Old Rain Quotes & Sayings

I had a terrible premonition. His flight was to Miami. The old news footage flashed through my mind of Air Florida Flight 90 to Miami that went down in a freezing rain. It showed pieces of the wings and smashed fuselage floating in a huge hole in the ice next to the Fourteenth Street Bridge. A helicopter trying to lift a survivor from the black water. Rescuers watching helplessly from the shore. I tried to call him, but the network was down. I'd seen this fearsome power of the past before, how it can rise up without warning and strike the living with unerring timing. Later Lorenzo called from Miami and said it was a rough flight but they made it. I was happy that for once my intuition was wrong. — J. J. Jorgens

Young Bingo was too busy introducing the mob to take much notice. They were a very C3 collection. Comrade Butt looked like one of those things that come out of dead trees after the rain; moth-eaten was the word I should have used to described old Rowbotham; and as for Charlotte, she seemed to take me straight into another and a dreadful world. — P.G. Wodehouse

Beyonce, to me, doesn't have a f
king Purple Rain, but she's the biggest thing on Earth. How can you be that big without at least one Sweet Home Alabama or Old Time Rock & Roll? ... People are like, 'Beyonce's hot. Got a nice f
king a
.' I'm like, 'Cool, I like skinny white chicks with big t
s.' Doesn't really f
king do much for me. — Kid Rock

It's raining outside. How did you get here? And how did you get to be twenty-eight? — Austin Grossman

We were all getting old. That much was as plain as the falling rain. — Haruki Murakami

It all seems like a dream, now.
Gray, old men ambling about a bookstore
in the old Jewish quarter of Paris.

As everything is suddenly soaked a dark stain,
we duck inside a door stoop.
I gently pull you closer
and look into your eyes,
azure pools that invite me to sink
into their sensuous depths.

Time slows as everything revolves around us
and planets, stars and constellations
slowly turn like clockwork,
as we dream our love,
our universe - together.

As darkness drains from the early morning sky,
I pull you up to my chest and whisper,
"Do you remember when we were caught in the rain in Paris?"
You squeeze my hand.

It all seems like a dream, now.
One love, one dream, one universe,
with only you and me,
together,
dreaming our love forever. — Jeffrey A. White

Language is my whore, my mistress, my wife, my pen-friend, my check-out girl. Language is a complimentary moist lemon-scented cleansing square or handy freshen-up wipette. Language is the breath of God, the dew on a fresh apple, it's the soft rain of dust that falls into a shaft of morning sun when you pull from an old bookshelf a forgotten volume of erotic diaries; language is the faint scent of urine on a pair of boxer shorts, it's a half-remembered childhood birthday party, a creak on the stair, a spluttering match held to a frosted pane, the warm wet, trusting touch of a leaking nappy, the hulk of a charred Panzer, the underside of a granite boulder, the first downy growth on the upper lip of a Mediterranean girl, cobwebs long since overrun by an old Wellington boot. — Stephen Fry

It was an excellent coat. It was long, grey, suspiciously blotched, smelt faintly of dust and old curries, went all the way down to my knees and overhung my wrists even when I stretched out my arms. It had big, smelly pockets, crunchy with crumbs, it boasted the remnants of a waterproof sheen, was missing a few buttons, and had once been beige. It was the coat that detectives down the ages had worn while trailing a beautiful, dangerous, presumably blond suspect in the rain, the coat that no one noticed, shapeless, bland and grey - it suited my purpose perfectly. — Kate Griffin

Centuries old, but recently widened, the highway was the same road used by pagan armies, pilgrims, peasants, donkey carts, nomads, wild horsemen out of the east, artillery, tanks, and ten-ton trucks. Its traffic gushed or trickled or dripped, according to the age and season. Once before, long ago, there had been six lanes and robot traffic. Then the traffic had stopped, the paving had cracked, and sparse grass grew in the cracks after an occasional rain. Dust had covered it. Desert dwellers had dug up its broken concrete for the building of hovels and barricades. Erosion made it a desert trail, crossing wilderness. But now there were six lanes and robot traffic, as before. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

