Clump Quotes & Sayings

Sarah took a deep breath and set off along the passageway again. A clump of lichen on the gatepost opened its eyes and watched her go. The eyes, on tendrils, had an anxious look, and when she had gone some distance away the clump, swiveling its eyes toward each other, commenced to gossip among itself. Most of it disapproved of the direction she had taken. You could tell that from the way the eyes looked meaningfully into each other. Lichen knows about directions. — A.C.H. Smith

He selected one of these incantations and began to chant in a loud, wailing voice. All the clocks in the house suddenly went off at once, though it was only three-twenty; the copper pots hanging in the kitchen clanged and whanged against each other; and a couple of the wizard's books fell off their shelves with a clump. But nothing else happened. Prospero slammed the magic book shut and slumped into an overstuffed chair. He fumbled in his smoking stand for his pipe and tobacco. "I learned that spell fifty years ago," he mumbled as he lit his pipe. "And I still don't know what it's for. — John Bellairs

Love? Do you mean love in the way you understand it
as a human?"
"Well, not exactly, but basically the same thing. I mean,
love is love."
"A brain surgeon would tell you that a specific part of
the brain controls the ability to love. If it's damaged, people
are incapable of love, incapable of caring about others."
"So?"
"So, isn't it arrogant to think that the love generated by
our little brains is the same thing that an omnipotent being
experiences? If you were omnipotent, why would you limit
yourself to something that could be reproduced by a little
clump of neurons? — Scott Adams

Something mystical happens to every writer who goes to the Masters for the first time, some sort of emotional experience that results in a search party having to be sent out to recover his typewriter from a clump of azaleas. — Dan Jenkins

At last she halted at a rotted, mossy stump. "I cannot marry you," she told the clump of toadstools flourishing at its base. "I'm so terribly sorry. I should have told you years ago, but - "
"For God's sake, Cecily." His soft laugh startled her, and she lifted her gaze. "You can't do this, not yet. How can a lady refuse a man, when he hasn't even proposed? I won't stand for it."
"It's not right, Denny. I've known for some time now that we wouldn't ... that I couldn't ... "
He shushed her gently, placing his hands on her shoulders. "The truth is, we know nothing of what could be or would be. We've been delaying this conversation for years now, haven't we? I've been waiting for ... Well, I hardly know what I've been waiting for. Something indefinable, I suppose. And you've been waiting for Luke. — Tessa Dare

Leave this touching and clawing. Let him be to me a spirit. A message, a thought, a sincerity, a glance from him, I want, but not news nor pottage. I can get politics, and chat, and neighborly conveniences from cheaper companions. Should not the society of my friend be to me poetic, pure, universal, and great as nature itself? Ought I to feel that our tie is profane in comparison with yonder bar of cloud that sleeps on the horizon, or that clump of waving grass that divides the brook? Let us not vilify, bur raise it to that standard. That great, defying eye, that scornful beauty of his mien and action, do not pique yourself on reducing, but rather fortify and enhance. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Still, there was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question. And the reply was, Eat the strawberries. — Neil Gaiman

I wish you were that birch rising from the clump behind you, and I the gray oak alongside. — Donald Hall

My hair is an untidy bob. I am very dark, but I embellish the roots because I am white in one clump. — Erin O'Connor

You were a negative, a dark absence, a clump of cells crying to come together. You were a pause in the flickering before consciousness. And when the atoms swirled, and when the skies yawned, and when a nervous god, still virgin to creation, called you forth: did you marvel at your
luck? Clumsy thumbprint of an awkward deity - did you slaughter the heavens, once freed? Did you grab the stars by their throats? Did you wear the skins of dead galaxies, your eyes ablaze with impossible fury? — Amber Sparks

She looked down, kicking a little clump of grass with her slipper. "I suppose you will look at me differently now."
"How so?"
"Now that you know I am not who you thought I was. Who I thought I was."
"Oh, are you not human after all?" He teased, "Are you actually a woodland water Sprite or famed West Country pixie?"
"No."
He took a step nearer.
"You are still Lady Amelia's pride and joy. Still headstrong, still a bruising rider and righter of wrongs, still the bravest and most foolish woman that I know, still determined to lead ever dance, and still and incorrigible flirt. Is that not true?"
She hesitated, torn between offense and amusement. "Yes, I...I suppose it is."
"Then you are still exactly the woman I thought."
"Very funny. — Julie Klassen

There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly. Tigers above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life; it might be the only strawberry we'll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of our life. — Pema Chodron

Ilse and I hunted all over the old orchard today for a four-leaved clover and couldn't find one. Then I found one in a clump of clover by the dairy steps tonight when I was straining the milk and never thinking of clovers. Cousin Jimmy says that is the way luck always comes, and it is no use to look for it. — L.M. Montgomery

