Hums Quotes & Sayings

He hums a little. He's a really old guy with an English accent, he might have a goatee, and he'll definitely be carrying around a really thick, boring book. You might be able to pry it from his decaying hands and beat him back to death with it. Or maybe just reading it to him would work. — Kasie West

Irish Tale Anonymous The Singing Bone hums when a blood memory rises up from the past. There has been no narrative, no discussion of the event that is recalled. It is as simple as a chin passed through the generations, but more revealing and dangerous to the descendent. The singing bone lies amongst the tiny bones of the middle ear. It is a very rare and special event when it is touched. — William E. Kennedy

He [Winne the Pooh] sang it like that, which is much the best way of singing it, and when he had finished, he waited for Piglet to say that, of all the outdoor hums for Snowy weather he had ever heard, this was the best. And after thinking the matter out carefully, Piglet said:
"Pooh," he said solemnly, "It isn't the toes so much as the ears".
... Pooh began to feel a little more comfortable, because when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and other people look at it — A.A. Milne

When I say I love the silence, I'm not being entirely truthful. What I actually love are the abundant, delicate sounds that amplify when I'm silent. These curious creaks, mutters, and hums compel my imagination. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The mythology of your culture hums in your ears so constantly that no one pays the slightest bit of attention to it. Of course man is conquering space and the atom and the deserts and the oceans and the elements. According to your mythology, this is what he was BORN to do. — Daniel Quinn

instability, the discomfort of the relationship - feed back into the low self-esteem and self-doubt that triggered the over-involvement to start with. The only way out appears to be deeper enmeshment, getting so close to the SOP that those blowups won't happen. Soon the cycle hums, fully in place, with both parties pedaling as fast as they can. — Robert Hemfelt

As I wade into the still-freezing stream, the wind raises goose bumps on my body. A cloud of swallows skates across the sky; the water carries a slight taste of grit; my mother hums downstream. This is not any kind of happiness that I imagined. It is not what I chose.

But it's enough. It is more than enough. — Lauren Oliver

I feel like I was born and bred to stay self-motivated. I'm not one of those people who ho-hums and feels sorry for himself when something's bad. — Dane Cook

My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness. — Virginia Woolf

So be we king
or be we bum
the reed still whistles
the heart still hums — Patti Smith

If the boy who draws
lets you look over his shoulder.
If the poet
smiles
and shows you her words.
If the girl who sings for the shower only,
hums a song
in front of you.
Know that you're no longer a person
but the air
and dust
that fills their lungs.
When the world perishes,
and all things cease to exist,
you'll remain inside an ink stain,
a paint brush,
a song.

Poem N. 8 — Alaska Gold

And we were taught to play golf. Golf epitomizes the tame world. On a golf course nature is neutered. The grass is clean, a lawn laundry that wipes away the mud, the insect, the bramble, nettle and thistle, an Eezy-wipe lawn where nothing of life, dirty and glorious, remains. Golf turns outdoors into indoors, a prefab mat of stultified grass, processed, pesticided, herbicided, the pseudo-green of formica sterility. Here, the grass is not singing. The wind cannot blow through it. Dumb expression, greenery made stupid, it hums a bland monotone in the key of the mono-minded. No word is emptier than a golf tee. No roots, it has no known etymology, it is verbal nail polish. Worldwide, golf is an arch act of enclosure, a commons fenced and subdued for the wealthy, trampling serf and seedling. The enemy of wildness, it is a demonstration of the absolute dominion of man over wild nature. — Jay Griffiths

The clock! That twelve-figured moon skull, that white spider belly! How serenely the hands move with their filigree pointers, and how steadily! Twelve hours, and twelve hours, and begin again! Eat, speak, sleep, cross a street, wash a dish! The clock is still ticking. All its vistas are just so broad - are regular. (Notice that word.) Every day, twelve little bins in which to order disorderly life, and even more disorderly thought. The town's clock cries out, and the face on every wrist hums or shines; the world keeps pace with itself. Another day is passing, a regular and ordinary day. (Notice that word also.) _ — Mary Oliver

