Quotes & Sayings About Lizards

Would you like to hear about the fascinating things lizards can do if you chew off their tails? — Elle Lothlorien

When we were kids the coolest dinosaur in world was the brontosaurus, which means 'THUNDERLIZARD'. But it turns out brontosaurs isn't even a thing, it's just an apatosaurus which means 'deceptive lizard', which isn't nearly as cool. I don't want my gigantic lizards to bring the lies. I want them to bring the thunder. — John Green

Even lizard + baby can be director. — Robert Robert

JOHNNA: When a Cheyenne baby is born, their umbilical cord is dried and sewn into this pouch. Turtles for girls, lizards for boys. And we wear it for the rest of our lives. JEAN: Wow. JOHNNA: Because if we lose it, our souls belong nowhere and after we die our souls will walk the Earth looking for where we belong. — Tracy Letts

The only way I can deal with it is to think that maybe that's how Neville would have wanted to go. He loved those fucking lizards. — Sarah Lotz

The ancient priest who had taken Father Angel's place and whose name no one had bothered to find out awaited God's mercy stretched out casually in a hammock, tortured by arthritis and the insomnia of doubt while the lizards and rats fought over the inheritance of the nearby church. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

There was a crackle. Kobe's voice came through the cans. "What would you guys do," he said, apropos of nothing, "if Jules turned into a lizard?"

Another crackle. "Hey!" Jules said.

"It wouldn't happen," said Jacob, and I saw him shrug in the half-light.

"But what if?"

I pressed the talk button on my cans. "There's an old fish tank in our garage," I said. "I'd put Jules in it, and then get a heat rock from the pet shop."

I heard Sam's low chuckle. "Make sure you wash your hands first."

"Why?"

"So you don't get any lizardy diseases."

"I don't have any lizardy diseases!" Jules's voice was getting higher.

"Not yet, but wait until you're a lizard."

"What's a heat rock?" asked Jacob.

"It's a rock," I told him, "that you heat up. Lizards like them. Anyway, once I'd done that, I'd take you to see my cousin Adam."

"IS HE A WIZARD? — Lili Wilkinson

Night, the astonishing, the stranger to all that is human, over the mountain-tops mournful and gleaming draws on. It was as though I stood at the topmost point of the earth, where the glittering winter sky is forever unchanging; as though the heath were rigid with frost, and adders, vipers and lizards of transparent ice lay slumbering in their hollows in the — W.G. Sebald

The long days seduce all thought away, and we lie like the lizards in the sun, postponing our lives indefinitely. — Elizabeth Smart

Democracy is all about not electing the wrong man-eating lizard. — Douglas Adams

Fillet of a Fenny Snake,
In the Cauldron boyle and bake:
Eye of Newt, and Toe of Frogge,
Wooll of Bat, and Tongue of Dogge:
Adders Forke, and Blinde-wormes Sting,
Lizards legge, and Howlets wing:
For a Charme of powrefull trouble,
Like a Hell-broth, boyle and bubble — William Shakespeare

The life of every man is a way to himself, an attempt at a way, the suggestion of a path. No man has ever been utterly himself, yet every man strives to be so, the dull, the intelligent, each one as best he can. Each man to the end of his days carries round with him vestiges of his birth - the slime and egg-shells of the primeval world. There are many who never become humans; they remain frogs, lizards, ants. Many men are human being above and fish below. Yet each one represents an attempt on the part of nature to create a human being. — Hermann Hesse

Remote though your farm may be, It's something to be the lord of one green lizard-and free. — Juvenal

It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets. — Cormac McCarthy

What would you rather be? 52 and look 52, or 52 and look like a 28-year-old lizard? — Bill Burr

Mario, I wrote, to give myself courage, had not taken away the world, he had taken away only himself. And you are not a woman of thirty years ago. You are of today, take hold of today, don't regress, don't lose yourself, keep a tight grip. Above all, don't give into distracted or malicious or angry monologues. Eliminate the exclamation points. He's gone, you're still here. You'll no longer enjoy the gleam of his eyes, of his words, but so what? Organize your defenses, preserve your wholeness, don't let yourself break like an ornament, you're not a knickknack, no woman is a knickknack. La femme rompue, ah, rompue, the destroyed woman, destroyed, shit. My job, I thought, is to demonstrate that one can remain healthy. Demonstrate it to myself, no one else. If I am exposed to lizards, I will fight the lizards. If I am exposed to ants, I will fight the ants. If I am exposed to thieves, I will fight the thieves. If I am exposed to myself, I will fight myself. — Elena Ferrante

