Excavating Quotes & Sayings

The archaeologists of the future will find themselves excavating heaps of our discarded junk, picking through mountains of DVDs and yoghurt pots and wondering: "who the fuck were these idiots? — Chris Thomas

I drove on, and between the north and southbound lanes a construction crew worked under daylight-bright industrial lamps. I saw them through a gauzy fog of dust and strong light...they wore blood-red vests and hardhats and massive goggles, and as the road sank I saw that the workers were bone thin, with skeletal jaws and long teeth. They labored on platforms over gaping holes in the earth, and among the men, piled atop rickety pallets, lolled babies, piles of them, in ashy cerements. I could not tell whether the crew was excavating or burying them. — Matthew M. Bartlett

I began to explore more body-centered approaches to emotional healing in the hopes of excavating deeper layers of unresolved material. The exploration began with a massage therapist who adeptly worked through layers of holding in my musculature for two hours per week. Although I was by no means muscle-bound, I was heavily armored, like an impenetrable fortress. As she peeled the armor, older and older memories emerged, muscles with a story that needed to be told. — Jeff Brown

I might be like a conductor, or I collect the stuff together and I do a lot of my own writing. But what is a pleasure is the whole creative thing in which we're all excavating and trying to find something. — Simon McBurney

For now, for one night, the pressures of the job were light-years away. He could do that to her, and for her, she realized. He could open little pockets of peace. — J.D. Robb

Isaac leaned over and whispered to me. "Yeah, I've got a few questions. Why does the word two have a "w" in it but the word one doesn't? Why don't hamburgers have any ham in them? And if oranges were blue, would they still be called oranges?" I chuckled. — Jill Williamson

The enlarging of the soul requires not only some remodeling, but some excavating. — Neal A. Maxwell

Dig down into the blood depths of hormonal bedrock, where violence and sex and power grow fibrously entwined. It's a murky, complicated place down there. No telling what you'll drag up once you start excavating. — Richard K. Morgan

Pretty quickly, I stopped seeing the company as an engine of community. Instead, I saw it as a mythmaker offering only an illusion of belonging and meeting its customers' desire for connections in form, maybe, but surely not in substance. Once I came to this conclusion, I started to dig deeper into the company's other promises
great working conditions, musical discovery, fair treatment of farmer, and concern for the environment. Every time I went excavating, the stories turned out to be more complex, more heavily edited, and more ambiguous than I had first thought. Each time, it became clear that Starbucks fulfilled its many promises only in the thinnest, most transitory of ways and that people's desires went largely unfulfilled. — Bryant Simon

Ultimately, I'm a fan of music. I describe writing music sometimes as hieroglyphics, like, you know, excavating, gently brushing off these artifacts and discovering the song underneath it all. It seems as if it is already written in it. — CeeLo Green

The motto of the Little family was evidently "variety". Young Bingo is long and thin and hasn't had a superfluous ounce on him since we first met; but the uncle restored the average and a bit over. The hand which grasped mine wrapped it round and enfolded it till I began to wonder if I'd ever get it out without excavating machinery. — P.G. Wodehouse

The light of our thought is always excavating our rich inheritance of darkness. The cradle of origin whose mysteries arise with the dawn, darkness is also the secret homeland where the slow harvestings of twilight return to become woven into the subtle eternity of memory: The — John O'Donohue

As an undergraduate, I had an opportunity to go on a number of archeological digs. So I had experience excavating, digging up remains of ancient Indian villages in the Midwest and in the Southwest. — Donald Johanson

It's an important tool to focus where we're excavating. It gives us a much bigger perspective on archaeological sites. We have to think bigger, and that's what the satellites allow us to do. — Sarah Parcak

