Cotta Quotes & Sayings

My geography savors a delicious paradox: Home - a grounding - found in unearthly beauty. The predominant colors are blue, emerald, and terra-cotta. Every day, every season, I taste these colors and the intricate flavors of their unaccountable tones and hues. I have yet to earn this land. Perhaps I never will. Home is a religion. Sensibly you understand the need for it, yet not even sensible people can explain it. - from the Chapter Finding Home — Ellen Meloy

Vampire fad just won't die. Makes sense, I guess. — Demetri Martin

A dialogue leads to connection, which leads to trust which leads to engagement — Seth Godin

We gazed back over the fields to the farmhouse. Its white walls, faded wooden shutters and terra-cotta tiled roof peeped sleepily over the deep green domes of the orange trees, while the mountains looked benignly on - secure, solid and serene. Without exchanging a word, we both knew that this was going to be our new home. — Peter Kerr

There's work to do. — Alien Ant Farm

In the course of the history of the earth innumerable events have occurred one after another, causing changes of states, all with certain lasting consequences. This is the basis of our developmental law, which, in a nutshell, claims that the diversity of phenomena is a necessary consequence of the accumulation of the results of all individual occurrences happening one after another ... The current state of the earth, thus, constitutes the as yet most diverse final result, which of course represents not a real but only a momentary end-point. — Bernhard Von Cotta

It's great to be back on terra cotta — John Prescott

It's ok, it's alright, nothing's wrong
tell Mr. man with impossible plans to just leave me alone
in the place where I make no mistakes
in the place where I have what it takes — Elliott Smith

One composition is meagre, though it has many figures; another is rich, though it has few. — Denis Diderot

Ryan looked almost eye-to-eye with the lifelike statue. The warrior's noble and steady gaze stared back at him. Ryan thought that the way the man's thin moustache curved above his unsmiling mouth made him look like he was hiding a secret. He wore no helmet, but his torso and arms had been intricately chiseled to display fine armour. He was poised to fight.
Ryan, Alex and Hong Mei moved forward, studying each sculpture that they passed. Just like real people, some were tall and slim while others were short and heavy. They wore different uniforms and hairstyles, and on some, Ryan could see remnants of the coloured lacquer that once would have covered them. — B.L. Sauder

A Thunderstorm In Town
She wore a 'terra-cotta' dress,
And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,
Within the hansom's dry recess,
Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless
We sat on, snug and warm.
Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain,
And the glass that had screened our forms before
Flew up, and out she sprang to her door:
I should have kissed her if the rain
Had lasted a minute more. — Thomas Hardy

The word "marriage" lingered in Guy's ears, too. It was a solemn word to him. It had the primordial solemnity of holy, love, sin. It was Miriam's round terra cotta-coloured mouth saying, "Why should I put myself out for you?" and it was Anne's eyes as she pushed her hair back and looked up at him on the lawn of her house where she planted crocuses. It was Miriam turning from the tall thin window in the room in Chicago, lifting her freckled, shield-shaped face directly up to his as she always did before she told a lie, and Steve's long dark head, insolently smiling. — Patricia Highsmith

[2 Pet. 3:10] But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.10 — Anonymous

Ch'in Shih-huang is the first emperor of China. He united seven separate kingdoms into a single nation. He built the Great Wall and was buried with the terra-cotta soldiers. The Chinese have mixed feelings about him. They're proud of the nation he created, but he was a maniacal tyrant. — Gene Luen Yang

They handed over spider plants in terra-cotta, six-packs, books, bottles of wine. Yuppies in embryo, miming their parents' manners. — Lauren Groff

Events are moving so fast and what in one moment seems impossible, the next is happening. I'm sure historians will, in time, provide theories and analysis, but for now I think most of us simply want the tide stemmed. — Lucy Powell

By now I was utterly deprogrammed. I walked along naked usually, clothes being not only putrid but unnecessary. My skin had been baked a deep terra-cotta brown and was the constituency of harness leather. The sun no longer penetrated it. I retained my hat. — Robyn Davidson

If I'd known I was about to meet the man who'd shatter me like bone china on terra-cotta, I would have slept in. Instead, — Martha Hall Kelly

Detach from emotions and desires; get rid of any fixations. — Zhuge Liang

There is no law that sermons shall be the preacher's own, but there is an eternal law against all manner of humbug. Pardon the word. — George MacDonald

Praise leads to weakness. Getting it causes fear, losing it causes fear. — Laozi

He thinks, if you were born in Putney, you saw the river every day, and imagined it widening out to the sea. Even if you had never seen the ocean you had a picture of it in your head from what you had been told by foreign people who sometimes came upriver. You knew that one day you would go out into a world of marble pavements and peacocks, of hillsides buzzing with heat, the fragrance of crushed herbs rising around you as you walked. You planned for what your journeys would bring you: the touch of warm terra-cotta, the night sky of another climate, alien flowers, the stone-eyed gaze of other people's saints. But if you were born in Aslockton, in flat fields under a wide sky, you might just be able to imagine Cambridge: no farther. — Hilary Mantel

