Crouching Quotes & Sayings

You remember having friends who used to lampoon the world so effortlessly, crouching at the verge of every joke and waiting to pounce on it, and you remember how they changed as they grew older and the joy of questioning everything slowly became transformed into the pain of questioning everything, like a star consuming its own core. — Kevin Brockmeier

Or maybe his reclusiveness was a decisive marketing strategy-if you disappear, people are more interested in your work. You become a legend while you're still alive. Crouching behind a stonewall, or the post under a house ... people are kneeling down to find you. — Naomi Shihab Nye

Yes. Otherwise I could have done a lot of Hollywood movies. After Crouching Tiger I got a lot of offers, but I turned them down because they were all victim roles - poor girls sold to America to be a wife or whatever. I know I have the ability to go deeper, to take on more original roles than that. — Zhang Ziyi

This reminds me of the place in Genesis 4 where God looks at Cain, who is full of self-pity, and says to him, "Cain, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it." What's important to understand is that the principle of self in your life is crouching at your door! It wants to have you, it wants to pounce on you, it wants to devour you. And it's up to you to do something about it. God asks that you deny yourself, that you lose yourself to find yourself. If you try to do this without the work of the Spirit, and without belief in all Christ has done for you, then simply giving up your rights and desires will be galling and hardening. But in Christ and with the Spirit, it will be liberating. — Timothy Keller

And overpowered by memory
Both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely
For man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching
Before Achilles' feet as Achilles wept himself,
Now for his father, now for Patroclus once again
And their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house. — Homer

The greatest religion gives suffering to nobody," reads a weather-beaten sign, quoting the Buddha, at Chele La pass, the highest motorable point in the country, near Paro. This maxim is everywhere evident. As a Bhutanese friend and I walked in the mountains one afternoon, he reflexively removed insects from the path and gently placed them in the verge, out of harm's way. Early one morning in Thimphu, I saw a group of young schoolboys, in their spotless white-sleeved ghos, crouching over a mouse on the street, gently offering it food. In Bhutan, the horses that trudge up the steep trail to the Tiger's Nest monastery are reserved for out-of-shape tourists; Bhutanese don't consider horses beasts of burden and prefer not to make them suffer under heavy loads. Even harvesting honey is considered a sign of disrespect for the industrious bees; my young guide, Kezang, admonished me for buying a bottle of Bhutanese honey to take home. (Chastened, I left it there.) In — Madeline Drexler

Ten years before Matrix, ten years before Crouching Tiger - I wanted to do a Hong Kong action movie. — Robert Mark Kamen

Whether you job involves chasing criminals, crouching numbers, or wrestling with paperwork, learning how to recognize and rely on those hunches and gut feelings can dramatically improve your job performance. — Laurie Nadel

That night, Gregory dreamt of his mother. It was a dream that he'd have carried to his therapist like a raw, precious egg if he'd had a therapist, and the dream made him wish he had one. In the dream, he sat in the kitchen of his mother's house at the table on his usual place. He could hear her handle pots and pans and sigh occasionally. Sitting there filled his heart with sadness and also with a long missed feeling of comfort until he realised that the chair and the table were much too small for him: it was a child's chair and he could barely fit his long legs under the table. He was worried that his mother might scold him for being so large and for not wearing pants. Gregory, in the dream, felt his manhood press against his belly while he was crouching uncomfortably, not daring to move. — Marcus Speh

Everywhere he looked he saw families reunited, and finally, he saw the two whose company he craved most.
"It's me," he muttered, crouching down between them. "Will you come with me?"
They stood up at once, and together he, Ron, and Hermione left the Great Hall. Great chunks were missing from the marble staircase, part of the balustrade gone, and rubble and bloodstains occurred every few steps as they climbed.
Somewhere in the distance they could hear Peeves zooming through the corridors singing a victory song of his own composition:

We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter's the one,
And Voldy's gone moldy, so now let's have fun!