The three of us do not go out very often as the three of us. I think Daniel is perfect for Jed, which is the highest compliment I can give. But my friendship isn't with him, and Jed understands that. When we hit the road, we hit it together alone.
We get to the bridge, out undestined destination. Even though there's no sign, no arrow, Jed turns at the last minute and parks us in a verge right before the bridge leaves the ground.
The trunk pops open, and Jed runs round back to retrieve a bag of oranges and a sweatshirt that fits me better.
Shall we make like lizards and leap? he asks.
I never felt the urge to jump off a bridge, but there are times I have wanted to jump out of my life, out of my skin.
Would you stroll me down the promenade instead? I ask back.
Most certainly, my splendid.
There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people tho don't see each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy. — David Levithan

You want us to bargain with a lizard?"
"They're not lizards, Father. They're extraordinary creatures who were
here long before any human was crawling on this earth. They are warriors
and scholars and - "
"He has long hair like a woman," one of Sigmar's sons blathered — G.A. Aiken

Our enemies-my enemies-wouldn't win. The demon lizards had hurt me for the last time. Now, they had a new foe, and I would make sure they remembered my name when I destroyed them on the battlefield.
I would work hard.
I would excel.
I would become the perfect soldier. — Julie Kagawa

Sometimes I felt the bloated Toad, hideous and pampered with the poisonous vapours of the dungeon, dragging his loathsome length along my bosom: Sometimes the quick cold Lizard rouzed me leaving his slimy track upon my face, and entangling itself in the tresses of my wild and matted hair: Often have I at waking found my fingers ringed with the long worms which bred in the corrupted flesh of my Infant. — Matthew Gregory Lewis

Braith turned and saw three of her cousins sunning themselves on boulders. Like lizards. Lizards in human form.
"What are you doing?" Braith asked.
"Enjoying the suns," replied one.
"It gives our scales a lovely bright hue," said another.
Braith blinked. "Except you're all in your human form. So how does that help your scales?"
They stared at her for several seconds before one stated, "You're a bit of a know-it-all, aren't you?"
"How is that ... " Braith shook her head. She wouldn't go from arguing with one idiot to arguing with three. — G.A. Aiken

Dozens of species of insects give virgin birth. Crayfish give virgin birth. Some honeybees give virgin birth. And Komodo dragons - yeah, those big lizards give virgin birth, too. Jeez, one human gives virgin birth and that jump-starts one of the world's greatest religions. But when a Komodo dragon gives virgin birth, do you know what it's thinking? It's thinking, 'This is Tuesday, right? I think this is Tuesday. What am I going to do on Wednesday? — Sherman Alexie

The man that brings ant-infested faggots into his hut should not grumble when lizards begin to pay him a visit. — Chinua Achebe

Never to have seen anything but the temperate zone is to have lived on the fringe of the world. Between the Tropic of Capricorn and the Tropic of Cancer live the majority of all the plant species, the vast majority of the insects, most of the strange ... quadrupeds, all of the great and most of the poisonous snakes and large lizards, most of the brilliantly colored sea fishes, and the strangest and most gorgeously plumaged of the birds. — David Fairchild

I always had an affinity for lizards. I've always felt somewhat close to them. They're reptiles. I find myself feeling somewhat reptilian at times. — Johnny Depp

One is seduced and battered in turn. The result is presumably wisdom. Wisdom! We are clinging to life like lizards.
Why is it so difficult to assemble those things that really matter in life and to dwell among them only? I am referring to certain landscapes, persons, beasts, books, rooms, meteorological conditions, fruits. In fact, I insist on it.
A letter is like a poem, it leaps into life and shows very clearly the marks, perhaps I should say thumbprints, of an unwilling or unready composer. — James Salter

Everyone will have gone then except us, because we're tied to this soil by a roomful of trunks where the household goods and clothing of grandparents are kept, and the canopies that my parenrs' horses used when they came to Macondo, fleeing from the war. We've been sown into this soil by the memory of the remote dead whose bones can no longer be found twenty fathoms under the earth. The trunks have been in the room ever since the last days of the war; and they'll be there this afternoon when we come back from the burial, if that final wind hasn't passed, the one that will sweep away Macondo, its bedrooms full of lizards and its silent people devastated by memories. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