When something real is about to happen to you, you go toward it with a transparent surface parallel to your own front that hums and bisects both your ears, making eyes very alert. The light bends toward chalky blue. Your skin aches. At last: something real. — Thomas Pynchon

The keys that unlock the heart are made of funny materials: a disarming phrase that comes out of the blue, nowhere, a certain sexy walk that sends you reeling, the way someone hums when she is alone. My father said it was the way my mother danced with him. — Jonathan Carroll

A giant wields a rusty saw. He gloats and hums as he works, slicing through my forehead and into the mind behind it. — E. Lockhart

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations. Nature — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Darn! what a beautiful night!
Heading towards Pandara Road-Gulati Restaurant, with open windows of my baby sedan and this broad chest guy with big brown eyes.
He hums the oldies well and his Issey Miyake is making me lose the grip over my senses.
One more thing is distracting me, he ain't wearing anything inside but a transparent white, V necked, cotton short Kurta.
I can see the hair winking out and his collar bones!!
Not only men get excited by transparent dresses but women as well.
His broad shoulders and chest is my weakness and he knows it.
This man is not doing good to me!
It's a crime to seduce in this way, when you are not touched, when you are distracted by the aroma of his skin, when you know, he is well aware of the intentions..
when you can't do anything except getting seduced by the corner stretching smile of a man with animal instinct..
I certainly am missing myself to be tied up to the bedpost,choked and groaning his name! — Himmilicious

The Sanctuary and its deities were the main source of the city's income. Visitors paid to enter the city. They had to buy the correct apparel to perform rituals in the Sanctuary. They had to pay again to acquire offerings for the gods. Mecca was not just one of the world's oldest shrines, it was a citadel for capitalism. The people who oiled the wheels of Meccan religious life were known as Hums. — Ziauddin Sardar

Imagine you have intellect but no insight, agendas but no awareness. Your circuitry hums with strategies for survival and persistence, flexible, intelligent, even technological - but no other circuitry monitors it. You can think of anything, yet are conscious of nothing. You can't imagine such a being, can you? The term being doesn't even seem to apply, in some fundamental way you can't quite put your finger on. — Peter Watts

I think I could have some very real feelings for you," I blurt out. I want to bite the words back as soon as I say them. "Good," she says, and she smiles as she rolls into my chest and wraps her arm around me. She buries her face in my shirt. I think she might be embarrassed. "I pour my heart out and all you can say is good?" I jostle her in my arms. "Mmm hmm," she hums. I feel her lips against my shirt, her breath warming the fabric. She laughs. "You can't really call that pouring your heart out, Pete." She mocks my tone, making her voice deep. "I think I might have some very real feelings for you." She laughs, and damn it all, it's such a pretty sound that she can't annoy me with it. — Tammy Falkner

Destroy! destroy! destroy! hums the under-consciousness. Love and produce! Love and produce! cackles the upper consciousness. And the world hears only the Love-and- produce cackle. Refuses to hear the hum of destruction under- neath. Until such time as it will have to hear. — D.H. Lawrence

But it isn't easy,' said Pooh. 'Because Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you. — A.A. Milne

We walk together to the kitchen. On these mornings when my brother makes breakfast, and my father's hand skims my hair as he reads the newspaper, and my mother hums as she clears the table - it is on these mornings that I feel guiltiest for wanting to leave them. — Veronica Roth

They were awfully close there by the fire," Mom says. "I was watching out the window." There's a quiet pause. "Did she let him touch her?" "No, but she touched him." He heaves a sigh. "She didn't even try to punch him in the throat." Fine. I can be a little aggressive. It all started after my attack with some self-defense classes. Then I realized I'm really good at martial arts. I can't help if it some people make me want to drop-kick them. "That's a start," Mom hums. I shake my head. I'm not starting anything. He's just a man that doesn't make me want to run in the other direction. That's all he is. He's nothing more than that. It's strange, because if I judged him based solely on his appearance, I'd be running away as fast as I could. "He's a good kid, it looks like," Dad says on a heavy sigh. "He made a stupid mistake." "He's kind of hot with all the tattoos," Mom says. She giggles, and I hear my dad growl. She shrieks, and I walk away. They don't need an audience for that part. — Tammy Falkner

