Hiss Quotes & Sayings

I need to keep sharp. But when you're this damned close to me, all I think about is you. I think about your mouth, and I think about your breasts, and I think about your pink tongue and your legs wrapped around me. I think about touching you and you touching me
and then I look at you and you're giving me that look
yes, that one, just there, as if you want me to kiss you
please stop
He exhaled on a hiss, tipping his head back against the wood and pressing two fingers to the bridge of his nose. — Shana Abe

There are new words now that excuse everybody. Give me the good old days of heroes and villains, the people you can bravo or hiss. There was a truth to them that all the slick credulity of today cannot touch. — Bette Davis

You can't stay in the library all day!" I hiss, sitting next to him.
"This is a school. Studying is encouraged."
"What exactly are you studying?"
He folds the paper and gives me his cat grin. "History students. — Kiersten White

Toward the end of March, in St. Louis, slush fills the gutters, and dirty snow lies heaped alongside porch steps, and everything seems to be suffocating in the embrace of a season that lasts too long. Radiators hiss mournfully, no one manages to be patient, the wind draws tears from your eyes, the clouds are filled with sadness. Women with scarves around their heads and their feet encased in fur-lined boots pick their way carefully over patches of melting ice. It seems that winter will last forever, that this is the decision of nature and nothing can be done about it. — Harold Brodkey

But for me, if we're talking about romance, cassettes wipe the floor with MP3s. This has nothing to do with superstition, or nostalgia. MP3s buzz straight to your brain. That's part of what I love about them. But the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy human bodies. The cassette is full of tape hiss and room tone; it's full of wasted space, unnecessary noise. Compared to the go-go-go rhythm of an MP3, mix tapes are hopelessly inefficient. You go back to a cassette the way a detective sits and pours drinks for the elderly motel clerk who tells stories about the old days
you know you might be somewhat bored, but there might be a clue in there somewhere. And if there isn't, what the hell? It's not a bad time. You know you will waste time. You plan on it. — Rob Sheffield

The waitress scuttles away, and I make a shooing motion at the old couple who're still glaring.
"Don't you have something to better to work on?" I hiss. "Like golfing or eating prunes or dying?"
The old lady looks shocked.
"Okay, sorry, not dying. But seriously, prunes are good for you. — Sara Wolf

What do I say to a whale, Galen?" I hiss.
"Tell him to come closer."
"No way."
"Fine. Tell him to back up."
I nod. "Right. Okay." I lace my fingers together to keep from wringing my hands raw. Even more than terror, I feel the insanity of the situation. I'm about to ask a fish the size of my house to make a U-turn. Because Galen, the man-fish behind me, doesn't speak humpback. "Uh, can you please back away from me?" I say. I sound polite, like I'm asking him to buy some Girl Scout cookies.
I feel better in the few moments afterward because Goliath doesn't move. It proves Galen doesn't know what he's talking about. It proves this whale can't understand me, that I'm not some Snow White of the ocean. Except that, Goliath does start to turn away.
I look back at Galen. "That's just a coincidence."
Galen sighs. "You're right. He probably mistook us for a relative or something. Tell him to do something else, Emma. — Anna Banks

I shut my eyes and she was again the same as she used to be: she was the hiss of steam, the clink of a cup, she was a certain hour of the night and the promise of rest. — Graham Greene

The hiss was now becoming a roar - the whole world was a vast moving screen of snow - but even now it said peace, it said remoteness, it said cold, it said sleep. — Conrad Aiken

To make his point, Ivan staged a sensational demonstration. Some time before Christmas he had arrested two Lithuanians employed in the Moscow Kremlin. He charged them with plotting to poison him. The accusations against Jan Lukhomski and Maciej the Pole did not sound very credible; but their guilt or innocence was hardly relevant. They were held in an open cage on the frozen Moskva River for all the world to see; and on the eve of the departure of Ivan's envoy to Lithuania, they were burned alive in their cage.50 As the ice melted under the fierce heat of the fire and the heavy iron cage sank beneath the water, taking its carbonized occupants down in a great hiss of steam, one could have well imagined that something was being said about Lithuania's political future. — Norman Davies

