Hard Stone Quotes & Sayings

My safe, safe psychosis is broken.
It was hard.
It was made of stone.
It covered my face like a mask.
But it has cracked. — Anne Sexton

But they were not living, thought Harry: They were gone. The empty words could not disguise the fact that his parents' moldering remains lay beneath snow and stone, indifferent, unknowing. And tears came before he could stop them, boiling hot then instantly freezing on his face, and what was the point in wiping them off or pretending? He let them fall, his lips pressed hard together, looking down at the thick snow hiding from his eyes the place where the last of Lily and James lay, bones now, surely, or dust, not knowing or caring that their living son stood so near, his heart still beating, alive because of their sacrifice and close to wishing, at this moment, that he was sleeping under the snow with them. — J.K. Rowling

In trying to make a broader historical point about the range of atrocities the Germans committed against many people, I made a clumsy association about the Holocaust, for which I am sorry and I regret Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry. The fact that the Holocaust is still a very important, vivid and current matter today is, in fact, a great credit to the very hard work of a broad coalition of people committed to the remembrance of this atrocity - and it was an atrocity. — Oliver Stone

I think it's always hard for children to talk about abuse because it is only memory. I didn't carry around a tape recorder ... I didn't chisel anything in stone ... Anybody can look and say, 'Well how do you know for sure?' And that's one of the most painful things about it. You don't. — Anne Heche

Near the Mexican border, rocky canyons cleave the mountains, laying them aside like broken wedges of gray cheese furred with a dark mold of pinon and juniper that sheds hard shadows on moon glazed stone, etched lithographs in gray and black, taupe and silver. Beneath feathery chamisa a rattlesnake flicks his tongue, following a scent. Along a precarious rock ledge a ring-tailed cat strolls, nose snuffling the cracks. At the base of the stone a peccary trots along familiar foot trails, toward the toes of a higher cliff where a seeping spring gathers in a rocky goblet. In the desert, sounds are dry and rattling: pebbles toed into cracks, hoofs tac-tacking on stone, the serpent rattle warning the wild pig to veer away, which she does with a grunt to the tribe behind her. From the rocky scarp the ring-tailed cat hears the whole population of the desert pass about its business in the canyon below. — Sheri S. Tepper

Were you in love with Emma?" I ask.
"I was hard-core obsessed," he says without thinking about it. "Not in love."
"What's the difference?"
He's about to throw a stone at ta yard light but stops. "Prison," he says, and puts the stone in his pocket. — Cath Crowley

Tell me you want to kiss me," he said. "I ... " I did, but saying it out loud was hard to do. He was handsome, nice, cared about me, — C.L.Stone

Sweet Evelyn, I think, I should have loved you better.
Possessing perfect knowledge I hover above him as he hacks me to bits. I see his rough childhood. I see his mother doing something horrid to him with a broomstick. I see the hate in his heart and the people he had yet to kill before pneumonia gets him at eighty-three. I see the dead kid's mom unable to sleep, pounding her fists against her face in grief at the moment I was burying her son's hand. I see the pain I've caused. I see the man I could have been, and the man I was, and then everything is bright and new and keen with love and I sweep through Sam's body, trying to change him, trying so hard, and feeling only hate and hate, solid as stone. — George Saunders

Clearly drive, IQ, and hard work are incredibly important. But ultimately what matters most is resilience
the ability to quickly rebound from failures, indeed to see failure as a stepping stone to success. — Arianna Huffington

A sudden understanding, a pity mixed with horror, welled up in Bilbo's heart: a glimpse of endless unmarked days without light or hope of betterment, hard stone, cold fish, sneaking and whispering. All these thoughts passed in a flash of a second. He trembled. And then quite suddenly in another flash, as if lifted by a new strength and resolve, he leaped. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I believe i am hard as a stone, but even a stone breaks if you smash it real hard..... — Andy Flynn

Oh boy. His chest was smooth and warm and hard as stone, and she
wanted to both touch and nibble.
And lick. Could she pretty please lick? — Jill Shalvis