If I was good each week, my father would take me to a different pet store each Saturday. I had a snake, horny toads, turtles, lizards, rabbits, guinea pigs ... I kept my alligator in the bathtub until it got too big. — Dick Van Patten

Texas is a hell hole, man. Dirt, cactus, lizards, dirt, cactus, the Bush family ... — Christopher Titus

Even the king's Erkynguard might have wished to be elsewhere, rather than here on this killing ground where duty brought them and loyalty prisoned them. Only the mercenaries were here by choice. To Simon, the minds of men who would come to this of their own will were suddenly as incomprehensible as the thoughts of spiders or lizards - less so, even, for the small creatures of the earth almost always fled from danger. These were madmen, Simon realized, and that was the direst problem of the world: that madmen should be strong and unafraid, so that they could force their will on the weak and peace-loving. If God allowed such madness to be, Simon could not help thinking, then He was an old god who had lost His grip. — Tad Williams

I could see why she felt attracted to Sam K. Barrows. Birds of a feather, or rather lizards of a scale. — Philip K. Dick

A budding fashionista even at four, I would capture the little lizards and latch them, still living, onto my earlobes as earrings. Most girls wouldn't touch them, I thought they completed the outfit. — Mireya Mayor

It makes my skin crawl to think about the violent ways snakes, lizards, alligators and other exotic creatures are raised and killed for boots, bags and belts. — Kelly Brook

Lizards flashed up the pine-trunks like living emerald necklaces. — John Fowles

You're mad, you missionaries,' ejaculated Tai Haruru angrily. 'What good do you think you do, crawling out to the extremities of all the different world's ends and dying there like lizards spiked on sticks?'
Brother Balaam jabbed his thumb over his shoulder at the church behind him. 'Ye'll get no civilization worth havin' in a new country unless ye lay down a few martyrs' bones for a foundation,' he said. 'They generate. Slow but sure. — Elizabeth Goudge

I just watched this documentary on the mating habits of whiptail lizards and trust me, if those things can make it happen, you can too, my friend. — Robin Bielman

Only, so far, it was like a bunch of lizards watching the World Cup. Politely put, they weren't sure what they were looking at. — James S.A. Corey

My Manager forced me to put my beetle in my own ear, a clear waste and an act that gave me nightmares: of a burning city through which giant carnivorous lizards prowled, eating survivors off of balconies. In one particularly vivid moment, I stood on a ledge as the jaws closed in, heat-swept, and tinged with the smell of rotting flesh. Beetles intended for the tough, tight minds of children should not be used by adults. We still remember a kinder, gentler world. — Jeff VanderMeer

we're not human any more. We've slipped out of our skins like lizards, shedding not just our pasts, but our futures. — Irvine Welsh

When I ask him if he thinks there's a moral to his story, he says he's sure there must be, but doesn't know exactly what it is. "Maybe," he says after a short pause, "it's that this world is full of lizards, and even though there's nothing we can do about it, it is always helpful to find out how big they are. — Etgar Keret

The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did. — Chinua Achebe

Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this
dog days
that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders. — Tove Jansson

Vimes died. The sun dropped out of the sky, giant lizards took over the world, and the stars exploded and went out and all hope vanished and gurgled into the sinktrap of oblivion. And gas filled the firmament and combusted and behold! There was a new heaven - or possibly not. And Disc and Io and and possibly verily life crawled out of the sea - or possibly didn't because it had been made by the gods, and lizards turned to less scaly lizards - or possibly did not. And lizards turned into birds and bugs turned into butterflies and a species of apple turned into banana and a kind of monkey fell out of a tree and realised life was better when you didn't have to spend your time hanging onto something. And in only a few billion years evolved trousers and ornamental stripey hats. Lastly the game of Crocket. And there, magically reincarnated, was Vimes, a little dizzy, standing on the village green looking into the smiling countenance of an enthusiast. — Terry Pratchett

What shall we do there?" "Climb up the hill to the old fort and look at the little wriggling gold snakes, and watch the lizards sun themselves. — Kate Chopin

