Chipped Quotes & Sayings

Autobiography is a precious broken vase pieced painstakingly together still showing the chips and cracks. It is a broken truth revealing snapshots of a cracked and chipped life pieced pieced painstakingly together. — Chloe Thurlow

To give so much of yourself to a cause, to believe in something so wholeheartedly, so blindly, that you willingly suffer the scars, and you do not complain when the little parts of you are chipped away. You keep telling yourself that it is for a greater good, that there is a higher purpose. And you do not think to read deeper until there is so little of you left that you cannot survive without it and be the same person. And it is then, when The Cause, with its greedy mouth, tries to take more from you, tries to take that part of you that you cannot give away, it is only then that you realize all of your sacrifices have been for nothing. You have given yourself to a fraud. And what is left to replace what has been taken is not a hero's pride but a bitter emptiness that sours even that last little core of yourself that you cling to. — D.J. Molles

I took the broom and made a wild sweep along the workbench, and an edge of the unwieldy head sent a tray of tools flying. Patrick picked up a chipped chisel and looked at me as if I had attacked his son.
Have you never used a broom before? — Laurie R. King

We're not falling apart; we're just chipped a little bit. — Joanne Huist Smith

Inch by inch, they chipped away until soon there would be nothing left to salvage. — Maya Banks

The site of his thinking and writing was a small office wedged in one corner of his shaggy house, on whose door he'd installed a lock to keep his sons out. They gathered wistfully outside it, his boys, with their chipped, heartbreaking faces. They were not permitted to so much as knock upon the door to the room in which he thought and wrote about art, but Ted hadn't found a way to keep them from prowling outside it, ghostly feral creatures drinking from a pond in moonlight, their bare feet digging at the carpet, their fingers sweating on the walls, leaving spoors of grease that Ted would point out each week to Elsa, the cleaning woman. He would sit in his office, listening to the movements of his boys, imagining that he felt their hot, curious breath. I will not let them in, he would tell himself. I will sit and think about art. But he found, to his despair, that often he couldn't think about art. He thought about nothing at all. — Jennifer Egan

so alone was almost spiritual - but something in Abby's voice makes her pause. "You might have a better idea," she says. "But you two were 'best friends,'" Abby says mockingly. She taps ash from her cigarette into a chipped teacup on the table. Kathryn looks at her. "I thought so." She swallows hard. "But — Christina Baker Kline

She had loved and been loved, but she felt in this moment of embrace as though there were nothing in her not shaped by love, from the chipped purple paint on her toenails to the fuzz in her belly button to her scarecrow hair escaping from Roselyn's ministrations and unguents. She was love, standing on love, breathing love, digesting love. — Thomm Quackenbush

You can't cure a chipped plate. All you can do is live with it or throw it out. — Patricia Cornwell

Churchmen are quick to defend religious freedom; lawyers were never so universally aroused as by President Roosevelt's Court bill; newspapers are most alert to civil liberties when there is a hint of press censorship in the air. And educators become perturbed at every effort to curb academic freedom. But too seldom do all of these become militant when ostensibly the rights of only one group are threatened. They do not always react to the truism that when the rights of any individual or group are chipped away, the freedom of all erodes. — Earl Warren

She resents the chipped paint of the table and the dingy closet they call a dressing room. (Dark City Lights) — Annette Meyers

Oscore is my favorite model," he says. "He has a very strange face. I don't know if you notice. God was very drunk when he made him. A little bit of this. A little bit of that. Brown eye. Green eye. Crooked nose, crooked mouth. Lunatic smile. Chipped tooth. Scar here, scar there. It is a puzzle. — Jandy Nelson

Everybody's talking about the President, we all chipped in for a bag of cement. — Paul McCartney

Hannah kept her eyes forward, trained on two rows of rusted showerheads stuck in facing walls. Sixteen in all. The room was paved with white tile, chipped and discolored by age and use. — Rebecca Forster

The situation was primordial. The Man beneath prevailed for a moment over the civilised superstructure, the Draper. He pushed at the pedals with archaic violence. So Palaeolithic man may have ridden his simple bicycle of chipped flint in pursuit of his exogamous affinity. — H.G.Wells