My first thought was that a tornado had somehow picked me up and carried me off, like in the Wizard of Oz. No old witches pedaled by, and I didn't see any flying farm animals or chicken coops, and after a few agonizing minutes, I fell deep into unconsciousness again. — J.R. Rain

All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning — W.S. Merwin

You know what my mother said to me when she came to say good-bye, as if to cheer me up, she says maybe District Twelve will finally have a winner. Then I realized she didn't mean me, she meant you!" bursts out Peeta.
"Oh, she meant you," I say with a wave of dismissal.
"She said, 'She's a survivor, that one.' She is," says Peeta.
That pulls me up short. Did his mother really say that about me? Did she rate me over her son? I see the pain in Peeta's eyes and know he isn't lying.
Suddenly I'm behind the bakery and I can feel the chill of the rain running down my back, the hollowness in my belly. I sound eleven years old when I speak. "But only because someone helped me. — Suzanne Collins

Voted worst in show the last two years got a refill on my tears another bottle of foam yellowed clear.
Old man twitching on the train reminds us of mortality
the snow everywhere reminds us of the rain. — Brendan Kelly

The Prodigal

Dark morning rain
Meant to fall
On a prison and a schoolyard,
Falling meanwhile
On my mother and her old dog.

How slow she shuffles now
In my father's Sunday shoes.
The dog by her side
Trembling with each step
As he tries to keep up.

I am on another corner waiting
With my head shaved.
My mind hops like a sparrow
In the rain.
I'm always watching and worrying about her.

Everything is a magic ritual,
A secret cinema,
The way she appears in a window hours later
To set the empty bowl
And spoon on the table,
And then exits
So that the day may pass,
And the night may fall
Into the empty bowl,
Empty room, empty house,
While the rain keeps
Knocking at the front door. — Charles Simic

Aemon's blind white eyes came open. "Egg?" he said, as the rain streamed down his cheeks. "Egg, I dreamed that I was old. — George R R Martin

Give the wilding an axe, why not?" He pointed out Mormont's weapon, a short-hafted battle-axe with gold scrollwork inlaid on the black steel blade. "He'll give it back, I vow. Buried in the Old Bear's skull, like as not. why not give him all our axes, and our swords as well? I mislike the way the clank and rattle as we ride. We'd travel faster without them, straight to hell's door. Does it rain in hell, I wonder? Perhaps Craster would like a nice hat instead."
Jon smiled. "He wants an axe. And wine as well."
"See, the Old Bear's clever. If we get the wildling well and truly drunk, perhaps he'll only cut off an ear when he tries to slay us with that axe. I have two ears but only one head. — George R R Martin

Recalling an old magistrate's words to a young attorney, The rain it raineth on the just And also on the unjust fella; But chiefly on the just, because The unjust steals the just's umbrella. — Sam Ervin

Then, with all my being I felt I was wildly, desperately in love. Not only with Maya and her dark locks flying in the wind as she ran. But also with the plants that swayed as she passed, and with that grey, sad sky and the air that smelled of rain. I was even in love with that old piece of farm machinery with flat tyres, sensing that it was quite essential to the harmony that had just been created before my eyes ... — Andrei Makine

As rain began to fall, Aldric worried the old machines would not be able to survive the weather. "Hand me that oil can!" he shouted to Siomon.
Magic machines need oil?" asked Simon.
Of course they need oil. They're not perfect. — Jason Hightman

As the shabby section of the audience rose to its feet, waving its hats and food-wrappers, a rich, stale smell wafted through the auditorium. It had something of the fog on the boulevard outside, where the pavements were sticky with rain, but also something more intimate : it suggested old stew and course tobacco, the coat racks and bookshelves of a pawnshop, and damp straw mattresses impregnated with urine and patchouli. It was - as though the set designer had intended some ironical epilogue - the smell of the real Latin Quarter. — Graham Robb

Through rain...then through dreaming glass, green with the evening. And herself in chair, old-fashioned, bonneted, looking west over the deck of Earth, inferno red at its edges, and further in the brown and gold clouds...

