Leathery Quotes & Sayings

Do you know, Mother, that Haj Salem was buried alive in his home? Does he tell you stories in heaven now? I wish I had had a chance to meet him. To see his toothless grin and touch his leathery skin. To beg him, as you did in your youth, for a story from our Palestine. He was over one hundred years old, Mother. To have lived so long, only to be crushed to death by a bulldozer. Is this what it means to be Palestinian? — Susan Abulhawa

Imagine jumping off a high building into a sea of marshmallows, then reaching out with a million arms to touch the entire world, while realizing that every emotion you've ever had is connected to every other emotion, and they're really one big emotion, like an emotion-whale that you can't completely see because you're up too close to notice anything other than a little bit of leathery emotion-whale skin. I — Brandon Sanderson

Introduction I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn't one of them. Although I was given a dry, leathery corpse to dissect in my first term, that was solely a way to learn about human anatomy. Our textbooks had almost nothing on aging or frailty or dying. How the process unfolds, how people experience the end of their lives, and how it affects those around them seemed beside the point. The way we saw it, and the way our professors saw it, the purpose of medical schooling was to teach how to save lives, not how to tend to their demise. The one time I remember discussing mortality was during an hour we spent on The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy's classic novella. — Atul Gawande

An old walrus-faced waiter attended to me; he had the knack of pouring the coffee and the hot milk from two jugs, held high in the air, and I found this entrancing, as if he were a child's magician. One day he said to me - he had some English - "Why are you sad?"
"I'm not sad," I said, and began to cry. Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.
"You should not be sad," he said, gazing at me with his melancholy, leathery walrus eyes. "It must be the love. But you are young and pretty, you will have time to be sad later." The French are connoisseurs of sadness, they know all the kinds. This is why they have bidets. "It is criminal, the love," he said, patting my shoulder. "But none is worse. — Margaret Atwood

unusual in comparison with other tree nuts since the nut is outside the fruit. The cashew apple is an edible false fruit, attached to the externally born nut by a stem. In its raw state, the shell of the nut is leathery, not brittle. It contains the thick vesicant oil, CNSL, within a sponge-like interior. A thin testa skin surrounds the kernel and keeps it separated from the inside of the shell. The primary products of cashew nuts are the kernels which have value as confectionery nuts. Cashew nut shell liquid (CNSL) is an important industrial raw material for resin manufacture and the shells can be burned to provide heat for the decorticating operation. Cashew Apple Nut ShellFigure 2: Cross-section of a Cashew Fruit Tasta Skin Kernal — Anonymous

It's easier to forget the past if nothing ever reminds you of those leathery old scars that can never again feel any loss or pain; the old wounds must be kept open if you are going to remember their cause and regret their occurrence. — Peter Robinson

George Vida braced his hands on the table before taking his seat, his gaze strafing the room with the discernment of a leathery old goat sniffing for something to nibble on. — Lisa Wingate

My sister has appendages connected to her ankles. They feature toes and arches, but I cannot call them feet. In color they resemble the leathery paws of great apes, but in texture they are closer to hooves. In order to maintain her balance, she'll periodically clear the bottoms of debris - a bottle cap, bits of broken glass, a chicken bone - but within moments she'll have stepped on something else and begun the process all over again. It's what happens when you sell both your broom and your vacuum cleaner. — David Sedaris

Strange that mankind should ever have used the mushroom. All the various species of this substance are of a leathery consistence, and contain but little nutriment. The condiments or seasonings which are added are what are chiefly prized. Without these, we should almost as soon eat saw dust as mushrooms. — William Alcott

That's a big trunk," James said, as we jammed in the leathery old case that looked so much like the black heart of some leviathan. "It fits a tuba, three suitcases, a dead dog, and a garment bag almost perfectly."
"That's just what they used to say in the ads," I said ... — Michael Chabon

Off in strata of porous rock by the leathery half-plant, half-animal little makers - and — Frank Herbert

There's not a season set aside for pondering and reveries. It will not les us hesitate or rest; it does not wish us to stand back and comment on its comeliness or devise a song for it. It has no time to listen to our song. It only asks us not to tire in our hard work. It wants to see us leathery, our necks and fore-arms burnt as black as chimney oak; it wants to leave us thinned and sinewy from work. It taxes us from dawn to dusk, and torments us at night; that is the taxing that the thrush complains about. Our great task each and every year is to defend ourselves against hunger and defeat with implements and tools. — Jim Crace

Surgeons are a singular brotherhood, Adam. To us, people aren't sacred beings crafted in the Almighty's image, no, people are joints of meat; diseased, leathery meat, yes, but meat ready for the skewer & the spit." He mimicked my usual voice, very well. "'But why *me*, Henry, are we not friends?' Well, Adam, even friends are made out of meat. — David Mitchell

I understood that fate could not be eluded forever; it came on leathery wings, swooping through the darkness like the bats in the orchards. — Alice Hoffman

