Quotes & Sayings About Fluttering

Love is about giving, about caring for the other person's welfare. Love is treating someone, in the Kantian sense, never as a means but as an end in themselves. Love is sacrifice, love is something you work at, something you build like a house or tend like a plant, brick by brick, drop by drop, day by day. Nonsense. Old wives' tales, old husbands' tales. That is affection they are talking about, that is companionship, that is charity, that is tickets for the Cancer Research Ball. You must ask the young if you want to know what love is. Only they are deep enough in it to describe. We older ones have clues and simulacra, we base our judgement, like pathologists do, on the dents and scars and sediments of hearts long kept in formaldehyde. It is the pulsing heart you want to probe: the pulsing, beating, leaping, dipping, fluttering heart of a seventeen-year-old. — A.P.

Jason smiled. The sound of wings was louder now, the fluttering of angels come to carry him home. — Robert Ferrigno

And how to paint your lovely hands, fluttering over the silks like two dark birds? — Elizabeth Borton De Trevino

I'm . . . concerned. You appear to be upset. What's wrong?" His voice gentled and his eyes searched mine. "What's happened? And what can I do to help?"

I crossed my arms because my stupid heart was fluttering again. He caught me off guard. I was not at all prepared for Cletus Winston's concern.

"Nothing. Nothing is wrong. I just wanted to bring y'all muffins. Can't I bring y'all muffins?"

He was scrutinizing me again. "No. Something's off. Is it Jackson James? Do I need to maim him? Because I will. I could give him leprosy, you know. Armadillos are carriers."

My mouth fell open and a bubble of laughter emerged unchecked. "Cletus Winston, you will do no such thing."

"Sheriff's deputy or not. Just say the word. It might improve him, actually."

"You are terrible." I laughed, even though he was terrible, and I felt terrible laughing at such a terrible joke.

At least, I hope it's a joke — Penny Reid

for she could never long endure any conversation of which she was not the chief subject. But she smiled when she spoke, consciously deepening her dimple and fluttering her bristly black lashes as swiftly as butterflies' wings. The boys were enchanted, as she had intended them to be, and they hastened to apologize for boring her. They thought none the less of her for her lack of interest. Indeed, they thought more. War was men's business, not ladies', and they took her attitude as evidence of her femininity. Having — Margaret Mitchell

She glanced across to where Tilly and her brand new husband were posing for photographs, Tilly fluttering a fan coquettishly in front of her face. 'Unfortunately I didn't realise there was a French Revolutionary theme.'
'The Marie-Antoinette thing?' said Dexter. 'Well at least we know there'll be cake. — David Nicholls

I turn my face and force the corners of my mouth up. There may even be a bit if eyelash fluttering going on. He just rolls his dark blue eyes at me, obviously not impressed - or maybe I just look like I have something stuck in my eye. Sometimes it would be nice to make use of some feminine wiles. I sigh and drop my shoulders. "Out."

"You're going to have to do better than that. You know I'm not supposed to let you out without an escort."

"Please. I can't breathe in here." I step forward, stare up into his face, and lower my voice. "Do you know Emily wanted me to come to sewing circle this morning? Can you even imagine?"

Flint's mouth rounds up into a smile and he coughs to cover his chuckle. "No, Jax. I can't possibly imagine you doing anything remotely feminine. — Theresa Kay

Who knows what hung, fluttering, at the window
between him and the darkness. — Mary Oliver

Why all this insistence on the senses? Because in order to convince your reader that he is THERE, you must assault each of his senses, in turn, with color, sound, taste, and texture. If your reader feels the sun on his flesh, the wind fluttering his shirt sleeves, half your fight is won. The most improbable tales can be made believable, if your reader, through his senses, feels certain that he stands at the middle of events. He cannot refuse, then, to participate. The logic of events always gives way to the logic of the senses. — Ray Bradbury

Living by synchronicity isn't merely about getting messages. It is about growing the poetic consciousness that allows us to taste and touch what rhymes and resonates in the world we inhabit, and how the world-behind-th e-world reveals itself by fluttering the veils of our consensual reality. — Robert Moss