Then, suddenly, night: The empty rocking chair lit staring chalk blue by--is it the moon, or some other light in the sky? just the hard chair, empty now, in the very clear night, and this cold light coming down...

The images go, flowering, in and out, some lovely, some just awful...but she's snuggled in here with her lamb, her Roger, and how she loves the line of his neck all at once so---why there it is right there, the back of his bumpy head like a boy of ten's. She kisses him up and down the sour salt reach of skin that's taken her so, taken her nightlit along this high tendoning, kisses him like kisses were flowing breath itself, and never ending. — Thomas Pynchon

In winter, when the dismal rain
Comes down in slanting lines,
And Wind, that grand old harper, smote
His thunder-harp of pines. — Alexander Smith

And you think journeying abroad will give you this knowledge you crave?
I think it will contribute to my understanding of the world, of people.
More so than say, the old lady who has lived in the same house her entire life, who has borne children both alive and dead? Who tends her soil; who sees the sun shine and the rain fall over the land, winter, spring, summer and autumn? What might you say to the idea that we all have a capacity for wisdom, just as a jug has room for a finite amount of water-pouring more water in the jug doesn't increase that capacity. — Jacqueline Winspear

And I shall watch the ferry boats, and they'll get high, on a bluer ocean against tomorrow's sky. and i will never grow so old again, and i will walk and talk, in gardens all wet with rain ... — Van Morrison

One day instead the old woman said kind words to her and gave her an awning on a stick to keep rain off (there has been much rain in purgatorium) — Ali Smith

On the spur of the hill stood the ruins of an old brewery. The roof had long since disappeared and the rain had beaten the stone floors smooth and yellow. Some enterprising Englishman had spent a lifetime here making beer for his thirsty compatriots down in the plains. Now, moss and ferns grew from the walls. — Ruskin Bond

London sank into February gloom and rain spattered the dirty pavements as Daisy Dunbar, fourteen years old, skinny and cold, struggled to get home. — Bex Archer

It was a bad night to be about with such a feeling in one's heart. The rain was cold, pitiless and increasing. A damp, keen wind blew down the cross streets leading from the river. The fumes of the gas works seemed to fall with the rain. The roadway was muddy; the pavement greasy; the lamps burned dimly; and that dreary district of London looked its very gloomiest and worst.
("The Old House In Vauxhall Road") — Charlotte Riddell

Words have a taste, sweet but subtle, like dark chocolate; the scent of old bookshops; a flamenco rhythm; the feeling of the rain on your face on sunny days. Words are cruel and spiteful sometimes, wise and loving at others. — Chloe Thurlow

O Moon that rid'st the night to wake
Before the dawn is pale,
The hamadryad in the brake,
The Satyr in the vale,
Caught in thy net of shadows
What dreams hast thou to show?
Who treads the silent meadows
To worship thee below?
The patter of the rain is hushed,
The wind's wild dance is done,
Cloud-mountains ruby-red were flushed
About the setting sun:
And now beneath thy argent beam
The wildwood standeth still,
Some spirit of an ancient dream
Breathes from the silent hill.