She would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands till their hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground till they grow into snouts; when at last they are a hideous sort of lizards, each of which believes himself the best, wisest, and loveliest being in the world, yea, the very centre of the universe. And so they run about for ever looking for their own shadows that they may worship them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves too near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at last, there is but one who knows. — George MacDonald

Horned lizards shoot jets of blood from their eyes for distances of up to 5 feet. I don't know why they do this because whenever I reach the phrase "shoot jets of blood from their eyes" in an article I just stop there and stare at it until I need to lie down. — Randall Munroe

When we heard those shots and he saw Ploeg lying in front of the house, what he said was, 'My God, the lizards!'
With wide-eyed disbelief Anton looked out over her head. — Harry Mulisch

I go where the lizards tell me. — Scott Westerfeld

In India when I was a boy they had great big green lizards there, and if you shouted or shot them their tails would fall off. There was only one boy in the school who could catch lizards intact. No one knew quite how he did it. He had a special soft way of going up to them, and he'd bring them back with their tails on. That strikes me as the best analogy I can give you. To try and catch your poem without its tail falling off. — Lawrence Durrell

Mineral cactai, quicksilver lizards in the adobe walls, the bird that punctures space, thirst, tedium, clouds of dust, impalpable epiphanies of wind. The pines taught me to talk to myself. In that garden I learnedto send myself off. Later there were no gardens. — Octavio Paz

Sure, we're physically bigger and we have more money, but they reckon we're not much smarter than animals. They call us water buffaloes or monitor lizards. There's no bigger insult than to say that a person is an animal, and that's what they think we are. We're — Stephen Leather

I'd like to see North America become a dry, sunny, sandy region inhabited mainly by lizards, buzzards and a modest human population - about 25 million would be plenty - of pastoralists and prospectors (prospecting for truth), gathering once a year in the ruins of ancient, mysterious cities for great ceremonies of music, art, dance, poetry, joy, faith and renewal. That's my dream of the American future. Like most such dreams, it will probably come true. That is why I'm still an optimist. — Edward Abbey

Red, orange and green geometric designs painted its body as well as the flimsy collar around its neck. The creature flicked its tail and blinked its deep-set eyes, apparently oblivious to their presence.
"That's a yraglian lizards," Deven whispered. "We need to stay back. They smell really bad if you upset them. I mean, really, really bad."
Dirck nodded, unsurprised that the first native creature he encountered on Cyraria represented it so well. — Marcha A. Fox

The Everglades was the only place on earth where alligators (broad snout, fresh water, darker skin) and crocodiles (pointy snout, salt water, toothy grin) lived side by side. It was the only home of the Everglades mink, Okeechobee gourd, and Big Cypress fox squirrel. It had carnivorous plants, amphibious birds, oysters that grew on trees, cacti that grew in water, lizards that changed colors, and fish that changed genders. It had 1,100 species of trees and plants, 350 birds, and 52 varieties of porcelain-smooth, candy-striped tree snails. It had bottlenose dolphins, marsh rabbits, ghost orchids, moray eels, bald eagles, and countless other species that didn't seem to belong on the same continent, much less in the same ecosystem. — Michael Grunwald

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

Let's Talk About Dinosaurs The word dinosaur means 'terrible lizard'. It was created by English paleontologist Richard Owen in 1842 and was implied to describe their remarkable size instead of their frightening appearance. Nevertheless, dinosaurs are not lizards. Rather, they are a different group of reptiles. The largest dinosaurs were more than 120 feet long and 50 feet high. The sauropod was the biggest dinosaur. The tiniest dinosaurs were about the size of a chicken and were named mussaurus, meaning mouse lizard. — P.T. Hersom

In time they sank and decayed, and nothing is left of them except an occasional impression in stones, in stones now found in deserts and on high mountain peaks. Birdless forests block the sun in uninhabited lands. Insects swirl in the air. And then, in a majestic, bloodthirsty, and mighty heave, the spinal columns of the vertebrates rise as monstrous lizards and fabulous creatures; dragons flinging their fearful bellows up to a steaming sky ... Slowly they become birds, birds as light as undreamt dreams. The searing roars become birdsong, whimpering flutes on warm nights. — Erik Fosnes Hansen

The pineal gland of evolutionarily older animals, such as lizards and amphibians, is also called the 'third' eye. Just like the two seeing eyes, the third eye possesses a lens, cornea, and retina. It is light-sensitive and helps regulate body temperature and skin coloration-two basic survival functions related to environmental light. — Rick Strassman