Afternoon,Caputo," Cole said.
Jack's face remained a cool mask. "Hello, Cole.Becks."
Cole froze at Jack's casual use of his real name. His arm dropped from my shoulders. I couldn't help but smile.
Jack looked at me. "I'll see you in Mrs. Stone's room, Becks. You're coming, right? Mythology paper?"
I nodded.Just before he sauntered away, Jack winked at me and slapped Cole hard on the shoulder. "See you around, Neal. — Brodi Ashton

Kids are meant to believe that their stepping stone to massive money is 'The X Factor.' Luck is great, but most of life is hard work. We do not celebrate people who have made success out of serious hard work. — Iain Duncan Smith

Have you failed today? If not, you might not be trying hard enough. Failure is a part of growth, a stepping stone towards success. In its own right it is a small victory and should be celebrated as such. So I ask you again, have you failed today? — Shane E. Bryan

Among twelve apostles there must always be one who is as hard as stone, so that the new church may be built upon him. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Instead of walking along the winding roads she had settled on hiking, which she had discovered was both more difficult and more likely to yield photographic possibilities. She carried her cameras in a nylon backpack. There was a dry wall of stone that she had photographed from a number of angles and that she thought might have possibilities. There was an old paper wasp nest built around the limb of a pine tree that had galvanized her for an entire morning and then when she looked at the pictures afterward on the computer screen they'd amounted to nothing, nothing that made her feel or think or look twice or hard. They were photographs you had to explain, which meant they were a failure. The — Anna Quindlen

Ezra felt his heart cry out, as though it were branded by the stone he now held. Then he roared against the tide of regret and anguish that suddenly filled him, a piercing grief for he knew not what. Ezra cast the first stone. Stephen was struck hard. But he straightened, lifted his eyes and his voice to heaven, and cried, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." The stones rained down upon him even as his face was lifted to the heavens, shining with that same light as in the Council chamber. The last words Ezra heard him speak were, "Lord, do not charge them with this sin. — Janette Oke

You've got to set yourself up to be as healthy as you can. The thing we tend to do is when it gets to be a bit too hard, we actually opt out for the absolute worst option. For example, if you're in a rush in a morning and you feel like you don't have time to make breakfast, you skip it. — Curtis Stone

When I was younger I could never get up in the morning, I always found it so difficult. If I had an appointment, I had no problem, but just getting up early for the sake of it was so hard, I just loved my bed (and still do!). — Benjamin Stone

They say I am a brave girl
I'm a hailstorm for the rain
I'm a volcano for the mountain
I'm a diamond for the stone
And I wonder if I can be real me.
I see the crowd
I hear the noise
I keep my patience.
But inside I want to scream
Yes I want to scream like hell.
And when she call me on phone,
I wonder how she knows it.
I wonder how she hears those silent words..
How she sees those forbidden tears ...
I wonder how she knows I am missing somewhere ... — Emma Brynstein

When she felt the tears coming up, building like a great hard pressure inside her, hot, so hot she thought they would burn, she swallowed them down deeper and deeper until they became a hard little stone in her chest. — Francine Rivers

Stone, I must be stone, I must be Casterly Rock, hard and unmovable. — George R R Martin

Though Isengard be strong and hard, as cold as stone and bare as bone,
We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door! — J.R.R. Tolkien

Where I lived - winter and hard earth.
I sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,
to break the ice. My broken heart -
I tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.
She came from a long, long way,
but I saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,
In bare feet, bringing all spring's flowers
to her mother's house. I swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,
the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon. — Carol Ann Duffy

He felt the stone hit his chest, hard and hot, before finding its way up to the surface again. He touched it, surprised by its weight. Marjorie splashed him suddenly, laughing loudly before swimming away, toward the shore. — Yaa Gyasi

A man seeks his own destiny and no other, said the judge. Wil or nill. Any man who could discover his own fate and elect therefore some opposite course could only come at last to that selfsame reckoning at the same appointed time, for each man's destiny is as large as the world he inhabits and contains within it all opposites as well. The desert upon which so many have been broken is vast and calls for largeness of heart but it is also ultimately empty. It is hard, it is barren. Its very nature is stone. — Cormac McCarthy