I turn, concentrating on Jeb. "No matter what you think happened between the two of us, I love you. We share battle scars and hearts. I don't want to lose that."
He studies my necklaces and the soldered clump of metal at my neck. "Yeah, I see how well you took care of my heart." — A.G. Howard

The clump-and-thud of avalanching books suggested that someone must be using the weapon of knowledge in an unconventional fashion. — Dean Koontz

Outside in the garden, which was full of mellow sunset light streaming through the dark old firs to the west of it, stood Anne and Diana, gazing bashfully at each other over a clump of gorgeous tiger lilies. — L.M. Montgomery

The Judgement is not a question, it's a sure answer, as to a clump of dough, that will yeast and rise, or go in the oven and burn to crust. — Anthony Liccione

And there were ruined castles covered with ivy - the badge of the old order, clinging to its own; and into the ivy doves dived, seeming to leave in their wake a trail of amethyst, just as a clump of bottle-green leaves is shot with purple by the knowledge that it hides violets. — Hope Mirrlees

I stood in the doorway and watched Dennis unbuttoning the blouse, pulling long shirttails out of her skirt and wetting her hair with his hands, letting hairspray clump together in long strands. Ruined like that, in front of me. It was hard to watch because it was so clean, so perfect.

The glow from the television screen crawls over their faces and it's hard to convince yourself they are breathing, living things. — Laurie Perez

We'll ride along the river. It's a mighty pretty sight..." Puffy white clouds floated across the azure blue sky. Pine-covered mountains crowned with snowcaps folded down into foothills that ringed the valley. Beneath the clouds the play of sun and shadow cast hazy blue-green patches on the mountainsides. A distant large-winged bird rode on air currents before diving into a clump of trees. — Debra Holland

Moss grows where nothing else can grow. It grows on bricks. It grows on tree bark and roofing slate. It grows in the Arctic Circle and in the balmiest tropics; it also grows on the fur of sloths, on the backs of snails, on decaying human bones ... It is a resurrection engine. A single clump of mosses can lie dormant and dry for forty years at a stretch, and then vault back again into life with a mere soaking of water. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Cities have no name for me: they are places without leaves, separating one pasture from another, and where the goats are frightened at street corners and scatter. The dog and I run to keep the flock together." "I am the opposite of you," I said. "I recognize only cities and cannot distinguish what is outside them. In uninhabited places each stone and each clump of grass mingles, in my eyes, with every other stone and dump. — Italo Calvino

He liked seeing the world through her eyes. The night, to him, was rather ordinary, overlaid with London's crowded odors and a damp that promised a deeply unlovely fog in the near future. But she preferred to consider the commonest patch of grass and the most unremarkable clump of trees worthy of a Constable canvas - in which case this night could very well have graced the ceiling of a great cathedral. — Sherry Thomas

Um, sweetums?" Driggs piped up.
Lex blew a sweaty clump of hair off her forehead. "What did you just call me?"
He sank further under her glower. "I just - ow ! — Gina Damico

Not long after he and Margaret were married, he'd complimented her on a pot of yellow blossoms near the front door. She'd laughed, and blushed, and then confessed that weeks earlier, watching him walk around the vegetable garden, she'd slipped out, dug up a brick-sized clump of earth which held the clear impression of his right foot, and tucked it into the flower pot. In that earth she'd planted a chrysanthemum, hoping that as it bloomed year after year so would his love for her. How should he marry again, after that? — Andrea Barrett

Really good director sometimes will kind of see what the actors are doing and then get in there. Because there's the realization that you have to find it a little bit and then kind of clump around and sniff it out. — Ron Livingston

Walking through town with Trip, I thought about how easily he had folded me into his group. Sometimes when Didi makes peanut butter cookies, she'll get all cranky trying to blend the peanut butter in the sugar, eggs, and butter. See, the peanut butter always stays in a big clump and the eggs are all slimy and you have to really work at it before everything gets nice and smooth. But the way Trip pulled me into his buttery, sugary life, you'd never know when I was peanut butter in the first place. — Kat Yeh

Mistletoe," said Luna dreamily, pointing at a large clump of white berries placed almost over Harry's head. He jumped out from under it.
"Good thinking," said Luna seriously. "It's often infested with nargles. — J.K. Rowling

Nothing had ever happened to me, and now everything was happening to me
and by everything, I really meant Lena. An hour was both faster and slower. I felt like I had sucked the air out of a giant balloon, like my brain wasn't getting enough oxygen. Clouds were more interesting, the lunchroom less disgusting, music sounded better, the same old jokes were funnier, and Jackson went from being a clump of grayish-green industrial buildings to a map of times and places where I might run into her. — Kami Garcia