At times I believed that the last page of my book and the last page of my life were one and the same, that when my book ended I'd end, a great wind would sweep through my rooms carrying the pages away, and when the air cleared of all those fluttering white sheets the room would be silent, the chair where I sat empty. — Nicole Krauss

My eyes flipped open at exactly six A.M. This was no avian fluttering of the lashes, no gentle blink toward consciousness. The awakening was mechanical. A spooky ventriloquist-dummy click of the lids: The world is black and then, showtime! 6-0-0 the clock said -in my face, first thing I saw. 6-0-0. It felt different. I rarely woke at such a rounded time. I was a man of jagged risings: 8:43, 11:51, 9:26. My life was alarmless. — Gillian Flynn

Every morning he went for a walk with his wife, Reine-Marie, and their German shepherd Henri. Tossing the tennis ball ahead of them, they ended up chasing it down themselves when Henri became distracted by a fluttering leaf, or a black fly, or the voices in his head. The dog would race after the ball, then stop and stare into thin air, moving his gigantic satellite ears this way and that. Honing in on some message. Not tense, but quizzical. It was, Gamache recognized, the way most people listened when they heard on the wind the wisps of a particularly beloved piece of music. Or a familiar voice from far away. — Louise Penny

I think at the heart of so much restlessness of the day is a spiritual vacuum. There is a yearning for meaningful lives, a yearning for values we can commonly embrace. I hear an almost inaudible but pervasive discontent with the price we pay for our current materialism. And I hear a fluttering of hope that there might be more to life than bread and circuses. — Bill Moyes

To practice the Way single heartedly is, in itself, enlightenment. There is no gap between practice and enlightenment and daily life. This stripped-down Buddhist aesthetic pervades all aspects of St Zen. Most St Zen temples eschew the fantastic sculptures of bodhisattvas with their jewelry and fluttering robes. Instead, Zen emphasizes rock gardens, green-tea caffeine-infused meditation, and single-mindedness. — Marie Mutsuki Mockett

I learned by heart the lines of your face. I can draw them blindly on a water canvas.
Your face in the middle of an inflamed argument. Your face in the middle of a mild one-- when you're at fault.
Your face filled with rainbows of laughter. Your face filled with clouds of distress.
Your face, fluttering, when I open you the door. Your face, agonizing, every time I stand waiting, for the elevator.
Your face, eager, when you kiss me. Your face, surprised, when I lead you to bed.
Your face in the middle of pain. Your face on the outskirts of pleasure.
Your face, with a baffled look, when you wake up. Your face falling asleep, with total surrender.
Your face the first night we met. Your face the last night we parted.
I learned by heart the lines of your face. They all led me into hell.
They all led me into heaven. — Malak El Halabi

She shook off her sense of amazement, and tried to pretend she was watching a period play. There was a lot of flirting going on, plenty of fluttering of ivory fans and eyelashes. It was weird to think that in another two hundred years people would flirt by pole dancing, twerking, and sexting. The — Julie McElwain

The orange sun is rolling across the sky like a severed head, gentle light glimmers in the ravines among the clouds, the banners of the sunset are fluttering above our heads. The stench of yesterday's blood and slaughtered horses drips into the evening chill. — Isaac Babel

There arose a wild, impetuous, precipitate, mad inexorable, furious, dark, lacerating, merciless, combative, contentious badb, which was shrieking and fluttering over their heads. And there arose also the satyrs, and sprites, and the maniacs of the valleys, and the witches, and goblins, and owls, and destroying demons of the air and firmament, and the demoniac phantom host; and they were inciting and sustaining valour and battle with them. — Katharine Mary Briggs

A great stag woven of rushes and fluttering with green ribbons was borne through the streets to the music of pipe and tabor. Crowds of women surrounded it, leaping and grabbing at the ribbons. — Ellen Kushner