I nurtured my dinomania with documentaries, delighted in the dino-themed B movies I brought home from the video store, and tore up my grandparents' backyard in my search of a perfect Triceratops nest. Never mind that the classic three-horned dinosaur never roamed central New Jersey, or that the few dinosaur fossils found in the state were mostly scraps of skeletons that had been washed out into the Cretaceous Atlantic. My fossil hunter's intuition told me there just had to be a dinosaur underneath the topsoil, and I kept excavating my pit. That is, until I got the hatchet out of my grandfather's toolshed and tried to cut down a sapling that was in my way. My parents bolted out of the house and put a stop to my excavation. Apparently, I hadn't filled out the proper permits before I started my dig. — Brian Switek

He who has never left his hearth and has confined his researches to the narrow field of the history of his own country cannot be compared to the courageous traveller who has worn out his life in journeys of exploration to distant parts and each day has faced danger in order to persevere in excavating the mines of learning and in snatching precious fragments of the past from oblivion. — Mas'udi

For some, excavating the past isn't an adventure, it's more akin to tearing a Band-Aid off an open wound. — Raquel Cepeda

One of the most important finds within the land of Egypt occurred when the Egyptologist and archaeologist Professor Walter B. Emery (1903-1971) was excavating tombs at the necropolis of Saqqara, one of the oldest cities in the land. There Professor Emery discovered men with blond hair and fair complexions. These individuals were revered and honored by the Egyptians as specially endowed elite. — Michael Tsarion

My own literary interest is more about excavating the past, or sensing the past inside the present. This requires all kinds of exclusions and sleights of hand. There's an admittedly antiquarian flavor to it, even though there's enough of the present included to lull the reader. — Teju Cole

Though collecting quotations could be considered as merely an ironic mimetism
victimless collecting, as it were ... in a world that is well on its way to becoming one vast quarry, the collector becomes someone engaged in a pious work of salvage. The course of modern history having already sapped the traditions and shattered the living wholes in which precious objects once found their place, the collector may now in good conscience go about excavating the choicer, more emblematic fragments. — Susan Sontag

I consider myself a pathfinder. I have been excavating the jungle and making the road for others to walk. I like to be the first in everything I do. — Dhirubhai Ambani

Never thought I'd see this moment, my voice said, full of the same breathlessness I felt as I looked up at him.
Neither did I,I replied.
'Girly?'
'I give up.'
'What?'
I took a deep breath.'I give in to you.' — Abigail Gibbs

I smiled at him, "It's okay, boys can be dumb."
Alex smirked, "Yeah, and girls can drive you crazy. — Joanne McClean

Fear gripped Harry, like some old dope-pusher promising a terrible high. — Clive Barker

I think that what most artists are trying to do is trying to understand. I think what distinguishes creative people and/or artists from another type of person is perhaps a willingness to go headlong into that uncertainty. — Brandon Boyd

Nico: "Prodigium effodio" -- what does that mean again?
Vision: Excavating monster. It's Latin.
Nico: Damn, how much time did you spend in the library?
Vision: I am a library. — Zeb Wells

Our lives become the sum of all whom we have loved. It is important not to waste anyone. One task of living out the last half of life is excavating and recovering all of those whom we loved in the first half. Thus, the recovery of lost loves becomes an important way in which the past affects the present. — George Vaillant

If Edgar Allan Poe were alive today, his agent would be constantly slapping him upside the head with tightly rolled copies of his brilliant short stories and novelettes, yelling, 'Full-length novels, you moron! Pay attention! What's the matter with you
are you shooting heroin or something? Write for the market! No more of this midlength 'Fall of the House of Usher' crap — Dean Koontz

The little babies are missing their families from their past lives. The babies have old souls and the old souls have to shrink to become little babies. The tears loosen their memories so they can slide away. They cry at the life they have lost, and then they cry at everything they'll forget. — Akhil Sharma

I spent a restless night plagued with excruciating dreams of Adam sucking me off in front of Matt, Jay and my mother. Matt and Jay weren't paying much attention, being too busy excavating each other's tonsils with their tongues, but Mum was staring with folded arms and narrowed eyes, occasionally muttering, Oh, for heaven's sake, Timothy - show a little enthusiasm! — J.L. Merrow