Crackling Quotes & Sayings

Consider yourself dead to the world's trappings and immortal with the NTCHRU.'- N MEdjay

'Even if a falcon's wings possessed only two feathers it can still take flight.' - N Medjay

'To master anything is foolish. When one becomes the goal they seek, there is no need to race to the end. They will become the raging waterfall, the calm lake, the crackling lightning and beyond that they will be the waterfall, the lake and the lightning.'- N Medjay
...
'If you want to change a certain habit or circumstance there is no time like the present, which is now. Truthfully it is as easy as fixing your mind to that you wish to be changed and nothing else. When thoughts like 'it's too hard' or 'I always do that' come to mind, do not fix your mind to them.' - N Medjay — DjaDja N Medjay

You're what," I asked, "Catholic? Fascist? Both?" It just popped out. I was out of practice with intellectuals of the right - I couldn't remember how to behave. All at once, in the distance, we heard a kind of sustained crackling. "What was that, do you think?" asked Alice. "It sounded like shooting," she added, hesitantly. We fell silent, — Michel Houellebecq

His voice ripped through her, low, soft, and a little husky- like the hushed crackling of an old fashioned record player just before the music starts — Kelly Creagh

Today, when we look at a brain, we see an intricate network of billions of neurons in constant, crackling communication, a chemical labyrinth that senses the world outside and within, produces love and sorrow, keeps our hearts beating and lungs breathing, composes our thoughts, and constructs our consciousness. — Carl Zimmer

So please enjoy these Tales - before a crackling fire on a chilly night, ideally, — Ransom Riggs

Razor, calm down. Say hi to our new friends."
The gremlin, now perched on Keirran's arm, turned to stare at us with blazing green eyes and started crackling like a bad radio station.
"They can't understand you, Razor," Keiran said mildly. "English."
"Oh," said the gremlin. "Right." It grinned widely, baring a mouthful of sharp teeth that glowed neon-blue. "Hiiiiiiii. — Julie Kagawa

Our laughter dissolves into a crackling current that steals my breath away. Our eyes lock, and heat pools low in my belly. — Lisa Renee Jones

The house was a vast labyrinth of books. Volumes were stacked from floor to ceiling on every wall, dark, crackling, redolent of leather bindings, smooth to the touch, with their gold titles and translucent gilt-edged pages and delicate typography. — Isabel Allende

Welcome to my gates, Ista dy Chalion. I am the Mother of Jokona." Her hand lifted from the girl's head, flicked out, fingers spreading.
Within Ista, the god unfolded.
Her second sight burst anew upon Ista's mind like a dazzling lightning stroke, brilliant beyond hope, revealing an eerie landscape. She saw it all, at one glance: the dozen demons, the swirling, crackling lines of power, the agonized souls, Joen's dark, dense, writhing passenger. The thirteenth demon, spinning wildly through the air toward her, trailing its evil umbilicus.
Ista opened her jaws in a fierce grin, and took it in a gulp.
"Welcome to mine, Joen of Jokona," said Ista. "I am the Mouth of Hell. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Last year, they curled their inky arms around me until my Technicolor world became crackling gray static. Until I felt nothing but blankness. — Emery Lord

She surrenders her bulk to the wicker armchair, which, out of sheer fright, bursts into a salvo of crackling. — Vladimir Nabokov

We love to hear some men speak, though we hear not what they say; the very air they breathe is rich and perfumed, and the sound of their voices falls on the ear like the rustling of leaves or the crackling of the fire. They stand many deep. — Henry David Thoreau

The cup of tea on arrival at a country house is a thing which, as a rule, I particularly enjoy. I like the crackling logs, the shaded lights, the scent of buttered toast, the general atmosphere of leisured cosiness. — P.G. Wodehouse

Kaden reached out with one hand and caressed my cheek. Next with both of his hands cupping my face, he moved in closer until I could feel his hot
breath upon my face and his lips slowly seeping between mine.
The pressure he was putting on my mouth
forced my lips to spread open and allow him access.
One of his hands dropped from my face and took me by the waist forcing our bodies to be as close as possible. I felt a vibration as if there was
electricity crackling between us and it was such a shock to your core that your body needed to find the owner of where the electricity was coming from. — Jennifer Whitfield

She loved the dry, crackling heat, the way the sky at sunset looked like a sheet of fire, and the overwhelming emptiness and severity of all that open land that had once been a huge ocean bed.
pg. 21 — Jeannette Walls