"Really gives a feeling for the scope and tragedy of the thing, doesn't it?" said Ron, pushing open a door to let Harry and Hermione through. — J.K. Rowling

We should've been different breeds. There can only be one lion in a small cage. It's not important if the other lion is sleeping or crouching in the corner. The only important thing is that ... it's a lion. — Seyoung Kim

You can use martial arts to tell a different story. Ang Lee used martial arts in 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' to talk about love. — Jet Li

Time held no meaning as my mind darted in and out of memories. Past and present collided to create a full-sensory collage out of my life: playing hide-n-seek with my best friends Luke - who always cheated by walking through walls when he was about to be caught - and Lucy; Mr. Caldrin critiquing my sketches and offering ideas to make them more realistic; targets changing faces, blending into the same person, their thoughts rippling through my mind like waves. Through it all, a demon stalked me from the shadows of my memories, never quite showing its face, but crouching, waiting.
And then I dreamed ... — Kimberly Kinrade

For years I have been crouching in corners hissing small and ladylike anathema of Theodore Dreiser. — Dorothy Parker

After supper was over and the toasts had been drunk, the boy Pablo was called in to play for the company while the gentlemen smoked ... there was softness and languor in the wire strings
but there was also a kind of madness; the recklessness, the call of wild countries which all these men had felt or followed in one way or another. Through clouds of cigar smoke, the scout and the soldiers, the Mexican rancheros and the priests, sat silently watching the bent head and crouching shoulders of the banjo player, and his seesawing yellow hand, which sometimes lost all form and became a mere whirl of matter in motion, like a patch of sand-storm. — Willa Cather

Roadblock #5: It's Unpredictable
By and large, human beings don't like surprises. I know that I don't. Okay, maybe I like that rare piece of unexpected good news or a letter from a friend or a thoughtful thank-you. But I'm willing to bet that people in funny hats jumping out of dark closets are responsible for more heart attacks than expressions of unbridled delight. When the doorbell rings late at night, I'm under no illusion that it's the Publisher's Clearing House Prize Patrol!
This, most likely, goes back to our caveman past when a big, exciting surprise was apt to be something like an 800-pound,snarling, saber-toothed tiger about to rip the head from our shoulders. Surprises were usually bad news. (Think about this the next time you're crouching in the dark in somebody's front hall closet with their raincoats and umbrellas.) — Paul Powers

The grass on the other side of the hill may well be greener, but you should always check that there isn't something with teeth and claws crouching in it. — Chris I. Naylor

Aubrey, crouching on a nearby counter, watched me with squinty eyes, apparently pondering why anyone would willingly immerse themselves in water ever, let alone for extended periods of time. — Richelle Mead

-Excuse me,- I said, but my voice seemed to disappear into the dark.
It was my body. In this gloomy, cramped box, I had eaten poison plants and died, hidden away from prying eyes.
Crouching down at the door, I wept. For my dead self. — Yoko Ogawa

He knew one thing only, and it was beyond fear or reason: He was not going to die crouching here like a child playing hide-and-seek; he was not going to die kneeling at Voldemort's feet ... he was going to die upright like his father, and he was going to die trying to defend himself, even if no defense was possible ... — J.K. Rowling

It's the moment when something happens not just deep among the trees but also in the dark interior of the human heart, for the heart, too, has its night and its wild surges, as strong an instinct for the hunt as a wolf or a stag. The human night is filled with the crouching forms of dreams, desires, vanities, self-interest, mad love, envy, and the thirst for revenge, as the desert night conceals the puma, the hawk and the jackal. — Sandor Marai

Back off, perv! I have a black belt in taekwondo
and I will fuck you up if you take another step toward
me."
Chase raised his hands in surrender, trying really,
really hard to keep his eyes on hers. "Whoa, there,
crouching tiger. Let's just take this down a notch. — Lorelei James