Yes," said Talon, his voice the hiss of a coiled serpent. — Raymond E. Feist

I am going to New York whether you like it or not," I hiss. "Don't count - " I hang up, cutting him off mid-sentence. — E.L. James

Task finished, she sat a few minutes longer, very quietly. Then she sheepishly opened the outhouse door, cursing the squeaking hinges as she stuck her head out. She saw nothing, so she took a careful step outside. She heard a hiss and snarl and saw the cat lurking around the shed, twenty feet away. She retreated, slamming the door. "Shit," she said aloud. "Shit, shit, shit!" So — Robyn Carr

My forehead hit the table again with a thud. Ow. The words left me in a rush.
"I'm-fucking-the-married-closeted-father-of-my-only-close-friend-in-the-entire-world-and-his-wife-is-going-to-be-here-in-two-weeks."
I heard the hiss as Robin sucked his breath in between his teeth. "Ouch."
"Yeah." I sighed, my forehead rubbing against the table as I nodded miserably. At least he didn't try to deny the idiotic part.
"You know there's absolutely no way that can end well."
"Duh. — Amelia C. Gormley

The scream of the twelve-inch shrapnel is more penetrating than the hiss from a thousand Jewish newspaper vipers. Therefore let them go on with their hissing. — Adolf Hitler

From the pilot's seat, Cal glowers. "He's done enough." He watches me take the chair next to him, seething all the while. "You really want to storm a secret prison built for people like us?"
"Would you rather let Julian die?" No answer but for a low hiss. "That's what I thought. — Victoria Aveyard

What is important is the moment of opening a life and feeling it touch
with an electric hiss and cry
this speckled mineral sphere, our present world. — Annie Dillard

One of them hissed-not the hiss of a cat, a long, steady tone-more like the hiss of air escaping the rubber raft that is all that lies between you and a dark sea full of sharks, the hiss of your life leaking out at the seams. — Christopher Moore

Grimalkin sighed loudly, causing me to look back and Razor to hiss at him. "Am I the only one here who has any insight at all?" he said, looking to each of our faces. We stared at him, and he shook his head. "Drawing a blank, are you? Think about what you just said, human. Repeat that last phrase, if you would."
I frowned. "Isn't that where you want to be?"
He closed his eyes. "The next phrase, human."
"With all the other gremlins." He stared at me expectantly, and I raised my hands. "What? What are you getting at, Grim?"
Grimalkin thumped his tail. "It is times like these I am ever more grateful that I am a cat," he sighed. "Why do you think I brought you that creature, human? To keep up my stalking skills? I assure you, they are quite adequate already. Please attempt to use the brain I know is hidden somewhere in that head. — Julie Kagawa

The lightning continued to strike, silent and lovely, even after he stilled. The sounds of the world came pouring back in, his breathing as ragged as the hiss of the crashing waves while he brushed lazy kisses to her temple, her nose, her mouth. Aelin drew her eyes away from the beauty of their magic, the beauty of them, and found his face to be the most beautiful of all. She — Sarah J. Maas

Our universe might have slid into equilibrium emitting nothing more than a quiet hiss. The fact that it spawned such plenitude is a miracle, one that is matched only by your universe giving rise to you. — Ted Chang

Puck and Ironhorse each grabbed a rope and began drawing the platform up the side of the building. The dark, mirrored walls reflected a strange party back at us: a cat, two elf-boys, a girl in a slightly tattered gown, and a monstrous black man with glowing red eyes. I contemplated how strange my life had become, but was interrupted by a soft hiss overhead. — Julie Kagawa

Alternative Anthem.


Put the kettle on
Put the kettle on
It is the British answer
to Armageddon.

Never mind taxes rise
Never mind trains are late
One thing you can be sure of
and that's the kettle, mate.