In archaeology, context is the basis of many discoveries that are imputed to the deliberate workings of intelligence. If I find a rock chipped in such a way as to give it a sharp edge, and the discovery is made in a cave, I am seduced into ascribing this to tool use by distant, fetid and furry ancestors. — Seth Shostak

From within that chipped gilt frame all the beauty, all the grandeur of religion looked darkly out upon the pink room. — Aldous Huxley

But playing your music as loud as you want and coming home drunk aren't real life. Real life, it turns out, is diapers and lawnmowers, decks that need painting, a wife that needs to be listened to, kids that need to be taught right from wrong, a checkbook, an oil change, a sunset behind a mountain, laughter at a kitchen table, too much wine, a chipped tooth, and a screaming child. — Donald Miller

Just like that, she chipped away my resolve, crumbling me in her hands like a weakened rock. When it comes down to it, all I wanna do is please her, rip away the pain that haunts her days and terrorizes her nights. That pain, the one that burns like acid behind her eyes, kills me. I need to make this jewel happy, even if it comes at the expense of me being miserable. — Gail McHugh

I don't trust happiness. I turn it over as if it were a glass at a flea market or a rug at a souk, looking for chipped rims or loose threads. — Jennifer Weiner

In an ideal world the scientist should find a method to prevent the most severe forms of autism but allow the milder forms to survive. After all, the really social people did not invent the first stone spear. It was probably invented by an Aspie who chipped away at rocks while the other people socialized around the campfire. Without autism traits we might still be living in caves. — Temple Grandin

With everyone else, he was chipped ice on a mountain. With her sister, he was a summer breeze across the sea. Alas, — Renee Ahdieh

The end goal is to get everybody chipped, to control the whole society, to have the bankers and the elite people control the world. — Aaron Russo

The hidden master of the Filipino-style Chinese donut is Benito Taganes, proprietor and king of the bubbling vats at Mabuhay. Mabuhay, dark, cramped, invisible from the street, stays open all night long. It drains the bars and cafes after hours, concentrates the wicked and the guilty along its chipped Formica counter, and thrums with the gossip of criminals, policemen, shtarkers and shlemiels, whores and night owls. With the fat applauding in the fryers, the exhaust fans roaring, and the boom box blasting the heartsick kundimans of Benito's Manila childhood, the clientele makes free with their secrets. A golden mist of kosher oil hangs in the air and baffles the senses. Who could overhear with ears full of KosherFry and the wailing of Diomedes Maturan? — Michael Chabon

I wanted a little of that swagger that comes with being able to gaze at a far horizon through eyes of chipped granite and say with a slow, manly sniff, Yeah, I've shit in the woods. — Bill Bryson

; the chipped plates might have been disinterred from some kitchen midden near an inhabited lake; and the chops recalled times more ancient still. They brought forcibly to one's mind the night of ages when the primeval man, evolving the first rudiments of cookery from his dim consciousness, scorched lumps of flesh at a fire of sticks ... — Joseph Conrad

Everything is accessible to everyone all the time, and I think there are wondrous things to treasure with what the Internet has made available to journalists. But I think it's also had some effects that are less pleasant. It has chipped away at a sense of privacy and secrecy. — Bill Keller

My best has to be for Barcelona against Villarreal in 2006 - that is the one I am asked most about, and it is the one I am most proud of. Xavi chipped the ball to me, I chested it down, twisted and hit an overhead kick. It was the final goal in a 4-0 win. — Ronaldinho

The tide goes out imperceptibly. The boulders show and seem to rise up and the ocean recedes leaving little pools, leaving wet weed and moss and sponge, iridescence and brown and blue and China red. On the bottoms lie the incredible refuse of the sea, shells broken and chipped and bits of skeleton, claws, the whole sea bottom a fantastic cemetery on which the living scamper and scramble. — John Steinbeck

I wouldn't pick you as the kind of man who'd care to die nicely."
He leant forward, lacing his hands together. "How do you think I'd like to die?"
"In a blaze of ice and fury." He was from Pirenti, after all.
The corner of his mouth hitched up at that, but it was a humourless expression, one filled with chipped edges and painted regrets. "And you?" he asked. " How would you like to die, Avery of Kaya?"
I picked up the oars and started to row.
"I'm already dead, Ambrose. — Charlotte McConaghy