I'd like to be a more consistent starter. I'd like a smoother transition from crouching to running. I have to learn to relax during a race and how to breathe. — Donovan Bailey

From the outside, it looked like it was crouching, like it knew it was an architectural outcast. — Anonymous

The rats had gnawed a hole through the bottom panel. At least he assumed it was rats. Of course it was. What else could it be? For a moment, he conjured up an assortment of Lovecraftian creatures crouching on their haunches, waiting patiently in the dark just beyond the door, waiting to devour him like a side of fresh beef. He quickly held his imagination in check. — Gary Val Tenuta

Decades of sorrow and loss, he had suffered. And all of them caused by this woman crouching in front of him with his blood on her lips. — Stephen Lloyd Jones

The moon climbed out of the ravine, blue, skinny, as if it had been fed on nothing but skimmed milk. It climbed out, and quickly slithered up and up along the finest thread-away from trouble, and on the very top it huddled, crouching on thin legs. ("The Protectress Of Sinners") — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Just like ice, lives crack, too. Personalities. Identities. Jimmy Zizmo, crouching over the Packard's wheel has already changed past understanding. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Hello," said a Traveler, crouching down on Tier's other side. "You must be the Bard."
"Tier," said Seraph, "this is Kors. Kors, my husband, Tier. Kors, what do you want?"
Ah, thought Tier contentedly, all that in under a breath, my Seraph at her charismatic best. — Patricia Briggs

I cannot actually see him, but there he is in my mind's eye, crouching or down on all fours, on a hillock, black clouds racing past over his head, and the hillock becomes a hill and the next minute it is the atrium of a church, an atrium as black as the clouds, charged with electricity like the clouds, and glistening with moisture or blood, and the wizened youth trembles more and more violently, wrinkles his nose and then pounces on the story. But only I know the story, the real story. And it is simple and cruel and true and it should make us laugh, it should make us die laughing. But we only know how to cry, the only thing we do wholeheartedly is cry. The curfew was in force. — Roberto Bolano

Private Benjamin lives next door but one to Bob Cryer from The Bill. I once saw him crouching down behind a sycamore tree and using his nose as an Allen Key to release a starving rat. — St John Morris

What are you smiling at?"
I whirled, peering into the gloom. The Darkling's voice seemed to float out of the shadows. He walked down to the stream, crouching on the bank to splash water on his face and through his dark hair.
"Well?" he asked, looking up at me.
"Myself," I admitted.
"Are you that funny?"
"I'm hilarious. — Leigh Bardugo

He lounged in the corner like a crouching cat, watching me through eyes narrowed against the sun. — Diana Gabaldon

He was an orphan, taken on by the alchemist to be little better than a slave. Will had never, not once, had anywhere to go
not really.
He realized this for the first time as he was crouching in the alleyway, but the realization, instead of making him feel unhappy, made him feel strangely free. It was like walking into a room and hearing everyone go silent and knowing yes, it was true, they *were* all talking about you; and they had been saying that your feet smelled like rotten fish; but also that you didn't care. — Lauren Oliver

'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' is not a direct-to-video, low-budget sequel: it's a big film. And it'd be fantastic to have the opportunity to see it on the IMAX screens at the same time, and IMAX has made arrangements with us for that to happen. — Ted Sarandos

There is one distinctive charm about fishing - its fascinations will stand any climate. You may sit crouching on ice over a hole inside the arctic circle, or on a Windsor chair by the side of the River Lea in the so-called temperate zone, or you may squat in a canoe on an equatorial river, with the surrounding atmosphere forty-five percent mosquito, and if you are fishing you will enjoy yourself ... — Mary Kingsley

Soon fifty-six Shield Bugs were lined up, crouching like coiled springs on the gunnels of the chicken boat. — Angie Sage

My blood ran cold. Twenty yards away a hooded figure was crouching behind the oak tree, flashing a pinpoint light into the office where Walter and Lola did business. — Suzanne M. Trauth