It is also true that memory sometimes comes to him as a voice. It is a voice that speaks inside him, and it is not necessarily his own. It speaks to him in the way a voice might tell stories to a child, and yet at times this voice makes fun of him, or calls him to attention, or curses him in no uncertain terms. At times it willfully distorts the story it is telling him, changing the facts to suit its whims, catering to the interests of drama rather than truth. Then he must speak to it in his own voice and tell it to stop, thus returning it to the silence it came from. At other times it sings to him. At still other times it whispers. And then there are the times it merely hums, or babbles, or cries out in pain. And even when it says nothing, he knows it is still there, and in the silence of this voice that says nothing, he waits for it to speak. — Paul Auster

If you wander with open eyes and simple curiosity, you'll discover a much richer pleasure - the simple feeling of possibility that hums from every direction as you move from place to place. — Rolf Potts

The only thing worse than opera is someone who hums along with opera. — Josh Lanyon

The linden, in the fervors of July,
Hums with a louder concert. When the wind
Sweeps the broad forest in its summer prime,
As when some master-hand exulting sweeps
The keys of some great organ, ye give forth
The music of the woodland depths, a hymn
Of gladness and of thanks. — William C. Bryant

The day hums sweetly when you have enough bees working for you. — Frank Herbert

If aw his hums and haws were hams and haggises, the country wad be weel fed! — Liz Lochhead

The audible signals people can produce are not a series of crisp beeps like on a touch-tone phone. Speech is a river of breath, bent into hisses and hums by the soft flesh of the mouth and throat. — Steven Pinker

But one day she was telling me how every room has a note. You just have to find it. She started warbling away, up and down. And suddenly one note came back to us, just bounced back off the walls and rose from the floor and filled the place with this perfect hum. This beautiful sound. Like you've thrown a plum and an orchard comes back at you. You wouldn't believe it, Mr. Evans. These two completely different things, a note and a room, finding each other. It sounded ... right. Am I being ridiculous? Do you think that's what we mean by love, Mr. Evans? The note that comes back to you? That finds you even when you don't want to be found? That one day you find someone, and everything they are comes back to you in a strange way that hums? That fits. That's beautiful. — Richard Flanagan

I regard each sentence as a little wheel ... Now and again I try to put a really big one next to a very small one in such a way that the big one, turning slowly, will make the small one spin so fast that it hums. Very tricky, that. — Roald Dahl

Any clear thing that blinds us with surprise,
your wandering silences and bright trouvailles,
dolphin let loose to catch the flashing fish ...
saying too little, then too much.
Poets die adolescents, their beat embalms them,
the archetypal voices sing offkey;
the old actor cannot read his friends,
and nevertheless he reads himself aloud,
genuis hums the auditorium dead.
The line must terminate.
Yet my heart rises, I know I've gladdened a lifetime
knotting, undoing a fishnet of tarred rope;
the net will hang on the wall when the fish are eaten,
nailed like illegible bronze on the futureless future. — Robert Lowell

Covering up with one of his wings, I surround myself with the scent of licorice and honey. "You want to hold me while I sleep. You want to watch my face as I dream like you never have - from the outside."
He traces my eye markings with an elegant fingertip. "That will be my memory to cling to, until you're mine forever at last, both in waking hours and sleep. The question is, do you trust me enough to give me that? To rest in my arms tonight?"
I hold his soft palm against my cheek. "Will you sing me my lullaby?"
He weaves his fingers through my hair and presses my forehead to his. "Forever and always," he whispers.
As he hums the tune that has been inside my mind and heart all my life, I close the waterfall canopy, cocooning us within our own frozen pocket of time. — A.G. Howard