I love you as only a lover can. Less depressed, less obsessed, I am better than ever able to love your hair, which has blond lights in it, and your remarkable eyes, the blue of my Nana's chipped china. I love the smell of your skin, impossible to describe except to say it's a confluence of many pungent things, and I love your chest with the disks of your nipples, and your thighs striated with sweat, and your back and your breath while you are above me. — Lauren Slater

With temerity and defiance, obstinance and patience, she chipped away at every hard edge of me until there was nothing left but the truths I feared. The bent and broken. — K. Bromberg

There are a good many pious people who are as careful of their religion as of their best service of china, only using it on holy occasions, for fear it should get chipped or flawed in working-day wear. — Douglas William Jerrold

I have all of the Apple products. Everything I've ever written, I've written on a Mac. My first computer, my roommates and I chipped in, and we got that first Macintosh - 128K. It had as much memory as a greeting card that plays music. — Aaron Sorkin

The table was set for two, as usual, with one exception. Right smack in the middle was an old chipped crock cookie jar. Glazing cracks started at the bottom and wove their way in different directions, some on the sides, with others winding their way around in circles.
"Are we having cookies with our waffles?" Jill asked.
"Look at it closely," Sawyer grinned, "Pay especially close attention to the lid."
"Daisies," She smiled.
"I would have gone out into the pasture and picked some wild ones for you, but it's the wrong time of year. That's all I could find with a daisy on it," Sawyer said — Carolyn Brown

Glass is transparent, right? And fragile. That's the fundamental nature of glass. And that's why objects that are made of glass have to be handled with care. After all, if they end up smashed or cracked or chipped, then they're good for nothing, right, you just have to chuck them away.
Before, we used to have a kind of glass that couldn't be broken. A truth so hard and clear it might as well have been made of glass. So when you think about it, it was only when we were shattered that we proved we had souls. That what we really were was humans made of glass. — Han Kang

I guess I just prefer to see the dark side of things. The glass is always half-empty. And cracked. And I just cut my lip on it. And chipped a tooth. — Janeane Garofalo

A chipped pebble is almost part of the hand it never leaves. A thrown spear declares a sort of independence the moment it is released ... The whole trend in technology has been to devise machines that are less and less under direct control and more and more seem to have the beginning of a will of their own. — Isaac Asimov

Later that night, when we left the prayer room, we felt something in Upper Room shift. Couldn't explain it, something just felt different. We knew the walls of Upper Room like the walls of our own homes. We'd soft-stepped down hallways as the choir practiced, noticing that corner in front of the instrument closet where the paint had chipped, or the tile in the ladies' room that had been laid crooked. We'd spend decades studying the splotch that looked like an elephant's ear on the ceiling above the water fountain. And we knew the exact spot on the sanctuary carpet where Elise Turner had knelt the night before she killed herself. (The more spiritual of us even swore they could still see the indented curve from her knees.) Sometimes we joked that when we died, we'd all become part of these walls, pressed down flat like wallpaper. — Brit Bennett

But those coins are wishes! You're stealing other people's wishes!"
The look Matteo gave her was so flinty, she could have chipped a tooth on it. "If you have money to waste on wishes, you don't need the wishes as badly as I need the money. — Katherine Rundell

He laughed, and the sound startled me. I turned back, taking in the sight of his hair blowing in the wind and the huge smile on his face. He looked so carefree. And his laugh...oh, Lord, his laugh. It melted my heart a little and chipped away at the carefully constructed wall I'd built. — Kelley R. Martin

I remembered looking down into her face, her eyes bright with new adventure and a little piece of my heart fell into her hands. My heart tumbled in pieces at her feet as she chipped away at it with her wondrous ways, and it didn't form a whole again until half a year had passed and the end product was a living, beating organ in the palm of her hands. — Fisher Amelie

It drains the bars and cafes after hours, concentrates the wicked and the guilty along its chipped Formica counter, and thrums with the gossip of criminals, policemen, shtarkers,and schlemiels, whores and night owls ... three or four floaters, solitaries, and drunks between benders lean against the sparkly resin counter, sucking the tea from their shtekelehs and working the calulations of their next big mistake. — Michael Chabon