They forked up in the air for him, like trees branching in the night, and rained down sparks. They roared and whispered with their crackling voices, they had danced when he said the word. The flames here were both tame and mutinous, strange, silent beasts that sometimes bit the hand that fed them. Only occasionally, on cold nights when there was nothing but the flames to stave off his loneliness, did he think he heard them calling to him, but they whispered words he didn't understand. — Cornelia Funke

And so they sat in silence. Sipping cold tea. Smoking. The windows of the house across the street shone molten gold, the silver sickle of the new moon hung in the dark blue sky, and there was a sharp crackling sound coming through the window - they must have been burning old crates again on the street. — Arkady Strugatsky

Everyone had something disparaging to say about the unfortunate Maltyshcheva, and the conversation began crackling merrily like a kindling bonfire. — Leo Tolstoy

You know that crazy heart of yours? The one with lightning crackling and moonlight shining through it. The one you've been told not to trust because it often led you off the beaten path. The one so many have misunderstood your entire life. Trust it. Feed it. Grow it. It's your greatest treasure and will point the way to your highest destiny. It is the voice of your soul. — Jacob Nordby

Later that night, I sat in my room thinking of what I just went through. The four of us had burned the body in an old pit and covered the burned remains with a pile of leaves. Just standing there, watching the crackling fire burn and cripple the bones of this thing just reminded me of how real this all became. My mom was not too happy when I came home late and smelling like a crematorium. — Sara Massa

The basic 110-volt AC power line moves the electrons at 60 cycles. If a transformer is close to the power source (and all speakers have transformers), the 60 cycles produce an audible hum. Crackling, caused by dirt on the sound head, can also be heard. — Sidney Lumet

And he sat in the corner and laughed as the flames consumed everything, crawling over the sadness and crackling it with life. — Andersen Prunty

Jesper struck a match and one, two, three, four, five of the rockets Wylan had prepared were screaming toward the sky, exploding in crackling bursts of color. The last was a shimmer of pink. Strontium chloride, Wylan had told him, working away on his collection of fireworks and explosives, flash bombs, weevils, and whatever else was needed. In the dark, it burns red.
Things are always more interesting in the dark, Jesper had replied. He hadn't been able to help it. Really, if the merchling was going to offer those kinds of opportunities, he had a duty to take them. — Leigh Bardugo

Pigskin crackling on my thumb, nummy nummy I hate pain. — Leonard Cohen

There is nothing I love more than traveling to a place where I know nobody, and where everything will be a surprise, and then writing about it. It's like having a new lover - even the parts you aren't crazy about have the crackling fascination of the unfamiliar. — Ariel Levy

It's funny, you know, they're always telling me to be a man, take it like a man, act like a man, like they're afraid if they don't keep reminding me I'll grow up to be a centaur or a dining room table, like they know, somehow, that I'm not a man, like it's a spell they can cast, if they say it enough I'll be tricked into being a man forever."
... "Yes." Tamburlaine nodded. "They always say: be a lady, speak like a lady, behave like a little lady, that's not very ladylike, is it, dear?"
"Well, I won't be a man, or take anything like one or act like one!" The troll inside him rubbed his hands gleefully, crackling with anticipation.
"Come on, then ... Don't let's be men, or ladies either. Don't let's act like them or behave like them or speak like them! — Catherynne M Valente

Electricity exploded in me, crackling and sparking all throughout my body. And I knew that he could feel it too right before his lips descended over mine. — Laura Kreitzer

Smoke hung heavy in the air. Will's eyes stung. His throat.
His nose. And the crackling. God, the crackling fire was like the devil laughing.
Vera was in that house.
Mikey gripped his arm. "Hold on, Will - "
Will lunged forward. "Vera - "
"Whoa, Will." Mikey's grip tightened. "Stop."
"The hell I will. Vera - "
"Billy?" One of the cops approached him. Said a bunch of
words. Helped Mikey hold Will back.
Vera was in that house.
Vera, her trusty wooden body, her frets, her new strings. Vera,
who'd had his back everywhere from Pickleberry Springs to
Nashville to New York to LA, from seedy bars to stadiums.
Vera, who'd helped him write his first song. His last song.
Every song in between. — Jamie Farrell