Since when did you bring a gun?" Navidson asks, crouching near the door.
"Are you kidding me? This place is scary. — Mark Z. Danielewski

In the deep shadow of the tree there was a deeper shadow yet, black, inchoate, vague - a crouching form full of savage vigor and menace. It — Arthur Conan Doyle

I hate when people question my ability to get from one place to another without mutilating myself. It's tantamount to saying, "Try to get home without screwing it up like last time, dummy," or "Farewell, for I may never see you again, given the mortality that awaits us all like a crouching panther. — Rob Sheffield

The harsh cry startled the fox, now crouching almost flat in the undergrowth. It leapt from its hiding place and up the bank. There was a flash of green light, a yelp, and the fox fell back to the ground, dead. — J.K. Rowling

He seemed to savor telling the story, as if he'd memorized its details especially for her: how three or four days after she and Lulu had left the general's redoubt, the photographers began showing up, first one or two whom the soldiers ferreted out of the jungle and imprisoned, then more, too many to capture or even count-they were superb hiders, crouching like monkeys in the trees, burying themselves i shallow pits camouflaging inside bunches of leaves. Assassins has never managed to locate the general with any precision, but the photographers made it look easy: scores of them surging across the border without visas, curled in baskets and wine casks, rolled up in rugs, juddering over unpaved roads in the backs of trucks and eventually surrounding the general's enclave, which he didn't dare leave. — Jennifer Egan

An immense body, encircling my delirium, a body made of wind and sunlight, crouching and stretching, encompassed the existence of the slightest human echo.
— Joe Bousquet

He had made follow him. He had called her by her name, and she had come crouching to his hand. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Jet slammed her back against the wall of the ruined warehouse, panting. Crouching down by the moldy cement bricks, she fought to make her breathing silent. Her sword dug into her spine in the middle of her back, but she barely felt it. Panic filled her, making her sweat even in the early morning air. She was too late. Surely, they'd seen her. They always said it happened this way. The older adults had been warning her for years about this kind of thing, warning all of them. — J.C. Andrijeski

Tonight's December thirty-first, something is about to burst. The clock is crouching, dark and small, like a time bomb in the hall. Hark, it's midnight, children dear. Duck! Here comes another year! — Ogden Nash

At evening when the lamp is lit,
The tired Human People sit
And doze, or turn with solemn looks
The speckled pages of their books.
Then I, the Dangerous Kitten, prowl
And in the Shadows softly growl,
And roam about the farthest floor
Where Kitten never trod before.
And, crouching in the jungle damp,
I watch the Human Hunter's camp,
Ready to spring with fearful roar
As soon as I shall hear them snore.
And then with stealthy tread I crawl
Into the dark and trackless hall,
Where 'neath the Hat-tree's shadows deep
Umbrellas fold their wings and sleep.
A cuckoo calls - and to their dens
The People climb like frightened hens,
And I'm alone - and no one cares
In Darkest Africa - downstairs. — Oliver Herford

Music is a wind that blows away the years, memories, and fear, that crouching animal I carry inside me. — Isabel Allende

Nature has always something rare to show us ... and the danger to life and limb is hardly greater than one would experience crouching deprecatingly beneath a roof. — John Muir

Rook. You fit me. When I saw you crouching in that stairwell last week I felt like I knew you. You stopped me dead in my tracks, you wiped my mind. — J.A. Huss

Sin is the Monster we love to deny. It is crouching at the door and it wants you, but you must overcome it. — Frank E. Peretti

Oh, how an animal that is hurt looks up at you, John! An animal's actions can inform you if it is in pain. It don't hop and jump around as usual. No. You find a sad, crouching, cringing, small bunch of fur or hair, whining, and plainly asking you to aid it. It isn't hard to find out what is wrong, John; any man or woman who would pass by such a sight, just isn't worth knowing. I just can't withstand it! Why, I think that not only animals, but plants can know pain. I carry a drink to many a poor, thirsty growing thing; or, if it is torn up I put it kindly back, and fix its soil up as comfortably as I can. Anything that is living, John, is worthy of Man's aid. — Ernest Vincent Wright