You don't have to lie to me to be nice, Jake. You can just say, 'Wow, your nails look crappy.'" I did my best boy voice.
"Well, I will tell you that's a crappy imitation of my voice." He smiled so wide I could see his eyetooth from across the table. "But you've got to know you're totally hot, chipped nails and all." He burned beet red all the way to the roots of his hair. "Man, you get me to say some embarrassing stuff, Brenna." He rubbed his hand on the back of his neck.
"Hey, don't blame me when you feel moved to make strange declarations. — Liz Reinhardt

Why does everything you know, and everything you've learned, confirm you in what you believed before? Whereas in my case, what I grew up with, and what I thought I believed, is chipped away a little and a little, a fragment then a piece and then a piece more. With every month that passes, the corners are knocked off the certainties of this world: and the next world too. — Hilary Mantel

It's a very odd feeling for a daughter to see her mother blush over a man."
"You wouldn't?" Alan skimmed a thumb over her cheekbone. Shelby forgot her mother altogether.
"Wouldn't what?"
"Blush," he said softly, tracing her jawline. "Over a man."
"Once-I was twelve and he was thirty-two." She had to talk-just keep talking to remember who she was. "He,uh, came to fix the water heater."
"How'd he make you blush?"
"He grinned at me.He had a chipped tooth I thought was really sexy."
On a quick ripple of laughter, Alan kissed her just as Myra opened the door.
"Well,well." She didn't bother to disguise a self-satisfied smile. "Good evening.I see you two have met."
"What makes you think that?" Shelby countered breezily as she stepped inside.
Myra glanced from one to the other. "Do I smell strawberries?" she asked sweetly.
"Your lamp." Shelby gave her a bland look and indicated the box Alan carried. "Where would you like it? — Nora Roberts

A bird painted not with beauty but with all the dirt and wounds collected in a long hard life, in battle, in love, with torn feathers and a busted leg and a chipped beak and one of its eyes half closed; and yet a bird of deeper loveliness for all of that. — Jeff Noon

It felt like he'd been pushing himself into my life from the very first time I dreamt of him. Ever since, my life had slowly chipped away into pieces that didn't seem to fit together anymore. I was afraid that if they ever came together, it would be far from the life i hoped it would be. — L.J. Kentowski

For the past two centuries, those who do not prize freedom have chipped away at every major clause of our Constitution until today we face a crisis of great dimensions. — Ezra Taft Benson

They found each other's hands in the dark, and an angel with chipped marble wings watched over them as they slept. — Mindy McGinnis

I have loved badly, loved the great Too soon, withdrawn my words too late; And eaten in an echoing hall Alone and from a chipped plate The words that I withdrew too late. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Pausing on the threshold, he looked in, conscious not so much of the few familiar sticks of furniture - the trucklebed, the worn strip of Brussels carpet, the chipped blue-banded ewer and basin, the framed illuminated texts on the walls - as of a perfect hive of abhorrent memories.
That high cupboard in the corner, from which certain bodiless shapes had been wont to issue and stoop at him cowering out of his dreams; the crab-patterned paper that came alive as you stared; the window cold with menacing stars; the mouseholes, the rusty grate - trumpet of every wind that blows - these objects at once lustily shouted at him in their own original tongues.
("Out Of The Deep") — Walter De La Mare

A great deal of stupidity has chipped away at the massive advantages of Western civilization, which could terminally decline if it remains on the current path. But these problems can be solved - and swiftly - if the right leaders emerge. — Paul Singer

'J'eet jet?' is still the standard way for a Pittsburgher to ask if you're ready for a meal, but the meal itself is no longer limited to chipped ham and an Iron City beer. — Bill Dedman

Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they'd get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist. — Daniel Woodrell

Casting my eyes on Mr. Wemmick as we went along, to see what he was like in the light of day, I found him to be a dry man, rather short in stature, with a square wooden face, whose expression seemed to have been imperfectly chipped out with a dull-edged chisel. There were some marks in it that might have been dimples, if the material had been softer and the instrument finer, but which, as it was, were only dints. The chisel had made three or four of these attempts at embellishment over his nose, but had given them up without an effort to smooth them off. — Charles Dickens