He saw his enemies stealthily darting from rock to tree, and tree to bush, creeping through the brush, and slipping closer and closer every moment. On three sides were his hated foes and on the remaining side - the abyss. Without a moment's hesitation the intrepid Major spurred his horse at the precipice. Never shall I forget that thrilling moment. The three hundred savages were silent as they realized the Major's intention. Those in the fort watched with staring eyes. A few bounds and the noble steed reared high on his hind legs. Outlined by the clear blue sky the magnificent animal stood for one brief instant, his black mane flying in the wind, his head thrown up and his front hoofs pawing the air like Marcus Curtius' mailed steed of old, and then down with a crash, a cloud of dust, and the crackling of pine limbs. — Zane Grey

Dent recognized it; the intermezzo before the last movement of De Bruik's Human Biology. The finale of the symphony was a standard concert opener in the outer worlds. Soon the crackling of superamplified muscle contractions and the rush of adrenaline into the bloodstream announced the shift to the finale, and the crowd cheered wildly; Dent could feel his blood surging through him - — Kim Stanley Robinson

Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals. — Paul Theroux

It sounds ghoulish, but it would have been fascinating to be in Paris in 1789 and watch the revolution begin. I can't even imagine what the energy must have been like that year with all of that change crackling in the air. — Deanna Raybourn

In November, people are good to each other. They carry pies to each other's homes and talk by crackling woodstoves, sipping mellow cider. They travel very far on a special November day just to share a meal with one another and to give thanks for their many blessings - for the food on their tables and the babies in their arms. — Cynthia Rylant

The noiseless wheels of my car
rush with a crackling sound over
dried leaves as I bow and pass smiling. — William Carlos Williams

The tannoy is crackling but I can only hear heavy breathing and snuffling.
...
Uh-oh, the tannoy is crackling again.
Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen, I momentarily lost hold of my pie. — Louise Rennison

All husbands are unfaithful in one way or another."
Lillian and Daisy glanced at each other with raised brows.
"Father isn't," Lillian replied smartly.
Mercedes responded with a laugh that sounded like crackling leaves being crushed underfoot. "Isn't he, dear? Perhaps he has stayed true to me physically - one can never be certain about these things. But his work has proved a more jealous and demanding mistress than a flesh-and-blood woman could ever be. All his dreams are invested in that collection of buildings and employees and legalities that absorb him to the exclusion of all else. If my competition had been a mortal woman, I could have borne it easily, knowing that passion fades and beauty lasts but an instant. But his company will never fade or sicken - it will outlast us all. If you have a year of your husband's interest and affection, it will be more than I have ever had. — Lisa Kleypas

Because they do burn leaves here, the older folks do, and I remember now that I love it and always have. The way fall feels at night because of it, because of the crackling sound and walking around the sidewalks, like when you're a kid, and kicking those soft piles, and seeing smoke from backyards and Mr. Kilstrap standing over the metal drum with the holes in the top, the sparking embers at his feet. — Megan Abbott

You wanted to see me?" she asked after shutting the door. She remained where she was, not daring to move any closer.
He turned his gaze from the fire crackling over the logs to face her. Those dark eyes scanned her from head to foot and when they reached her once again, they gleamed with unmistakable hunger.
"Take off your clothes," he said calmly. — Lisa Carlisle

I have lived twice as long as I should have," the oldest one said, his voice crackling like an old radio because decades were rubbing up against each other around his vocal chords, "and I've never seen so many people so cheerful in such a bad time. It is the Devil's work. — Salman Rushdie

Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind!
My soul in storm is but a tattered sail,
Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale;
In calm, 'tis but a limp and flapping thing:
Oh! swell it with thy breath; make it a wing,
To sweep through thee the ocean, with thee the wind
Nor rest until in thee its haven it shall find.
Roses are scentless, hopeless are the morns,
Rest is but weakness, laughter crackling thorns,
But love is life. To die of love is then
The only pass to higher life than this.
All love is death to loving, living men;
All deaths are leaps across clefts to the abyss.
Weakness needs pity, sometimes love's rebuke;
Strength only sympathy deserves and draws -
And grows by every faithful loving look.
Ripeness must always come with loss of might. — George MacDonald

There is a way of looking at things when you are alone in the woods at night. You see more clearly the things at the corner of the eye, and hear all the little crackling noises, the saw of your own breath, even the thumping of your heart. All so clear. It is as though on stepping out of the city an older part of the brain starts to work again. The part that remembers flint and bone and ice. — Paul Kearney