Christians have a way of crouching in their own culture instead of penetrating the one they live in with the gospel. Too many migrate to a faith that elevates issue debate and substitutes a set of personal preferences for the glorious gospel. — James MacDonald

I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time ago, but it's wrong what they say about the past, I've learned, about how you can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I have been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years. — Khaled Hosseini

I'd been trained in the art of psychotherapy, the excavation of the past as a means of untangling the present and rendering it livable. It's detective work, of sorts, crouching stealthily in the blind alleys of the unconscious. (179) — Jonathan Kellerman

Me in a one-man tent crouching over carrier bag. It's not just the lowest point of the trip. It's the lowest point ever. In 38 years. — Karl Pilkington

I saw the movie, 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' and was surprised because I didn't see any tigers or dragons. And then I realized why: they're crouching and hidden. — Steve Martin

Alec surprised Magnus and the werewolf both by breaking away and lunging at Marcy. Whatever he had been planning, it didn't work: this time the werewolf's swipe caught him full in the chest. Alec went flying into a hot pink wall decorated with gold glitter. He hit a mirror set into the wall and decorated with curling gold fretwork with enough force to crack the glass across.
"Oh, stupid Shadowhunters," Magnus moaned under his breath. But Alec used his own body hitting the wall as leverage, rebounding off the wall and up, catching a sparkling chandelier and swinging, then dropping down as lightly as a leaping cat and crouching to attack again in one smooth movement. "Stupid, sexy Shadowhunters. — Cassandra Clare

For one moment I had a cold feeling he was watching. Over the arm of the couch, I caught a glimpse of his face staring back at me through the dark beyond the window - where just a few minutes earlier I had been crouching. A switch of perception, and I was out on the fire escape again, watching a man and a woman inside, making love on the couch. ... I thought to myself, go ahead, you poor bastard - watch. I don't give a damn anymore. — Daniel Keyes

... I suddenly discerned at my feet, crouching among the rocks for protection against the heat, the marine goddesses for whom Elstir had lain in wait and whom he had surprised there, beneath the dark glaze as lovely as Leonardo would have painted, the marvelous Shadows, sheltering furtively, nimble and silent, ready at the first glimmer of light to slip behind the stone, to hide in a cranny, and prompt, once the menacing ray had passed, to return to the rock or the seaweed over whose torpid slumbers they seemed to be keeping vigil, beneath the sun that crumbled the cliffs and the etiolated ocean, motionless lightfoot guardians darkening the water's surface with their viscous bodies and the attentive gaze of their deep blue eyes. — Marcel Proust

I considered quitting graduate school. I paid my ticket, I rode the ride. Right? Half the people I started with quit. I did not have to continue toward scholar. But something wouldn't let me. Some deep wrestling match going on inside my rib house and gray matter. Some woman in me I'd never met. You know who she was? My intellect. When I opened the door and there she stood, with her sassy red reading glasses and fitted skirt and leather bookbag, I thought, who the hell are you? Crouching into a defensive posture and looking at her warily out of the corner of my eye. Watch out, woman. To which she replied, I'm Lidia. I have a desire toward language and knowledge that will blow your mind. — Lidia Yuknavitch

When she looked up, the sky was crouching. — Anonymous

They did not use the sonic stunners but the foray gun, the ancient weapon that fires a set of metal fragments in a burst. They shot to kill him. He was dying when I got to him, sprawled and twisted away from his skis that stuck up out of the snow, his chest half shot away. I took his head in my arms and spoke to him, but he never answered me; only in a way he answered my love for him, crying out through the silent wreck and tumult of his mind as consciousness lapsed, in the unspoken tongue, once, clearly, 'Arek!' Then no more. I held him, crouching there in the snow, while he died. They let me do that. Then they made me get up, and took me off one way and him another, I going to prison and he into the dark. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I shall speak of love...
and of hate.
It is truly a marvel, but I tell you, hatred and love may live cramped together, crouching in the same heart. — M T Anderson