Witch-Goddess Moon, thy spell invokes
The Ancient Ones of night,
Once more the old stone altar smokes,
The fire is glimmering bright.
Scattered and few thy children be,
Yet gather we unknown
To dance the old round merrily
About the time-worn stone.
We ask no Heaven, we fear no Hell,
Nor mourn our outcast lot,
Treading the mazes of a spell
By priests and men forgot. — Gerald Gardner

Spring is singing in my blood today, and the lure of April is abroad on the air. I'm seeing visions and dreaming dreams, Pris. That's because the wind is from the west. I do love the west wind. It sings of hope and gladness, doesn't it? When the east wind blows I always think of sorrowful rain on the eaves and sad waves on a gray shore. When I get old I shall have rheumatism when the wind is east." "And — L.M. Montgomery

There is only a black fence
and a wide field and a barn of Wyeth red.
The smell of anger chokes the air.
Ravens of September rain descend.
Some say a mad mad hermit man lived here
talking to himself and the woodchuck.
But he's gone. No reason. No sense.
He just wandered off one day,
past the onions, past the fence.
Forget the letters. Forget love.
Troy is nothing more than
a black finger of charcoal
frozen in lake ice.
And near where the owl watches
and the old bear dreams,
the parapet of memory burns to the ground
taking heaven with it. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! spout, rain!
Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire, are my daughters:
I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness;
I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children,
You owe me no subscription: then let fall
Your horrible pleasure: here I stand, your slave,
A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:
But yet I call you servile ministers,
That have with two pernicious daughters join'd
Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head
So old and white as this. O! O! 'tis foul! — William Shakespeare

I wake up and tear drops, they fall down like rain. I put on that old song we danced to and then, I head off to my job cause not much has changed. Punch the clock, head for home, check the phone. Just in case. Go to bed, dream of you. That's what I am doing these days. — Rascal Flatts

And then the rains came. They came down from the hills and up from the sound. And it rained a sickness. And it rained a fear. And it rained an odor. And it rained a murder. And it rained dangers and pale eggs of the beast. Rain poured for days, unceasing. Flooding occurred. The wells filled with reptiles. The basements filled with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics roamed the dripping peninsulas. Moisture gleamed on the beak of the raven. Ancient Shaman's rained from their homes in dead tree trunks, clacked their clamshell teeth in the drowned doorways of forests. Rain hissed on the freeway. It hissed at the prows of fishing boats. It ate the old warpaths, spilled the huckleberries, ran into the ditches. Soaking. Spreading. Penetrating. And it rained an omen. And it rained a poison. And it rained a pigment. And it rained a seizure. — Tom Robbins

We play among dense fields of sugarcane
Shaking a citrus tree to taste its rain
From scorching sun, we always flee,
Panting for an old shadowy tree — Yasser Kashef

He was still on his feet, and before him was a man who stood in the path of...what? Of a great many things, his own dream of Gorhaut not least of all. Of what his home should be, in the eyes of the world, in the sight of Corannos, in his own soul. He had said this two nights ago, words very like this, King Daufridi of Valensa. He's been asked if he loved his country.
He did. He loved it with a heart that ached like an old man's fingers in rain, hurting for the Gorhaut of his own vision, a land worthy of the god who had chosen it, and of the honour of men. Not a place of scheming wiles, of a degraded, sensuously corrupt king, of people dispossessed of their lands by a cowardly treaty, or of ugly designs under the false, perverted aegis of Corannos for nothing less than annihilation here south of the mountains. — Guy Gavriel Kay

Trying to remember old dreams. A voice. Who came in.
And meanwhile the rain, all day, all evening,
quiet steady sound. Before it grew too dark
watched the blue iris leaning under the rain,
the flame of the poppies guttered and went out.
A voice. Almost recalled. There have been times
the gods entered. Entered a room, a cave?
A long enclosure where I was, the fourth wall of it
too distant or too dark to see. The birds are silent,
no moths at the lit windows. Only a swaying rosebush
pierces the table's reflection, raindrops gazing from it.
There have been hands laid on my shoulders.
What has been said to me,
how has my life replied?
The rain, the rain ... — Denise Levertov

It was a child's first memory of light falling through crib bars, the recollected scent of rain and city streets, the pain of unforgotten loss, the sting of remembered humiliation, and the cruel forgetfulness of old age, when the most ancient of memories stand out with agonizingly clear precision and the nearest of incidents are lost beyond recall. — Cassandra Clare