Youth, if adults will only admit that it has any brains at all, will stand out, today, in a most promising light. Philosophically, Youth is Wisdom in formation, and with many thoughts startling to adult minds; and, industrially, this vast World's coming stability is now, today, in its bands; growing slowly, as a blossom grows from its bud. If you will furnish him with a thorough schooling, you can plank down your dollar that Youth, starting out from this miraculous day, will not lag nor shirk on that coming day in which old joints, rusty and crackling, must slow down; and, calling for an oil can, you will find that Youth only, is that lubrication which can run Tomorrow's World. — Ernest Vincent Wright

A cat's rage is beautiful, burning with pure cat flame, all its hair standing up and crackling blue sparks, eyes blazing and sputtering. — William S. Burroughs

Love is a blazing, crackling, green-wood flame, as much smoke as flame; friendship, married friendship particularly, is a steady,intense, comfortable fire. Love, in courtship, is friendship in hope; in matrimony, friendship upon proof. — Samuel Richardson

Love you not, then, to list and hear
The crackling of the gorse-flower near,
Pouring an orange-scented tide
Of fragrance o'er the desert wide? — Alfred William Howitt

Roger's wand made a crackling noise as he traced it around Winston's arms, down his waist, and everywhere else. — Justin Swapp

I enjoy having breakfast in bed. I like waking up to the smell of bacon, sue me. And since I don't have a butler, I have to do it myself. So, most nights before I go to bed, I will lay six strips of bacon out on my George Foreman grill. Then I go to sleep. When I wake up, I plug in the grill. I go back to sleep again. Then I wake up to the smell of crackling bacon. It is delicious, it's good for me, it's the perfect way to start the day. — Michael Scott

They gathered after mass, sang hymns and read. Everyone had grown even more serene; beneath the sisters' kerchiefs it was as if there were no faces. When they met Daryushka - it was as if they bowed down lower. She was walking in the Spirit.

Daryushka was entirely serene. She was thinking of nothing, had turned within herself, peering inside; and inside her all was smiling ever so gently.

After the storm clear days came, frosty, crackling, clear days. Snow and sky, snow and sky, and the sky was even brighter, whiter, from the snow - and the snow sparkled with blue fires from the sky.

Daryushka went down to the river with buckets, to the ice-hole. She went down to the landing alone... Snow, and sky, and brilliance...

("He Has Descended") — Zinaida Gippius

There is nothing more distressing ... than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter. Such laughter is worse than the crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes not merely the vacant mind, but the heart in which high emotions have been choked before they could grow to fruition. — Theodore Roosevelt

I've stood outside my house in Montana looking at the northern lights ... crackling against the night sky. To me, that's magic. — Christopher Paolini

I must see new things and investigate them. I want to taste dark water and see crackling trees and wild winds. — Egon Schiele

I love stories. When I tell a story, I try to think of people sitting around a crackling campfire. — Phil Keoghan

The sleet-spattered windows were rattling in their frames, and the room was chilly despite the fire crackling in the grate. — J.K. Rowling

YOU YOU YOU your eyes, thick as a high school scrapbook crackling and yellow, curling at the edges a book of myths in which i do not appear. — Clint Catalyst

Thrilling, illuminating, heart-pounding. Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy reads like a crackling espionage novel and resonates as only the most compelling history can. Abbott brings to vivid life four extraordinary and audacious women, and runs glorious roughshod over all our traditional notions of the role of women in the Civil War. — Megan Abbott

The dusk rapidly deepened; the glades grew dark; the crackling of the fire and the wash of little waves along the rocky lake shore were the only sounds audible. The wind had dropped with the sun, and in all that vast world of branches nothing stirred. Any moment, it seemed, the woodland gods, who are to be worshipped in silence and loneliness, might stretch their mighty and terrific outlines among the trees. — Algernon Blackwood

An inn, of course, was a place you came to at night (not at three o'clock in the afternoon), preferably a rainy night - wind, too, if it could be managed; and it should be situated on a moor ("bleak," Kate knew, was the adjective here). And there should be scullions; mine host should be gravy-stained and broad in the beam with a tousled apron pulled across his stomach; and there should be a tall, dark stranger - the one who speaks to nobody - warming thin hands before the fire. And the fire should be a fire - crackling and blazing, laid with an impossible size log and roaring its great heart out up the chimney. And there should be some sort of cauldron, Kate felt, somewhere about - and, perhaps, a couple of mastiffs thrown in for good measure. — Mary Norton

