Grates Quotes & Sayings

and all of the books are behind metal grates, protected like the precious objects they are. — Jenny Han

I'll listen, till my fancy hears
The clang of swords' the crash of spears!
These grates, these walls, shall vanish then
For the fair field of fighting men,
And my free spirit burst away,
As if it soared from battle fray. — Walter Scott

Whereas the structural trend toward increased inequality was gradual and went for a long time unobserved, the crises in the lives of the urban poor were public and dramatic. The new armies of the homeless that seemed suddenly to materialize in every major city in the early 1980s, sleeping in doorways, camped under elevated highways, spreading their temporary cardboard shelters over office tower heating grates, were a startling and disturbing sight. Not since the Depression had the least-advantaged Americans been so starkly visible to the rest. — Daniel T. Rodgers

During the 1970s and 1980s, Congress distributed more than $60 billion to cities to make sure that what goes into toilets, industrial drains and street grates would not endanger human health. — Charles Duhigg

People, her people at least, were always chasing shattered hopes. A father gazing down on dead soil, with a brood of hollow-cheeked children sitting around a barren table. A lonely maid cleaning grates and waiting for a lover who by now wouldn't even recall her name. A weary labourer trudging miles between the hiring fairs, carrying his spade, clothes soiled from sleeping in damp fields. They held candles to storms, her people. They saw their lights extinguished as cruel winds of fate blew. — Paul Reid

Start with a clean grill. Keep it clean by brushing with a wire brush after preheating, and again after cooking. Make sure to oil your grates and your food before putting it on the grill to keep it from sticking. — Emeril Lagasse

I sit in my room glowering at the ceiling. I know what this is about, I think. I'm cranky 'cause I'm uncomfortably thirsty for Chris all the bloody time. The heart-twinging excitement of yestermonth is gone. Now it just grates. There is no relief. There is nothing to be done. There is no sign of a parachute. — Laura Buzo

As Cinderella would probably tell you, even a prince who only recognizes your footwear is preferable to a lifetime of cleaning grates. — Barbara Hambly

Editors keep pushing
deadline strain while people sleep
on benches and subway grates;
a welter weight boxer dances
on the platform at 125th Street
station, commuters look unfazed... — Kristen Henderson

I know who you are," the Chicano said to Thomas. "You're that Indian guy did all the talking." "Yeah," one of the African men said. "You're that storyteller. Tell us some stories, chief, give us the scoop." Thomas looked at these five men who shared his skin color, at the white man who shared this bus which was going to deliver them into a new kind of reservation, barrio, ghetto, logging-town tin shack. He then looked out the window, through the steel grates on the windows, at the freedom just outside the glass. He saw wheat fields, bodies of water, and bodies of dark-skinned workers pulling fruit from trees and sweat from thin air. Thomas closed his eyes and told this story. — Sherman Alexie

It is a hard and nice subject for a man to speak of himself: it grates his own heart to say anything of disparagement, and the reader's ear to hear anything of praise from him. — Abraham Cowley

Everybody says, 'I have problems overcooking steak on the grill,' but just take it off earlier! Grilling is really common sense. It's very simple. You should think of a grill as a burner - it just happens to have grates. You shouldn't be intimidated by it. — Bobby Flay

Cinema captures the sound of speech close up and makes us hear in their materiality, their sensuality, the breath, the gutturals, the fleshiness of the lips, a whole presence of the human muzzle (that the voice, that writing, be as fresh, supple, lubricated, delicately granular and vibrant as an animal's muzzle), to succeed in shifting the signified a great distance and in throwing, so to speak, the anonymous body of the actor into my ear: it granulates, it crackles, it caresses, it grates, it cuts, it comes: that is bliss. — Roland Barthes

One who has a personality that grates like glass paper should probably choose footwear sufficient for fleeing from irritated people. — Lindsay Buroker

I've had to take a lot of stick down the years but the one thing that really got to me was when someone questioned my integrity. It's the one thing that really grates with you. — Gordon Strachan

I try not to see Woody Harrelson because he has become this big movie star, and it grates, so I try and stay away from him. — Ted Danson

We are talking about mutated women, the result of cruel genetic experiments performed by fashion designers so lacking in any sense of human decency that they think nothing of putting their initials on your eyeglass lenses. The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates. If a normal woman puts on clothing designed for these unfortunate people, she is quite naturally going to look like Revenge of the Pork Person. — Dave Barry

We're both so into it, neither of us hears the footsteps until a snarl breaks us apart. We turn to find Morpheus standing there with enough rage in his black eyes to send the Devil packing for heaven.
Jeb tugs his fingers from the rings in my belt but keeps a hand at my lower back. I touch my lips; they're throbbing and gluttonous, hungry for more.
"Wel, now, isn't that cozy?" Morpheus's voice isn't liquid this time. It grates like rusted nails along my eardrums. He peels off his gloves and slaps them against his palm, wings droopy and trailing the floor like a cape. "perhaps you might give Alyssa her lipstick back. We haven't time to find more before dinner." — A.G. Howard