It's not whether you lose
It's not whether you win
It's whether or not
you've plugged the kettle in.

May the kettle ever hiss
May the kettle ever steam
It is the engine
that drives our nation's dream.

Long live the kettle
that rules over us
May it be limescale free
and may it never rust.

Sing it on the beaches
Sing it from the housetops
The sun may set on empire
but the kettle never stops. — John Agard

There are so many ways of saying Hi. Hiss it, trill it, bark it, sing it, bellow it, laugh it, cough it. A simple stroll in the hallway calls for paragraphs, sentences in your head, decisions galore. — Frank McCourt

Our relationship with places is a close bond, intricate in nature, and not abstract, not remote at all: It's enveloping, almost a continuum with all we are and think. — Tony Hiss

Stare at him," said Ghost. "They won't bite you if you keep staring at them."
Steve backed away. "They bite?"
Not really. They hiss at you, mostly. The only time geese are ever dangerous is when you happen to be standing on the edge of a cliff. I heard about a guy that almost got killed that way."
By geese?"
Yeah, there was a whole flock of them coming after him. All hissing and cackling and stabbing at his ankles with their big ol' beaks. He didn't know you had to stare them right in the eye, and he panicked. They backed him right over a fifty-foot cliff."
So how come he didn't die?"
This guy had wings," said Ghost. "He flew away. — Poppy Z. Brite

You may growl, and hiss, and meow, and maybe sometimes you bring out those claws, but I know how to make you purr. I'm the king of the jungle. I'm the predator. — J.M. Darhower

A centipede the size of a Pontiac had once lived in the bottom-right corner of the trunk but had long since moved on once he realized that no one was ever going to bother him, so he could stand up on his hind hundred feet, hiss like a pissed cat, and deliver a deadly bite to a naked foot. — Christopher Moore

She's not here," I tell him. Buttercup hisses again. "She's not here. You can hiss all you like. You won't find Prim." At her name, he perks up. Raises his flattened ears. Begins to meow hopefully. "Get out!" He dodges the pillow I throw at him. "Go away! There's nothing left for you here!" I start to shake, furious with him. "She's not coming back! She's never ever coming back here again!" I grab another pillow and get to my feet to improve my aim. Out of nowhere, the tears begin to pour down my cheeks. "She's dead, you stupid cat. She's dead. — Suzanne Collins

I see you've got an unwanted visitor." He walked to stand beside Doris just as she poked at the gator with the table leg and caused it to hiss and back up again. "Ma'am, would you please not poke the gator anymore? Hissing is his way of telling you he doesn't much like that. — Susannah Sandlin

Then you should be as willing. I know how poison fascinates you. Surely dying from it will fascinate you, too." Leaning closer, I hiss, "It is a pity you cannot take notes. — Maryrose Wood

Then I whispered, "I love you, my Lahn," and heard the swift hiss of his intake of breath. Then he buried his face in my neck and whispered back, "Loot kay hansahnalay na, my Circe." And I love you, my Circe. — Kristen Ashley

The fuck are you staring at? I hiss at the stranger staring at me in my rearview. Oh, wait, that's me. — Sean Murphy

On the third, directly before me, were embedded more polished letters: PER OMNIA SAECULA SAECULORUM.
For ever and ever.
In the red light, the brushed steel glowed softly, like embers. The polish letters blazed.
Without a hiss, For ever and ever slid aside, as though inviting me to eternity. — Dean Koontz

Studying cows, pigs and chickens can help an actor develop his character. There are a lot of things I learned from animals. One was that they couldn't hiss or boo me. — James Dean

An airplane crossed the sky, and she imagined its interior-people packed in rows like eggs in a carton, the chemical smell of the toilets, pretzels in foil pouches, cans hiss-popping open, black oval of night sky embedded in the rattling walls. How strange that something so drab, so confined, so stifling with sour exhalations and the fumes of indifferent machinery might be mistaken for a star. — Maggie Shipstead