Any part of the piggy Is quite all right with me Ham from Westphalia, ham from Parma Ham as lean as the Dalai Lama Ham from Virginia, ham from York, Trotters Sausages, hot roast pork. Crackling crisp for my teeth to grind on Bacon with or without the rind on Though humanitarian I'm not a vegetarian. I'm neither crank nor prude nor prig And though it may sound infra dig Any part of the darling pig Is perfectly fine with me. — Noel Coward

The closest fires were near enough for us to hear the crackling flames and the yells of firemen. Little fires grew into big ones even as we watched. Big ones died down under the firemen's valor only to break out again later. — Ernie Pyle

I walked slowly, my eyes focused on the gravel beneath me. I didn't know where I was going, not that I cared. I just needed to get away. Soon enough, I'd find my way home. I had to believe that.
There was a loud crackling noise in the sky as the thunder rolled through the clouds. I threw my head back, admiring the storm above. The sky was dark with flashes of white sparking throughout with each bolt of lightening following behind the thunder. It was beautiful. "After the storm, you will find peace." I smiled as the sound boomed through the quiet neighborhood. And in that moment I felt at one with the storm as the pain inside of me slowly began to seep out. — Nicole Sobon

Madams Manec's energy, Marie-Lauren is learning, is extraordinary; she burgeons, shoots off stalks, wakes early, works late, concocts basques without a drop of cream, loaves with less than a cup of flour. They clomp together through the narrow streets, Marie-Laure's hand on the back of Madame's apron, following the odors of her stews and cakes; in such moments Madame seems like a great moving wall of rose bushes, thorny and fragrant and crackling with bees. — Anthony Doerr

Apple Tree Inn, the nightly gathering place of all Winslow residents, and in many ways the core of the town's happiness, always had a warm fire crackling on the hearth and was known for its good cider and company. — Clara Diane Thompson

Falsehood is fire in stubble; it likewise turns all the light stuff around it into its own substance for a moment, one crackling blazing moment, and then dies; and all its converts are scattered in the wind, without place or evidence of their existence, as viewless as the wind which scatters them. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

January. It was all things. And it was one thing, like a solid door. Its cold sealed the city in a gray capsule. January was moments, and January was a year. January rained the moments down, and froze them in her memory: [ ... ]Every human action seemed to yield a magic. January was a two-faced month, jangling like jester's bells, crackling like snow crust, pure as any beginning, grim as an old man, mysteriously familiar yet unknown, like a word one can almost but not quite define. — Patricia Highsmith

Aunt Rachel removes the knaffea from the oven and places it on its sumptuous tray; the shredded phyllo dough is crisp and brown, crackling with hot, rose-scented syrup. Nestled within, like a naughty secret, is the melting layer of sweet cheese. The pastry is freshly hot, the only way to eat it, really, with its miraculous study in contrasts - the running cheese hidden within crisp, crackling layers of baked phyllo and the distinctive, brocaded complexities of flavors. It's so hot that it steams in your mouth, and at first you eat it with just the tips of your teeth. Then the layers of crisp and sweet and soft intermingle, a series of surprises. It is so rich and dense that you can eat only a little bit, and then it is over and the knaffea is just a pleasant memory - like a lovely dream that you forget a few seconds after you wake. But for a few seconds, you knew you were eating knaffea. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Got any water?" she asked in that whining, complaining voice. Gra-ted. "Yeah." He grabbed one of the bottles of water he'd brought, twisted off the cap and drained most of the contents while she watched. A whimper escaped her, and he squeezed the bottle a little too hard, crackling the plastic. "Well? Are you going to share or not?" With a forced shrug, he tossed her what was left. "That has my cooties," he informed her. "Good news is, I'm up-to-date on all my shots." She drained the contents in seconds, then peered over at him, clearly irritated with what little he'd given her. "Be grateful I gave you any at all," he said with feeling. "Evil bastard." "Murderous bitch. — Gena Showalter

But you're happy, eh?'
I blink at her, surprised. She's right.
My happiness is crunchy. Snapping, crackling and popping in the sun. — Kirsty Eagar

Once I had gotten my bearings and turned back to the room in front of me, I found myself staring directly into the eyes of Queen Julia. Well, her and about twenty Hunters who seemed only too happy to display their bouncing balls of crackling orange magic and wicked stares. — Stormy Smith