I recount as this journey begins where I rest to gather the tale from this
same old house resting on the hill, leaving me a view of a carnival once seen from just across the tracks. My pallet is dry now. The colors I see no more. The rain has washed away many of the signs that once stood for a prosper
home and family. My grave is waiting. The dreams once filled my head with
images of world unison, hope and companionship for all. The saga spoken
through my canvas drew darker as the years went on to the bitter cold nights.
All that comes to me now are glimpses of faces that graced my soul. — Kris Courtney

I guess us folks in California are kind of straitlaced and old-fashioned.
Hahaha, I thought on the way downstairs. I never thought I'd say those words with a straight face ... — J.R. Rain

We drank our whiskeys. It was the good stuff and it tasted of salt, sea, rain, wind and the Old Testament. — Adrian McKinty

Before you there lie the Steppes, my darling - only the Steppes, the naked Steppes, the Steppes that are as bare as the palm of my hand. There there live only heartless old women and rude peasants and drunkards. There the trees have already shed their leaves. There abide but rain and cold. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

makes me more than sad, it makes my heart burn within me, to see that folk can make a jest of striving men; of chaps who comed to ask for a bit o' fire for th' old granny, as shivers i' th' cold; for a bit o' bedding, and some warm clothing to the poor wife who lies in labour on th' damp flags; and for victuals for the childer, whose little voices are getting too faint and weak to cry aloud wi' hunger. For, brothers, is not them the things we ask for when we ask for more wage? We donnot want dainties, we want bellyfuls; we donnot want gimcrack coats and waistcoats, we want warm clothes; and so that we get 'em, we'd not quarrel wi' what they're made on. We donnot want their grand houses, we want a roof to cover us from the rain, and the snow, and the storm; ay, and not alone to cover us, but the helpless ones that cling to us in the keen wind, and ask us with their eyes why we brought 'em into th' world to suffer?" He — Elizabeth Gaskell

It was starting to rain, big sloppy drops spilling onto the windshield. No thunder yet. His driving was stymied by a clobbering sensation of loss. But what exactly had he lost? Himself as he had been, firm-bodied and flabby-minded? Some clarity of vision he once had possessed? Or was it the old, dormant chamber of his bicameral mind calling out to him, reminding him of the days when rocks and trees and statues had spoken with the voices of gods? — Jennifer Egan

The same old rain, and, if not welcomed, at least accepted - an old gray aunt who came to visit every winter and stayed till spring. You learn to live with her. You learn to reconcile yourself to the little inconveniences and not get annoyed. You remember she is seldom angry or vicious and nothing to get in a stew about, and if she is a bore and stays overlong you can train yourself not to notice her, or at least not to stew about her. Which — Ken Kesey

My people? Who are they?
I went into the church where the congregation
Worshiped my God. Were they my people?
I felt no kinship to them as they knelt there.
My people! Where are they?
I went into the land where I was born,
Where men spoke my language.
I was a stranger there.
"My people," my soul cried. "Who are my people?"
Last night in the rain I met an old man
Who spoke a language I do not speak,
Which marked him as one who does not know my God.
With apologetic smile he offered me
The shelter of his patched umbrella.
I met his eyes ... And then I knew ... — Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni

walked down the hill and stuck out my thumb, standing in the same spot where I had stood when I hitchhiked to high school. My clothes and gear were in my official Boy Scout backpack, a big old thing on an aluminum rack, with my sleeping bag and pup tent lashed to it. I'd been a serious Boy Scout - I joined at 12, after my failed Little League career, and took to it immediately, racking up merit badges and making it all the way to Eagle Scout. I knew first aid, how to start a fire in the rain, how to make a mean camp stew, and lots of other useful stuff. And I didn't mind sleeping outside, which was a good thing, since there was no way I could afford motels. My official Boy Scout sheath knife, a serious piece of business with a leather-wrapped handle and a five-inch blade, was also in the pack; I'd move it into my boot by the end of the first day. — David Noonan

