness and the night and the fear. ("The Number's Up") — Cornell Woolrich

He had chosen to spend his days in the world of men. Life was what mattered, its slow, priceless pulse, its burning fragility; his debt lay with those importunate Flanders echoes that had never really left him. The private could aspire to be a general because both general and private, at their best, recognized the dire importance of strategy, fortitude, the value of their imperiled existence; but when the machinist became the executive he left the world of tangibles and human conjugacy and entered a shadow world of credits and consols - a world that seemed to reward nothing so much as irresponsibility and boundless greed. And when the thunder rolled down upon them - as he knew it would - how would he feel, playing with paper, striving to outwit his fellows, drinking imported Scotch evenings and listening to the brittle parade of comedians on radio ...? — Anton Myrer

His master's pain was his pain. And it hurt him more for his master to be sick than for him to be sick himself. When the house started burning down, that type of Negro would fight harder to put the master's house out than the master himself would. But then you had another Negro out in the field. The house Negro was in the minority. The masses - the field Negroes were the masses. They were in the majority. When the master got sick, they prayed that he'd die. If his house caught on fire, they'd pray for a wind to come along and fan the breeze. — Malcolm X

You look at the crime and you look at the criminal. If it's a dope dealer who guns down an undercover narcotics officer, then he gets the gas. If it's a drifter who rapes a three-year-old girl, drowns her by holding her little head in a mudhole, then throws her body off a bridge, then you take his life and thank god he's gone. If it's an escaped convict who breaks into a farmhouse late at night and beats and tortures an elderly couple before burning them with their house, then you strap him in a chair, hook up a few wires, pray for his soul, and pull the switch. And if it's two dopeheads who gang-rape a ten-year-old girl and kick her with pointed-toe cowboy boots until her jaws break, then you happily, merrily, thankfully, gleefully lock them in a gas chamber and listen to them squeal. It's very simple. Their crimes were barbaric. Death is too good for them, much too good. — John Grisham

The backs of their heads were hollowed out; their faces were nothing but thin masks at the front. Within each hollow a candle was burning. This was so plain to him now, that he wondered he had never noticed it before. He imagined what would happen if he went down into the street and blew some of the candles out. It made him laugh to think of it. He laughed so much that he could no longer stand. His laughter echoed round and round the house. Some small remaining shred of reason warned him that he ought not to let the landlord and his family know what he was doing so he went to bed and muffled the sound of his laughter in the pillows, kicking his legs from time to time with the sheer hilarity of the idea. — Susanna Clarke

Chasing a burning girl down a city street is a lot harder than it sounds. Civilians tend to stop and stare and this turns them into human bowling pins. Slow whiny bowling pins. — Richard Kadrey

It is still news to her that passion
could steer her wrong
though she went down, a thousand times
strung out
across railroad tracks, off bridges
under cars, or stiff
glass bottle still in hand, hair soft
on greasy pillows, still it is
news she cannot follow love (his
burning footsteps in blue crystal
snow) & still
come out all right. — Diane Di Prima

A warm burning sensation fl ashed in her breasts, and she pressed them with backs of her wrists to stop the milk before it fl owed.

"Ugh, I'm letting down. We'll have to make this fast so I can go pump in the bathroom. I'm used to nursing every couple of hours."

The horror in Felix's eyes was so intense it seemed painful. "Pretend you didn't just say that."

"Say what? I didn't say anything."