We are two men, two minute sparks of life; outside is the night and the circle of death. We sit
on the edge of it crouching in danger, the grease drips from our hands, in our hearts we are close
to one another, and the hour is like the room: flecked over with the lights and shadows of our
feelings cast by a quiet fire. What does he know of me or I of him? formerly we should not have
had a single thought in common--now we sit with a goose between us and feel in unison, are so
intimate that we do not even speak. — Erich Maria Remarque

Dogwoods are great optimists. Daffodils wait and see, crouching firmly underground just in case spring doesn't come this year, but dogwoods have faith. — Barbara Holland

I review all I know, but can synthesize no meaning. When I doze, the Fact, the certain accomplished calamity, wakes me roughly like a brutal nurse. I see it crouching inflexibly in a corner of the ceiling. It comes down in geometrical diagonal like lightning.
It says, I remain, I AM, I shall never cease to be: your memory will grow a deathly glaze: you will forget, you will fade out, but I cannot be undone.
Thus every quarter hour it puts the taste of death in my mouth, and shows me, but not gently, how I go whoring after oblivion. — Elizabeth Smart

This moment of lucidity does not last long. But it serves as the punishment for your sins, a Promethean entrails-pecking moment, crouching half-horse half-man, with the knowledge that you cannot appreciate the destination without knowing the starting point; you cannot revel in the simplicity unless you remember the alternatives.
And that's not the worst of your revelation. You realize that the next time you return here, with your thick horse brain, you won't have the capacity to ask to become a human again. You won't understand what a human is. Your choice to slide down the intelligence ladder is irreversible. And just before you lose your final human faculties, you painfully ponder what magnificent extraterrestrial creature, enthralled with the idea of finding a simpler life, chose in the last round to become a human. — David Eagleman

You're safer out in the open than you are crouching in the woodshed listening for footsteps and going crazy. — Eiji Yoshikawa

Shaken from sleep, and numbed and scarce awake,
Out in the trench with three hours' watch to take,
I blunder through the splashing mirk; and then
Hear the gruff muttering voices of the men
Crouching in cabins candle-chinked with light.
Hark! There's the big bombardment on our right
Rumbling and bumping; and the dark's a glare
Of flickering horror in the sectors where
We raid the Boche; men waiting, stiff and chilled,
Or crawling on their bellies through the wire.
"What? Stretcher-bearers wanted? Some one killed?"
Five minutes ago I heard a sniper fire:
Why did he do it? ... Starlight overhead
Blank stars. I'm wide-awake; and some chap's dead. — Siegfried Sassoon

CROUCHING TIGER is nevertheless a gloriously big epic, starring the Hong Kong action stars Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh in a visionary adventure where the characters seem set free from the force of gravity. — Roger Ebert

Avery?" she whispered.
He gathered her closer, his eyes still closed.
"Avery?"
"Shh." His voice was low and infinitely sad. "Hush. Tomorrow's waiting outside this door. It's crouching there in an ocean of words and uncertainties. But it's not here yet and we are. Lily. Lillian. Love. I'm begging you. Let me love you again. Let me love you all night long." She answered with a kiss. — Connie Brockway

I never wanted this," said Bastian, crouching over him. He brought the paperweight down again, into the center of Mason's face, feeling the bridge of his nose fracture under the blow. "I never said yes." He lifted his arm and brought it down again and again, and closed his eyes as the red liquid splattered over his face, dousing him in warmth. "You never gave me the chance." He didn't stop until Mason's twitching limbs fell still and his breath creased to froth through his ruined jaw. — Lisa Henry

Crouching in position posing in perfect posture
On the rooftop of a gothic cathedral sits a monster — Justin Bienvenue