Wait," Kaidan called from behind me. I squeezed my eyes shut for a second, but kept walking. Then I felt his hand around my
wrist, spinning me in a half circle and pulling me to his chest. His face was so close. He reached down and cupped my face with one
woolly hand, and wiped the top corner of my lip hard with his thumb. I flinched back.
"What are you doing?"
"I ... " He appeared to have no idea himself. "I wanted to see your freckle."
A vulnerable tenderness flashed across his face, more painful to see than the coldness. It took every ounce of strength I had not to
beg for one last kiss. As fast as his expression had softened, it was back to stone again.
"What do you want from me, Kai?"
"For starters?" His voice lowered to sexy, dangerous depths. "I want to introduce myself to every freckle on your body."
A powerful shiver ripped through me. — Wendy Higgins

I really like grammar. And spelling. I was a spelling-bee kid. I'm hard-core about grammar. — Emma Stone

Fuuuck. Mark that hole, babe." Michaels was pushing his ass up into Judge but there wasn't another inch available, every part of him that could fit was inside Michaels already. His sexy partner moaned while Judge rode out the last shivers of his orgasm. Judge fell to the side, arms thrown over his head, his heart beating so fast he thought he'd pass out. Michaels chuckled next to him. Leaned over and kissed, laughed, swam in the moment. Michaels buried his nose in Judge's armpit, inhaled him a while before he licked around the fury patch in the center, slicking down the fine hairs with his spit. Judge held Michaels' head in place, moaning the more Michaels bathed him. "Feels good," Judge whispered. It was absolutely the most erotic thing in the world. Judge's eyes opened back up and he saw right before he felt that Michaels was still hard as stone. "You didn't come." "Nope," Michaels said, pushing until Judge was on his stomach. Oh — A.E. Via

Plain hard work is good and important, but it is ideas that drive us, as individuals, companies, nations, and a global community. Creativity is what makes us unique, inspired, and fulfilled. — Biz Stone

UNDER THE STORM AND THE CLOUD TODAY, AND TODAY THE HARD PERIL AND PAIN - TOMORROW
THE STONE WILL BE ROLLED AWAY, FOR THE SUNSHINE SHALL FOLLOW THE RAIN — Joaquin Miller

How should Spring bring forth a garden on hard stone? Become earth, that you may grow flowers of many colors. For you have been heart-breaking rock. Once, for the sake of experiment, be earth! — Rumi

You're hard sometimes, but you're genuine and easy to love. You give people everything you have to give, Silas. You're a rough diamond amongst pearls. You look like a dirty stone amongst the sheen, but your value far exceeds the silky dull shine of a pearl. — Criss Copp

These days I travel so much it's hard to get into a routine. When I'm on the road, I tend to use hotel gyms. When I'm home in L.A., I like to hike and hit the surf. All in all, I try to keep a balanced diet and exercise routine, which has stood me in good stead to date. — Curtis Stone

Go, grieving rimes of mine, to that hard stone
Whereunder lies my darling, lies my dear,
And cry to her to speak from heaven's sphere. — Petrarch

Don't stop,' said Lymond pleasantly. 'You've my father, my brother, my late sister and a whole clecking of aunts to get through. Auntie May is a good one to start with. Fifteen stone, and every spring she goes broody; and we find her out in the hen run on a clutch of burst yolks; except the year mother got there first and hard-boiled them. — Dorothy Dunnett

Your magic gets me hard," he said, looking like he wished he could be anywhere but where he was. "When you do anything, I get hard, really. Even your ridiculous sex puns. You remember when you wrapped those Dark wizards in stone at the restaurant?"
"Yeah," I managed to say.
"I wanted to tell you that you gave me an e-rock-tion." He bent over and banged his forehead against the table. "Why, why, why did I say that out loud? Please. Someone. Anyone. Kill me."
"Sex puns," I breathed. "Knight Delicious Face said a sex pun. — T.J. Klune

'Tis hard preaching a stone into tears, or making a rock to tremble. — Richard Baxter

No matter how hard we strive for objectivity, writers are biased toward tension - those moments in which character is forged and revealed. — Brad Stone