Crystal spheres imprisoning green lizards, salamanders, millefiori bouquets dragonflies, a basket of pears, butterflies alighted on a frond of fern, swirls of pink and white and blue and white, shimmering like fireworks, cobras ready to strike, pretty little arrangements of pansies, magnificent poinsettias ... — Truman Capote

You make me understand how wonderful it is for little lizards when they find that one special rock that's perfect for sunning themselves on. You make me lizard-happy. — R. K. Milholland

What did turtles evolve from? Really, I want to know. And for God's sake, don't say lizards, because turtles are nothing like lizards. They could not be more different. — Gwen Stefani

It was difficult to anticipate - in these monsters with enormous, fantastic beaks which they opened wide immediately after birth, hissing greedily to show the backs of their throats, in these lizards with frail, naked bodies of hunchbacks - the future peacocks, pheasants, grouse or condors. Placed in cotton wool, in baskets, this dragon brood lifted blind, walleyed heads on thin necks, croaking voicelessly from their dumb throats. — Bruno Schulz

Cat saliva contains a natural deodorant which is why they lick themselves a lot. It's been proven by zoologists that cats that lick the smell off themselves survive longer and have more successful offspring. It's also their way of hiding themselves from predators like large snakes, lizards and other larger carnivorous mammals. — James Bowen

My companion doesn't like you, and my sister Amelia says she doesn't know you well enough to decide, but she's inclined not to like you.
"What about Beatrix?"
"She likes you. But then she likes lizards and snakes. — Lisa Kleypas

What!" Schiffer blurted, not a question. Lucas had been watching Carver and Dannon again, and again, their eyes were blank; if they'd been lizards, Lucas thought, a nictitating membrane might have dropped slowly across them. — John Sandford

Thea began to wonder whether people could not utterly lose the power to work, as they can lose their voice or their memory. She had always been a little drudge, hurrying from one task to another - as if it mattered! And now her power to think seemed converted into a power of sustained sensation. She could become a mere receptacle for heat, or become a color, like the bright lizards that darted about on the hot stones outside her door; or she could become a continuous repetition of sound, like the cicadas. — Willa Cather

Already many of the surrounding buildings had disappeared beneath the proliferating vegetation. Huge club mosses and calamites blotted out the white rectangular faces, shading the lizards in their window lairs. Beyond the lagoon, the endless tides of silt had begun to accumulate into enormous glittering banks, here and there overtopping the shoreline like the immense tippings of some distant goldmine. The light drummed against his brain, bathing the submerged levels below his consciousness, carrying him downwards to warm pellucid depths, where the nominal realities of time and space ceased to exist. Guided by his dreams, he was moving back into his emergent past, through a succession of ever stranger landscapes centered on the lagoon, each of which seemed to represent one of his own spinal levels. — J.G. Ballard

When you are in a creative or appreciative zone, you literally have no access to your inner lizard, to that fear-based, non creative, shrieking little beasty who's so afraid you're going to be a bag lady. — Martha Beck

The brain does much more than recollect. It compares, synthesizes, analyzes, generates abstractions. We must figure out much more than our genes can know. That is why the brain library is some ten thousand times larger than the gene library. Our passion for learning, evident in the behaviour of every toddler, is the tool for our survival. Emotions and ritualized behaviour patterns are built deeply into us. They are part of our humanity. But they are not characteristically human. Many other animals have feelings. What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behaviour patterns of lizards and baboons. We are, each of us, largerly responsible for what gets put into our brains, for what, as adults, we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain, we can change ourselves. — Carl Sagan

I'm a rather useless insomniac viscount, but" - he gestured at Minerva - "my companion here is a brilliant geologist. There's a symposium, you see. We need to get to Edinburgh by tomorrow, so she can present her findings about giant lizards and possibly alter our understanding of the world's natural history. — Tessa Dare

We both disliked rude rickshwalas, shepu bhaji in any form, group photographs at weddings, lizards, tea that has gone cold, the habit of taking newspaper to the toilet, kissing a boy who'd just smoked a cigarette et cetra.
Another list. The things we loved: strong coffee, Matisse, Rumi, summer rain, bathing together, Tom Hanks, rice pancakes, Cafe Sunrise, black-and-white photographs, the first quiet moments after you wake up in the morning. — Sachin Kundalkar