He shook his head in disgust. — Shannon Hale

Every time an old person dies, it's like a library burning down. — Alex Haley

Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink. Get to San Francisco. Get to San Francisco in defiance of your geography, your ancestry and the lonely change rattling sad excuses in your pocket. Fuel up on pie and diner coffee and mystic visions and the freedom of not knowing what's coming next except that you're burning the road to outrun it. — Jack Kerouac

I'm thinking that it will be autumn soon," she said, lifting her gaze to his. "Autumn is my absolute favorite season. Spring is overrated. It's soggy and the trees are still bare from winter. Winter drags on and on, and summer is nice, but it's all the same. Autumn is different. I mean, is there any perfume in the world that can compare with the smell of burning leaves?" she asked with an engaging smile. Matt thought she smelled a hell of a lot better than burning leaves, but he let her continue. "Autumn - is thexincgitsinagre
changing. It's like dusk." "Dusk?"
"Dusk is my favorite time of day, for the same reason. When I was young, I used to walk down our driveway at dusk in the summer and stand at the fence, watching all the cars going by with their headlights on. Everyone had a place to go, something to do. The night was just beginning ... " She trailed off in embarrassment. "That must sound incredibly silly."
"It sounds incredibly lonely. — Judith McNaught

There was a little smile on his mouth - the mouth that had been kissing hers. Otherwise, he was incommunicado.
"Liam?" she said again, more loudly this time.
Nada. He was out cold. Down for the count.
She straightened abruptly. Face was burning, joints buzzing with adrenaline, chest filled with helium.
Liam Murphy had kissed her.
And he'd fallen asleep in the middle of it. She didn't know whether to burst into song or kick something. — Kristan Higgins

They say a good love is one that sits you down, gives you a drink of water, and pats you on top of the head. But I say a good love is one that casts you into the wind, sets you ablaze, makes you burn through the skies and ignite the night like a phoenix; the kind that cuts you loose like a wildfire and you can't stop running simply because you keep on burning everything that you touch! I say that's a good love; one that burns and flies, and you run with it! — C. JoyBell C.

Soldiers have been looting and burning for generations. Perhaps they burned the town because of you, or perhaps they did it because they disliked the whiskey. Soldiers kill and rape and loot for a thousand reasons. The one thing I am certain of is that neither you nor I did this burning." Tool reached down and turned Mahlia's gaze to meet his own. "Do not seek to own what others have done. — Paolo Bacigalupi

He moves suddenly so that his hand is cupping my sex, and one of his fingers sinks slowly into me. His other arm holds me firmly in place around my waist.
"This is mine," he whispers aggressively. "All mine. Do you understand?" He eases his finger in and out as he gazes down at me, gauging my reaction, his eyes burning.
"Yes, yours ... "
Abruptly, he moves, doing several things at once: Withdrawing his fingers, leaving me wanting, unzipping his fly, and pushing me down onto the couch so he's lying on top of me.
"Hands on your head," he commands through gritted teeth as he kneels up, forcing my legs wider ...
"We don't have long. This will be quick, and it's for me, not you. Do you understand?
Don't come, or I will spank you," he says through clenched teeth. — E.L. James

Thank you again," Wax said to her. "I still can't believe you snuck a gun into the party."
"It's only appropriate," Steris said, "that you would make a smuggler out of me."
"Just as you try to make a gentleman out of me."
"You're already a gentleman," Steris said.
Wax looked down at her as she held to him while trying to stare in every direction at once. He suddenly found something burning in him, like a metal. A protectiveness for this woman in his arms, so full of logic and yet so full of wonder at the same time. And a powerful affection.
So he let himself kiss her. She was surprised by it, but melted into the embrace. They started to drift sideways and arc downward as he lost his balance on his anchors, but he held on to the kiss, letting them slip back down into the churning mists. — Brandon Sanderson

I will be the answer at the end of the line. I will be there for you. Why take the time? In the burning of uncertainty, I will be your solid ground. I, I will hold the balance if you can't look down. If it takes my whole life, I won't break. I won't bend. It will all be worth it, worth it in the end because I can only tell you what I know, that I need you in my life. When the stars have all gone out you'll still be burning so bright. — Sarah McLachlan

