Carved Into Wood Quotes & Sayings

Don't think too much. There'll be time to think later. Analysis won't help. You're chiseling now. You're passing your hands over the wood. Now the page is no longer blank. There's something there. It isn't your business yet to know whether it's going to be prize-worthy someday, or whether it will gather dust in a drawer. Now you've carved the tree. You've chiseled the marbled. You've begun. — Dani Shapiro

Just as our ancient ancestors drew animals on cave walls and carved animals from wood and bone, we decorate our homes with animal prints and motifs, give our children stuffed animals to clutch, cartoon animals to watch, animal stories to read. — Diane Ackerman

I was never good at painting. The great turning point came when I had a block of wood and I carved a shape into the wood and put a small piece of timber into that space - like a negative - and so it made an endless column, only inward. — Carl Andre

She had her eyes on one ship in particular, had been watching, coveting, all day. It was a gorgeous vessel, its hull and masts carved from dark wood and trimmed in silver, its sails shifting from midnight blue to black, depending on the light. A name ran along its hull - Saren Noche - and she would later learn that it meant Night Spire. For now she only knew that she wanted it. But she couldn't simply storm a fully manned craft and claim it as her own. She was good, but she wasn't that good. And then there was the grim fact that Lila didn't technically know how to sail. — V.E Schwab

I envy the table its scars, the scorch marks caused by the hot bread tins. I envy its calm sense of time, and I wish I could say: I did this five years ago. I made this mark, this ring caused by a wet coffee cup, this cigarette burn, this ladder of cuts against the wood's coarse grain. This is where Anouk carved her initials, the year she was six years old, this secret place behind the table leg. I did this on a warm day seven summers ago with the carving knife. Do you remember? Do you remember the summer the river ran dry? Do you remember? I envy the table's calm sense of place. It has been here a long time. It belongs. — Joanne Harris

In the long ago, in the gentle days, Brother Grumlow carved wood, worked with saw and chisel. When hard times come carpenters are apt to get nailed to crosses. Grumlow took up the knife and learned to carve men. He looks soft, my brother of the blade, slight in build, light in colour, weak chin, sad eyes, all of him drooping like the moustache that hangs off his lip. Yet he has fast hands and no fear of a sharp edge. Come against him with just a dagger for company and he will cut you a new opinion. — Mark Lawrence

My goodness, I am made from planets and wood, diamonds and orange peels, now and then, here and there; the iron in my blood was once the blade of a Roman plow; peel back my scalp and you will see my cranium covered in the scrimshaw carved by an ancient sailor who never suspected he was whittling at my skull - no, my blood is a Roman plow, my bones are being etched by men with names that mean sea wrestler and ocean rider and the pictures they are making are pictures of northern stars at different seasons, and the man keeping my blood straight as it splits the soil is named Lucian and he will plant wheat, and I cannot concentrate on this apple, this apple, and the only thing common to all of this is that I feel sorrow so deep, it must be love, and they are upset because while they are carving and plowing they are troubled by visions of trying to pick apples from barrels. — P. Harding

To Judeans the cross was perhaps the most hated symbol of Roman rule. The deadly silhouette had scarred too many hilltops, signifying the most ignoble of deaths, a lingering torment that carried shame for all who witnessed it. And yet here it was, portraying a hope that transcended their worries and fears. Merely looking at this bit of carved wood lifted Linux beyond himself, carried upon a promise as strong as it was eternal. — Davis Bunn

I'm a very compulsive person, so I spend most of my time drawing or writing my diary, patching things up and carving bits of wood - I've carved two of my guitars. — Lou Doillon

The greatest minds and the most advanced engineering went into its creation. They carved the prison out of solid rock from the face of the
mountains just north of the lake. They sealed it not only with metal, stone, and wood but also with ancient and powerful enchantments. In the end, when it was finished, it was believed to be the most secure prison in the world."
"They must have had some really nasty criminals back then to go to so much trouble," Hadrian said.
"No," Myron replied matter-of-factly, "just one."
"One?" Alric asked. "An entire prison designed to hold just one man?"
"His name was Esrahaddon. — Michael J. Sullivan

I want to be the girl Zhara once was.
Hellbeast
Maybe I am, already.
I go to Astrid's drawer. I take: her knife.
In the siding of the drawer, I notice her scrawl carved into the wood. She wrote:
To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house. - Isaiah 42:7
Amen, sister.
Someone should pay for their sins. — Rachel Cohn

