Chalkboard Quotes & Sayings

It was a funny, impossible little trap of nature, motherhood. It muddled your brain with floods of hormones and sleep deprivation, kept you constantly busy tending to a million needs, had you forever thinking about the care of others. You could disappear into motherhood, forget completely that once upon a time you were an athlete, a graduate student, that you had ambitions to go into politics, change the world. That once upon a time you wanted to write. And even though motherhood wiped all that away like a cosmic eraser over the chalkboard of your life, it gave you something else - this crazy, blissful, adoring love that splits you open and redefines you from the inside out. — Lisa Unger

I can't stand the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard! — Hugh Jackman

Congratulations on your exciting opportunity!" declared the blob in a voice that sounded like a mix between sandpaper and nails on a chalkboard. It appeared to be wholly ignorant of the way its voice sounded, its words infused with a joyful sincerity Paresh found unsettling.
"Excuse me?" asked Paresh, who had never encountered an alien before but decided that if the first thing they did when they invaded was congratulate you, they couldn't be all that bad.
"We have identified you as a potential host body. We find your body very desirable."
No one was allowed to find his body desirable but his wife, dammit. "Host body?"
"Our analysts have determined that your body's complexion, specific gravity, and the length of its extremities are optimal for our experience."
Sita had never commented on his specific gravity, but Paresh took it as a compliment. She had commented on the length of his extremity. — Sunil Patel

I write stuff down. I have a chalkboard in the kitchen where I will scrawl stuff down if I have a faint outline of an idea. And I'll go into my office or whatever. But that goes from format to format. — John Darnielle

My loneliness ... still comes over me sometimes ... It's a liminal, lost sensation of having wandered wide, endless boulevards, among rows of orange trees, winter butterflies, seasons reversed and out of order, dogs barking from behind fences meant to keep out intruders. It's not the place that impoverishes me but I who bring my own sense of poverty, of loss, to the place. It's a sense of near nothingness, as though I were not so much a blank slate as an erased chalkboard, still bearing illegible smudges of smoothed-over writing. — Marco Roth

I hardly ever watch my own work. I just end up picking myself apart! I can't even stand to hear myself on voicemail. the sound of my own voice is like nails on a chalkboard. The same goes for my records. — Grey DeLisle

He reminded me of the typical soap-opera star. His words were fake, his smile was fake, and his very presence affected me like nails on a chalkboard. — Jamie McGuire

I had a professor in college who returned our graded essays, walked up to the chalkboard, and wrote in huge letters: "SO WHAT?" She threw the piece of chalk down and said, "Ask yourself that every time you turn in a piece of writing." It's a lesson I never forgot. — Austin Kleon

I found college awkward: another teacher, same old chalkboard.
I felt I was shifting backward, when I expected to shoot forward. — MC Paul Barman

His laugh was like nails to a chalkboard. "I cannot remember a time when anything was new to me. I only ever see the tattered remains of what once was. — Diantha Jones

I'm going to die. I'm going to die. I'm going to die-
No.
Heather took a deep breath and tried to think about something else. Anything else.
Like ponies.
Ponies were a happy thought. They were nice and gentle and they never kidnapped people or strapped them to cold warehouse pillars.
Ponies, ponies, ponies-
"Tie him up by the girl and for God's sake don't kill him!" Clare's - er, Raven's - voice was like nails on a chalkboard as it floated into Heather's ears.
Any attempts to think of ponies came to an abrupt halt. — Chelsea Fine

Everyday begins like a blank chalkboard, on which each one of us can write the poem of our present and our dreams for the future. — Ricky Martin

As a child, I was very careful not to erase my mother's writing on the chalkboard because I would miss her. — Joyce Rachelle

The main thing that I loved about living alone was the silence. Sometimes simply talking to people was like listening to white noise. Often I could tune the sound out and be all right, but other times it was like hearing nails on a chalkboard - almost painful. — Adrianne Brooks

Then Glenn Beck burned to death on his Internet program, right in front of his chalkboard, burned so hot his glasses fused to his face, and after that most of the news was less about who did it and more about how not to catch it. — Joe Hill

If I go into a sandwich shop or anywhere that features 'Today's specials' on a chalkboard more than 10 feet away, I have to ask for a printed menu. I smile at people I don't know on the street and ignore those I do. When at home, I often find myself grabbing my 'back-up' glasses to search for the better-loved pair I have left on top of my dresser. — Sloane Crosley

My voice went recently, never happened before, off like a tap. I had to sit in silence for nine days, chalkboard around my neck. Like an old-school mime. Like a kid in the naughty corner. Like a Victorian mute. — Adele

Whenever I get distracted or bored, my eyes wander over to that chalkboard and I read the words. Some of them grow on me, and others annoy me. I attack the latter with eraser and chalk, and keep nudging at them until I like the way they look and sound. Others never make the cut at all and simply get erased. Perhaps one day I will sell these on eBay to RPG players who need names for characters or alien races. — Neal Stephenson

The sky above the buildings outside their apartment windows is the color of a dusty chalkboard, and the light coming down onto the street is exactly the color of boredom. — Jennifer Egan