Visualize the conversations your friends have about how they all knew you'd never be able to make it. Imagine having to explain quitting to every single person who knew you were going to BUD/S. You have to face them. You have to live with many of them. Imagine trying to find a way to overcome the shame of failing. How long is it going to take for them to stop thinking of you as a failure, a quitter, a pussy? How long until anyone takes anything you say seriously again? Visualize being sent to a crappy ship, an undesignated Seaman. Imagine, if you will, a life below deck where you spend 18 hours chipping paint and repainting the spot you chipped. Imagine not seeing the sun for days or weeks at a time. This picture is worse than anything in BUD/S. Experience the shame and humiliation of quitting once in your head. Feel how much you hate yourself for giving up on your dream. Then never, ever, ever experience it in real life. — Mark Owens

I have attended weddings, with chipped nail paints.
I have worn same blue denim for days in a row.
I have not followed etiquette sometimes, I was too happy to bother.
I have picked up fights, ugly ones too.
I have been notorious because I stood up for myself.
I have flaws. I am flawed.
But I have come to realize,
It's okay to life a life others don't understand.
My life should be my LIBERATION,
Not anyone's REGULATION. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Fear transforms your body like an inept sculptor does a perfect block of stone...It's just that you're chipped away at from within, and no one sees how many splinters and layers have been taken off you. You become ever thinner and more brittle inside, until eve the slightest emotion bowls you over. One hug, and you think you're going to shatter and be lost. — Nina George

He tilted the box toward a chipped Pottery Barn blue bowl, and the little blue clumps, like cerulean rat turds, tumbled out, hitting the porcelain with a surprisingly metallic thud. It sounded like pennies dumped into an aluminum trash can. — Eric Spitznagel

People don't like to guess. It's easier to know something by how it immediately appears. Dark, hard metal is known as it appears, and so dark, hard people are built from it. Marble is smooth and pale and bright like the faces chipped into it. But that's something about life, what you think you know about a thing is always the first obstacle you face when trying to get to know it better. If they could speak, do you think they'd all be the same? — Devon Michael

They were like a couple of asteroids that had collided, she and Owen, briefly sparking before ricocheting off again, a little chipped, maybe even a little scarred, but with miles and miles still to go. — Jennifer E. Smith

The American Indians were Communists. They were. Every anthropologist will tell you they were Communists. No rich, no poor. If somebody needed something the community chipped in. — Pete Seeger

Inside, he had forgotten what it was like to hear a woman's voice, listen to the sort of complaints that only women could have. Bad haircuts. Rude store clerks. Chipped nails. Men wanted to talk about things: cars, guns, snatch. They didn't discuss their feelings unless it was anger, and even that didn't last for long because generally they started doing something about it. — Karin Slaughter

What we did do was got to Chinese school. Whether you lived in D.C., Ann Arbor, New York, or Orlando, if there were Chinese people, there were Chinese schools where you went every Sunday to take Chinese Language and cultural classes. Chinese people would drive hours from every direction to take their kids to school. All teachers were volunteers and the parents chipped in to keep it going. While the rest of America went to church, we learned how to read right to left. — Eddie Huang

Ragged clothes?" He grabbed my hand and examined it. "Chipped nails? Those aren't enough to disguise what's inside. You'll always be you, Lia. You can't run from that. — Mary E. Pearson

My dad's been having a hard time lately. Keeps on losing his keys. Can't hang on to a set of keys to save his life. And he has tried everything too: little hook next to the door, little bowl next to his bed, keychain makes a noise when you whistle. Nothing worked. So finally, this year for his birthday, the whole family chipped in - and we put him in a home. — Anthony Jeselnik

Well I'm not going to hope that you get hurt, but if you do, remember that you're my damsel in distress, and no one is allowed to carry you."

"I don't remember signing a contract."

"All the more reason to promise me now."

"What if you're not around when I get hurt?"

"Send word, I'll come running."

"How big an injury does it have to be? Because sometimes I do this thing when I stand up too quickly and my ankle kind of twists a little---"

"Sounds serious. You don't want to put any weight on that. I'd better carry you the next time that happens."

"What if I skin my knee?"

"I'll carry you."

"Charley horse?"

"I'll carry you."

"Chipped toenail?"

"Not worth taking a risk. I'll carry you."