A great, spreading beech tree sheltered the entire backyard. Its beautiful, perfectly symmetrical canopy stretched from one fence line to the other, so dense that it tinted even the hottest summer day a lush green. Only the heaviest rain could penetrate the leaves. Blue had a satchelful of memories of standing by the massive, smooth trunk in the rain, hearing it hiss and tap and scatter across the canopy without ever reaching the ground. Standing under the beech tree, it felt like she was the beech, like the rain rolled off her leaves and off the bark, smooth as skin against her own. With — Maggie Stiefvater

Ah! Sir, a boy's being flogged is not so severe as a man's having the hiss of the world against him. — Samuel Johnson

Did you see it?" asked Yarvi.
"I had that questionable privilege."
"What do you think?"
"She is wretched. She is all pride and anger. She has too much confidence and too little. She does not know herself." The figure pushed back her hood. A black-skinned old woman with a face lean as famine and hair shaved to gray fuzz. She picked her nose with one long forefinger, carefully examined the results, then flicked them away "The girl is stupid as a stump. Worse. Most stumps have the dignity to rot quietly without causing offense."
"I'm right here," Thorn managed to hiss from her hands and knees.
"Just where the drunk boy put you." The woman flashed a smile at Brand that seemed to have too many teeth. "I like him, though: he is pretty and desperate. My favorite combination. — Joe Abercrombie

In the 1920s, a generation before the coming of solid-state electronics, one could look at the circuits and see how the electron stream flowed. Radios had valves, as though electricity were a fluid to be diverted by plumbing. With the click of the knob came a significant hiss and hum, just at the edge of audibility. — James Gleick

The Prime Minister seems now to be basing his re-election campaign on this plot line. He is saying to the Australian people, look out, the baddies behind you - hiss, boo and whatever you do, don't vote Labor. This political parody of pantomime is looking and sounding desperate. — Julia Gillard

American Ballet Theatre's rehearsal studios are at 890 Broadway, an old building where exposed pipes clank and hiss in uneven accompaniment to piano music. The high ceilings wear a toupee of dust. The wall paint peels like a newbie ballerina's toes. — Sascha Radetsky

The populace may hiss me, but when I go home and think of my money, I applaud myself. — Horace

Don't push me, little girl. You don't wanna see my bad side."
I blink a second before my eyes widen and i lean back from him as I whisper hiss, "This is your good side? — Belle Aurora

Those cries rose from among the twisted roots
through which the spirits of the damned were slinking
to hide from us. Therefore my Master said:
'If you break off a twig, what you will learn
will drive what you are thinking from your head.'
Puzzled, I raised my hand a bit and slowly
broke off a branchlet from an enormous thorn:
and the great trunk of it cried: 'Why do you break me?'
And after blood had darkened all the bowl
of the wound, it cried again: 'Why do you tear me?
Is there no pity left in any soul?
Men we were, and now we are changed to sticks;
well might your hand have been more merciful
were we no more than souls of lice and ticks.'
As a green branch with one end all aflame
will hiss and sputter sap out of the other
as the air escapes- so from that trunk there came
words and blood together, gout by gout.
Startled, I dropped the branch that I was holding
and stood transfixed by fear, ... — Dante Alighieri

Men often applaud an imitation and hiss the real thing. — Aesop

She reached toward the chessboard, and he caught her hand in his. "Believe me," he whispered. "When I wish to be, I can be very convincing." He followed the seam of her fingers with this thumb, tracing slowly upward until he reached the soft cleft below her knuckles. He watched as her eyes widened and her lips parted. Then he stroked the spot lightly - a quick, circular caress - and she made a little sound, half gasp and half sigh. That little sound - that tiny, panting breath - was very nearly his undoing. Jeremy knew that sound. It was the tumbler of a lock falling in place, the charged crackle between lightning and thunderbolt, the hiss of a candlewick the instant before it comes alive with flame. An incomplete sound. A sound that promised - and begged for - more. — Tessa Dare