I'm very expressive.
i deserve to feel pretty.
i kissed the blarney stone.
i am strong. i am brave.
im a good friend. I'm a good sister. I'm a good wife. i am a good in-law. I'm a good daughter. i am a good niece. I'm a good beagle mother. i am a good granddaughter.
i work hard for it, honey.
im superfly TNT motherfucker.
im a pilot of the airwaves.
im a better third baseman that brooks robinson.
I B-E-A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E.
i have exceptionally beautiful feet, eyes, ears, hips, hair, teeth, breasts. and shoulders. and fingernails. in a different pen, she added, and eyelashes and eyebrows, plus in yet another pen, and nose. and chin. — Rob Sheffield

What's the one superpower of June Elbus?"
I thought about myself from head to toe. It was like being forced to read the most boring part of the Sears catalog. Like leafing through the bathroom accessories pages. Boring brain. Boring face. No sex appeal. Clumsy hands.
"Heart. Hard heart," I said, not sure where it came from. "The hardest heart in the world."
"Hmmm," Toby said, tapping a finger in the air. "That's a useful one, you know. Very handy. The question is ... " Toby paused like he was considering this all very seriously.
"What's the question?"
"The question is, stone or ice? Crack or melt? — Carol Rifka Brunt

I imagined your stick, washing in the waves for hundreds of years, turning to driftwood, smooth and hard like stone. I imagined a little girl finding it on a beach so many years later. Saving it on her shelf, where she put the things that made her feel like the world was magical. — Ava Dellaira

He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by stone, fingers and toes digging hard into the small crevices between. He always took off his boots and went barefoot when he climbed; it made him feel as if he had four hands instead of two. He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the muscles afterward. He liked the way the air tasted way up high, sweet and cold as a winter peach. He liked the birds: the crows in the broken tower, the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones, the ancient owl that slept in the dusty loft above the old armory. Bran knew them all. Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go, and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfell in a way that no one else ever saw it. — George R R Martin

I'm supposed to be a man but I can't help thinking no one ever showed me what that is supposed to look like. Maybe that is why I ride the middle all the time - never offending anyone, never getting a hard time, but never much standing out either. — Heather Duffy Stone

We could go back," he said. In the dome light of the car, his face looked hard as stone. "We could go back to your house. I can stay with you always. We can know each other's bodies in every way, night after night. I could love you." His nostrils flared, and he looked suddenly proud. "I could work. You would not be poor. I would help you."
"Sounds like a marriage," I said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. But my voice was too shaky.
"Yes," he said. — Charlaine Harris

The Poet With His Face In His Hands
You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need anymore of that sound.
So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across
the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets
like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you
want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything. — Mary Oliver

A rock or stone is not a subject that, of itself, may interest a philosopher to study; but, when he comes to see the necessity of those hard bodies, in the constitution of this earth, or for the permanency of the land on which we dwell, and when he finds that there are means wisely provided for the renovation of this necessary decaying part, as well as that of every other, he then, with pleasure, contemplates this manifestation of design, and thus connects the mineral system of this earth with that by which the heavenly bodies are made to move perpetually in their orbits. — James Hutton

Diesel was about to place the cockroach on the casket, and my purse rocked out with "Thriller" again.
"Excuse me," I said. And I answered my phone.
"I'm beginning to appreciate Hatchet," Wulf said to Diesel.
Diesel smiled. "She has her moments. And she makes cupcakes."
I disconnected and stuffed my phone into my pocket.
"Well?" Diesel asked.
"It was Glo. Her broom ran away again."
"I would appreciate it if we could get on with this without more interruption," Wulf said in his eerily quiet voice, his eyes riveted on mine.
"Lighten up," I said to Wulf. "Glo lost her broom again. This is a big deal for her. And what have we got here anyway ... a dead guy and a Stone. Do you think they can wait for three minutes longer?"
Diesel gave a bark of laughter, and Wulf looked like her was trying hard not to sigh.
- Diesel, Lizzy, and Wulf, page 306-307. — Janet Evanovich

I feel like a stone you have picked up and thrown to the hard rock bottom of your heart. — Randy Travis

Some people work hard in this business and become really popular, really big stars but they never receive an award from within the business. Somehow, when your colleagues and friends believe in you to the point of handing you an award it means so much more. — Sharon Stone