I grin at him [...] I have to admit -- he's funnier and smarter than I've given him credit for. — Claire LaZebnik

I adore my mother, but I fear for her. She seems helpless, caught in the vortex of my father's dark moods and unpredictable behavior. I try never to displease her. I love the scent of Juicy Fruit gum on her breath and the hint of Joy perfume on her neck, the crisp crinkle of her hair stiff with aerosol spray and the chipped pink polish on her nails. — Kristen Iversen

I don't know where that strength went, I don't remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it. The — Paula Hawkins

When did you become so weak?" I don't know. I don't know where that strength went, I don't remember losing it. I think that over time it got chipped away, bit by bit, by life, by the living of it. — Paula Hawkins

Mary stood beside Wilbur, waiting as he sewed Henrietta's abdomen closed. She wanted to run out of the morgue and back to the lab, but instead, she stared at Henrietta's arms and legs - anything to avoid looking into her lifeless eyes. Then Mary's gaze fell on Henrietta's feet, and she gasped: Henrietta's toenails were covered in chipped bright red polish. "When I saw those toenails," Mary told me years later, "I nearly fainted. I thought, Oh jeez, she's a real person. I started imagining her sitting in her bathroom painting those toenails, and it hit me for the first time that those cells we'd been working with all this time and sending all over the world, they came from a live woman. I'd never thought of it that way." — Rebecca Skloot

I saw the logic that they used, and the death of a thousand cuts as experimental scientists slowly chipped away at the belief that the world was an inexplicably powerful, magical place. Ultimately they failed, though. The magic never really went away. It waited, quietly, for people to return to it when they found the science wanting. — Deborah Harkness

Catcher in the Rye had a profound impact on me-the idea that we all have lots of dreams that are slowly being chipped away as we grow up. — Judd Nelson

She walks,
on the streets,
with a face that,
doesn't belong.
It smiles more than,
many put together,
whole day long.
Her heart misfit,
a little chipped.
And she likes to,
call it once broken,
but now stitched. — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

The girl's arms jutted out at awkward angles, not quite hands on the hips belligerent but not relaxed either, as if they weren't all the way under the girl's control. "I came to find you."
"I didn't know. If I'd known ... "
"It doesn't matter now." The girl's attention was unwavering. "This is where you are."
"It is at that."
The girl looked sad. Her soil-dark eyes were clouded over by tears she hadn't been able to shed. "I came here to find you."
"I couldn't have known." Maylene reached out and plucked a leaf from the girl's hair.
"Doesn't matter." She lifted a dirty hand, fingernails flashing chipped red polish, but she didn't seem to know what to do with her outstretched fingers. Little girl fears warred with teenage bravado. Bravado won. "I'm here now."
"All right, then." Maylene walked down the path toward one of the gates. She pulled the key from her handbag, twisted it in the lock, and pushed open the gate. — Melissa Marr

This is not exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to miss lunch," Alex said grumpily forty minutes later. He shifted uncomfortably and tried to see what I was doing.
I stared him back into submission. "Wait."
The art room is usually empty Thursday afternoons except for me. Ms. Evers leaves early to teach her UArts class and looks up.Of course, I am one of the few entrusted with the Secret Location of the Key.
A few feet away from where I sat perched on a stool,Alex was posed on the anchient chaise we use for figure drawing. It's a relic, probably from the Palladinetti years: chipped mahogany and dusty velvet, what little remaining stuffing pokes out from a century of holes. I was probably luxurious once. Now it's like sitting on a slightly smelly board. But I'd wanted to sketch Alex as I so often saw him, reclining with his head propped on one hand,listening or talking or coaxing me to put down the glass, already,Ella,and come here. — Melissa Jensen

Someone told me at the beginning of that summer that I would come face-to-face with death because of a Romeo and Juliet romance, I would never have believed it. But it wasn't like that summer went at all like I had planned in the first place. The Columbia recruiter sat across from me, her dark bushy eyebrows rising as high as they could go while she stared down at my application. "So, Alex, I see that you don't have any extracurricular activities." I shrugged. I was sitting in one of those uncomfortable orange plastic chairs in the guidance counselor's office, wishing I could just disappear. I was the first student in all of Winnebago High School's history to have a recruiter from an Ivy League school visit. By the way she looked at our tiny school with its ancient, chipped walls and rusted lockers, I could see why nobody had wanted to visit in the past. — Magan Vernon