If Under fell, if Over leaped, If death was life and Death life reaped, Something rises from the gloom, To make the Underland a tomb Hear it scratching down below, Rat of long forgotten snow, Evil cloaked in coat of White, Will the Warrior drain your light? What could turn the Warrior week? What do burning Gnawers seek? Just a barely speaking pup That holds the Land of Under up Die the baby, die his heart Die his most essential part Die the peace that rules the hour, Gnawers have their key to power — Suzanne Collins

And by God, what a day! You know the kind of day that generally comes some time in March when winter suddenly seems to give up fighting. For days past we'd been having the kind of beastly weather that people call "bright" weather, when the sky's a cold hard blue and the wind scrapes you like a blunt razor-blade. Then suddenly the wind had dropped and the sun got a chance. You know the kind of day. Pale yellow sunshine, not a leaf stirring, a touch of mist in the far distances where you could see the sheep scattered over the hillsides like lumps of chalk. And down in the valleys fires were burning, and the smoke twisted slowly upwards and melted into the mist. I'd got the road to myself. It was so warm you could almost have taken your clothes off. — George Orwell

It's the end. It's the end of the civilization. We're going down.
No, it's sure not too attractive. Lenticels.
I just hope my kids don't live to see the last days. The things burning and people living in cellars.
Violet.
The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever. — M T Anderson

The Sun by Czeslaw Milosz

All colors come from the sun. And it does not have
Any particular color, for it contains them all.
And the whole Earth is like a poem
While the sun above represents the artist.

Whoever wants to paint the variegated world
Let him never look straight up at the sun
Or he will lose the memory of things he has seen.
Only burning tears will stay in his eyes.

Let him kneel down, lower his face to the grass,
And look at the light reflected by the ground.
There he will find everything we have lost:
The stars and the roses, the dusks and the dawns.

Warsaw, 1943 — Czeslaw Milosz

Don't let it bring you down. It's only castles burning, find someone who's turning, and you will come around. — Neil Young

The Fire Department has traditionally considered architecture a priority only when it's burning down. — Justin Davidson

The business aspects of the Fourth of July is not perfect as it stands. See what it costs us every year with loss of life, the crippling of thousands with its fireworks, and the burning down of property. It is not only sacred to patriotism and universal freedom, but to the surgeon, the undertaker, the insurance offices - and they are working it for all it is worth. — Mark Twain

The room was almost dark, with just flickers of light coming from the logs burning in the hearth. I could just see his shape, sitting in the leather, wing-backed chair, silhouetted by the fire.
"Come here."
His voice was quiet, but with the firmness I had come to expect from him. I moved closer and knelt down in front of him, my naked bottom facing the warmth of the fire. I bent my head downwards and looked at the floor as I had been taught, but he surprised me by lifting up my chin with his hand.
"You look so beautiful."
He bent and kissed me softly on the lips, and I shivered in anticipation. Was it to be pleasure or pain this time? Or perhaps a combination of both, given in the way that only he can. — Rachel De Vine

Cold air rises from the ground as the sun goes down. The eye-burning clarity of the light intensifies. The southern rim of the sky glows to a deeper blue, to pale violet, to purple, then thins to grey. Slowly the wind falls, and the still air begins to freeze. The solid eastern ridge is black; it has a bloom on it like the dust on the skin of a grape. The west flares briefly. The long, cold amber of the afterglow casts clear black lunar shadows. There is an animal mystery in the light that sets upon the fields like a frozen muscle that will flex and wake at sunrise. — J.A. Baker

One morning in April, I woke up a little sick. I lay there looking at shadows on the white plaster ceiling. I remembered a long time ago, when I lay in bed beside my mother, watching lights from the street move across the ceiling and down the walls. I felt the sharp nostalgia of train whistles, piano music down a city street, burning leaves. A mild degree of junk sickness always brought me the magic of childhood. It never fails, I thought, just like a shot; I wonder if all junkies score for this wonderful stuff. — William S. Burroughs