He belted his sword around his hips, threw a cloak over his shoulder, and knelt on one knee beside the bed. He kissed her with his eyes open and she understood completely because she couldn't rob herself of one last sight of him either. "Mend my hose while I'm gone," he said, straightening. "Don't count on it." He smiled, the brief satisfied smile of a man who knew in whose hands his heart was kept, then turned and left the room without saying anything else. Jessica rose and pulled a blanket around her. Then she knelt on the hard stone floor of a medieval tower chamber and prayed that she hadn't just seen the last of him. — Lynn Kurland

Okay, I think it's time for another distraction" Eight says, disappearing again. He reappears by the outer circle of stones, plants his hands on an upright slab, and pushes hard. All I can do is watch in horror, frozen to the spot. The huge stone wobbles and slowly tips backwards, then the horizontal slab on top falls too, and that's when Eight starts yelling, "Help! Help! The stones are falling over! Stonehenge is falling down!" I will kill him. I clench my fists at my side, which is when I realize I still have a small rock in my hand. I lean down and carefully, pointlessly, return it to its spot. — Pittacus Lore

Whore!" he snarls, slamming me into the wall so hard stars burst in my eyes. I hiss at him, the tiger in me threatening to emerge and rip out his throat, but a shout brings me back to myself.
"Zahra!"
I turn my head and see Aladdin running toward us. When he sees that it's Darian holding me roughly against the wall, his face twists into such rage that he seems unrecognizable.
He crashes into Darian before the prince has a chance to say anything. The two slam into the ground, Aladdin throwing a punch that cracks against Darian's jaw.
"Stop it!" I cry. "Prince Rahzad!"
The boys ignore me, rolling and thrashing like dogs.
Leave them! Zhian roars. Let me out!
"How dare you touch her?" Aladdin spits, grabbing Darian by the hair and pressing the prince's face into the stone floor. "You bastard!"
"I didn't give her anything she didn't ask for," Darian hisses back. "Get off me or I'll have you executed! — Jessica Khoury

The Dutchman [Brannenburg] was hard ... he was stone. His brain was eroded granite where the few ideas he had carved deep their ruts of opinion. There was no way for another idea to seep in, no place for imagination, no place for dreams, none for compassion or mercy or even fear.
He knew no shadings of emotion, he knew no half-rights or half-wrongs or pity or excuse, nor had he any sense of pardon. The more I thought of him the more I knew he was not evil in himself, and he would have been shocked that anybody thought of him as evil. Shocked for a moment only, then he'd have shut the idea from his mind as nonsense. For the deepest groove worn into that granite brain was the one of his own rightness.
And that scared me. — Louis L'Amour

Like what you feel do you? Because there is more of me that's just as hard you know? — Kitty Berry

I find hair things really hard because I can't do my own hair. The only thing I use for my hair is a Tangle Teezer. It's the best thing ever for everyone that has long hair. — Lara Stone

As an actor in-between jobs, it can be hard to stay motivated when you feel like you future is always in someone else's hands. You are always waiting for someone to look at you and say "YES." — Benjamin Stone

Rick and Scotty, who had heard Australian slang before from Digger Sears, one-time mate of the Tarpon, broke into chuckles.

"I'd better translate," Scotty said, "'Lord stone the crows' is just an expression. Oscar Ashe is hard cash. Yakka is hard work. And dinkum oil is gospel truth. — John Blaine

Drama is hard for me. Crying is much harder for me than laughter. — Emma Stone

This is beautiful," I said, ignoring the shop window to trace the gleaming stone walls fronting another boutique.
"You know what's funny?" Jacob asked. He didn't wait for my answer. "You can see beauty in everything, except for yourself."
***
I swallowed hard. Erik thought my body was beautiful, Karin that it was enviable. At random times, people had noted that my hands were beautiful, or my hair. The Twisted Sisters had called my art beautiful. Mom had the best intentions and always told me before and after my laser surgeries that I would be beautiful. But no one had ever said that I was beautiful, all my parts taken together, not just the bits and pieces. — Justina Chen

Always she had sounded sympathetic, always she had appeared to understand. But inside there was a bit of her that said that they couldn't have tried hard enough. If Celia had a daughter who was desperately unhappy at school and who had lost four stone in weight, she wouldn't hang around
she'd try to cope with it. If she had a father who couldn't cope she'd have him to live with her. Only now was she beginning to realize that it was not to be so simple. People had minds of their own. And her mother's mind was like a hermetically sealed box in a vault of a bank. — Maeve Binchy