Sitting in a room, alone, listening to a CD is to be lonely. Sitting in a room alone with an LP crackling away, or sitting next to the turntable listening to a song at a time via 7-inch single is enjoying the sublime state of solitude. — Henry Rollins

It was like a blackout in reverse. Since around nine o'clock, no lamps could be switched off, no electrical appliances powered down. If you tried to pull out the plug there was an alarming crackling sound and sparks flew between the outlet and the plug, preventing the circuit from being broken. — John Ajvide Lindqvist

The devil steps up to the podium, clears his throat and taps out time with his baton: in come the monstrous iron kettle drums of artillery, joined by a woodwind section of whistling bullets and shrieking shells, the ever-crackling light percussion of rifle fire. — Matthew De Abaitua

The history of mankind for the last four centuries is rather like that of an imprisoned sleeper, stirring clumsily and uneasily while the prison that restrains and shelters him catches fire, not waking but incorporating the crackling and warmth of the fire with ancient and incongruous dreams, than like that of a man consciously awake to danger and opportunity. — H.G.Wells

I feel a tug in the air. The magic. When I look over, Felicity has her eyes closed in concentration, and a faint smile curves those full lips. Suddenly, Lady Denby breaks wind with an enormous crackling sound. There is no hiding the shock and horror on her face as she realizes what she's done. She breaks wind again, and several women clear their throats and look away as if they can pretend no to notice the offense. — Libba Bray

If someone is counting on children to bring them peace of mind, self-confidence, or a steady sense of happiness, they are in for a bad shock. What children do is complicate, implicate, give plot lines to the story, color to the picture, darken everything, bring fear as never before, suggest the holy, explain the ferocity of the human mind, undo or redo some of the past while casting shadows into the future. There is no boredom with children in the home. The risks are high. The voltage crackling. - Anne Roiphe, Married — Esther Perel

They clomp together through the narrow streets, Marie-Laure's hand on the back of Madame's apron, following the odors of her stews and cakes; in such moments Madame seems like a great moving wall of rosebushes, thorny and fragrant and crackling with bees. Still-warm — Anthony Doerr

It never occurred to me that half of the population of Vermont wasn't experiencing pretty much what I put myself through every night- bone-crackling cold that made my joints ache, cold so relentless I felt it in my dreams: ice floes, lost expeditions, the lights of search planes swinging over whitecaps as I floundered alone Arctic Seas. — Donna Tartt

Me was the glittering desolation of the sea, the awful solitude upon which I had already suffered so much; behind me the island, hushed under the dawn, its Beast People silent and unseen. The enclosure, with all its provisions and ammunition, burnt noisily, with sudden gusts of flame, a fitful crackling, and now and then a crash. The heavy smoke drove up the beach away from me, rolling low over the distant tree-tops towards the huts in the ravine. Beside me were the charred vestiges of the boats and these four dead bodies. — H.G.Wells

The door shut behind them all, and locked. The women stared at it, mesmerized, and observed across it the wavering shadow of an uncanny cloud. Behind the chamfered windows the sun was obscured by drifting wreaths of grey smoke, and the silence filled with the crackling of flames. The youngest surviving Crawford, in leaving, had deftly set fire to the castle. — Dorothy Dunnett

And then he tells her stories. Myths he learned from his instructor. Fantasies he created himself, inspired by bits and pieces of others read in archaic books with crackling spines. — Erin Morgenstern

Harry and Hermione supported Ron over the threshold, into the one-roomed cabin, which had an enormous bed in one corner, a fire crackling merrily in another. Hagrid — J.K. Rowling

What most people find festive - a weekend at a beach shack with friends, a boat trip down a river, a crackling bonfire on a summer night - I see as a bleak nightmare to be grimly endured. I would sooner put lit cigarettes in my eyes than share a vacation house with a crowd. — Jancee Dunn

A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Jen's been hiding the sugary cereals behind the granola, so I forget we have them.
It's not a very nice thing to do.
Jen likes the granola that feels like crackling leaves.
I like cereal with taste as opposed to feelings. — Erynn Mangum

Homer and Shakespeare and Milton and Marvell and Wordsworth are but the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing. — Henry David Thoreau

Maggie sipped her drink with the cat draped across her lap and the dog curled at her feet. The only sounds in the room were the crackling of the fire and Dan Sean's shallow snores. There were no CD's to play, no radio, no television. There was nothing. She was just sitting there in silence, getting drunk. It occurred to her that a person's first drunken experience shoud be in the basement of a friend's house, in a forest preserve, behind the bleachers of a football field. Certainly not in the company of a sleeping ninety-nine-year-old man. She giggled a little and wondered what Uncle Kevin would make of it. "Hot port?" he would say. "Very impressive, Mags. I would have thought you'd be more of a wine cooler type of girl. — Jessie Ann Foley