He [Mr. Snagsby] is a mild, bald, timid man with a shining head and a scrubby clump of black hair sticking out at the back. He tends to meekness and obesity. — Charles Dickens

Look at any randomly selected piece of your world. Encoded deep in the biology of every cell in every blade of grass, in every insect's wing, in every bacterium cell, is the history of the third planet from the Sun in a Solar System making its way lethargically around a galaxy called the Milky Way. Its shape, form, function, colour, smell, taste, molecular structure, arrangement of atoms, sequence of bases, and possibilities for the future are all absolutely unique. There is nowhere else in the observable Universe where you will see precisely that little clump of emergent, living complexity. It is wonderful. — Brian Cox

There was a tale he had read once, long ago, as a small boy: the story of a traveler who had slipped down a cliff, with man-eating tigers above him and a lethal fall below him, who managed to stop his fall halfway down the side of the cliff, holding on for dear life. There was a clump of strawberries beside him, and certain death above him and below. What should he do? went the question.
And the reply was, Eat the strawberries.
The story had never made sense to him as a boy. It did now. — Neil Gaiman

Just tell me i'm not dreaming?"
maybe you are," she said. "Probably you are."
I don't want to be. Clio, i can't do this on my own."
There was a bang.
We both jumped, turned towards the Roman bath. A clump of leaves swirled on the surface of the water in a slow spiral.
Is there something down there?"
Clio nodded. "Yes."
What is it?"
I don't k now," she said, watching the waters. "Something from down where it gets black."
There was another bang.
Little waves raced across the littery surface, lapping the bath's mouldy tiled sides.
Are you ready? This is it." Clio held me by the tops of my arms and gave me a smile which was meant to be strong and almost was.
What? Clee, what's going on?"
Bang. — Steven Hall

Me wretched! Let me curr to quercine shades!
Effund your albid hausts, lactiferous maids!
O, might I vole to some umbrageous clump,
Depart,
be off,
excede,
evade,
erump! — Oliver Wendell Holmes

The trick in foraging for a tooth lost in coffee grounds is not to be misled by the clumps. The only way to be sure is to rub each clump between your thumb and index finger, which makes a mess of your hands. — Roger Rosenblatt

Look through that clump of trees. There's a hawk sitting on the weathervane at the Red Rooster Inn. I've heard that if someone you love very much passes away, they can come back in the form of a hawk, to look after you and give you comfort. — Caroline Fyffe

Life is nothing but a clump of mud; your thoughts define which statue you can mold out of it. — Debasish Mridha

He had too much to think about. In the course of his long, useless marches he had sunk deeper and deeper into the tangle of his botched life as into a clump of brambles, and still he had found no meaning or consolation. — Hermann Hesse

I feel like my art is very eclectic. I have taken my favorite things - be that costume designing, fashion sense, music and video editing - and I threw them all into one big clump. And that's what I do. — Lindsey Stirling

It took about three minutes for the unassuming Waffle House to become the new offices of the law firm of Amber, Amber, Amber, and Madison. They set up camp in a clump of booths in the corner opposite from us. A few of them gave me an "oh, good, you are still alive" nod, but for the most part, they had no interest in anyone else. — Maureen Johnson

The ultimate goal of the Web is to support and improve our web-like existence in the world . We clump into family , association, and companies. — Tim Berners-Lee

Back and forth from Brooklyn to Manhattan. New York at night, from its bridges, is a miracle. When I first came to the city, it took all my fantasies and set them on fire, turned them into flickering constellations of light. Then it did the same with my history. As a dark speck of energy hurtling over the water toward that galaxy, I felt myself disappear. Relative to the image of infinity I was nothing, a clump of quantum matter skidding through the ether. It was as good as any drug. — Melissa Febos

Now comes the picture of mass defeat, the most awesome spectacle of the war. It is in the bent bodies of old women who poke among ruins seeking some miserable object that will link their lives with the old days. It is in the shamed darting eyes of the defeated. It is in the faces of the little boys who regard our triumphant columns with fear and fascination. And above all it is in the thousands of beaten, dusty soldiers who stream along the roads towards the stockades. Their feet clump wearily, mechanically, hopelessly on the still endless road of war. They move as haggard, gray masses, in which the individual had neither life nor meaning. It is impossible to see in these men the quality that made them stand up and fight like demons out of hell a few shorts months ago. — Audie Murphy