Usually, Shakespeare gives me goose bumps. The guy knows everything. Like some ancient angel quill-ing out blueprints life. Hiding it in fiction. And usually I love the sound of the words, the way they dance on the page. Today, they fall flat. My attention bobbing in the cosmos. All free brain-space is marinating in gap month fizz. I chew my pen, candy-cane style. The million possibilities ahead make it hard to care about right now. I write my answers slowly, each letter carved in stone not ballpoint. I'm going to explore the world, find my passion, try everything! The fizz shoots up my spine and a smile sprouts. — Jolene Stockman

Divorce is hard and painful and complicated, and something you have to grow through. — Sharon Stone

He could feel the earth beneath, all the deep stone of it, cool and hard near the surface of the earth, but hotter and softer as you went deep, until it flowed like honey, a vast sweet fiery ocean of molten rock a thousand times more voluminous and ten thousand times heavier than the sea. It felt to him as if it were his own blood, and his heart pumped it. — Orson Scott Card

When Francie brought a ticket and a dime back and pushed them across the counter, he gave her the wrapped shirt and two lichee nuts in exchange. Francie loved these lichee nuts. There was a crisp easily broken shell and the soft sweet meat inside. Inside the meat was a hard stone that no child had ever been able to break open. It was said that this stone contained a smaller stone and that the smaller stone contained a smaller stone which contained a yet smaller stone and so on. It was said that soon the stones got so small you could only see them with a magnifying glass and those smaller ones got still smaller until you couldn't see them with anything but they were always there and would never stop coming. It was Francie's first experience with infinity. — Betty Smith

Check this out," Nine says. He holds up a small purple stone and then places it on the back of his hand. The stone slides into his hand - through it. Nine turns his hand over just as the stone pops out in his palm. "Pretty cool, right?" he asks me, waggling his eyebrows.
"Uh, but what is it supposed to do?" Eight asks, looking up from his own Chest.
"I dunno. Impress girls?" Nine looks over at me. "Did it work?"
"Um ... " I hesitate, trying not to roll my eyes too hard. "Not really. But, I've seen guys teleport so I'm kind of hard to impress."
"Tough crowd. — Pittacus Lore

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
Snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter,
Long ago. — Christina Rossetti

I miss the ocean. I miss diving into the cold water and coming out a new man. On the road it's hard to get that feeling. Showers are okay, but there's nothing quite like being in the ocean. — Angus Stone

I fold back the sheet, get carefully up, on silent bare feet, in my nightgown, go to the window, like a child, I want to see. The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow. The sky is clear but hard to make out, because of the searchlight; but yes, in the obscured sky a moon does float, newly, a wishing moon, a sliver of ancient rock, a goddess, a wink. The moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware, but oh God, how beautiful anyway. I want Luke here so badly. I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name, remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I — Margaret Atwood

The hard surface of the stone is impervious to nothing in the end. The heat of the sun leaves evidence of daylight. Each drop of rain changes the form; even the wind and the air itself, invisible to our eyes, etches its presence. ... All history is taken in by stones. — Susan Griffin

The stripped and shapely Maple grieves The ghosts of her Departed leaves. The ground is hard, As hard as stone. The year is old, The birds are flown. — John Updike

I wanted to dissolve into the floor, mixing myself with the hard stone. A stone had a single purpose: to be. No complicated promises, no worries and no feelings. — Maria V. Snyder

First, we think all truth is beautiful, no matter how hideous its face may seem. We accept all of nature, without any repudiation. We believe there is more beauty in a harsh truth than in a pretty lie, more poetry in earthiness than in all the salons of Paris. We think pain is good because it is the most profound of all human feelings. We think sex is beautiful even when portrayed by a harlot and a pimp. We put character above ugliness, pain above prettiness and hard, crude reality above all the wealth in France. We accept life in its entirety without making moral judgments. We think the prostitute is as good as the countess, the concierge as good as the general, the peasant as good as the cabinet minister, for they all fit into the pattern of nature and are woven into the design of life! — Irving Stone

Mixing myself with the hard stone. A stone had a single purpose: to — Maria V. Snyder