The old women in black at early Mass in winter
are a problem for him. He could tell by their eyes
they have seen Christ. They make the kernel
of his being and the clarity around it
seem meager, as though he needs girders
to hold up his unusable soul. But he chooses
against the Lord. He will not abandon his life.
Not his childhood, not the ninety-two bridges
across the two rivers of his youth. Nor the mills
along the banks where he became a young man
as he worked. The mills are eaten away, and eaten
again by the sun and its rusting. He needs them
even though they are gone, to measure against.
The silver is worn down to the brass underneath
and is the better for it. He will gauge
by the smell of concrete sidewalks after night rain.
He is like an old ferry dragged on to the shore,
a home in its smashed grandeur, with the giant beams
and joists. Like a wooden ocean out of control.
A beached heart. A cauldron of cooling melt. — Jack Gilbert

There was no burger so soggy that he would not eat it. No tequila so mean that he would not drink it. No car so covered with birdshit and rust that he would not drive it around town (and if it were a convertible, he'd have the top down, even in rain, even in snow). There was no flag he would not desecrate, no true believer he would not mock, no song he wouldn't sign off-key, no dental appointment he wouldn't break, no child he wouldn't do tricks for, no old person he wouldn't help in from the cold, no moon he wouldn't lie under ... — Tom Robbins

You whining coward of a vampire who prowls the night killing alley cats and rats and staring for hours at candles as if they were people and standing in the rain like a zombie until your clothes are drenched and you smell like old wardrobe trunks in attics and have the look of a baffled idiot at the zoo. — Anne Rice

Trees are like people and give the answers to the way of Man. They grow from the top down. Children, like treetops, have flexibility of youth, and sway more than larger adults at the bottom. They are more vulnerable to the elements, and are put to the test of survival by life's strong winds, rain, freezing cold, and hot sun. Constantly challenged. As they mature, they journey down the tree, strengthening the family unit until one day they have become big hefty branches. In the stillness below, having weathered the seasons, they now relax in their old age, no longer subject to the stress from above. It's always warmer and more enclosed at the base of the tree. The members remain protected and strong as they bear the weight and give support to the entire tree. They have the endurance. — Ralph Helfer

Soon this would just be who I was. Soon old me would be dead too. I tipped my head against the cold glass of the window. When I felt myself begin to cry, I didn't fight against it. And when I caught my refection in the dark window, I wasn't able to tell what was tears and what was rain. — Morgan Matson

In a little while they were kissing. In a little while longer, they made their slow sweet love.
The iron bed sounded like a pine forest in an ice storm, like a switch track in a Memphis trainyard, like the sweet electrical thunder of habitual love and the tragical history of the constant heart. Auntee finished first, and then Uncle soon after, and their lips were touching lightly as they did.
The rain was still falling and the scritch owl was still asleep and the dragonflies were hidden like jewels somewhere in deep brown wet grasses, nobody knew where.
Uncle rolled away from his wife and held onto her hand, never let it go, old friend, old partner, passionate wife. — Lewis Nordan

To be shelterless and alone in the open country, hearing the wind moan and watching for day through the whole long weary night; to listen to the falling rain, and crouch fr warmth beneath the lee of some old barn or rick, or in the hollow of a tree; are dismal things - but not so dismal as the wandering up and down where shelter is, and beds and sleepers are by the thousands; a houseless rejected creature. — Charles Dickens

And then there's the truth beyond that, sitting like an old rock under green creek water: none of these things matter. Right now, in this moment, we have love. We have it in the sound of my daughter's laugher, in Mom's and Georgia's locked fingers, in the warm pressure of J.T.'s hand. It will leave, and it will come again, and when it does I'll give up everything and take it. Just like an addict. Like dry grass in new rain. It's not something I'm proud of necessarily. Then again, maybe I am. — Katie Crouch