The doctors are busy with the repulsive but beneficent work of amputation. You see the sharp, curved knife enter the healthy, white body, you see the wounded man suddenly regain consciousness with a piercing cry and curses, you see the army surgeon fling the amputated arm into a corner, you see another wounded man, lying in a litter in the same apartment, shrink convulsively and groan as he gazes at the operation upon his comrade, not so much from physical pain as from the moral torture of anticipation. - You behold the frightful, soul-stirring scenes; you behold war, not from its conventional, beautiful, and brilliant side, with music and drum-beat, with fluttering flags and galloping generals, but you behold war in its real phase - in blood, in suffering, in death. — Leo Tolstoy

Marie-Laure is glad to hear a smile enter his voice. But beneath it she can sense his thoughts fluttering like trapped birds. — Anthony Doerr

Clair de Lune," a song that makes her think of leaves fluttering, and of the hard ribbons of sand beneath her feet at low tide. The music slinks and rises and settles back to earth, — Anthony Doerr

[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get done either, I know, I know. But it's a change of muck. And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral. — Samuel Beckett

Every leaf speaks bliss to me, fluttering from the autumn tree. — Emily Bronte

A book a week I heave a sigh;
That Slogan's peremptory cry
I will not hear, I will not heed.
How can They say that I should need
The book They bid me weekly buy?
But Slogans change, as days go by;
My Psyche listens, fluttering shy,
To newer message "Come and Read
A book a week."
To read! to read! O wings that fly
O'er sun-kissed lands, through clouded sky
That bear us on where Great ones lead!
I too must follow, so I plead
For magic wings. I'll read (or try)
A book a week! — Alexander Ireland

It was a Wednesday, the fluttering contractions beginning less than a half hour after returning from lunch with a few of her coworkers. They had all ordered Thai from — Andrina Coy

A trail twists through the stone cliffs toward Arques. At its end lies a broken man, his soul lifting away from his body, fluttering on a butterfly's wing, as fragile as a dream. — Julie Christine Johnson

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;
Lengthen night and shorten day;
Every leaf speaks bliss to me
Fluttering from the autumn tree.
I shall smile when wreaths of snow
Blossom where the rose should grow;
I shall sing when night's decay
Ushers in a drearier day. — Emily Bronte

In the rare moments I permitted any stillness, I noted a small fluttering at the pit of my belly, a barely perceptible disturbance. The faint whisper of a word would sound in my head: writing. At first I could not say whether it was heartburn or inspiration. The more I listened, the louder the message became: I needed to write, to express myself through written language not only so that others might hear me but so that I could hear myself. The gods, we are taught, created humankind in their own image. Everyone has an urge to create. Its expression may flow through many channels: through writing, art, or music or through the inventiveness of work or in any number of ways unique to all of us, whether it be cooking, gardening, or the art of social discourse. The point is to honor the urge. To do so is healing for ourselves and for others; not to do so deadens our bodies and our spirits. When I did not write, I suffocated in silence. — Gabor Mate

Well, possibly," I said, feeling my lips twitch again. "But maybe first you would tell us why you chose to manifest yourself in the form of Shirley Temple as last seen on the 'Good Ship Lollipop'?"
The demon twirled around, its big pink sash fluttering as it smoothed down its dress and frilly little petticoat. "My grotesque form isn't making you sick with fright?"
We both shook our heads, Noelle with a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. "Shirley Temple at her pinnacle was frightening," I finally told it, "but not in the sense I think you mean. — Katie MacAlister

Twenty-three," he said. "Mm?" She opened her dazed eyes. Thorne pulled back, looking guilty and worried, which made some of her euphoria fade away. "You once asked me how many times I'd told a girl I loved her. I've been trying to remember them all, and I'm pretty sure the answer is twenty-three." She blinked, a slow, fluttering stare. Her lips pursed in a question that took a while to form. "Including the Lunar girl who kissed you?" His brow furrowed. "Are we counting her?" "You said it, didn't you?" His gaze darted to the side. "Twenty-four." Cress gaped. Twenty-four girls. She didn't even know twenty-four people. — Marissa Meyer

It does help to actually realize that however stunning the person who is, you know, fluttering eyelashes at you, she doesn't do anything to match up to your wife. — Colin Firth