All I have is the will to remember. Time revoked/fever dreams - I wake up reaching, afraid I'll forget. Pictures keep the woman young. L.A., fall 1958.
Newsprint: link the dots. Names, events - so brutal they beg to be connected. Years down - the story stays dispersed. The names are dead or too guilty to tell. I'm old, afraid I'll forget: I killed innocent men. I betrayed sacred oaths. I reaped profit from horror.
Fever - that time burning. I want to go with the music - spin, fall with it. — James Ellroy

The body responds to a calorie deficit by slowing down the metabolism and burning muscle tissue. That leads to weakness, sluggishness, slow times. In girls, it can also result in cessation of menstrual periods, which in turn leads to loss of bone density and frequent stress fractures. — Don Kardong

In all the Kalahari Desert, only six true hunters remained. The renegades agreed to let Louis hang around, an offer he took to the extreme; once installed, Louis acted like an unemployed in-law, basically squatting with the Bushmen for the next four years ... He learned to keep his campfire burning and tent zipped even on the most sweltering nights, since packs of hyenas were known to drag people from open shelters and tear out their throats. He leaned that if you stumble upon an angry lioness and her cubs, you stand tall and make her back down, but in the same situation with a rhino, you run like hell. (p. 234) Know why people run marathons? he said ... Because running is rooted in our collective imagination, and our imagination is rooted in running. Language, art, science; space shuttles ... intravascular surgery, they all had their roots in our ability to run. Running was the superpower that made us human- which means it's a superpower all humans possess. (p. 239) — Christopher McDougall

The whiff of ocean on the southern breeze and the smell of burning asphalt brought back memories of summers past. It had seemed as though those sweet dreams of summer would last forever: the warmth of a girl's skin, an old rock 'n' roll song, freshly washed button-down shirt, the odor of cigarette smoke in a pool changing room, a fleeting premonition. Then one summer (when had it been?) the dreams had vanished, never to return. — Haruki Murakami

Jake buried his face in my neck and kissed a burning trail up it and along my jaw. "Should I ride the elevator of our building up and down all night, hoping you'll show?" he asked, his voice husky. "Or should we just plan to meet? — Cindi Madsen

The rims of his eyelids were burning. A blow received straightens a man up and makes the body move forward, to return that blow, or a punch-to jump, to get a hard-on, to dance: to be alive. But a blow received may also cause you to bend over, to shake, to fall down, to die. When we see life, we call it beautiful. When we see death, we call it ugly. But it is more beautiful still to see oneself living at great speed, right up to the moment of death. Detectives, poets, domestic servants and priests rely on abjection. From it, they draw their power. It circulates in their veins. It nourishes them. — Jean Genet

It was a gorgeous calamity in scale, I thought. A lovely misfortune. Immediate and irreversible and very soon forgotten. We needed more troubles like that. Ones like burning supper or coming down with a head cold at an awkward time. I desperately wanted to pass through countless small, endurable problems with the girl sitting next to me. I didn't need much else. — Lyndsay Faye

Now," she said when all was ready and lit the silver sconces on either side of the mirror. What woman would not have kindled to see what Orlando saw then burning in the snow
for all about the looking glass were snowy lawns, and she was like a fire, a burning bush, and the candle flames about her head were silver leaves; or again, the glass was green water, and she a mermaid, slung with pearls, a siren in a cave, singing so that oarsmen leant from their boats and fell down, down to embrace her; so dark, so bright, so hard, so soft, was she, so astonishingly seductive that it was a thousand pities that there was no one there to pt it in plain English, and say outright "Damn it Madam, you are loveliness incarnate," which was the truth. — Virginia Woolf

Baby you're the only light I ever saw. I make the most of all the sadness, you be a bitch because you can. You try to hit me just to hurt me so you leave me feeling dirty 'cause you can't understand. We're going down and you could see it to ... we're slow dancing in a burning room!!! — John Mayer

The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if they had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought
to call it by a prouder name than it deserved
had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until
you know the little tug
the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. — Virginia Woolf