On our flight back from Arizona where we adopted our daughter three years after our ungreen one-headed son a stewardess ... paused to to adore the little girl my wife was holding. The woman was very attractive and seemed happy and easy with herself - confident enough to say to my wife 'Well congratulations and my don't you look terrific too.' My wife said 'Well we've just adopted her.' And the stewardess said 'How wonderful Congratulations again I was adopted too.' Happily the enthusiastic remark was not lost on our three-year-old boy nor was it lost on him that in Pheonix we had stayed in a close to luxurious resort hotel. He didn't know or care about the dreary heavy rain that fell in Atlanta when he came into our lives - all he knew about adoption at this point really was that it involved a warm whirpool tub cornucopian buffet breakfasts and a fascinating differently private-partsed baby. — Daniel Menaker

I spend a fair chunk of time in Los Angeles, and after about ten days of warmth and unbroken clear skies, you start to yearn for a bit of good old British gloom and rain! — Sean Bean

He was becoming an effective human being. He had learned from his birth family how to snare rabbits, make stew, paint fingernails, glue wallpaper, conduct ceremonies, start outside fires in a driving rain, sew with a sewing machine, cut quilt squares, play Halo, gather, dry, and boil various medicine teas. He had learned from the old people how to move between worlds seen and unseen. Peter taught him how to use an ax, a chain saw, safely handle a .22, drive a riding lawn mower, drive a tractor, even a car. Nola taught him how to paint walls, keep animals, how to plant and grow things, how to fry meat, how to bake. Maggie taught him how to hide fear, fake pain, how to punch with a knuckle jutting. How to go for the eyes. How to hook your fingers in a person's nose from behind and threaten to rip the nose off your face. He hadn't done these things yet, and neither had Maggie, but she was always looking for a chance. When — Louise Erdrich

The Redwood Tree

My father once told me a story about an old redwood tree - how she stood tall and proud - her sprawling limbs clothed in emerald green. With a smile, he described her as a mere sapling, sheltered by her elders and basking in the safety of the warm, dappled light. But as this tree grew taller, she found herself at the mercy of the cruel wind and the vicious rain. Together, they tore relentlessly at her pretty boughs, until she felt as though her heart would split in two.

After a long, thoughtful pause, my father turned to me and said, "My daughter, one day the same thing will happen to you. And when that time comes, remember the redwood tree. Do not worry about the cruel wind or the vicious rain - but do as that tree did and just keep growing. — Lang Leav

When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice - twice - we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner - everybody except Allie. I couldn't stand it. I know it's only his body and all that's in the cemetery, and his soul's in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn't stand it anyway. I just wished he wasn't there. — J.D. Salinger

Since Monday, it has been raining buoyant summer rain shot through with sun, but dark at night and full of sound, full of dripping leaves, watery chimings, sleepless scuttlings. Billy Bob is wide-awake, dry-eyed, though everything he does is a little frozen and his tongue is as stiff as a bell tongue. It has not been easy for him, Miss Bobbit's going. Because she'd meant more than that. Than what? Than being thirteen years old and crazy in love. She was the queer things in him, like the pecan tree and liking books and caring enough about people to let them hurt him. She was the things he was afraid to show anyone else. And in the dark the music trickled through the rain: won't there be nights when we will hear it just as though it were really there? And afternoons when the shadows will be all at once confused, and she will pass before us, unfurling across the lawn like a pretty piece of ribbon? — Truman Capote

Heaven opened and the water hammered down, reviving the reluctant old well, greenmossing the pigless pigsty, carpet bombing still, tea-colored puddles the way memory bombs still, tea-colored minds. — Arundhati Roy