A lot of people don't believe in curses.
A lot of people don't believe in yellow-spotted lizards either, but if one bites you, it doesn't make a difference whether you believe in it or not. — Louis Sachar

Seeing that he could not go on, seeing that he was near ters, Brys simply nodded. He turned to study what he could see of the Malazan position.
Nothing but armored lizards, weapons lifting and descending, blood rising in a mist.
But, as he stared he noticed something.
The Nah'ruk were no longe advancing.
You stopped them? Blood of the gods, what manner of soldiers are you? — Steven Erikson

Go and copulate with yon purple lizard. — Roger Zelazny

The Lizards were extremely philosophical by nature, and often sat thinking for hours and hours together, — Oscar Wilde

Tell me my little children, what crime has this lizard committed that it must die this evening?" There was silence. In raising my head like a joke, I tried to laugh. That was the same time I realized that grandma was dead serious with us.Pg.26 — Obehi Peter Ewanfoh

Fortune's fool! How we humans lie upon beauty like lizards upon a sun-baked rock. — Roman Payne

Lizards that blend into the rock do so to catch flies. — Margaret Weis

What distinguishes our species is thought. The cerebral cortex is in a way a liberation. We need no longer be trapped in the genetically inherited behavior patterns of lizards and baboons: territoriality and aggression and dominance hierarchies. We are each of us largely responsible for what gets put in to our brains. For what as adults we wind up caring for and knowing about. No longer at the mercy of the reptile brain we can change ourselves. Think of the possibilities. — Carl Sagan

I'm not into animal rights. I'm only into animal welfare and health. I've been with the Morris Animal Foundation since the '70s. We're a health organization. We fund campaign health studies for dogs, cats, lizards and wildlife. I've worked with the L.A. Zoo for about the same length of time. I get my animal fixes! — Betty White

Me, and thousands of others in this country like me, are half-baked, because we were never allowed to complete our schooling. Open our skulls, look in with a penlight, and you'll find an odd museum of ideas: sentences of history or mathematics remembered from school textbooks (no boy remembers his schooling like the one who was taken out of school, let me assure you), sentences about politics read in a newspaper while waiting for someone to come to an office, triangles and pyramids seen on the torn pages of the old geometry textbooks which every tea shop in this country uses to wrap its snacks in, bits of All India Radio news bulletins, things that drop into your mind, like lizards from the ceiling, in the half hour before falling asleep
all these ideas, half formed and half digested and half correct, mix up with other half-cooked ideas in your head, and I guess these half-formed ideas bugger one another, and make more half-formed ideas, and this is what you act on and live with. — Aravind Adiga

Everywhere there was somewhere and everywhere there they were men women children dogs cows wild pigs little rabbits cats lizards and animals. That is the way it was. And everybody dogs cats sheep rabbits and lizards and children all wanted to tell ... all about themselves. — Gertrude Stein

[Ford said] ".. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur. "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't the people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going in for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. — Douglas Adams

Gavin stood within the trees, observing her from the shadows. He watched the basket rise to her nose as she closed her eyes to sniff at its contents. A smile told him it smelled delicious, but she didn't open the container to pinch off a sample. Instead, the basket lowered to swing at her side as it had previously done.

All at once the air was filled with soft singing--a sweet, merry tune comprised of ludicrous lyrics. It was impossible not to grin at the words.

"Rainbows paint the sky 'til the sun melts their colors.
Swinging in the wind, whiskered cattails purr.
The pigs gallop by and snort at the moon,
While frogs kiss the lizards and princesses too." — Richelle E. Goodrich

I couldn't have been more than six, but I was calling her an ignorant little bitch. Her momma stood on the porch step shaking her mop at me and saying there were snakes and lizards coming out of my mouth, to which I said i didn't give a shit. — Mary Karr

It was like a bunch of lizards watching the World Cup. Politely put, they weren't sure what they were looking at. But — James S.A. Corey

[According to 1348 theorists, poisoning of Christian water by Jews was the cause of Black Death.]