Alice leaned first one way and then the other, down the line of children. She said, Is everybody understanding this?"
One child said, "The misuse of power is the root of all evil?"
Alice said, "Well ... "
Another child said, "There is no justice on the earth?"
Alice said, "Well ... "
Another child said, "We are all alone in the world?"
Alice said, "Well ... "
Another child said, "The greatest depth of our loss is the beginning of true freedom?"
Alice said, "Well ... "
Another child said, "The disposal of human waste is the responsibility of the brokenhearted?"
These were all phrases Alice had put on the chalkboard after other field trips. It occurred to Alice, hearing these phrases now, that she might have attempted to do too much with a class of fourth graders. She was willing to admit to some excesses.
Alice said, "Just listen. — Lewis Nordan

In our society, the sound of men complaining is like nails on a chalkboard. — Warren Farrell

The Lights ... " said Norv the Raw, as if we might not have noticed.
Before any further statements of the obvious could be made doors of gleaming steel started to slide down from recesses above every entrance above the Gilden Gate. The action accompanied by a squealing noise that set my teeth on edge, the sound of nails down Lundist's chalkboard.
"The doors ... " said Norv. I resisted temptation to beat him around the head. — Mark Lawrence

In the room where I work, I have a chalkboard, and as I'm going along, I write the made-up words on it. A few feet from that chalkboard is a copy of the full 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, to which I refer frequently as a source of ideas and word roots. — Neal Stephenson

"I am not just another notch on your belt?" she asked him. "Of course not." he said as he put a mark on the chalkboard. — Jay Leno

I want you to start a brand-new section in your notebooks and call it Mr. Browne's Precepts." He kept talking as we did what he was telling us to do. "Put today's date at the top of the first page. And from now on, at the beginning of every month, I'm going to write a new Mr. Browne precept on the chalkboard and you're going to write it down in your notebook. Then we're going to discuss that precept and what it means. And at the end of the month, you're going to write an essay about it, about what it means to you. So by the end of the year, you'll all have your own list of precepts to take away with you. — R.J. Palacio

My sister's voice is Minnie Mouse and a dash of fingernails down a chalkboard, but only when she wants to bend me to her will. — Alex Adams

By the way, I'm not just one man with a chalkboard. I'm one man with four chalkboards. — Glenn Beck

V had a passing thought that she used the word "anyway" like an eraser on a crowded chalkboard. She said it whenever she needed to clear off the things she'd just shared to make room for more. — J.R. Ward

[A community chalkboard is] about knowing you're not alone. It's about understanding our neighbors in new and enlightening ways. — Candy Chang

I had a dream about you. It happened during the day. You used a pencil to erase the ink I wrote over the chalkboard since the professor told me 7 + 4 didn't equal 10. You were really cool about it; in fact, you handed me a bucket of ice. Apparently I needed to chill out. — Melody Sohayegh

I used to think that nails-down-a-chalkboard was the worst sound in the world. Then I moved on to people-eating-cereal-on-the-phone. But only this week did I stumble across the rightful winner: it's the sound of a baggage carousel coming to a grinding halt, having reunited every passenger on your flight with their luggage, except for you. — Sloane Crosley

But he's kind of ... extreme. Like he came to school one day painted head-to-toe red, and it wasn't even Spirit Week. He told some people that he was protesting racism and others he was protesting the consumption of meat. Junior year he wore a cape every day for an entire month, cracked a chalkboard in half with a desk, and stole all the dissecting frogs from the science wing and gave them a funeral before burying them in the baseball field. — Jennifer Niven

To write as if your life depended on it; to write across the chalkboard, putting up there in public the words you have dredged; sieved up in dreams, from behind screen memories, out of silence
words you have dreaded and needed in order to know you exist. — Adrienne Rich

Tim's countenance changed from a contemplative glow to a dim scene of a dramatic aftermath; an echo of an unknown song scratched down a chalkboard of an unidentified emotion while scrambled attempts at focus latched on to speculative fragments of logic that accumulated to reach a satisfactory degree of progress to a common ground of comprehensive reasoning. — Calvin W. Allison

I was doing stand-up at a restaurant and there was a chalkboard on the street out front. It said, Soup of the Day: Cream of Asparagus. Ellen DeGeneres. — Ellen DeGeneres

Into the silence rips a sound that makes me let go of Max's hand and cover my ears. It is like the strafe of a bullet, nails on a chalkboard, promises being broken. It's a note I have never heard - this chord of pure pain - and it takes a moment to realize it is coming from me. — Jodi Picoult

A vision flashed across Nick's mind. It was the image of a lipstick kiss his wife left for him on the mirror that morning. It hung there like the single digit sum to the chalkboard-crammed equation of his life. — Gary Ponzo

Here is a quote I used to post on the chalkboard once and a while for my students:

Education is not going to fall out of a tree and bonk you on the head -like an apple- you have to dig for it, much like digging for Gold... — Miles Cobbett

Then there was your voice
Like a windup tin toy
Like the sweetest nails on a chalkboard
That I ever heard — Michelle Dalton

I'm a chalkboard that's been erased over and over again until there's nothing left but a haze of white dust. Before this I never understood how long an hour could take, how many ticks of the second hand are in a minute, how endless the space between seconds can be. — Sarah McCarry

Ever heard someone's voice and it sounded like nails on a chalkboard? I finally know what that feels like. — April Mae Monterrosa

Out this way there was the lonely last pub, the Castle, which now had an angry chalkboard sign up that said "drinkers welcome" to indicate its dissatisfaction with other establishments' fads like pub quizzes, bands, food, and, presumably, conversation. — Paul Cornell