I inhaled the musty, leathery, old-papery scent and a shiver passed over me. If I had any idea of heaven, it was this: shelves and shelves of books, ten times as many as were upstairs, each with stories or pictures more exciting and beautiful than the next, and two overstuffed chairs big enough for me to sleep in. — Clay Carmichael

And I think of the night-blooming cereus, a plant that looks like a leathery weed most of the year. But for one night each summer its flower opens to reveal silky white petals, which encircle yellow lacelike threads, and another whole flower like a tiny sea anemone within the outer flower. By morning, the flower has shriveled. One night of the year, as delicate and fleeting as a life in the universe. — Alan Lightman

The books downstairs were reciting their poetry to each other, rubbing together, whispering through the leathery covers. Wine was flowing through the water pipes. You had caught my leaping heart in your hands like a fish. — Francesca Lia Block

I think about death, when I lie in bed and imagine disintegrating, my skin going leathery and my hair petrifying and a tree growing out of my stomach, it's a way to avoid what's right in front of me. It's a way to not be here, in the uncertainty of right now. — Lena Dunham

Leathery bar girls worked the charter booths at the harbor, smoking Basic 100s and talking in voices that sounded like 151 rum poured into hot grease - a jigger of friendly to the liter of harsh. — Christopher Moore

Thumbs-up. We could never make Dry Witch Toby cry. The boys said she was a hardass - she and Rebecca were the two hardest asses. Rebecca was jolly on the outside, but you did not push her buttons. As for Toby, she was leathery inside and out. "Don't try it, Shackleton," she would say, even though her back was turned. Nuala was too kind to us, but Toby held us to account, and we trusted Toby more: you'd — Margaret Atwood

A single slim trunk
Branches that bow in a storm
Green, leathery leaves with a soft centre
Glittering against blue sky
White bark scarred, bleeding
Heart wide-open
Bandaged, but upright she stands... (225) — Fadia Faqir

Roosevelt set his sights on a strikingly tall man striding into camp alongside one of the native's harems. He had no female companions, yet he was also naked and carried a spear and bow in Nhambiquara fashion. As the man approached, Roosevelt's mouth lay agape noticing that he bore a full beard and his skin pigmentation was unquestionably white, and yet he was weathered to a leathery brown. The — Mark Paul Jacobs

Changing into shorts, he took a cold can of beer from the refrigerator and drank it, standing, while he heated a large pot of water. Before the water boiled, he stripped all the leathery edamame pods from the branch, spread them on a cutting board, and rubbed them all over with salt. When the water boiled, he threw them into the pot. — Haruki Murakami

Cupping her chin, he said, "Sexiest female I've ever seen."
One side of her mouth turned up with a smile while her eyes twinkled. "Even gray and leathery?"
"Ever so bonny. — Lisa Carlisle

Poetry is cathartic only for the unserious, for in front of the rush of expressive need stands the barrier of form, and when the hurdler's scissored legs and outstretched arms carry him over the bars, the limp in his life, the headache in his heart, the emptiness he's full of, are as absent as his street-shoes, which will pinch and scrape his feet in all the old leathery ways once the race is over and he has to walk through the front door of his future like a brushman with some feckless patter and a chintzy plastic prize. — William H Gass

It had been along time since I breached the surface of the world above. My parents wouldn't allow it. So as far as I knew, the survivors that remained were savages. I'd seen a few things before our colony was built and most of the inhabitants left ran wildly through the bare, desert terrain, filth covering them from head to toe, bones protruding their leathery skin, and foam dripping from their mouths in search of one thing ...
Nourishment. — Lauren Hammond

Lachie slaps his arms around his body and hugs himself when he comes out of the water that's thick with the spaghetti of dark, leathery seaweed.
"Does it not try to drag you down to the bottom?" I say.
"No, sure it's like being stroked by mermaids" says Lachie. — Flora Kennedy

The monster towered ten or twelve feet tall. Its bright green leathery skin was covered in dirt,
moss, leaves, and patches of grass, the stench repulsive. His teeth gleamed brown. Evidently he
wasn't aware of the multitude of whitening products on the market. — A&E Kirk

My wife is a lovely leathery green, the blue-tongued lizard said;
Her eyes are as red as bulldog ants, lurking in holes in her head;
Her body is made of the speckled grass, a violet grows on her tongue,
And I could watch her for fifty years if nobody blundered along. — Douglas Stewart

You know, Mo, I've been thinking of the Elephantarium lately. You remember Atoul, the white elephant? Well, he taught me that all things need to change form to live. When we die, we change into ashes, gases, things like that. They carry on until they change. The ashes may help a tree grow, the gases could mingle with others and become ... something else! That means you and I are going to change and ... ah ... well ... " His voice stuck in his throat. He stopped, cleared his throat, turned, and walked to Mo. He rubbed the soft leathery skin on the underside of her ear. "and you ... You will become something greater and more wonderful than you can imagine! You will soar in the cosmos, become part of all things, you will sit at HIS side and help rule all of nature." Bram's whole being felt the impact ... The thought of not being with her. "I will be waiting for you, okay? I'll meet you there." pg 317 — Ralph Helfer