The space that I can call mine.. is so small that my ideas have become small. I am like a caterpillar in a cocoon of paper; all around me are sketches for sculptures, small drawings that seem like moths fluttering against the windows, beating their wings to escape from this tiny space.. Every day the ideas come more reluctantly, as though they know I will starve them and stunt their growth. — Audrey Niffenegger

He was reaching that age, he was at the edge of it, when the world becomes suddenly more beautiful, when it reveals itself in a special way, in every detail, roof and wall, in the leaves of trees fluttering faintly before the rain. The world was opening itself, as if to allow, now that life was shortening, one long, passionate look, and all that had been withheld would finally be given. — James Salter

You see, a man's... ahem... is shaped differently from a woman's..." Mama fluttered her hand. "... whatsit. And in the marital bed, he will wish to place his..." More hand fluttering. "... inside yours."
"His ahem goes in my whatsit."
"In so many words. Yes. — Tessa Dare

Then her eyes are fluttering open and she's looking into me. Not at me, but into me. — Jasinda Wilder

The World Trade Organization, The World Bank, The International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions virtually write economic policy and parliamentary legislation. With a deadly combination of arrogance and ruthlessness, they take their sledgehammers to fragile, interdependent, historically complex societies and devastate them, all under the fluttering banner of 'reform'. — Arundhati Roy

The cashier had long since left for home. By now she was probably bustling by an unmade bed that was waiting in her small room like a boat to carry her off to the black lagoons of sleep, into the complicated world of dreams. The person sitting in the box office was only a wraith, an illusory phantom looking with tired, heavily made-up eyes at the empyiness of light, fluttering her lashes thoughtlessly to disperse the golden dust of drowsiness scattered by the elctric bulbs. — Bruno Schulz

The drums staggered toward the distant street. Moving away from us, the dancers romped and rolled on the rhythm, their swaying heads like a field of wildflowers weaving back and forth on waves of wind. As the music dwindled to an echo in our minds, the day-to-day and minute-to-minute of slum life slowly reclaimed the lanes. We gave ourselves to our routines, our needs, and our harmless, hopeful scheming. And for a while, a little while, ours was a better world because the hearts and smiles that ruled it were almost as pure and clean as the flower petals fluttering from our hair, and clinging to our faces like still, white tears. — Gregory David Roberts

There is something charming and peculiar about a beginning. You feel it, like the change of seasons, from winter to spring, from spring to summer. You feel it; the new blood pumping inside your veins. You feel it; a thousand butterflies fluttering around your fingers to help you fly. You feel it; on your lips, when you smile at the absurdities of life that suddenly make perfect sense.
You smile... Because in every beginning, there is a rebirth. Because in every beginning, there is a layer of you that you just discovered. A layer you forgot was buried in you all this time. You smile because you are reminded of the immensity of fate. You smile because suddenly you feel so small and you like it.
So let's begin my dear. This life is beautiful. — Malak El Halabi

It was a bird. A bird struggling through stickiness: a bird coated in paint, floundering in its nest, splashing color everywhere.
Red. Red. Red.
Dozens of them: black feathers coated thickly with crimson-colored paint, fluttering among the branches.
Red means run. — Lauren Oliver

Poetry isn't like any writing I've ever heard before. I don't understand all of it, just bits of images, sentences that appear half-finished, all fluttering together like brightly colored ribbons in the wind. — Lauren Oliver

I reach out and grab her wrist. It feels impossibly tiny in my hand, like this one time I found a baby bird near goose Point, and I picked it up and it died there, taking its final gasping fluttering breaths in my palm. — Lauren Oliver

Don't wait for the muse. As I've said, he's a hardheaded guy who's not susceptible to a lot of creative fluttering. This isn't the Ouija board or the spirit-world we're talking about here, but just another job like laying pipe or driving long-haul trucks. Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you're going to be every day from nine 'til noon. or seven 'til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he'll start showing up. — Stephen King

Goddamn Summerset. I've told him to leave my car when I park it."
"I think he did." Peabody flipped on her sunshades, pointed. "It's blocking the drive, see?"
"Oh, yeah." Eve cleared her throat. The car was just as she'd left it, and fluttering in the mild breeze were a few torn articles of clothing. "Don't ask," she muttered and started to hoof it down the drive.
"I wasn't going to." Peabody's voice was smooth as silk, "Speculation's more interesting. — J.D. Robb