I'll give my jewels for a set of beads,
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage,
My gay apparel for an almsman's gown,
My figured goblets for a dish of wood,
My scepter for a palmer's walking staff
My subjects for a pair of carved saints
and my large kingdom for a little grave. — William Shakespeare

The staircase was a mass of rotting wood, carved with such cruel-looking mermaids that Mr. Jelliby was afraid to put his hand on the banister. — Stefan Bachmann

The word 'iconic' is used too frequently - an icon is a statue carved in wood. It was shocking at first, when I got that reference. It was a responsibility, and it's impossible to live up to - you're supposed to be dead, for one thing. — Debbie Harry

I made it when I was young, by my standards, after years of playing on various harps. I shaped its pieces out of Ymris oak beside night fires in far, lonely places where I heard no man's voice but my own. I carved on each piece the shapes of leaves, flowers, birds I saw in my wanderings. In An, I searched three months for strings for it. I found them finally; sold my horse for them. They were strung to the broken harp of Ustin of Aum, who died of sorrow over the conquering of Aum. Its strings were tuned to his sorrow, and its wood was split like his heart. I strung my harp with them, matching note for note in the restringing. And then I returned them to my joy." Morgon — Patricia A. McKillip

Plain Kate greased her boots and bandaged her feet, and soon she would walk like a Roamer born. She helped Drina with the water and the wood, and in the long, wet evenings she carved objarka burji.
Plain Kate carved fast and learned slowly. She was bewildered most of the time, but Daj called her mira again, and when she asked Drina what it meant, the girl replied, "It means she likes you. It means your family."
Family.
It could have kept her walking for a hundred miles. And she did walk far. — Erin Bow

Rotten wood cannot be carved. — Confucius

Her whole body tenses, heaves, tries to scream, and her eyes burn with tears of frustration and terror.
In the moonlit shadows of her bedroom, she hears a cat begin to purr.
Kara runs, shaking, out into the short corridor.
The cats are black and white, ginger and gray, fat and starved. They sit on tables, on chairs, on tatami mats. One sits so still beside a lamp that it looks carved from wood. She wants her father, wants to go into his room and wake him, but three of them sit, barring his door.
As one, they follow her with their eyes as Kara weaves through the living room.
As one, they hiss.
As one, they begin to follow, stalking her. — Thomas Randall

For three thousand years it had been the concent's policy to accept any and all folding chairs and collapsible tables made available to it, and never throw one away. On one and only one occasion, this had turned out to be a wise policy: the millennial Apert of 3000, when 27,500 pilgrims had swarmed in through the gates to enjoy a square meal and see the End of the World. We had folding chairs made of bamboo, machined aluminum, aerospace composites, injection-molded poly, salvaged rebar, hand-carved wood, bent twigs, advanced newmatter, tree stumps, lashed sticks, brazed scrap metal, and plaited grass. Tabletops could be made of old-growth lumber, particle board, extruded titanium, recycled paper, plate glass, rattan, or substances on whose true nature I did not wish to speculate. Their lengths ranged from two to twenty-four feet and their weights from that of a dried flower to that of a buffalo. — Neal Stephenson

I got killed against Morimoto. I brought out white plates with food; I thought that was really nice. He brings out sculptures of ice, Noah's ark made of balsa wood that he carved at his restaurant downstairs, smoking trees ... When I saw that, I looked at my sous chef and I'm like, we're toast. — Geoffrey Zakarian

Truths were carved from the identical wood as were lies
words
and so sank or floated with identical ease. But since truths were carved by the World, they rarely appeased Men and their innumerable vanities. Men hhad no taste for facts that did not ornament or enrich, and so they willfully
if not knowingly
panelled their lives with shining and intricate falsehoods. — R. Scott Bakker

Saying that, he was suddenly himself again, despite his lunatic hair and eyes: a man whose personal dignity went so deep as to be nearly invisible ...
It was more than diginity. Integrity? Wholeness? Like a block of wood not carved.
The infinite possibility, the unlimited and unqualified wholeness of being of the uncommitted, the nonacting, the uncarved: the being who, being nothing but himself, is everything. — Ursula K. Le Guin

"Out of any piece of wood a god may be carved. — Arthur Schopenhauer

On the top of my desk there are initials, carved into the wood, and dates ... This carving, done with a pencil dug many times into the warn varnish of the desk, has the pathos of all vanished civilizations. It's like a handprint on stone. Whoever made this was once alive. — Margaret Atwood