It's hard for me to speak to you as if you were not a tyrant," I say. "You sit here and think you are more civilized than Luna because you obey your creed of honor, because you show restraint." I gesture to the simple house. "But you are not more civilized," I say, "You're just more disciplined."
"Isn't that civilization? Order? Denying animal impulse for stability?" He eats his fruit in measured bites. I set mine on the stone.
"No, it's not. But, I'm not here to debate philosophy or politics."
"Thank Jove. I doubt we'd agree upon much. He watches me carefully.
"I'm here to discuss what we both know best, war. — Pierce Brown

As a songwriter, it's kind of hard to listen to your own stuff with clarity. — Stone Gossard

BlogHer would not exist ... if we hadn't made a commitment that the only way to work with women in an entirely new record-breaking technological environment was to listen as hard as we could and try to deliver services that they might be interested in. — Lisa Stone

Was it really that fucking great to be gay? Ever since he got too fucked up to drive home and he'd crashed at Day and God's place after their cookout this summer. Green was in Miami testifying in a Federal case, so he didn't have his usual designated driver. Shit. He'd heard his lieutenants going at it in the middle of the night. It was so loud and violent, but wildly erotic. He didn't know if they forgot he was downstairs or if they just didn't give a fuck. He remembered being hard as goddamn stone lying there, and feeling like a pervert for listening. But since then, he hadn't been able to get the sounds out of his head. The sounds of furious passion and uninhibited ecstasy. The way God roared his lover's name when he ca - " "Time — A.E. Via

Come on, Trouble. Let's go before you start farting bunnies and rainbows or some shit. Luke started laughing hard, and clamped his hand over his stomach, squeezing his brown eyes almost shut. — C.L.Stone

III
But may I, when alone again I have the city's crush
and tangled noise-skein and the furor
of its traffic all around me,
may I above the mindless swirl
recall sky and the gentle mountain rim
on which the far-off herd curved homeward.
May my spirit be hard as rock
and the shepherd's life to me seem possible-
the way he drifts and turns brown in the sun and with a practiced
stone-throw mends his flock, whenever it frays.
Steps slow, not light, his body pensive,
but in his standing there, majestic. Even now a god
might enter this form and not be lessened.
He lingers for a while, then moves on, like the day itself,
and shadows of the clouds
pass through him, as though space were slowly
thinking thoughts for him. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Song

This is the love I bring,
Absolute and nothing:
A tree but with no roots,
A cloud heavy with fruit,
A wide stone stair
That leads nowhere
But to empty sky,
Ambiguous majesty.

This is the love I bear:
It is light as air,
Yet weighs like an earth;
It is water flowing,
Yet adamant as fire.
It is coming from going.
It is dying and growing.

A love so rare and hard
It cuts a diamond word
Upon the windowpane,
"Never, never again,
Never upon my breast,"
Having no time to bring,
Having no place to rest,
Absolute and nothing. — May Sarton

What is harder than stone?
What more soft than water?
Nevertheless hard though the rock be, it is hollowed by the wave. — Ovid

When he[Thresh] shouts, I jump, never having heard him speak above a mutter. "What'd you do to that little girl? You kill her?"
Clove is scrambling backwards on all fours, like a frantic insect, too shocked to even call for Cato. "No! No, it wasn't me!"
"You said her name. I heard you. You kill her?" Another thought brings a fresh wave of rage to his features. "You cut her up like you were about to do to this girl here?"
"No! No, I-" Clove sees the stone, about the size of a small loaf of bread in Thresh's hand and loses it. "Cato!" she screeches. "Cato!"
"Clove!" I hear Cato's answer, but he's too far away, I can tell that much, to do her any good. What was he doing? Trying to get Foxface or Peeta? Or had he been lying in wait for Thresh and just badly misjudged his location?
Thresh brings the rock down hard against Clove's temple. It's not bleeding, but I can see the dent in her skull and I know that she's a goner. — Suzanne Collins

I've had to grow up with everyone watching me, which has been hard. — Joss Stone

It's so easy to love. The only hard thing is to be loved.
[Vincent Van Gogh] — Irving Stone