I jumped up and "casually" strolled a bit closer. I blinked my eyes in the sun. It couldn't be, could it? But it was.
Gabe.
...
"You know, if you're going to stalk someone, you should be less obvious."
I wheeled around. It was Todd. He'd snuck up on me.
He said, "For starters, try not to standing in the middle of a field, gawking at your prey."
I kicked at a dusty clump of grass. "Gawking? I ... I'm ... not gawking. I was just watching your girlfired putting the moves on someone else. Jealous?"
"Oh Gabe Webber?" Todd laughed. "Uh ... no."
I shielded my eyes from the sun. "Why? What's wrong with Gabe Webber?"
"Nothing. As in, there's nothing there. He has the personality of dry toast."
How dare he insult my Gabe? "Oh yes. I forgot. You prefer the company of assholes and jerks. As they say, 'Birds of a feather ... '"
"That must be why you hang around. — Kristin Walker

Standing there, peering around his room, Pete realized something that should have dawned on him years ago: Science really did suck. (Russell was right.) There just wasn't any point to it. Sure, in its most altruistic distillation, science saved lives - but when had it ever made those lives worth living? The cold machine called science's sole purpose, and Pete knew it now, was to drain the wonder out of things, to sap the imagination of its juices, to rob possibilities from dreamers. Science explained without ever getting to the crux of the matter, locking us all into a single paradigm of thought: that all we are is randomly accumulated stardust hanging out on a larger clump of randomly accumulated stardust that is spiraling out and away from other chunks of randomly accumulated stardust, on a collision course with an empty infinity. — Jay Nichols

The one appalling thing about electric cars is that one plugs them into already overtaxed municipal power grids. Try mentioning this to a politician or manufacturer who wants to ride the green wave and you will quickly find yourself escorted out of the room. Mention this twice and you'll magically find yourself on the No Fly List. Mention this three times and your cold lifeless body will be found in a clump of brambles off the nearest motorway. — Douglas Coupland

One wanders through life as if wandering through a field in the dark of night, wearing a blindfold and very heavy shoes, with a poisonous toad waiting patiently beneath a clump of weeds, knowing full well that eventually you will step on him. — Daniel Handler

No one could claim that Preda Norlo Trumb was the most perceptive of individuals, and the half-dozen Letherii guards under his command, who stood in a twitching clump behind the Preda, were now faced with the very real possibility that Trumb's stupidity was going to cost them their lives. — Steven Erikson

I push a clump of very wet hair out of my face and try to look dignified. It's not like it really matters in the long run, considering I'm in the presence of a boy who is wearing a T-shirt with a dinosaur riding a tricycle screen printed on it. I think that says a lot. — Mara Dabrishus

Some breakfast cereals only come into their own as children's party treats: what are cornflakes and Coco Pops for, if not to clump together with melted chocolate and spoon into a cupcake holder? — Yotam Ottolenghi

He knew by heart every individual clump of bunch grass in the miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of its early summer, in all the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all the plagues of Egypt. He had seen it parched by drought, and sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen it stretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as the floor of hell. — Willa Cather

March 4 CHARITY is being rescued by the LORD I love you just as the Father loves me. ~ John 15:9 Someone asked an old chief "Why're you always talking about Jesus?" The chief didn't say anything. Instead, he collected some dry grass and twigs and put them into a circle. Next he caught a caterpillar, feeding on a nearby clump of weeds. He placed it inside the circle. Then, he took a match and set fire to the dry grass and the twigs. As the fire blazed up, the caterpillar began to search for an escape. At this point the old chief extended his finger to the caterpillar. Instantly, it climbed on to it. He said, "That's what Jesus did for me. I was like the caterpillar, without hope. Then Jesus rescued me. How can I not talk about my Savior's love and mercy?" ~ Mark Link, S.J. How grateful are you for what Jesus did for us? How do you show it concretely? It wasn't the nails that held Jesus on the cross but his love for us. ~ Author unknown — Scott Hahn

Gusts of snow blew in front of the car as he felt his way toward Man o' War Boulevard ... The snow-covered fields made him think of the desert. Black fences rimmed with snow created a grid against the blank, vanished ground. He saw five snow-blanketed horses huddled under a clump of trees ... He was surprised they weren't lolling on feather beds in their climate-controlled barns. Racehorses got better care than some people, he thought. — Bobbie Ann Mason

A rabbit sneeze on the morning breeze sets homesick hearts aglow sitting with his rumps in a chicory clump and longing for a nice plump doe. — Richard Adams