Some Hindus have an elephant to show.
No one here has ever seen an elephant.
They bring it at night to a dark room.
One by one, we go in the dark and come out
saying how we experience the animal.
One of us happens to touch the trunk.
A water-pipe kind of creature.
Another, the ear. A strong, always moving
back and forth, fan-animal. Another, the leg.
I find it still, like a column on a temple.
Another touches the curve back.
A leathery throne. Another, the cleverest,
feels the tusk. A rounded sword made of porcelain.
He is proud of his description.
Each of us touches one place
and understands the whole in that way.
The palm and the fingers feeling in the dark
are how the senses explore the reality of the elephant.
If each of us held a candle there,
and if we went in together, we could see it. — Rumi

We pulled the seeds out and scattered them on their flossy parachutes, leaving only the leathery brownish yellow tongue, soft as the inside of an elbow. — Margaret Atwood

You? Really now, Mr. McGee. You are spectacularly huge, and a tan that deep is almost vulgar, and you have a kind of leathery fading boyish charm, but this is not and never was a game for dilettantes, for jolly boys, for the favor-for-an-old-buddy routine. No gray-eyed wonder with a big white grin can solve anything or retrieve anything by blundering around in my life. Thanks for the gesture. But this isn't television. I don't need a big brother. So why don't you just go on back to your fun and games? — John D. MacDonald

The northern girl. Winterfell's daughter. We heard she killed the king with a spell, and afterward changed into a wolf with big leathery wings like a bat, and flew out a tower window. — George R R Martin

Mr. Wegg sits down on a box in front of the fire, and inhales a warm and comfortable smell which is not the smell of the shop. 'For that,' Mr. Wegg inwardly decides, as he takes a corrective sniff or two, 'is musty, leathery, feathery, cellary, gluey, gummy, and,' with another sniff, 'as it might be, strong of old pairs of bellows. — Charles Dickens

Humankind's greatest gift is that we are indeterminate beings. Unlike the tough and leathery seed of an acorn, which will grow into a magnificent oak tree, none of us has a predetermined final configuration of our ultimate essence. Our mental temperament is pliable. We make conscious and subconscious choices that govern who we become. — Kilroy J. Oldster

A Quarkbeast is a small hyena-shaped creature that is covered in leathery scales and often described as: 'One tenth Labrador, six-tenths velociraptor and three-tenths kitchen food blender. — Jasper Fforde

This time I saw. In a blue heaven was coiled an infinite snake of gold and green, with four eyes of fire, black fire and red, that darted rays in every direction; held within its coils was a great multitude of laughing children. And even as I looked, all this was blotted out. Crawling rivers of blood spread over the heaven, of blood purulent with nameless forms - mangy dogs with their bowels dragging behind them; creatures half elephant, half beetle; things that were but a ghastly bloodshot eye, set about with leathery tentacles; women whose skins heaved and bubbled like boiling sulphur, giving off clouds that condensed into a thousand other shapes, more hideous than their mother; these were the least of the denizens of these hateful rivers. — Aleister Crowley

Boys don't smell the same as girls. They have a pungent, leathery, underneath smell, like old rope, like damp dogs. — Margaret Atwood

Parker, who was six feet four with nothing to protect his bones from exposure to the weather but tough-looking leathery skin, was so skeptical that at one point I thought he was going to pass, but he finally conceded that the move might be undertaken without undue risk to juridical virtue, to his own reputation, or to his client's life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. When all details had been settled and money passed - a dollar bill from Sarah to Parker as a token retainer - I got at the phone and dialed a number. — Rex Stout

Currents of cigarette fumes wafted through what passed for air. Attractive young women in bright-hued gowns glided through the streams of smoke, like tropical fish in an aquarium. Detecting the white uniforms and leathery faces, they promptly approached the Navy men. Very pretty, Ed thought, but hungry, a school of piranha. Just what the doctor ordered: fun and games with no complications. Right: no complications. pg. 27. — Clark Zlotchew

leathery tan face and eyes popping from white rings of flesh left by tanning goggles, had his head so far up his ass that he needed a snorkel to breathe. At least most thought so. — Gregg Olsen

He was a crusty old bastard, dressed like my uncle in ancient denim coveralls, espadrilles and beret. He had a leathery, tanned and windblown face, hollow cheeks, and the tiny broken blood vessels on nose and cheeks that everyone seemed to have from drinking so much of the local Bordeaux. — Anthony Bourdain

If one's memories of Baghdad women were only of those to be seen in the streets, they would be of leathery, wrinkled faces, prematurely old, figures which have lost all shape, and henna-stained hands crinkled and deformed by toil. — Isabella Bird