There's a very generous donation in the parish's future if you make this fast. Ten minutes, at the most."
Frowning, the man fumbled open his liturgy. "There's an established rite, Your Grace. Marriage must be entered into with solemnity and consideration. I don't know that I can rush
"
"Ten minutes. One thousand guineas."
The liturgy snapped closed. "Then again, what do a few extra minutes signify to an eternal God?" He beckoned Amelia with a fluttering, papery hand. "Make haste, child. You're about to be married. — Tessa Dare

A persistent breeze lifted the thin curtains, fluttering a few moments of tranquility into the turbulent day. — Susan Abulhawa

How hard it is to escape from places. However carefully one goes they hold you - you leave little bits of yourself fluttering on the fences - like rags and shreds of your very life. — Katherine Mansfield

Once Chuang Chou dreamt he was a butterfly, a butterfly flitting and fluttering around, happy with himself and doing as he pleased. He didn't know he was Chuang Chou. Suddenly he woke up and there he was, solid and unmistakeable Chuang Chou. But he didn't know if he was Chuang Chou who had dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he was Chuang Chou. — Zhuangzi

And this evening when I close my eyes against the darkness and think about her, I'll imagine iridescent wings fluttering, if only for a moment, against cloudless blue skies. — Nancy Stephan

He doesn't back down under my accusations. Instead he leans in, his big frame curving over me like a wave. "I would do all that and more." His tone betrays a carefully restrained ferocity, and I see in him, shifting and fluttering, behind his eyes the monster I've always known is there. It makes my breath catch, the beautiful horror of it. He doesn't try to hide it, if anything he leans in closer, filling my vision until he fills the world. Him and his dark devil's eyes. — Eliza Crewe

His soul was sensitive without being enthusiastic: it was too languid to thrill out of self-consciousness into passionate delight; it went on fluttering in the swampy ground where it was hatched, thinking of its wings and never flying. His experience was of that pitiable kind which shrinks from pity, and fears most of all that is should be known: it was that proud narrow sensitiveness which has not mass enough to spare for transformation into sympathy, and quivers threadlike in small currents of self-preoccupation or at best of an egoistic scrupulosity. — George Eliot

Ophelia moaned as I patted her cheeks in the approved "vague assistance to woman who has fainted" manner.

"Perdy?" she mumbled, her eyelashes fluttering.

"No, it's just me," I said, looking up when the door opened. "And Drake and Fiat, and Pal and Istvan, and I think that's Renaldo and another one of Fiat's bullies in the hall, although it's a little hard to see with everyone in the way. — Katie MacAlister

She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air. — Raymond Chandler

Aamir, recalling back to the idyllic days of his college youth, pictured himself once again sitting quietly on a familiar neighbourhood rooftop. He often enjoyed relaxing there, alone or with friends, while watching the colourful fluttering prayer flags on rooftop poles, especially in the warmth of an early evening breeze, as wispy clouds drifted against the jagged Himalayan backdrop. He has oft times wondered, ever since his childhood, if the prayers to the spirits of the dead, flying out from those slowly tattering rags, will ever really be answered. Perhaps it will be in another place, in another time, when we're living another life that we shall finally know. Aamir had calmly thought at the time. He was that sort of philosophical guy. — Andrew James Pritchard

I swear," Nell said, walking faster, "you're looking at a life of hamburger and no yelling." She held the dachshund closer, and it sighed this time and put its head on her arm, and she stopped to look down into
its eyes. "Hello," she said, and SugarPie stared back, pathetic and wide-eyed in the glow from the streetlight, her eyelashes fluttering like a Southern belle confronted by a Yankee. — Jennifer Crusie

God designs that we should enjoy ourselves. I do not believe in a religion that makes people gloomy, melancholy, miserable and ascetic. . . . I should
not think there was anything great or good associated with that, while everything around, the trees, birds, flowers and green fields, were so pleasing, the insects and bees buzzing and fluttering, the lambs frolicking and playing. While everything else enjoyed life, why should not we? But we want to do it correctly
and not pervert any of these principles that God has planted in
the human family. — John Taylor