The problem was Mike Tyson always had trouble with bigger men. Even fighters like Bud Green, "Bonecrusher", he had trouble with them whether he wanted to or not. He would have had great trouble with Lennox Lewis, particularly since he maximized his shortness by crouching, and he couldn't fight inside so the guy would pick him apart like Buster Douglas. — Bert Sugar

Fearing the unknown within myself has kept me crouching in a corner. I look to see who I am and discover much that is worthy. — Maureen Brady

Crouching, Ceony felt the edge of the giant crack. None of it came away in her fingers, even when she scratched it with her nails. The rock stayed hard and firm. Another handful of sand dropped to the canyon floor, seeming to make no difference in the canyon's depth whatsoever. But Ceony knew that enough handfuls would fill it, eventually. After all, it took time to mend one's heart. Enough time could heal a heart as broken as this one. It was half-healed already. — Charlie N. Holmberg

I feel nothing."
Crouching down beside her, Bercelak took a cloth from off the table and placed it over the wound. "Nothing? You feel no pain?"
"Oh. I feel pain. Lots of pain. But nothing else. — G.A. Aiken

Simmer down, crouching demon, hidden Warden. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Just then Warren's breathing, which part of me was listening to with rapt attention, stopped. Adam heard it too, crouching as if there were an enemy in the room. Maybe there was. Death is an enemy, right? — Patricia Briggs

I wish the world could better know this country for what it really is. Not just a greedy economic giant crouching fearfully behind its walls, not just a panoplied warrior nervously fingering his weapons. What is this, is a people who gather together in thousands to give a people's government its essential vitality. — Ralph Bellamy

Barbarians, we call them, while all the while we timidly cling to our Web like Visigoths crouching in the ruins of Rome's faded glory and proclaim ourselves civilized. — Dan Simmons

But if you could read my thoughts, you would be welcome to come in
and listen to the story of my life. At least, you could slip your arm through
the bars and touch me and I will hold out my forepaw to greet you, after
retracting my claws, of course. You are carried away by appearances - my
claws and fangs and the glowing eyes frighten you no doubt. I don't blame
you. I don't know why God has chosen to give us this fierce make-up, the
same God who has created the parrot, the peacock, and the deer, which
inspire poets and painters. I would not blame you for keeping your distance
- I myself shuddered at my own reflection on the still surface of a pond
while crouching for a drink of water, not when I was really a wild beast, but
after I came under the influence of my Master and learnt to question, 'Who
am I?' Don't laugh within yourself to hear me speak thus. I'll tell you about
my Master presently. — R.K. Narayan

There is a narrative behind every image. I often imagine being able to see the photographer standing behind the camera, or perhaps crouching or running with it. — James Welling

Suddenly she thought that these men believed feeling itself a disease, something to be cut out like a rotten appendix. Cold, calculating, ambitious, believing themselves rational and superior, they chased the crouching female animal through the brain with a scalpel. From an early age she had been told that what she felt was unreal and didn't matter. Now they were about to place in her something that would rule her feelings like a thermostat — Marge Piercy

I have no words for you, Rook Walsh." "Try," I whisper back as I stare hungrily into his eyes. He brings his palms to my face and tilts my chin. "I could describe what you look like, but that's not what I see. You are so much more than a body inside a dress, Rook. You fit me. When I saw you crouching in that stairwell last week I felt like I knew you. You stopped me dead in my tracks, you wiped my mind. And I reached out to touch you that day because I couldn't resist. I needed to do it and I plan on touching you all night, on the way there in the car, through dinner, as we walk around the zoo and do whatever the hell it is they do at a nighttime fundraiser, and all the way home. — J.A. Huss

