Digging For Dirt Quotes & Sayings

Stanley spent more time pushing the wheelbarrow than digging, because he was such a slow digger. He carted away the excess dirt and dumped it into previously dug holes. He was careful not to dump any of it in the hole where the gold tube was actually found. — Louis Sachar

That fact alone should let you know just how deep a hole I was digging. Or would that be, already have dug? Yeah, already dug. I was about halfway to China and still throwing dirt up in the air. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is the latest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. So long as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comes back to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business, eaten dirt, and sown wild oats, drifted about the world, and taken the wind of all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or of looking on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to come back to him, as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground, and stay there. — Charles Dudley Warner

Democracy is born in dirt, nourished by the digging up and turning over as much of it as can be brought within reach of a television camera or subpoena. — Lewis H. Lapham

I love the little garden in the back of my family's brownstone in Brooklyn. Digging out there in the dirt is a joy for me, although by the time August rolls around and my roses have black spot, I need the break winter provides. — Siri Hustvedt

Tell me what game Steph Landry and I used to play in the big dirt pile they made while they were digging my family's pool, back when we were both seven, or I'll know you're an alien replacement and you've got the real Steph up in your mother ship!"
I glared at him. "G.I. Joe meets Spelunker Barbie," I said. "And stop being so ridiculous. We have to go. We're going to end up at a bad table for lunch. — Meg Cabot

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry
is where we are ourselves,
(though Sterling Brown said
"Every 'I' is a dramatic 'I'")
digging in the clam flats
for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love
and I'm sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,
and are we not of interest to each other? — Elizabeth Alexander

I love finding things. I love digging around in the dirt. It's part of my Virgo. It's like acting, really. You're always searching around for something and finding little hidden treasures. — Julia Sawalha

CELL

Now look objectively. You have to
admit the cancer cell is beautiful.
If it were a flower, you'd say, How pretty,
with its mauve centre and pink petals

of if a cover for a pulpy thirties
sci-fi magazine. How striking:
as an alien, a success,
all purple eye and jelly tentacles
and spines, or are they gills,
creeping around on granular Martian
dirt red as the inside of the body,

while its tender walls
expand and burst, its spores
scatter elsewhere, take root, like money,
drifting like a fiction or
miasma in and out of people's
brains, digging themselves
industriously in. The lab technician

says, It has forgotten
how to die. But why remember? All it wants is more
amnesia. More life, and more abundantly. to take
more. to eat more. To replicate itself. To keep on
doing those things forever. Such desires
are not unknown. Look in the mirror. — Margaret Atwood

I'd like to go back to five years old again. Just sometimes. To be turning over rocks and looking for pill bugs and holding earthworms, playing dolls, erecting forts, digging through dirt for marbles, burrowing in leaf piles, failing at igloo building, when my biggest concern was going to sleep with the lights off. I wish I was five again, before things got hard, before I was forced to grow up way too early and been stuck in this "adult" thing way too long. I wish I could sit in my Grandpa's lap and let him sing me crazy Irish songs and go over the names of the planets. "Gwampa, tell me about Outer Space." ... "Gwampa, sing the Swimming Song."
I wish I could go back there, just for a little while, and pick raspberries by myself in the sun and find secret hideaways and not hurt, not worry, not carry the heavy things. If I could be five years old ... just for a few minutes. Remember what it felt like to be free. That would be something. — Jennifer DeLucy

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? — Henry David Thoreau

I leaned forward. "How did I turn out? Are you proud of the monster you made?"
Roland smiled. Hugh and Landon were right. It was like the sun had risen. Like digging a hole in your backyard and finding a glittering jewel in the dirt.
"Child, my dangerous one, my beautiful one. You've claimed your city. You shouldn't have been able to do that for another hundred years. I'm so proud that my pride could topple mountains. If you let me, I would show you to the world. I would show the world to you."
"So I could see it through your eyes?"
"So you could see it through your own. — Ilona Andrews

Francis Marion Tarwater's uncle had been dead for only half a day when the boy got too drunk to finish digging his grave and a Negro named Buford Munson, who had come to get a jug filled, had to finish it and drag the body from the breakfast table where it was still sitting and bury it in a decent and Christian way, with the sign of its Savior at the head of the grave and enough dirt on top to keep the dogs from digging it up. Buford had come along about noon and when he left at sundown, the boy, Tarwater, had never returned from the still. — Flannery O'Connor

One day, the infielders were having a pretty bad time and were making some bad throws to me at first base. After digging a few out of the dirt, Joe Orengo called over to me, 'Atta boy, John, you look like a big cat.' Some of the writers overheard the remark and asked Joe about it later. The nickname has stuck with me ever since. — Johnny Mize

Maybe tranquility is the dirt under my nails. I know it's there but I never feel like digging it out. — Casey Renee Kiser

As the night air started to creep in, he lifted her in his arms and walked the back way to their home on campus. He spent the evening digging her grave, not even caring who came his way. He didn't care whether he lived or died, now that he had lost his only love. Mike glanced into her face one more time, and then covered her with dirt. "We bury our own. We take care of the ones we love." He spoke softly, then placed a flower on her grave and made his way back to their dorm room. — Joseph McGinnis

My parents had a gardener when I was growing up, and he and I would dig in the dirt together - my mom and dad were definitely not digging with me! When I was 5, he helped me plant some corn in our backyard, and I remember how fascinating it was to watch it grow. Little did I know that 50 years later I'd be growing corn in a different way. — Howard Graham Buffett

Once archaeologists have shown possible 'new' ancient features, they can import the data into their iPads and take it to the field to do survey or excavation work. Technology doesn't mean we aren't digging in the dirt anymore - it's just that we know better where to dig. — Sarah Parcak

Like Momma says, only thing you get by digging dirt is dirty. — Jamie Farrell

We lost our everything,
she said, which said everything
about loss. My accumulation
dictates my ruin; it's different

from your dismantling, which
can happen slowly or all at once.
What's crucial is a total
inventory, which may reveal

some one element not obliterated.
We lost our everything,
she said - we - she repeated,
meaning the we-ness remained,

which in the end must be the seed
of re-beginning, the seed that
divines the plow, the ounce
of dirt, the memory of digging. — Andrea Cohen

His father had a dream: to keep his hands forever clean. Joey wasn't clear whether his father had ever understood that it takes a lot of digging in the dirt to do that. — William H Gass