We'll meet again in Lvov, my love and I ... Tatiana hums, eating her ice cream, in our Leningrad, in jasmine June, near Fontanka, the Neva, the Summer Garden, where we are forever young. — Paullina Simons

Plans could change in a heartbeat, though, couldn't they? The wind shifts and the clouds rush in. The air sparks and hums, and before you can even think about running, you're standing in the middle of a storm. — Anne Francis Scott

It's very you, that bike. Fast and dirty and loud."
"Watch it, missy. My girl hums like a lullaby."
"Oh yeah. Completely."
"You're just not listening right, that's all."
"I suppose my hearing's too sensitive."
"Just the opposite. You listen properly, behind the growl, it's all purrs. Pure pussycat. — Cara McKenna

The wind hums low with sweet exultation, sings its lullaby, while you sleep ... — John Geddes

You put her body on display." His lips brush my ear as he forces the words through clenched teeth. Pain hums in his voice. "I'll do the same to you. — Victoria Aveyard

Frau Elena paces the parlor, her slippers whispering left, whispering right. Coal cars grind past in the wet dark. Machinery hums in the distance: pistons throbbing, belts turning. Smoothly. Madly. — Anthony Doerr

Knowing how to tinker with a broken piece of prose until it hums is a source of contentment known by all who have mastered a worthy craft. — Carol Fisher Saller

The Ill Wind Promises"

When the oscillator hums, I'll hold your hand
When they come to get you, I'll pull you aside
When the engine purrs, I'll find the right words
When the music stops, your lips may have to part

When your baby's born, I'll carry his name
When your mother visits, I'll hide in your bed
When your husband comes by, I'll turn up the music
When the party's over, I'll hand you your handbag

When you kiss me, I'll stick a hand in your pocket
When your lover calls, I'll braid your hair
When they come to get you, I'll talk nonsense
When you're dead and gone, I'll smoke a cigarette — Ann Cotten

A condom is a rubber thing shaped like a wiener that hums. — Bill Engvall

Billy offers small hums of agreement and waits for the momma-logue to wind down. — Ben Fountain

Doubt always hovers nearby, but I take photographs the way a musician hums. Looking is like breathing. So when luck turns my way and offers me a good picture, joy is surely nigh. — Marc Riboud

It thunders, howls, roars, hisses, whistles, blusters, hums, growls, rumbles, squeaks, groans, sings, crackles, cracks, rattles, flickers, clicks, snarls, tumbles, whimpers, whines, rustles, murmurs, crashes, clucks, to gurgle, tinkles, blows, snores, claps, to lisp, to cough, it boils, to scream, to weep, to sob, to croak, to stutter, to lisp, to coo, to breathe, to clash, to bleat, to neigh, to grumble, to scrape, to bubble. These words, and others like them, which express sounds are more than mere symbols: they are a kind of hieroglyphics for the ear. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

"Dance with me, blossom," he coaxes, and when I hesitate, he reels me in with his magic. I snuggle into his chest and let myself savor his vitality, wishing I could absorb it.
He wraps an arm around my waist and clasps my hand with his. Lips pressed to my dreadlocked head, he hums the lullaby's tune while his inner voice fills my head on a frequency only I can hear: "You dazzled me today. So uninhibited. So filled with malice." — A.G. Howard

An Afternoon in the Stacks
Closing the book, I find I have left my head
inside. It is dark in here, but the chapters open
their beautiful spaces and give a rustling sound,
words adjusting themselves to their meaning.
Long passages open at successive pages. An echo,
continuous from the title onward, hums
behind me. From in here the world looms,
a jungle redeemed by these linked sentences
carved out when an author traveled and a reader
kept the way open. When this book ends
I will pull it inside-out like a sock
and throw it back in the library. But the rumor
of it will haunt all that follows in my life.
A candleflame in Tibet leans when I move. — William Stafford