O'Shaughnessy is hitting Denholt on the side of his head with his free arm, great, walloping, pile-driver blows. The two of them stagger together, like partners in a crazy dance. Glass is breaking all around them. Gray smoke from the six shots, pink-and-white dust from the chipped brick-and-plaster walls, swirl around them in a rainbow haze. Something vividly green flares up from one of the overturned retorts, goes right out again. O'Shaughnessy tears the emptied gun away, flings it off somewhere. More breaking glass, and this time a tart pungent smell that makes the nostrils sting. The crunch of pulverized tube glass underfoot makes it sound as if they were scuffling in sand or hard-packed snow. ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

They have courses teaching you foreign languages and ballroom dancing and etiquette and cooking. But there are no classes to learn how to be by yourself in a furnished room with chipped dishes, or how to be alone in general without any words of concern or familiar sounds. — Irmgard Keun

Writing always means hiding something in such a way that it then is discovered; because the truth that can come from my pen is like a shard that has been chipped from a great boulder by a violent impact, then flung far away; because there is no certitude outside falsification. — Italo Calvino

A demon seduced an angel in the middle of the night
and they gave the stars a glimpse.
There was nothing casual about it,
it was tender skin and battle scars
breathless passion under storm clouds
a rapid river stream mirroring the moon light.
Until one day, he left her with nothing,
just a bruised heart and carved memories
iridescent wings chipped on the edges
heat under her skin, like an ember burning low.
I asked her, "What do you do after a love like that?"
She laughed.
And madness danced behind her eyes.
But she flew so high the world was jealous. — M.J. Abraham

Whereas," I chipped in, leaning forward and raising my own voice enough to be heard over the clop and creak of the horses, "if harm comes to them because of some man, the satisfaction of blaming him will be adequate compensation? — Diana Gabaldon

Although it is easy to imagine happiness as the upwards turn on this haphazard rising and falling of emotion which is life, but really it is a foundation of strength of character and inner balance that precipitates peace, a foundation that is slowly built or slowly chipped away.
There are times when it may seem that the foundation of happiness is broken, but as the dust settles and the debris is cleared away, we find that the storm has only covered it, still leaving everything we have built in place.
True happiness is forged in the furnace of perseverance, fortitude, hope and love. It is not burned or broken by the heat, rather it is made unbreakable - it becomes eternal. Life is the fuel for this purifying fire. — Michael Brent Jones

We were developing a machine that used egg white, heat and sugar to synthesize methanol when a power surge caused an implosion. Owens was meringued. By the time we chipped him out the poor chap had expired. — Jasper Fforde

The sunset looks beautiful over the projects ...
What a shame, it ain't the same where we stand at.
If you look close, you can see the bricks chipped off.
Sometimes niggas miss when they lick off. — Prodigy

I gave my mother a matching set [of mugs] for Christmas, and she accepted them as graciously as possible, announcing that they would make the perfect pet bowls. The mugs were set on the kitchen floor and remained there until the cat chipped a tooth and went on a hunger strike. — David Sedaris

How dare you - "
"How dare I offer you more than you could've ever dreamed?"
"How dare you waltz in here and presume - "
"Presume to prescribe a future with hope and promise?"
I shut my mouth abruptly, glaring at him. Then, "Are you quite finished?"
"Are you?" he asked.
"I am a free woman, Mr.Kensington. Grown. I can do as I wish.I may be blood kin to you, but I am not your employee." My eyes cut to Mama, but hers remained on the barn.
"Regardless, you shall do as I say."
I let out a sputtering, exasperated laugh. "And if I do not?"
He traced the edge of his chipped china saucer. "That would be ill advised. — Lisa Tawn Bergren

..the Zimmers sharpening their sarcasm. Over an early dinner, they chipped away at each other like little Michelangelos, placing every stroke of the mallet with care and devotion. — Amor Towles

We are all meant to be a little broken, it's just about finding someone who will take the time to mend you. Someone who loves you enough to want to find the pieces that may have fallen from you and glue you back together. This is what love is, to restore someone when they have been broken and chipped, and all the while, feeling content whilst mending them... — Seja Majeed