Dear Chicago, when I wake up in the morning and see your skyline - the terra cotta of the Wrigley Building, the height of the Willis Tower, the shiny sides of my beloved Trump Tower - I know I'm home. I feel a certain energy walking between your spires, but recognize that what makes you special to me is that my roots are here. — Bill Rancic

I closed my eyes and took more of those deep breaths Dad was so fond of, thinking that it was no wonder Prodigium were always getting their asses handed to them by humans. I mean, every time I had to do an intense spell, there was all this focusing, and relaxing, and picturing, and breathing...It wasn't exactly the most effective battle strategy against something like The Eye.
I should've known better than to think about The Eye,though. As soon as the name popped into my head, my control shattered.
And so did the terra-cotta pot.
Black soil rained down on my feet, and the purple flower drooped even further. I could have sworn it actually bobbed accusingly at me.
"Ugh," I groaned, as Cal quickly scooped the jagged pot out of my hands. "Sorry,but I warned you I was destructo-girl. — Rachel Hawkins

Had been keeping Diddy, his pet tarantula, in an empty terra-cotta pot Helmut used to grow tulips. Hanna's parents nervously stood up and walked over to the doctor. "Your daughter is still unconscious," Dr. Geist said quietly. "Not much has changed. — Sara Shepard

THE FUZZY GREEN light gradually resolved itself into trees, and a narrow street of damp terra-cotta bricks stretched lazily into the distance. — Fuminori Nakamura

That's my little piece of heaven. Go ahead."
Ciro followed Remo through the open door to a small enclosed garden. Terra-cotta pots positioned along the top of the stone wall spilled over with red geraniums and orange impatiens. An elm tree with a wide trunk and deep roots filled the center of the garden. Its green leaves and thick branches reached past the roof of Remo's building, creating a canopy over the garden. There was a small white marble birdbath, gray with soot, flanked by two deep wicker armchairs.
Remo fished a cigarette out of his pocket, offering another to Ciro as both men took a seat. "This is where I come to think."
"Va bene," Ciro said as he looked up into the tree. He remembered the thousands of trees that blanketed the Alps; here on Mulberry Street, one tree with peeling gray bark and holes in its leaves was cause for celebration. — Adriana Trigiani

In Santa Fe her whole yard had been crowded with different-sized terra-cotta pots, out of which she grew everything from rosemary and lavender to ornamental pear and plum trees and even peppers, although they were not particularly popular with the bees.
In Colorado she'd created a fertile oasis out of old gas cans and cut-off oil drums. Her neighbors had been skeptical to begin with but once her creepers grew up and her flowers draped down and her shrubs fluffed out, the junkyard ugly duckling was transformed into the proverbial backyard swan. — Sarah-Kate Lynch

I do think the Cubans have to change some of the political structures there and allow critical voices, for their own sakes, because unless there is accountability the revolution will totally atrophy. — Tariq Ali

I suppose I've come a long way
from: being drunk enough to drive;
tired enough to replace sleep with
pills; irresponsible enough with
money to steal for it; and dumb enough
to ruin perfectly normal relationships;
but smart enough to know the difference
that every lifestyle change is just
a new prison — Phil Volatile

from The Prep Pantheon: An All-Time Great Alumni Association

Caroline Kennedy. Concord Academy '75. Harvard '80. On technical points Preppier than Mummy. During four years at Harvard Square, an unnatural fiber never went near her body (except for the shell of her L. L. Bean down vest). Her lacrosse game was ruthless, her brunch technique dazzling (smoked heavily, sat with the descendents of three other presidents). — Lisa Birnbach

... a waitress came out and plonked in front of each of us a small standard terra-cotta flowerpot in which had been baked a little loaf of bread.
"What's this?" I asked.
"It's bread," she replied.
"But it's in a flowerpot?" She gave me a look that I was beginning to think of as the Darwin stare. It was a look that said, "Yeah? So?"
"Well, isn't that kind of unusual?"
She considered for a moment. "Is a bit, I suppose." "And will we be following a horticultural theme throughout the meal?" Her expression contorted in a deeply pained look, as if she were trying to suck her face into the back of her head. "What?"
"Will the main course arrive in a wheelbarrow?" I elaborated helpfully. "Will you be serving the salad with a pitchfork?"
"Oh, no. It's just the bread that's special."
"I'm so pleased to hear it. — Bill Bryson

I love paperwhites - they smell heavenly and you can often pick them up from a big home improvement store garden center already planted in pretty terra cotta pots. — Clinton Smith