Have you ever had a large spider in the tub, figuring you'll wash it down the drain you turn on the shower, and set it to hot?
Only to have the stupid thing grab onto the edge of the drain and hiss at you!! — Neil Leckman

That lazy servant next door was sloppy with the Tso family's nightstool and stunk up the street with their nightsoil," Mama says. "And Cook!" She allows herself a low hiss of disapproval. "Cook has served us shrimp so old that the smell has made me lose my appetite."
We don't contradict her, but the odor suffocating us comes not from spilled nightsoil or day-old shrimp but from her. Since we don't have our servants to keep the air moving in the room, the smell that rises from the blood and pus that seep through the bandages holding Mama's feet in their tiny shape clings to the back of my throat. — Lisa See

Vince had dragged a box over to the Dumpster. He was standing on it and very carefully examining the body, but something had frozen him in place, absolutely motionless, half bent into the Dumpster, and I felt a new hiss of interest from the Passenger. "What is it," I asked him, fighting to keep the eagerness out of my voice. "Oh, holy fuck," he said. "I can't believe this." "Believe what?" I said, more than a little irritated at the way he had to emote his way through a long dramatic buildup instead of simply answering my question. "Semen," he said, shaking his head and turning to face me with a look of complete disgust. "There's semen in the eye socket. — Jeff Lindsay

Don't stop," I hiss as he plunges back inside, deeper this time, coaxing another unrestrained noise out of my throat. "Don't you ever stop fucking me."
"Jesus," he swears, gravelly and low. "I'll bury myself in you, if you let me. — Karina Halle

Wit isn't a useful instrument of defense; it may make a short-run appeal, but it creates a backlash- one saw this in the Hiss case and the Oppenheimer hearings; certainly one saw it in the trial of Oscar Wilde. — Diana Trilling

As men neither fear nor respect what has been made contemptible, all honor to him who makes oppression laughable as well as detestable. Armies cannot protect it then; and walls which have remained impenetrable to cannon have fallen before a roar of laughter or a hiss of contempt. — Edwin Percy Whipple

It would do none of us any good, runnin' an evil off like we're too weak and too scared to take care of our own problems. As if we zero in bravery and sword. We can't forget, we are the lords of our own 'round here, and we alone hiss back the serpent. — Tiffany McDaniel

I can hear until you start whispering," Shawn said defensively. "Then you just hiss like a snake and it all blends into one long Remybabble. — Abigail Roux

It must be a little love, - a baby, sort of,
It shies away when the cars honk and hiss,
But adores the bells on the horse-tram. — Vladimir Mayakovsky

At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it. — Whittaker Chambers

I hate being called "Liz", because it can sound like such a hiss. — Elizabeth Taylor

Well, one gets out of bed and the planets don't always hiss or muck up the day, each day. — Anne Sexton

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

He let out a hiss of pain,then smiled that crooked, sheepish smile he always fell back on when he was caught doing something bad. Sorry. I-I didn't mean to. I just- I've been lying here for hours, thinking about blood. — Holly Black

Andrew Breitbart, self-described media mogul, had several screws loose or missing and was the grinning bomb-thrower of the radical right. He was the attack dog kept on a tight leash and brought out on special occasions to hiss and to menace. — Bill Ayers

There are moments in time when the axis of the universe shifts, when life as you knew it is irrevocably altered. When the hiss and grind of the gears fell silent, some deeply rooted instinctive part of me knew this was one of those moments. — Jennifer Silverwood

Captain Flume was obsessed with the idea that Chief White Halfoat would tiptoe up to his cot one night when he was sound asleep and slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume had obtained this idea from Chief White Halfoat himself, who did tiptoe up to his cot one night as he was dozing off, to hiss portentously that one night when he, Captain Flume, was sound asleep he, Chief White Halfoat, was going to slit his throat open for him from ear to ear. Captain Flume turned to ice, his eyes, flung open wide, staring directly up into Chief White Halfoat's, glinting drunkenly only inches away.
'Why?' Captain Flume managed to croak finally.
'Why not?' was Chief White Halfoat's answer. — Joseph Heller