Horace felt an overwhelming need to sneeze. He tried to smother the
sound, but only succeeded in making it louder.
Will looked up angrily, shaking his head in disbelief. "Will you shut up?" he said tautly.
Horace shrugged in apology. "I'm sorry," he said. "I sneezed. A person can't help it
when they sneeze."
"Perhaps not. But you could try to make it sound a little less like an elephant
trumpeting in agony," Will told him.
Horace wasn't prepared to take that lying down. Crouching down, perhaps. But lying
down, never.
"And of course, you'd know what an elephant sounds like! Have you ever heard an
elephant?" he challenged.
But Will was unabashed by his logic."No," he said."But I'm sure it couldn't be any louder
than that sneeze. — John Flanagan

Our feature film, 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Two,' has a built-in fan base from the original film. — Ted Sarandos

He felt the tremble ... Why? But she was bigger, stronger, more intelligent than
himself, wasn't she? Did she, too, feel that intangible menace, that groping out of
darkness, that crouching malignancy down below? Was there, then, no strength in
growing up? No solace in being an adult? No sanctuary in life? No fleshly citadel strong
enough to withstand the scrabbling assault of midnights? Doubts flushed him. — Ray Bradbury

I long for a church that understands the dangers of entertainment and sees it for what is is: a lion crouching at the evangelical door, ready to devour us. We need a culture of evangelism that never sacrifices to the idolatry of entertainment, but serves up the rich fare found the gospel of Christ. — J. Mack Stiles

Are you placed where others are sitting down idly, doing nothing? Rise to the work with all your powers; and when the sweat stands upon your brow, and you are tempted to loiter, cry, No, I cannot stop, for I am Christ's. If I were not purchased by blood, I might be like Issachar, crouching between two burdens; but I am Christ's, and cannot loiter. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

People who claim to know jackrabbits will tell you they are primarily motivated by Fear, Stupidity, and Craziness. But I have spent enough time in jack rabbit country to know that most of them lead pretty dull lives; they are bored with their daily routines: eat, fuck, sleep, hop around a bush now and then ... No wonder some of them drift over the line into cheap thrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful adrenalin rush in crouching by the side of a road, waiting for the next set of headlights to come along, then streaking out of the bushes with split-second timing and making it across to the other side just inches in front of the speeding front wheels — Hunter S. Thompson

Don't kill me,' said the knight. 'I yield. I yield. You can't kill a man at mercy.'

Lancelot put up his sword and went back from the knight, as if he were going back from his own soul. He felt in his heart cruelty and cowardice, the things which made him brave and kind.

'Get up,' he said. 'I won't hurt you. Get up, go.'

The knight looked at him, on all fours like a dog, and stood up, crouching uncertainly.

Lancelot went away and was sick. — T.H. White

There might never be another 'Crouching Tiger.' There might be something that's even better than 'Crouching Tiger.' — Michelle Yeoh

The problem with being nuts, she thought, is that you don't always feel as if you're nuts. Sometimes, in fact, you feel perfectly sane, and there just happens to be a trailer-shaped dragon crouching in the lot next door. — Christopher Moore

London, the crouching monster, like every other monster has to breathe, and breathe it does in its own obscure, malignant way. Its vital oxygen is composed of suburban working men and women of all kinds, who every morning are sucked up through an infinitely complicated respiratory apparatus of trains and termini into the mighty congested lungs, held there for a number of hours, and then, in the evening, exhaled violently through the same channels. — Patrick Hamilton

Tris," Tobias says, crouching next to me. His face is pale, almost yellow.
There is too much I want to say. The first thing that comes out is, "Beatrice."
He laughs weakly.
"Beatrice," he amends, and touches his lips to mine. I curl my fingers into his shirt. — Veronica Roth

All you can do is involve yourself totally in your own life, your own moment, Lonzi said. And when we feel pessimism crouching on our shoulders like a stinking vulture, he said, we banish it, we smother it with optimism. We want, and our want kills doom. — Rachel Kushner

My mother is an immigrant from China, and she filled my head with stories about ghosts and fighting monks in China, so the world of 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' was a very familiar one. — Tess Gerritsen