Just as the Mediterranean separated France from the country Algiers, so did the Mississippi separate New Orleans proper from Algiers Point. The neighborhood had a strange mix. It looked seedier and more laid-back all at the same time. Many artists lived on the peninsula, with greenery everywhere and the most beautiful and exotic plants. The French influence was heavy in Algiers, as if the air above the water had carried as much ambience as it could across to the little neighborhood. There were more dilapidated buildings in the community, but Jackson and Buddy passed homes with completely manicured properties, too, and wild ferns growing out of baskets on the porches, as if they were a part of the architecture. Many of the buildings had rich, ornamental detail, wood trim hand-carved by craftsmen and artisans years ago. The community almost had the look of an ailing beach town on some forgotten coast. — Hunter Murphy

But here there were houses full of *stuff*, fancy sheets woven with silk floss as soft as a baby's bum; fancy washstands carved of dark wood that glowed like cherries where the light hit it; curtains the shade of the summer sky, heavy and glossy and smooth to the touch. The velvet-flocked wallpaper was so soft beneath her fingertips that had her eyes been closed, she might have thought she was brushing the belly of a rabbit.
And the stool in the corner! One wouldn't imagine you'd get too fancy with such a piece, but this stool was covered with embroidery so fine that her knuckles ached just looking at the stitches. Unbelievable. The rich even spoiled their arses! — Meredith Duran

Swirls of antique stained glass, blazes of brass, forests of carved wood and waterfalls of crystal combine to make up the city's most fabulously festive interior. — Mimi Sheraton

Whenever you leave cleared land, when you step from some place carved out, plowed, or traced by a human and pass into the woods, you must leave something of yourself behind. It is that sudden loss, I think, even more than the difficulty of walking through undergrowth, that keeps people firmly fixed to paths. In the woods, there is no right way to go, of course, no trail to follow but the law of growth. You must leave behind the notion that things are right. Just look around you. Here is the way things are. Twisted, fallen, split at the root. What grows best does so at the expense of what's beneath. A white birch feeds on the pulp of an old hemlock and supports the grapevine that will slowly throttle it. In the dead wood of another tree grow fungi black as devil's hooves. Overhead the canopy, tall pines that whistle and shudder and choke off light from their own lower branches. (from "Revival Road") — Louise Erdrich

Her rocking chair of carved wood and woven cane tilted between this world and another that was beyond imagining, wafting scents of talcum and medicinal tea, auras of lace-edged santos whose eyes rolled up to a heaven too close for comfort. — Sonia Sotomayor

Cedar groaned and picked up her spoon with her bright blue fingers. While the rest of her was the fiery brown of the cedar wood she'd been carved from, her fingers were covered in blue paint up to her knuckles. You could tell a lot about Cedar's current art projects by the color of her fingers. She didn't mind getting messy. She just sanded the paint off. — Shannon Hale

And how does one basically recognize good development? In that a well-developed man does our senses good: that he is carved from wood which is hard, delicate, and sweet-smelling, all at the same time. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I was terrified of my weakness, of my sharp tongue, of
my every flaw. I was terrified that this moment, my chance to
live in happiness for however short a time we may have had,
would be ruined because I was simply not carved out of the
same wood as happiness, and that my grain was too twisted
to ever take its form. — Amy Lane

We are, in a certain way, defined as much by our potential as by its expression. There is a great difference between an acorn and a little bit of wood carved into an acorn shape, a difference not always readily apparent to the naked eye. The difference is there even if the acorn never has the opportunity to plant itself and become an oak. Remembering its potential changes the way in which we think of the acorn and react to it. How we value it. If an acorn were conscious, knowing its potential would change the way that it might think and feel about itself. — Rachel Naomi Remen

Who knows more of gods than I? Horse gods and fire gods, gods made of gold with gemstone eyes, gods carved of cedar wood, gods chiseled into mountains, gods of empty air ... I know them all. I have seen their peoples garland them with flowers, and shed the blood of goats and bulls and children in their names. And I have heard the prayers, in half a hundred tongues. Cure my withered leg, make the maiden love me, grant me a healthy son. Save me, succor me, make me wealthy ... protect me! Protect me from mine enemies, protect me from the darkness, protect me from the crabs inside my belly, from the horselords, from the slavers, from the sellswords at my door. Protect me from the Silence." He laughed. "Godless? Why, Aeron, I am the godliest man ever to raise sail! You serve one god, Damphair, but I have served ten thousand. From Ib to Asshai, when men see my sails, they pray. — George R R Martin