Even the poison used to contaminate the Christian water supply was described in meticulous detail. It was "about the size of an egg," except when it was the "size of a nut" or a "large nut," "a fist" or "two fists"- and it came packaged in "a leather pouch," except when it was packaged in "linen cloth," "a rag," or a "paper coronet"; and the poison was variously made from lizards, frogs, and spiders- when it was not made from the hearts of Christians and from Holy Communion wafers. — John Kelly

I didn't grow up playing video games. I grew up catching crawdads in the creek and minnows and lizards and snakes. — Blake Shelton

An Exhortation

Chameleons feed on light and air:
Poets' food is love and fame:
If in this wide world of care
Poets could but find the same
With as little toil as they,
Would they ever change their hue
As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a day?

Poets are on this cold earth,
As chameleons might be,
Hidden from their early birth
In a cave beneath the sea;
Where light is, chameleons change:
Where love is not, poets do:
Fame is love disguised: if few
Find either, never think it strange
That poets range.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power
A poet's free and heavenly mind:
If bright chameleons should devour
Any food but beams and wind,
They would grow as earthly soon
As their brother lizards are.
Children of a sunnier star,
Spirits from beyond the moon,
O, refuse the boon! — Percy Bysshe Shelley

The sort of man who likes to spend his time watching a cage of monkeys chase one another, or a lion gnaw its tail, or a lizard catch flies, is precisely the sort of man whose mental weakness should be combated at the public expense, not fostered. — H.L. Mencken

...Everything that's not asexual has two sexes, male and female. Most of the time it takes one of each to reproduce. Then there's the whiptail lizard. This is a lizard that lives way the fuck out there in the middle of the desert, and sometimes it's hard to find another lizard to mate with out there. Therefore, what the female whiptail can do is sort of make her eggs start dividing on their own. She makes daughters, clones of herself. It's called parthenogenesis. — Erin O'Riordan

Transfixed by the bright gaze of a lizard, I become calm. This stone on which the lizard lies was under the sea when lizards first came into being, and now the flood is wearing it away, to return it once again into the oceans. — Peter Matthiessen

Every lizard lies on its belly, so we cannot tell which has a belly-ache — Chinua Achebe

Wow, monitor lizards are pretty gnarly creatures. I want to go with the monitor lizard. That's just weird enough to be true. No? — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

She looked at me with gentle indignation. She was what we have after sixty million years of the Cenozoic. There were a lot of random starts and dead ends. Those big plated pea-brain lizards didn't make it. Sharks, scorpions and cockroaches, as living fossils, are lasting pretty well. Savagery, venom and guile are good survival quotients. This forked female mammal didn't seem to have enough tools. One night in the swamps would kill her. Yet behind all that fragility was a marvelous toughness. A Junior Allen was less evolved. He was a skull-cracker, two steps away from the cave. They were at the two ends of our bell curve, with all the rest of us lumped in the middle. If the trend is still supposed to be up, she was of the kind we should breed, accepting sensitivity as a strength rather than a weakness. But there is too much Junior Allen seed around. — John D. MacDonald

And it's deadly to us. We can inspire lust, but it's just a shadow. An illusion. Love is a dangerous force." He shook his head. "Love killed the dinosaurs, man."
I'm pretty sure a meteor killed the dinosaurs, Thomas."
He shrugged. "There's a theory making the rounds now that when the meteor hit it only killed off the big stuff. That there were plenty of smaller reptiles running around, about the same size as all the mammals at the time. The reptiles should have regained their position eventually, but they didn't, because the mammals could feel love. They could be utterly, even irrationally devoted to their mates and their offspring. It made them more likely to survive. The lizards couldn't do that. The meteor hit gave the mammals their shot, but it was love that turned the tide. — Jim Butcher

The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jedda, in Babylon. — Cormac McCarthy

You ugly rat-faced birds.
You call yourself a bird?
You call yourself an owl?
You ain't no decent kind of fowl!
They call you Jatt?
They call you Jutt?
I'm gonna toss you in a rut!
Then I'm gonna punch you in the gut!
Then your gonna wind up on your butt!
Think you're all gizzard!
I seen better lizards.
One-Two-Three-Four,
You're goin' down, won't ask for more.
Five-Six-Seven-Eight,
You ain't better than fish bait ...
Nine-Ten-Eleven-Twelve,
I'm gonna send you straight to hell.
-Twilight — Kathryn Lasky

If you watch lizards and lions copulating, then you will see that in 200 million years the male has not had a single new idea. — Robert Ardrey

We got to stay awake for all these lizards and snakes;
Some of them come as friends, some of them come as Jakes. — Q-Tip