Sometimes, during the lonely hours on the control deck, Bowman would listen to this radiation. He would turn up the gain until the room filled with a crackling, hissing roar; out of this background, at irregular intervals, emerged brief whistles and peeps like the cries of demented birds. It was an eerie sound, for it had nothing to do with Man; it was as lonely and meaningless as the murmur of waves on a beach, or the distant crash of thunder beyond the horizon. — Arthur C. Clarke

Being a father, having an heir, seem to add an extra dimension to David. He had always been of vivid, animating presence in any room he entered. But now he would come from visiting the boy crackling with even greater energy and force. He had been engaged listener, ready to learn what any man might have to offer in discussion, but now there was an additional depth to his questions, a more far-reaching vision behind his decisions. He thought now beyond the span of years, and into a future that glistened ahead into centuries. It's one thing, I suppose, to have a prophet tell you that you will found a dynasty. Now, it seemed, he allowed himself to truly believe it. — Geraldine Brooks

She herself had certainly never been more alive. She felt electric. She would not have been surprised if sparks had come crackling out of the tips of her sober gloves. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Forests are places where we can get back in touch with our inner selves, where we can walk on soft ground, breathe in natural scents, taste berries, listen to the leaves crackling - all the senses are awakened in the subdued light and stress melts away like snow in the snow. — Pierre Lieutaghi

An editorial in the Los Angeles Times [1923] wistfully asked, 'Will eating chestnuts by crackling log fires become one of the lost arts preserved by a devoted people only in poetry and romance? — Susan Freinkel

(Dwight Gooden) his fastball crackling , his curveball dropping as suddenly as a duck shot in the air, has begun his charge for a third straight award-winning season. — Ira Berkow

I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors' continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.
I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half-blind.
Neither by night's ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death's feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie. — Dylan Thomas

There was no such thing as arguing with delight. Like seeing a pretty girl with the sunlight in her hair, like pancakes and hot chocolate in front of a crackling fire. Delight was one of the fundamental forces of being, like gravity. — Joe Hill

But I will place this carefully fed pig Within the crackling oven; and, I pray, What nicer dish can e'er be given to man. — Aeschylus

When they had arranged their blankets the boy lowered the lamp and stepped into the yard and pulled the door shut behind, leaving them in profound and absolute darkness.
No one moved. In that cold stable the shutting of the door may have evoked in some hearts other hostels and not of their choosing. The mare sniffed uneasily and the young colt stepped about. Then one by one they began to divest themselves of their outer clothes, the hide slickers and raw wool serapes and vests, and one by one they propagated about themselves a great crackling of sparks and each man was seen to wear a shroud of palest fire. Their arms aloft pulling at their clothes were luminous and each obscure soul was enveloped in audible shapes of light as if it had always been so. The mare at the far end of the stable snorted and shied at this luminosity in beings so endarkened and the little horse turned and hid his face in the web of his dam's flank. — Cormac McCarthy

Soon," said the crackling voice of the flame, coming from behind him, "they will fall. Soon they will fall and the star people will meet the earth people. There will be heroes among them, and men who will slay monsters and bring knowledge, but none of them will be gods. This is a poor place for gods. — Neil Gaiman

He could smell her crackling white apron and the faint flavour of toast that always hung about her so deliciously. — P.L. Travers

His presence silenced, if only for a few seconds, the crackling anxiety that made my blood grate against my bones and for a little while I'd feel melted and soft. — Meg Rosoff

Today's Gypsies, who have lived in Prague for only two generations, light a ritual fire wherever they work, a nomads' fire crackling only for the joy of it, a blaze of rough-hewn wood like a child's laugh, a symbol of the eternity that preceded human thought, a free fire, a gift from heaven, a living sign of the elements unnoticed by the world-weary pedestrian, a fire in the ditches of Prague warming the wanderer's eye and soul. — Bohumil Hrabal

There was a guy roasting chestnuts on the street corner, and the smell wafted over, hinting at the coming Winter, but in a good way, in the way that makes you think about Christmas and snow days and fires crackling away in fireplaces. — Sarah Dunn