- The earth hums?
- Of course it does. What a stupid question! Don't you hear it? — Jeff Smith

The cozy fire is bright and gay, The merry kettle boils away and hums a cheerful song. I sing the saucer and the cup; Pray, Mary, fill the teapot up, And do not make it strong — Barry Pain

He hears everything as music,' said his father, Moses Whitaker. 'The fax machine sounds like an A. The copy machine is a B flat. The jackhammers are making the drum beats that he likes.' When the subway rumbles, Matthew taps his cane on the ground to re-create the noise. He hums along with the city - the fast cars and fast talkers. When asked to describe New York, he stands and pivots a full 360 degrees, pointing his fingers in front of him. 'New York is a circle of sounds,' he says. 'There is music everywhere. Everybody has a smile on their face. It's musical, it's dark and so beautiful. — David Byrne

Lips unused to thee, Bashful, sip thy jasmines, As the fainting bee, Reaching late his flower, Round her chamber hums, Counts his nectars - enters, And is lost in balms! — Emily Dickinson

What I Found in My Desk
A ripe peach with an ugly bruise,
a pair of stinky tennis shoes,
a day-old ham-and-cheese on rye,
a swimsuit that I left to dry,
a pencil that glows in the dark,
some bubble gum found in the park,
a paper bag with cookie crumbs,
an old kazoo that barely hums,
a spelling test I almost failed,
a letter that I should have mailed,
and one more thing, I must confess,
a note from teacher: Clean This Mess!!!! — Bruce Lansky

The jacaranda in the courtyard has put on its bloom. This purple can't be ignored, it's like a tree singing. The walk down Londres Street to the market is a concert: the small jacaranda on the the corner hums the tuning note, then all others in the lane join in. — Barbara Kingsolver

The motor hums away outside, and the cold air is forced through narrow tubing that enters through a small — Drew Boyd

I was on this boat in the middle of the ocean scuba diving for this film I did, and I was with actor Mackenzie Cook, who is in it as well, and I didn't have my phone on me. The producer of the film handed me over this phone and said "someone is on the phone for you Gemma," and here I am completely in all of the scuba gear on with the tank on, and a helmet. My agent just went "dum, dum, dum, dum"(hums Bond theme song), and I just knew then, and I went ahhhh madness, and I was over the moon, — Gemma Arterton

The pure, absolute quality and nature of each note in itself are only appreciated by the strummer. For some notes have all the sea in them, and some cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance and a smell of greenery; in some fauns dance to the merry reed, and even the grave centaurs peep out from their caves. Some bring moonlight, and some the deep crimson of a rose's heart; some are blue, some red, and others will tell of an army with silken standards and march-music. And throughout all the sequence of suggestion, up above the little white men leap and peep, and strive against the imprisoning wires; and all the big rosewood box hums as it were full of hiving bees. — Kenneth Grahame

A capitalist economy hums when leading businessmen are bubbling with animal spirits and are prepared to sink their money into risky ventures. — Paul Johnson

The peach-bud glows, the wild bee hums, and wind-flowers wave in graceful gladness. — Lucy Larcom

As he hums the melody softly into my ear, I can feel the notes seep deep into my skin and bones, and birth an ache in my soul I never knew existed. What is this, if not impossible? — Ashley Poston

Her body is thin beneath the gray robe. She has high cheekbones and long eyelashes, and when she lets her hair down at night, it hangs in waves over her shoulders. But she must hide that beauty in Abnegation. We walk together to the kitchen. On these mornings when my brother makes breakfast, and my father's hand skims my hair as he reads the newspaper, and my mother hums as she clears the table - it is on these mornings that I feel guiltiest for wanting to leave them. The bus stinks of exhaust. Every time it hits a patch of uneven pavement, it jostles me from side to side, even though — Veronica Roth

Hmm," she hums after a moment.
"What?"
"Just thinking ... We both want you to get this role."
"No sh*t."
"And arguing obviously isn't helping us out."
I snort. "But that's what we do. — Cassie Mae