When I'm manic, I'm so awake and alert, that my eyelashes fluttering on the pillow sound like thunder. — Andy Behrman

They watched storms out there so distant they could not be heard, the silent lightning flaring sheetwise and the thin black spine of the mountain chain fluttering and sucked away again in the dark. They saw wild horses racing on the plain, pounding their shadows down the night and- leaving in the moonlight a vaporous dust like the palest stain of their passing. — Cormac McCarthy

A plodding diligence brings us sooner to our journey's end than a fluttering way of advancing by starts. — Roger L'Estrange

I've missed you, he whispers softly. The air between them is electric as he leans in, gently brushing his lips against her neck. In the next room, the guests complain about the sudden increase in temperature. Fans are drawn from colorful bags, fluttering like tropical birds. — Erin Morgenstern

Tonight all the hells of young grief have opened again; the mad words, the bitter resentment, the fluttering in the stomach, the nightmare unreality, the wallowed-in tears. For in grief nothing 'stays put.' One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often - will it be for always? - how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, 'I never realized my loss till this moment'? The same leg is cut off time after time. The first plunge of the knife into the flesh is felt again and again. They — C.S. Lewis

I scoffed, enjoying myself far too much, my heart and stomach fluttering together, in cahoots like squealing fangirls. — Penny Reid

I was beginning to understand something I couldn't articulate. It was a jazzy feeling in my chest, a fluttering, a kind of buzzing in my brain. Warmth. Life. The circulation of blood. Sanguinity. I don't know. I understood the enormous risk of telling the truth, how the telling could result in every level of hell reigning down on you, your skin scorched to the bone and then bone to ash and then nothing but a lingering odour of shame and decomposition, but now I was also beginning to understand the new and alien feeling of taking the risk and having the person on the other end of the telling, the listener, say:
Bad shit at home? You guys are running away?
Yeah, I said.
I understand, said, Noehmi. — Miriam Toews

Oh, dear." Free looked down, fluttering her eyelashes demurely. "Is my punctuation showing once more? — Courtney Milan

Then his beautiful lips touched hers. A fluttering of wings, a cry of angels, a single beat of two hearts. — Chris Lange

This was more than the mate-claim. It was more than love. More than a fluttering of our hearts, or a tingle when she entered a room. — Lila Felix

The wind fluttering the pennants atop the outer keep and teasing Berenice's hair carried the loamy smell of damp earth, the fresh scent of the river, and, even now, a ghostly chemical astringency. The miasma wafted from the battlefield. — Ian Tregillis

There is a thing, like a bird, weak and fluttering within my chest, i cradle it and care for it as anyone should an injured thing, yet, i silently pray for it's death. — Gabriel Macht

What totally different feelings did Emma take back into the house from what she had brought out!- she had then been only daring to hope for a little respite of suffering;- she was now in an exquisite site fluttering of happiness moreover as she believed must still be greater when the flutter should have passed away — Jane Austen

Also in the boom of the big bell there is a quaintness of tone which wakens feelings, so strangely far-away from all the nineteenth-century part of me, that the faint blind stirrings of them make me afraid, - deliciously afraid. never do I hear that billowing peal but I become aware of a striving and a fluttering in the abyssal part of my ghost, - a sensation as of memories struggling to reach the light beyond the obscurations of a million million deaths and births. I hope to remain within hearing of that bell ... and, considering the possibility of being doomed to the state of a jiki-ketsu-geki, I want to have my chance of being reborn in some bamboo flower-cup, or mizutame, whence I might issue softly, singing my thin and pungent song, to bite some people that I know. — Lafcadio Hearn

Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzu, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awoke, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming that I am a man." The — David Eagleman

Mr. Weasley conjured up candles to light the darkening garden before they had their homemade strawberry ice cream, and by the time they had finished, moths were fluttering low over the table, and the warm air was perfumed with the smells of grass and honeysuckle. Harry was feeling extremely well fed and at peace with the world as he watched several gnomes sprinting through the — J.K. Rowling