Little girl," Cain begins, moving in close and speaking deliberately. "I know exactly what I want, but as long as you insist on continuing this charade, I will not claim you as mine again until you beg to hear those words from me." I stare at him, stunned at how the same cocksure attitude that floods my mind with contempt floods my body with excitement as he leans back, a satisfied smirk on his face.
"I don't beg," I hiss.
"Not yet," is all he says. — Lilly Black

It's not funny, Kacey!" I hiss. "That guy forced himself on me!"
She rolls her eyes but then, after a long pause, she sighs. "Yeah, you're right." Reaching over, she pinches the guy's arm without hesitation. "Hey, buddy!"
"You do that to her again and I'll sneak into your room and rip your balls off while you sleep, capisce?" she warns with a pointed finger. Most times my sister's threats involve the mutilation of testicles. — K.A. Tucker

[democrats] hated Richard Nixon, and no wonder. It was Nixon who sent Alger Hiss to jail, and Nixon who waged the Vietnam War after the Democrats gave up, — David Frum

I can't afford to gamble."
His breath came out in a hiss, but he tightened his grip around her.
"So we'll take it slow then," he said. "I won't push you beyond what you want, Sam. But fair warning: I will push you. When this happens it'll be on your terms, because you want it as much as I do." Not if, but when. — Roxanne Snopek

A cell phone rings. I can feel the vibration through Brittany's pants.
"It's hers," I say.
"Answer it," Isa Instructs.
I already feel like I've kidnapped the girl. Now I'm gonna answer her cell? Shit. Rolling her a bit, I feel for the bulge in her back pocket.
"Contesta," Isa whispers loudly, this time in Spanish.
"I am," I hiss, my fingers clumsy as I fumble for the phone.
"I'll do it," Paco says, leaning over the seats and reaching toward Brittany's ass.
I whack his hand away. "Get your hands off her."
"Geez, man, I was just tryin' to help."
My response is a glare. — Simone Elkeles

The closed door to the left of the hallway hid whatever room lay beyond it, but instead of walking farther into the house to see what the second right revealed, she shouted, "Magician Thane! Your guests are here and would greatly appreciate a real person at the door!"
"Miss Twill!" Mg. Aviosky said in a suppressed sort of hiss as the paper skeleton shut the front door. "Manners! — Charlie N. Holmberg

Life was not good. In fact, it was shitzterhozen - hozen full of shitzter. I wanted to heckle life.

Boo-o-o and hiss-s-s! — Penny Reid

The stretching, yearning stalks hiss against the boat's bottom, making a white noise that sounds like pollen coming out of a piss-blizzard. — Chuck Wendig

In her book Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion, Carol Tavris recounts a story about a Bengali cobra that liked to bite passing villagers. One day a swami - a man who has achieved self-mastery - convinces the snake that biting is wrong. The cobra vows to stop immediately, and does. Before long, the village boys grow unafraid of the snake and start to abuse him. Battered and bloodied, the snake complains to the swami that this is what came of keeping his promise.
"I told you not to bite," said the swami, "but I did not tell you not to hiss."
"Many people, like the swami's cobra, confuse the hiss with the bite," writes Tavris. — Susan Cain

I peel
hiss tense fingers
on his right hand
away from
the steering wheel,
one
two
three
four
five.
With each finger,
the scowl
diappears
a little more. when i place
his hand on
my leg
and gently
caress it, he smiles.
That's better. — Lisa Schroeder