The crops, however, I examine closely, to see what each bird has been feeding upon. Clover. Kinnickkinnick. Snowberries. Wheat. Barley. Crickets. Grasshoppers. Fir needles. Huckleberries. Rose hips. The crops filled with snowberries are breathtaking, looking like a clump of pearls, and nearly as rare; it's always a thrill to open a crop and see nothing but beautiful white berries. Usually in these woods, though, in the autumn, the crops are bulging with bright red kinnickkinnick berries, and the bright green leaves from the same bush. Tom and Nancy save the crop from each bird they kill and set it on the windowsill to dry translucent in the sunlight - a globe, a ball, filled with Christmas colors, perfect red and green; and then in December they hang these as ornaments on their tree. For — Rick Bass

The deeper I went into the valley, the greater the rewards. First, it was a clump of birches, the bottoms wrapped in thick fog, the uppermost branches clear now, nesting birds waking with bright-eyed songs. Next, I passed under the pines, browned needles underfoot, and was transported to the quiet moments of rapture under such branches throughout my life. The last, and worth all other gifts combined, was that moment when the valley inhaled, taking with it the fog. In its place, so close to where I was standing, there they were, the year's first flowers, the pure white snowdrops springing from the dark-green foliage under the elms. It was as if the clouds were swept in an instant from the sky leaving only the quiet delicacy of the stars. — Megan Rich

Carl sat musing until the sun leaped above the prairie, and in the grass about him all the small creatures of day began to tune their tiny instruments. Birds and insects without number began to chirp, to twitter, to snap and whistle, to make all manner of fresh shrill noises. The pasture was flooded with light; every clump of ironweed and snow-on-the-mountain threw a long shadow, and the golden light seemed to be rippling through the curly grass like the tide racing in. — Willa Cather

In the wake of the Patriot Act, during the second administration of George W., you made a series of small, handheld weapons. The rule was that each weapon had to be assembled from household items within minutes. You'd been gay-bashed before, two black eyes while waiting in line for a burrito (you ran after him, of course). Now you thought, if the government comes for its citizens, we should be prepared, even if our weapons are pathetic. Your art-weapons included a steak knife affixed to a bottle of ranch dressing and mounted on an axe handle, a dirty sock sprouting nails, a wooden stump with a clump of urethane resin stuck to one end with dull bolts protruding from it, and more. — Maggie Nelson

As Harry and Ron rounded the clump of trees behind which Harry had first heard the dragons roar, a witch leapt out from behind them.
It was Rita Skeeter. She was wearing acid-green robes today; the Quick-Quotes Quill in her hand blended perfectly against them.
"Congratulations, Harry!' she said beaming at him. "I wonder if you could give me a quick word? How you felt facing that dragon? How do you feel now about the fairness of the scoring?"
"Yeah, you can have a word," said Harry savagely. "Goodbye! — J.K. Rowling

Just by imagining the clump it seemed to me that I could hear whispers secret surges smell the beating of hot blood under wild unsecret flesh watching against red eyelids the swine untethered in pairs rushing coupled into the sea and he we must just stay awake and see evil done for a little while its not always and i it doesnt have to be even that long for a man of courage and he do you consider that courage and i yes sir dont you and he every man is the arbiter of his own virtues whether or not you consider it courageous is of more importance than the act itself than any act otherwise you could not be in earnest and i you dont believe i am serious and he i think you are too serious to give me any cause for alarm you wouldnt have felt driven to the expedient of telling me you had committed incest otherwise and i i wasnt lying i wasnt lying and he you wanted to sublimate a piece of natural human folly into a horror and then exorcise it with truth — William Faulkner

In the lab, we could not see or physically describe the mathematical objects that we called quarks, which we suspected were the key to unlocking the dynamics of the strong force that binds together the clump of protons and neutrons at the center of the atom. — David Gross

when she made the most unnecessary statement I had ever heard. "Well, you're still under twelve weeks gestation, so you could still have a miscarriage. Oh, but don't worry- it's just a little clump of cells right now." I wondered if she was thinking that I wanted to have a miscarriage. — E. McNew

A daffodil bulb will divide and redivide endlessly. That's why, like the peony, it is one of the few flowers you can find around abandoned farmhouses, still blooming and increasing in numbers fifty years after the farmer and his wife have moved to heaven, or the other place, Boca Raton. If you dig up a clump when no one is nearby and there is no danger of being shot, you'll find that there are scores of little bulbs in each clump, the progeny of a dozen or so planted by the farmer's wife in 1942. If you take these home, separate them, and plant them in your own yard, within a couple of years, you'll have a hundred daffodils for the mere price of a trespassing fine or imprisonment or both. I had this adventure once, and I consider it one of the great cheap thrills of my gardening career. I am not advocating trespassing, especially on my property, but there is no law against having a shovel in the trunk of your car. — Cassandra Danz