As the floods of God
Wash away sin city
They say it was written
In the page of the Lord
But I was looking
For that great jazz note
That destroyed
The walls of Jericho
The winds of fear
Whip away the sickness
The messages on the tablet
Was valium
As the planets form
That golden cross Lord
I'll see you on
The holy cross roads
After all this time
To believe in Jesus
After all those drugs
I thought I was Him
After all my lying
And a-crying
And my suffering
I ain't good enough
I ain't clean enough
To be Him
The tribal wars
Burning up the homeland
The fuel of evil
Is raining from the sky
The sea of lava
Flowing down the mountain
The time will sleep
Us sinners by
Holy rollers roll
Give generously now
Pass the hubcap please
Thank you Lord — Joe Strummer

Nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, 'Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be late!' (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down — Lewis Carroll

Once a man offered me his heart and I said no. Not because I didn't love him. Not because he was a beast or white - I couldn't love him. Do you understand? In bed while we slept, our bodies inches apart, the dark between our flesh a wick. It was burning down. And he couldn't feel it. — Eduardo C. Corral

There was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!" (when she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural); but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and, burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. — Lewis Carroll

Dear me, what would this barren vocabulary get out of the mightiest spectacle? - the burning of Rome in Nero's time, for instance? Why, it would merely say, 'Town burned down; no insurance; boy brast a window, fireman brake his neck!' Why, THAT ain't a picture! — Mark Twain

It happened as it always did, swallowing her swiftly and completely. Intense. Painful. Quick, vivid colors spun beneath her eyelids. Sounds were sharp inside her skull. Fire shot up through her bones. She may have been screaming and she wouldn't have known. There was smoke in her nose, thick and black, and she couldn't breathe. It stung her eyes and licked at her skin. Wood and metal crashed down as skin blistered and popped and she knew this wasn't her, knew it was someone else, someone with a bigger body, bigger boots and darker jeans, and big ol' hands with scars on the fingers. Men's hands. Nails blunt and dirty with oil and grease and burning and- The cars were on fire. Paper burned and curled and rags ignited, the cement floor pockmarked by flash fires. Meat withered in her nose and she realized it was her. Him. Dancing embers blackened and burned bone. He screamed and she hoped she was not. He writhed and she really hoped she was not. He was dying, dead, and- — Angele Gougeon

The [Victory Gin] was like nitric acid, and moreover, in swallowing it one had the sensation of being hit on the back of the head with a rubber club. The next moment, however, the burning in his belly died down and the world began to look more cheerful. — George Orwell

And his hair was free, no ponytail, no braid, the long thickness of it waved and curled down his back, over his shoulders and next to his face. I felt my lungs start burning. Holy freaking moly ... my husband was hot! — Kristen Ashley

His fingers skimmed down her body, over skin and satin, and she shivered, leaning into him, and she was sure they both tasted like blood and ashes and salt, but it didn't matter; the world, the city, and all it's lights and life seemed to have narrowed down to this, just her and Jace, the burning heart of a frozen world. — Cassandra Clare

The human louse somewhat resembles a tiny lobster, and he lives chiefly in your trousers. Short of burning all your clothes there is no known way of getting rid of him. Down the seams of your trousers he lays his glittering white eggs, like tiny grains of rice, which hatch out and breed families of thier own at horrible speed. I think pacifists might find it helpful to illustrate thier pamphlets with enlarged photographs of lice. Glory of war indeed! In war all solderies are lousy, at the least when it is warm enough. The men that fought at Verdun, at Waterloo, at Flodden, at Senlac, at Thermopylae - every one of them had lice crawling over his testicles. — George Orwell

A lot of us have been raised with the Bible and with movies from Hollywood to believe that God shouts down from the heavens or appears in a burning bush. It's always so dramatic and kind of scary. So that's what we all expect when we're asking God for some answers. — Echo Bodine