I was the illegitimate child of the legitimate theater. I had no training. I came from downtown rock and roll, and when I came in and auditioned for the Broadway revival of 'Hair,' I had no eyebrows - kind of a Bowie-esque glimmer kid. And it was hard representing the flower power era when we were stone cold punks. — Annie Golden

Through the wind and the rain
She stands hard as a stone
In a world that she can't rise above
But her dreams give her wings
And she flies to a place where she's loved
Concrete angel — Martina Mcbride

She felt something inside her turn to stone and fall down into her gut, where it lay cold and hard and uncomfortable. Which was impossible, of course. Human organs did not turn to stone and certainly could not shift into the stomach. — Trudi Canavan

You study enough to get the answers right and then forget it again to study another test. Really hard to learn anything when it's short term memorization. — C.L.Stone

It would indeed be a great delusion, if we stated that those sports of Nature [we find] enclosed in rocks are there by chance or by some vague creative power. Ah, that would be superficial indeed! In reality, those shells, which once were alive in water and are now dead and decomposed, were made thus by time not Nature; and what we now find as very hard, figured stone, was once soft mud and which received the impression of the shape of a shell, as I have frequently demonstrated. — Agostino Scilla

I know what you're doing," he whispered to Raphael, whose movements only became more fervent, and the thought slipped from the boy's mind so that he became dazed and undone with pleasure, staring up at the ceiling, watching as it blurred and became indistinct, and he felt the rising rush of pleasure, until he cried out in a sharp gasp.
And the pleasure went on and on, as it did, unbearably, until either Raphael took pity on him, or he pushed his Genitor away. Whichever it was, the pleasure that was leaking into pain, stopped, and he was lifted and laid down on the stone, cold and hard under his spine, and Raphael was bent over him, kissing up this time, up to his lips, flicking his tongue at them, and whispering: "Don't question my love for you. Ever again. — Carmen Dominique Taxer

SUCH SILENCE As deep as I ever went into the forest I came upon an old stone bench, very, very old, and around it a clearing, and beyond that trees taller and older than I had ever seen. Such silence! It really wasn't so far from a town, but it seemed all the clocks in the world had stopped counting. So it was hard to suppose the usual rules applied. Sometimes there's only a hint, a possibility. What's magical, sometimes, has deeper roots than reason. I hope everyone knows that. I sat on the bench, waiting for something. An angel, perhaps. Or dancers with the legs of goats. No, I didn't see either. But only, I think, because I didn't stay long enough. — Mary Oliver

The good Bishop of Assisi expressed a sort of horror at the hard life which the Little Brothers lived at the Portiuncula, without comforts, without possessions, eating anything they could get and sleeping anyhow on the ground. St. Francis answered him with that curious and almost stunning shrewdness which the unworldly can sometimes wield like a club of stone. He said, 'If we had any possessions, we should need weapons and laws to defend them. — G.K. Chesterton

You do the best job you can. You take it step by step. It's hard enough to make a movie. If it works, that's great. If it means something beyond the moment to somebody, they can take it and it lasts through the years, we'll see. — Oliver Stone

Kell swept Lila up into his arms, amazed at her lightness. She took up so much space in the world - in his world - it was hard to imagine her being so slight. In his mind, she was made of stone. — V.E Schwab

Success isn't supposed to happen, no matter how hard you work. There's no guarantee you're going to succeed. There's nothing set in stone. — Kevin Hart

Slumped to the floor. The pit of blackness welcomed her to let go and fall into the murky depths where conscience and pain ceased to exist.
Hands to her head, face to the stone, screaming without sound, she pushed back hard.
For nine months she'd tasted happiness, a chance at the closest thing she'd known to peace and a real life. For nine months the rage and violence that had defined so many of her years had finally ebbed, and now those who had no right had come with impunity to rip her out of this newfound calm, throwing her into an impossible situation where no matter what she did or what she chose, the end result would be a return to madness. — Taylor Stevens

I find it quite hard for me to pull off. It's so nice to have a tan and look healthy and glowing. I'd quite like to look like Karen Elson - she looks good pale. I feel like I look a bit washed out. — Lara Stone

Be still and let it wash over you. You are a stone at the bottom of a river. You are hard rock. The water wears you down, but it only makes you smoother. And the smoother and harder you are, the less the flow can affect you. — D.J. Molles