His eyes were so inviting that for a moment, everything in me wanted to reveal this part of myself, as though the truth was a butterfly, wings fluttering, green and gold and quivering to be free. I was a closed book, a rolled map, a dark territory, uncharted; I was surprised by my urgency, but after all, to be known was to exist. — Heidi Heilig

Out of the corner of his eye he saw the fluttering banner high above, flashing Potter for President over the crowd. His heart skipped. He felt braver. — J.K. Rowling

No matter how bleak and black her existence became, the familiar sight of the moon restored something within her, small as it was - like tiny fluttering wings of flame beating back the darkness. — Shona Moyce

It's quite amazing what 3D is doing to movies. Just simple things like a paper plane flying at you or flower petals fluttering about are wonderful. — Kou Shibasaki

Open your eyes, baby. Look at me." He pressed his forehead down to meet mine, my eyelids fluttering open at his command. "Look at me and tell me you don't want it."
I peered up at him with unsteady breaths, hearing his throat work when I tilted my lips to graze his. The contact was feather light, my heart hammering through my chest at the feel of it. "I'm looking," I breathed against him.
"Good. Because right now, all I want to do is rip your clothes off and make you come until you can't stand, and I want your eyes on me the whole time, are we clear?"
-Jackson and Emma — Rachael Wade

It's nowhere near as intense as what I imagine an actor experiences backstage, but I feel a fluttering nervousness before a curtain goes up on a play. I mean, any play, anywhere - on Broadway or the Bowery or in a church basement. — Ben Brantley

Her heartbeat picks up, her pulse fluttering through her neck and wrists. She loves this part, loves the moment before she pulls off a job - the heat, the cold, the rush. It's terrifying and delicious, like teetering out over the edge of a building, her fingers tight on the safety railing. She can see how everything could go horribly wrong, but that rational part of her is tamped down, silenced by the beauty of the fall. — Emily Lloyd-Jones

Necessity knows no magic formulae-they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders. — Milan Kundera

I admire one to my left, the bronze sun is behind him as he falls, silhouetting him, immortalizing him in that singular moment - one I know I shall never forget - so that he looks like a Miltonian angel falling with wrath and glory. His exoskeleton sheds its friction armor, as Lucifer might have shed the fetters of heaven, feathers of flame peeling off, fluttering behind. Then a missile slashes the sky and high-grade explosives christen him mortal once again. — Pierce Brown

And who over the ruins of his life pursued its fleeting, fluttering significance, while he suffered its seeming meaninglessness and lived its seeming madness, and who hoped in secret at the last turn of the labyrinth of Chaos for revelation and God's presence ... — Hermann Hesse

As they drifted down the Apple River, Virgil felt as though a medicine was moving through him, flushing his cells with a natural liquid peace. The quiet shrilly of katydids and the soft song of moving water permeated the air. He watched Chantel slowly spinning in the currents, her eyelids fluttering in a way he'd never seen before, her ebony face drenched in sunshine, feet kicking lazily in the water. He wanted to think only of her, in this calm river vision, releasing all other thoughts from his head like flocks and flocks of birds, every species known to man, shooting out of a cavern and filling the sky. — Ron Parsons

What if I promise to keep my pants on?" The smile in his voice had butterflies fluttering in her stomach.
She stared up at the ceiling. "Fine. But you'll have to leave mine on, too."
"Well, shit." His laughter warmed her all over. "You drive a hard bargain."
"I'm all about hard things." She ran her tongue along her teeth.
"You do have that effect on me. — Lisa Kessler

There is a sacred calling on your life, and the question is: Will you spend your life flittering and fluttering about or take the time and really heed that call and create your own path to your highest good? ... You cannot let other people define your life for you. You are the author of your own life ... Real power is when you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing, the best it can be done. Authentic power. There's a surge, there's a kind of energy field that says, "I'm in my groove, I'm in my groove." And nobody has to tell you, "You go, girl," because you know you're already gone. — Oprah Winfrey