If people wrote their reviews on paper and put them into a real, physical library, I am sure that the Goodreads administrators would be very reluctant to pull them down from shelves and burn them. When you can get rid of a piece of writing just by clicking on a few links, there's a temptation to believe that it's less serious. But it isn't. It's just less clear what you've done. — G.R. Reader

Jones described what followed in his official report:
All the oil, the tanks, barrels,engines for pumping, engine-houses, and wagons- in a word, everything used for rising, holding, or sending it off was burned. The smoke is very dense and jet black. The boats, filled with oil in bulk, burst with a report almost equaling artillery, and spread the burning fuel down the river. Before night huge columns of ebony smoke marked the meanderings of the stream as far as the eye could see. By dark the oil from the tanks on the burning creek had reached the river and the whole stream was a sheet of fire. A burning river, carrying destruction to our merciless enemy, was a scene of magnificence that might well carry joy to every patriotic heart.- General William E. " Grumble" Jones — Clint Johnson

He moved into the moonlight. That was no accident. He wanted me to see his eyes burning with fever, his skin flushed, hair sweat soaked. He wanted me to say, "Oh, you're Changing," leap out of bed, and insist on going outside with him, help him through it, a I had the last two times.
I looked at him and I lay back down.
He stepped froward. "Chloe.."
"What?"
"It's ... It's starting again."
"I see that."
I sat up, swung my legs out of bed, and stood. He breathed a sigh of relief. I walked to the window.
"Head down that path about thirty feet, and you'll find a clearing to the left. That should be a good place."
A spark of panic ignited in his eyes. After how he'd treated me today, I should have said "good." But i didn't. Couldn't. It took everything I had to just crawl back into bed. — Kelley Armstrong

Therese leaned closer toward it, looking down at her glass. She wanted to thrust the table aside and spring into her arms, to bury her nose in the green and gold scarf that was tied close about her neck. Once the backs of their hands brushed on the table, and Therese's skin there felt separately alive now, and rather burning. — Patricia Highsmith

All I had to do was die a little, and you get a new planet!"
I expected her to laugh, or at least smile. I did not expect her to slap my arm. "You stupid idiot!" she says, smacking me again. "I don't want the new planet without you!"
Her eyes round as she realizes what she just said. Anytime we'd gotten this close to talking about us before, Amy has shied away from the topic. But now, instead of drawing away from me, she leans closer. Her hair spills over her shoulders, brushing my chest as she leans down. Her fiery joy at learning about the planet is replaced with something else, something warmer like a slow-burning but steady flame.
"It wouldn't be worth it without you," she says, her voice low. — Beth Revis

[ ... ] without much ardor but quite unmistakably, she was writhing her hips as if she were dancing. When he was very close, he saw' her gaping mouth: she was yawning lengthily, insatiably: the great open hole was rocking gently atop die mechanically dancing body. Jean-Marc thought: she's dancing and she's bored.
He reached the seawall: down below, on the beach, he saw men with their heads thrown back releasing kites into the air. They were doing it with passion, and Jean-Marc recalled his old theory: there are three kinds of boredom: passive boredom: the girl dancing and yawning; active boredom: kite-lovers; and rebellious boredom: young people burning cars and smashing shop windows. — Milan Kundera

I'd caught what cameras call an updraft: just as the viewers got over the first rush of interest, others smelled the excitement and tuned in. The surprise of the newcomers strengthened the scent, attracting still more people, in a spiral that could make the feedback escalate out of control. Wave upon wave of astonishment crashed through me. I tried to look down, but the curiosity of millions forced my head back up. I stood there staring at the whale like someone forced to look into the sun, unable to turn away, though my mind cringed from the sight and my eyes were burning. It was not just an updraft, but riptide: feedback so strong that it flooded out my own emotions and derailed my thoughts. The audience grew so large and so greedy that it wouldn't even let me blink. — Raphael Carter