A tailwind, on the other hand, is one of the most beautiful experiences you can have on a bike. There's no wind in my ears, so I hear everything around me. The chain purrs sweetly as it pulls the gears under the coaxing of my legs. The soft hiss of my tires on the smooth hard pavement, the sound of little critters scurrying in the desert around me as I pass. Smells aren't as big a deal out here in the dry desert, but even the smells are more accessible in a tailwind, since I'm moving through air at a slower relative speed, and the smells linger around my face long enough to register and enjoy them.
Relative progress, speed, sights, smells, sounds. It all goes together to create a gestalt for the ride that's pure sweetness, and I never want it to end.
Hozho. — Neil M. Hanson

Fucking hell! The lioness won. She got a burst of speed and let the bones crack, muscles tense, and skin turned to fur so flawlessly, she didn't slow. Now she ran on all fours. A loud hiss escaped from her lioness. Pissed wasn't even the word at this point. Andi wanted blood. Someone — Milly Taiden

There is a way to master silence
Control its curves, inhabit its dark corners
And listen to the hiss of time outside
— Paul Bowles

At this moment in time," came the hiss in his ear, "we know two things. But only one of them is a game changer. — J.R. Ward

Don't focus on her hiss. Remember her purr. — Donna Lynn Hope

She tilted her head, considering the sensation. "It is strange."
He gave a hiss of laughter at the words. "It only gets stranger, darling. But we shall try for something more. — Sarah MacLean

The No. 1 source in the State Department was Alger Hiss, who was then an assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State, Francis Sayre, the son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson. The No. 2 source in the same Department was Henry Julian Wadleigh, an expert in the Trade Agreements Division, to which he had managed to have himself transferred from the Agriculture Department. He had done so at the request of the Communist Party — Whittaker Chambers

Padre Blazon was almost shouting by this time, and I had to hush him. People in the restaurant were staring, and one or two of the ladies of devout appearance were heaving their bosoms indignantly. He swept the room with the wild eyes of a conspirator in a melodrama and dropped his voice to a hiss. Fragments of food, ejected from his mouth by this jet, flew about the table. [p.201] — Robertson Davies

One moment it was a calculating machine, attempting dispassionately to keep up with the gouts of data. And then awash in those gouts, something metal twitched and a patter of valves sounded that had not been instructed by those numbers. A loop of data was self-generated by the analytical engine. The processor reflected on its creation in a hiss of high-pressure steam. One moment it was a calculating machine. The next, it thought. — China Mieville

Gretel in Darkness:


This is the world we wanted.
All who would have seen us dead
are dead. I hear the witch's cry
break in the moonlight through a sheet
of sugar: God rewards.
Her tongue shrivels into gas....

Now, far from women's arms
And memory of women, in our father's hut
we sleep, are never hungry.
Why do I not forget?
My father bars the door, bars harm
from this house, and it is years.

No one remembers. Even you, my brother,
summer afternoons you look at me as though
you meant to leave,
as though it never happened.
But I killed for you. I see armed firs,
the spires of that gleaming kiln--

Nights I turn to you to hold me
but you are not there.
Am I alone? Spies
hiss in the stillness, Hansel
we are there still, and it is real, real,
that black forest, and the fire in earnest. — Louise Gluck

I can't make out what they're saying; it sounds like: hiss, blah, she hiss, squeak. But the aunt appears to speak the native language. — Emma Chase

You can always wake up on the wrong side of the bed and, boo-hiss, everyone suffers. We can all be temperamental. — John Lydon

Now gently settles like dust in a shaft - for one moment there is no one else - only the wind like the hiss of an ice skate ... — John Geddes

Vee scowled at him. She is famous for that scowl. It's a look that does everything but audibly hiss. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Yes, I'm a mouse. Squeak, squeak. Now shoo-shoo back to your little bug friends, said Rirped, picking up a hunk of dried beef. He tore a off a piece with his teeth and noticed Boots hadn't moved. He pulled back his lips to reveal a row of jagged teeth and gave her a sharp hiss. — Suzanne Collins