I understand now, Fluttering Bird! I must draw the cats close - together once more - so that we can grow strong and spread like the Blazing Star. — Erin Hunter

From the mountain peaks for streams descend and flow near the town; in the cascades the white water is calling, but the mistis do not hear it. On the hillsides, on the plains, on the mountaintops the yellow flowers dance in the wind, but the mistis hardly see them. At dawn, against the cold sky, beyond the edge of the mountains, the sun appears; then the larks and doves sing, fluttering their little wings; the sheep and the colts run to and fro in the grass, while the mistis sleep or watch, calculating the weight of their steers. In the evening Tayta Inti gilds the sk, gilds the earth, but they sneeze, spur their horses on the road, or drink coffee, drink hot pisco.
But in the hearts of the Puquios, the valley is weeping and laughing, in their eyes the sky and the sun are alive; within them the valley sings with the voice of the morning, of the noontide, of the afternoon, of the evening. — Jose Maria Arguedas

In a fit of sudden rage, Gary stripped the book from Chiang-gong's grasp, clutched it with a white-knuckled, vicelike grip, groaning, and then threw it out the door of the house where it hit the car and dropped to the ground, the pages fluttering in the wind. Quietly, Chiang-gong walked outside and picked it up. He stared down the street and he shielded his eyes, squinting at something in the distance. Then he turned to the others in the house and shouted, "Soldier, they coming! — B.C. Chase

The faerie represent the beauty we don't see, or even choose to ignore. That's why I'll paint them in junkyards, or fluttering around a sleeping wino. No place or person is immune to spirit. Look hard enough, and everything has a story. Everybody is important.- Jilly Coppercorn — Charles De Lint

And whether this happiness lasted a hundred seconds or ten minutes, it was so far removed from time that it resembled every other genuine happiness as completely as one fluttering blue lycaenid butterfly resembles another. — Hermann Hesse

But the herm was gray-faced, lips purple-blue, eyelids fluttering. An IV pump, not dependent upon potentially erratic ship's gravity, infused yellow fluid rapidly into Bel's right arm. The left arm was strapped to a board; plastic tubing filled with blood ran from under a bandage and into a hybrid appliance bound around with quantities of plastic tape. A second tube ran back again, its dark surface moist with condensation. — Lois McMaster Bujold

That night, like every other night since I'd met her, I curled Grace into my arms, listening to her parents' muffled movements in the living room. They were like busy little brainless birds, fluttering in and out of their nest at all hours of the day or night, so involved in the pleasure of nest building that they hadn't noticed that it had been empty for years. — Maggie Stiefvater

Of a man who only wills the Good out of fear of punishment, it is necessary to say with special emphasis, that he fears what a man should not and ought not to fear: loss of money, loss of reputation, misjudgment by others, neglect, the world's judgment, the ridicule of fools, the laughter of the frivolous, the cowardly whining of consideration, the inflated triviality of the moment, the fluttering mist-forms of vapor. — Soren Kierkegaard

All craftsmen share a knowledge. They have heldReality down fluttering to a bench. — Vita Sackville-West

sighed, smirking and rolling her eyes in friendly, amused exasperation. Grabbing his shirt, she pulled him up to her. His hands caught her shoulders, pulling her even closer. They kissed. It was definitely not one-sided, or platonic. Wow. Um. When they let go, Will gave me a playful nod. "I've got a job to do." He ran off so fast that he almost disappeared. All he left was the little white fortune card, fluttering to the floor. Cassie crouched down to pick it up. With that same bland, cynical smirk she looked at it, then flipped it around in her fingers for me to read: 'In six minutes, you will kiss the girl standing next to you. — Richard Roberts

She could see Sylvie and her friends on the lawn below, their dresses fluttering like moths in the encroaching dusk. — Kate Atkinson

He [Cupid] was Love [Eros] reborn. And as he was born after his parents coupled as Love-Birds, he was born with little fluttering wings. — Nicholas Chong

Our pain hides beneath these fluttering, random thoughts that run through our heads in an endless loop. But there's so much freedom in getting to know what's under there, the bedrock. — Dani Shapiro