Arthur and Bram stood on Bridge Street, just across from the
Jews' Burial Ground. Though it was quite dark, they could still
make out a few of the tallest headstones, chipped and ragged,
illuminated by the lights of the workhouse behind them. They
heard the groans of drunks from somewhere beyond, and from the
large road they heard the faint pitter-patter of prostitutes' feet
along the dirt. Arthur had not planned this return to the East End,
to be sure. But now that he was here, and had been venturing here
for the past two days, he realized that of course there was nowhere
else for this matter to properly end. — Graham Moore

But heart's desires? My dear, I see by your misery - by this very request you are making - that you know more of true men's and women's hearts than once you did, than your mother's world permitted you to see. Such chipped and cracked and outright broken things they are, are they not? They have their illnesses too, and their impulses. And hearts are not always connected well to minds, and even if they are, minds are not always clear and commonsensical. A heart may desire a thing powerfully indeed, but that heart's desire might be what a person least needs, for her health, for her continuing happiness. — Margo Lanagan

It was twenty-five minutes past nine when he got to the corner of Seventh and Spring, where the Metropole was. It was an old hotel that had once been exclusive and was now steering a shaky course between a receivership and a bad name at Headquarters. It had too much oily dark wood paneling, too many chipped gilt mirrors. Too much smoke hung below its low beamed lobby ceiling and too many grifters bummed around in its worn leather rockers. The blonde who looked after the big horseshoe cigar counter wasn't young any more and her eyes were cynical from standing off cheap dates. (Nevada Gas) — Raymond Chandler

I knew by then that I would never have my mother back, not in the way I had known her all my life. When you have seen your mother shattered, there's no putting her back together. There will always be seams, chipped edges, and clumps of dried glue. Even if you could get her to where she looks the same, she will never be stronger than a cracked plate. — Tayari Jones

Gamache loved to see inside the homes of people involved in a case. To look at the choices they made for their most intimate space. The colors, the decorations. The aromas. Were there books? What sort?

How did it feel?

He'd been in shacks in the middle of nowhere, carpets worn, upholstery torn, wallpaper peeling off. But stepping in he'd also noticed the smell of fresh coffee and bread. Walls were taken up with immense smiling graduation photos and on rusty pocked TV trays stood modest chipped vases with cheery daffodils or pussy willows or some tiny wild flower picked by worn hands for eyes that would adore it.

And he'd been in mansions that felt like mausoleums. — Louise Penny

Now I knew why I had been hollowed out, why my insides were chipped away with a chisel and mallet. It was to make room for this new feeling, this love that was so vast, so expansive it could not have fit into the vessel I once was. — Lang Leav

In hindsight, the grand hero ideal she always thought he encompassed chipped away and all that remained was a cheap imitation. He embodied everything she'd hidden from in her adolescence. Boyfriends, relationships, and sex all led to disaster. Being alone was better than shattered and broken like mother: disenchanted with the life she'd been forced into. — Callie Hunter

Most of the houses were of logs - all of them, indeed, except three or four; these latter were frame ones. There were none of brick, and none of stone. There was a log church, with a puncheon floor and slab benches. A puncheon floor is made of logs whose upper surfaces have been chipped flat with the adze. The cracks between the logs were not filled; there was no carpet; consequently, if you dropped anything smaller than a peach, it was likely to go through. The church was perched upon short sections of logs, which elevated it two or three feet from the ground. Hogs slept under there, and whenever the dogs got after them during services, the minister had to wait till the disturbance was over. In winter there was always a refreshing breeze up through the puncheon floor; in summer there were fleas enough for all. — Mark Twain

With the morbid realisation that his sexual being was a dull thing, a lifeless thing, a mass-produced marionette with chipped paint and fraying strings — Will Self

It's very true; there are many more iron pots certainly than porcelain. But you may depend on it that every one bears some mark; even the hardest iron pots have a little bruise, a little hole somewhere. I flatter myself that I'm rather stout, but if I must tell you the truth I've been
shockingly chipped and cracked. I do very well for service yet, because I've been cleverly mended; and I try to remain in the cupboard - the quiet, dusky cupboard where there's an odour of stale spices - as much as I can. But
when I've to come out and into a strong light - then, my dear, I'm a horror! — Henry James