He never cried, not even when his alarm went off. Swaddled in his Moses basket, wires trailing out the bottom, his monitor flashing green, green, green, his entire four-pound body motionless except his eyelids, it seemed he understood everything I was working so hard to understand: his mother's love, his brother's ceasless crying: he was alreday forgiving me my shortcomings as a father; he was a distillation of a dozen generations, all stripped into a single flame and stowed still-burning inside the this slip of his ribs. I'd hold him to the window and he's stare out into the night, blue tributaries of veins pulsing his neck, his big eyelids slipping down now and then, and it would feel as if tethers were falling away, and the two of us were gently rising, through the glass, through the trees, through the interweaving layers of atmosphere, into whatever was beyond the sky. — Anthony Doerr

When they'd gone the old man turned around to watch the sun's slow descent. The Boat of Millions of Years, he thought; the boat of the dying sungod Ra, tacking down the western sky to the source of the dark river that runs through the underworld from west to east, through the twelve hours of the night, at the far eastern end of which the boat will tomorrow reappear, bearing a once again youthful, newly reignited sun.
Or, he thought bitterly, removed from us by a distance the universe shouldn't even be able to encompass, it's a vast motionless globe of burning gas, around which this little ball of a planet rolls like a pellet of dung propelled by a kephera beetle.
Take your pick, he told himself as he started slowly down the hill ... But be willing to die for your choice. — Tim Powers

Randy Edsall is a good, strong, decent man who is working his tail off on behalf of the University of Maryland. And there are more people that want to spend their days burning things down than building it up. At least just stop rooting against him. You know, give the guy a chance. — Kevin Plank

There is a certain period of the soul-culture when it begins to interfere with some of characters of typical beauty belonging to the bodily frame, the stirring of the intellect wearing down the flesh, and the moral enthusiasm burning its way out to heaven, through the emaciation of the earthen vessel; and there is, in this indication of subduing the mortal by the immortal part, an ideal glory of perhaps a purer and higher range than that of the more perfect material form. We conceive, I think, more nobly of the weak presence of Paul than of, the fair and ruddy countenance of David. — John Ruskin

Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. — David Foster Wallace

Are you kidding?" She looked at me as if I'd just dropped from the moon. Her cheeks were bright red.
"What's the problem now?" I demanded.
"Me, go with you to the...the 'Thrill Ride of Love'? How embarrassing is that? What if somebody saw me?"
"Who's going to see you?" But my face was burning now, too. Leave it to a girl to make everything complicated. "Fine," I told her. "I'll do it myself." But when I started down the side of the pool, she followed me, muttering about how boys always messed things up. — Rick Riordan

All at once it was just too much, and Harvey felt something about to snap. He drew back into the shadowy side of the doorway, out of site. Then he slid down the wall to the ground and put his palm over his mouth to hold in his breath and his feelings both. He'd forced in more air then he could hold, and his lungs were burning. More importantly, his heart hurt ... He wished he hadn't eavesdropped. — Yukako Kabei

What shall I do, today? Visit the pub?
Sit down in a garden with a book? A bird
flies past. Where is it headed? It's out of
sight already. The drunkenness of a bird in the
burning azure. The melancholy of a man
in the cool shadow of a mosque. — Omar Khayyam

It doesn't take a genius to pump up the GNP [of a developing country] by burning down rainforests, using slave labor and social repression to keep things in place. — Hazel Henderson

He decided to go over a couple of blocks to Michael's Tavern for something cold, and as he walked beside the road he felt his anger burning up in the heat of noon, and saw himself, as he often did when he was outdoors on hot days, being forged in enormous fires for some purpose beyond his imagining. He was only walking down a street toward a barroom, and yet in his own mind he took his part in the eternity of this place. It seemed to him - it was not the first time - that he belonged in Hell, and would always find himself joyful in its midst. It seemed to him that to touch James Houston was to touch one iota of the vast grit that made the desert and hid the fires at the centre of the earth. — Denis Johnson