So I pulled a gun on him and demanded his wallet."
The soda in my mouth becomes the soda in my nose. "You had a gun?" I cough and sputter into my napkin.
Mom's eyes go round and she pressed her finger to her lips, mouthing, "Shhh!"
"Where did you get a gun?" I hiss.
"Oliver lent it to me. He was always looking out for me. Told me to shoot first and run. He said the asking-questions-later part was for the police." She grins at my expression. "Does that earn me cool points?"
I swirl a fry in the mound of ketchup on my plate. "You want cool points for pulling a gun on my father?" I say it with all the appropriate disdain and condescension it deserves, but deep down, we both know she gets mega cool points for it.
"Psh." She waves her hand. "I didn't even know whether or not it would fire. And anyway, he didn't hand me his wallet. He propositioned me instead."
"Okay. Ew."
"Not like that, you brat. — Anna Banks

And those who, like you and me, dear reader, go there to die, must get there solely and compulsorily via arrest.
Arrest! Need it be said that it is a breaking point in your life, a bolt of lightning which has scored a direct hit on you? That it is an unassimilable spiritual earthquake not every person can cope with, as a result of which people often slip into insanity?
The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: "You are under arrest"
If you are arrested, can anything else remain unshattered by this cataclysm? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Richard M. Nixon honestly believed in his bones that an organized conspiracy of liberal media insiders had literally been plotting against him ever since he broke Alger Hiss in 1948 (he never shifted course, and lost his soul). — Rick Perlstein

He heard the hiss right before a billion pounds of dynamite exploded in his shoulder. His mind said goodbye for the third time. — James Dashner

Wolfe let out a full-blooded hiss, as though he were thinking about coming across the desk at Janus. Wolfe is not to be trifled with. Wolfe is not to be threatened - — Anonymous

From inside his room Reacher heard the lawn chair scrape across the blacktop, but he paid no attention. Just a random nighttime sound, nothing dangerous, not a shotgun jacking a round, not the hiss of a blade on a sheath, nothing for his lizard brain to worry about. And the only non-lizard possibilities were a lace-up footstep on the sidewalk outside, and a knock on the door, because the woman from the railroad seemed like a person with a lot of questions, and also some kind of expectation they should be answered. Who are you and why have you come here? — Lee Child

We played like a dead French kiss reincarnated
as a saxophone with tendencies to hiss
galaxophonic secrets through the tombs of trombones
reborn as the lower bones of Bojangles, dancing
on base drums prancing like songs of the railroad
set free, we played like freedom, stirring
on those hills reflected in the back heels
of a dancer in New Orleans
tapping prosperity — Inua Ellams

Humans have never been welcome in the Dragon's capital city, Growl-Growl-Hiss-Growl-Snap Your Teeth Together, but Rose insisted on having Ember, Jake, Miranda, and I accompany her. — Bryan Fields

He threw his hands to his eyes and hissed. Like the hiss of incinerating ashes. 'What is this bright, orange orb in the sky that mocks me with its warmth? — Jesikah Sundin

(The tree bend over. Suddenly, a hiss and a meow sounded an instant before two cats darted off across the backyard.)
Look, Lanie, it's Mr. Tomcat come to save me from my celibacy. Oh, help me, Moon Mistress. Whatever am I to do with the attentions of such an unwanted suitor! Help me quick, before he kills me with my allergies. (Grace) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Masses of warring men animated the horizon, crashing into stubborn ranks, churning in melee. The air didn't so much thunder as hiss with the sound of distant battle, like a sea heard through a conch shell, Martemus thought - an angry sea. Winded, he watched the first of Conphas's assassins stride up behind Prince Kellhus, raise his short-sword ...
There was an impossible moment - a sharp intake of breath.
The Prophet simply turned and caught the descending blade between his thumb and forefinger. "No," he said, then swept around, knocking the man to the turf with an unbelievable kick. Somehow the assassin's sword found its way into his left hand. Still crouched, the Prophet drove it down through the assassin's throat, nailing him to the turf.
A mere heartbeat had passed. — R. Scott Bakker