Cambridge exceeded our most macabre expectations ... the arm-chairs, the crumpets, the beautifully-bound eighteenth century volumes, the fires roaring in stoked grates. Each of us had the loan of an absent undergraduate's rooms - bedroom, sitting-room and pantry; all fitted up in a style which, after the spartan simplicity of a public school study, seemed positively sinful. — Christopher Isherwood

And there were hundreds of singular events experienced by individuals: creatures moving in the shadows, voices and screams from the sewer grates, milk souring, cats scratching owners, dogs howling, and a thousand people woke up to find that they no longer cared for the taste of chocolate. It was a fucked-up day. — Christopher Moore

The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates. — Dave Barry

It is with books as with the fires of our grates, everybody borrows a light from his neighbor to kindle his own, which in turn is communicated to others, and each partakes of all. — Voltaire

Many people find it difficult living with someone who likes to be alone. It grates on those who can't handle it themselves. — Fredrik Backman

Water enters the dark sewer grates with no fear; it travels everywhere; it learns some things from everything and this is the secret of water's wisdom! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Why doesn't passionate love last? how is it possible to see a person as beautiful on Monday, and 364 days later, on another Monday, to see that beauty as bland? surely the object of your affection could not have changed that much. she still has the same shaped eyes. her voice has always had that husky sound, but now it grates on you - she sounds like she needs an antibiotic. — Lauren Slater

[On her father, Ronald Reagan:] How do you argue with someone who states that the people who are sleeping on the grates of the streets of America 'are homeless by choice'? — Patti Davis

There is one way by which a strolling player may be ever secure of success; that is, in our theatrical way of expressing it, to make a great deal of the character. To speak and act as in common life is not playing, nor is it what people come to see; natural speaking, like sweet wine, runs glibly over the palate and scarcely leaves any taste behind it; but being high in a part resembles vinegar, which grates upon the taste, and one feels it while he is drinking. — Oliver Goldsmith

The U.S-Mexican border es una herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country - a border culture.
Borders are set up to define the places that are safe and unsafe, to distinguish us from them. A border is a dividing line, a narrow strip along a steep edge. A borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition. The prohibited and forbidden are its inhabitants. — Gloria E. Anzaldua

I know you don't like me very much."
He pulled back, and his smile turned into another chuckle. "Now I wouldnae say that. Donna get me wrong. Ye have a way about ye that drives me completely mad, and your sharp tongue grates on my nerves, but... 'tis apparent that I hold something for ye because I havenae yet run my sword through ye. — Victoria Roberts

Gods take whoever designed this crawlspace and jam them inside a sardine can. Then put that sardine can inside a pill box and shoot both into a black hole. Ugh, and I am having a very long discussion with Orn and his habit of throwing old candy sticks through the grates! — Sabrina Zbasnik

This is, i think, very much the Age of Anxiety, the age of the neurosis, because along with so much that weighs on our minds there is perhaps even more that grates on our nerves. — Louis Kronenberger

[T]he term 'nonhuman' grates on me, since it lumps millions of species together by an absence, as if they were missing something. Poor things, they are nonhuman! When students embrace this jargon in their writing, I cannot resist sarcastic corrections in the margin saying that for completeness's sake, they should add that the animals they are talking about are also nonpenguin, nonhyena, and a whole lot more. — Frans De Waal

Smoke poured from every chimney, for the day was cold. The thought of all those coal-grates and wood-stoves made me wary of fire, for these buildings were little more than tinder and brown paper, putting on airs of architecture. — Robert Charles Wilson

I'm quite sure Shakespeare enjoyed writing Iago much more than he did writing Othello. If you write about someone you love, what the hell are you supposed to say about that person? It's much better to have something between you and your main character that grates. — Henning Mankell

What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice. — Ronald Reagan

Faire language grates not the tongue. — George Herbert

She murmured, in that particular Nancy way of hers that grates most when my inner bitch is aching to be let loose, 'Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.'
My eyes popped open to see her lemon face standing over me.
'SOMEONE,' I hissed, 'HASN'T EVEN WOKEN UP YET. GOD, WHAT IS YOUR ANEURYSM? CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE? — Rachel Cohn

You can't help those who simply will not be helped. One problem that we've had, even in the best of times, is people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless who are homeless, you might say, by choice. — Ronald Reagan

The U.S.-Mexican border es un herida abierta where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country - a border culture. — Gloria E. Anzaldua

This [the movie Babe] is the way Americans want to think of pigs. Real-life 'Babes' see no sun in their limited lives, with no hay to lie on, no mud to roll in. The sows live in tiny cages, so narrow they can't even turn around. They live over metal grates, and their waste is pushed through slats beneath them and flushed into huge pits. — Morley Safer

I crumple, my palm skating along the tree's frozen face as I plop to the ground.
"Alyssa?" Morpheus crouches beside me in an instant. He catches my chin and forces me to look at him. "Are you feeling anemic again?"
I struggle to breathe. It grates inside my chest, like inhaling angry bees. Blood creeps into my throat and gags me.
Morpheus's jeweled markings flash through an anxious kaleidoscope of colors. — A.G. Howard

Pinned under the air that grates like a claw
Every time I look up to the sky
I learn that I am trapped in this world
If only that sky would crumble and fall
I could fly to anywhere — Tite Kubo