It always has been and always will be the same. The old folk of our grandfathers' young days sang a song bearing exactly the same burden; and the young folk of to-day will drone out precisely similar nonsense for the aggravation of the next generation. "Oh, give me back the good old days of fifty years ago," has been the cry ever since Adam's fifty-first birthday. Take up the literature of 1835, and you will find the poets and novelists asking for the same impossible gift as did the German Minnesingers long before them and the old Norse Saga writers long before that. And for the same thing sighed the early prophets and the philosophers of ancient Greece. From all accounts, the world has been getting worse and worse ever since it was created. All I can say is that it must have been a remarkably delightful place when it was first opened to the public, for it is very pleasant even now if you only keep as much as possible in the sunshine and take the rain good-temperedly. — Jerome K. Jerome

Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore defeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems. — Robinson Jeffers

Sopping, and with no sign of stopping, either- then a breather. Warm again, storm again- what is the norm, again? It's fine, it's not, it's suddenly hot: Boom, crash, lightning flash! — Old Farmer's Almanac

And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them? — Mervyn Peake

Hard weather, says the old man. So let it be. Wrap me in the weathers of the earth, I will be hard and hard. My face will wash rain like the stones. — Cormac McCarthy

I need grit and struggle and Los Angeles is terribly nice, but people, once they get there, cease to be real. Constant and repetitive fulfillment is not good for the human spirit. We all need rain and good old depression. Life can't be all beer and skittles. — Morrissey

SEASONS PASSED, FALL AND WINTER and spring and summer. Leaves blew in through the open door of Lucius Clarke's shop, and rain, and the green outrageous hopeful light of spring. People came and went, grandmothers and doll collectors and little girls with their mothers. Edward Tulane waited. The seasons turned into years. Edward Tulane waited. He repeated the old doll's words over and over until they wore a smooth groove of hope in his brain: Someone will come; someone will come for you. — Kate DiCamillo

A scientist with a poet's command of language, Cristina Eisenberg writes with precision and passion ... takes her reader on a breathtaking, sometimes heartbreaking tour of the planet from the Gulf of Maine to the Amazonian rain forests, the tropical coral reefs to old growth forests of the Northwest as well as rivers, lakes, and wetlands. I found the wealth of information not only accessible but riveting ... Eisenberg's powerful, beautifully written book ... has the potential to open many people's eyes, minds, and hearts. — Elizabeth Cunningham

Rose sat all alone in the big best parlor, with her little handkerchief laid ready to catch the first tear, for she was thinking of her troubles, and a shower was expected. She had retired to this room as a good place in which to be miserable; for it was dark and still, full of ancient furniture, somber curtains, and hung all around with portraits of solemn old gentlemen in wigs, severe-nosed ladies in top-heavy caps, and staring children in little bobtailed coats or short-waisted frocks. It was an excellent place for woe; amd the fitful spring rain that pattered on the windowpane seemed to sob,Cry away; I'm with you. — Louisa May Alcott

This is what I have heard at last the wind in December lashing the old trees with rain unseen rain racing along the tiles under the moon wind rising and falling wind with many clouds trees in the night wind. — W.S. Merwin

Reasercher 101,
I do not long for the old, unreachable days. When I'm plugged in I can go anywhere, do and learn anything. Today, for instance, I visited a tiny library in Portugal. I learned how the Shakers weave baskets and I discovered my best friend in middle school loves blood-orange sorbet. Okay, I also learned that a certain pop star actually believes she's a fairy, an honest-to-goodness fairy from the fey people, but my point is access. Access to information. I don't even have to look out my window to see what the eather is like. I can have the weather delivered every morning to my phone. What could be better?
Sincerely,
Wife 22
Wife 22,
Getting caught in the rain?
All the best,
Researcher 101 — Melanie Gideon

The fans of 'Speed' are very different from the fans of 'To Wong Foo,' which are different from 'Donnie Darko.' Look at the classics I've been in: 'No Country for Old Men' ... 'Little Miss Sunshine' ... 'Rain Man' was my first big studio movie! How lucky is that? — Beth Grant

In the Old Language, she hissed, "If any harm shall befall him, I will come after you, and find you where you sleep. I do not care where you lay your head or who with, my vengeance shall rain upon you until you drown."
That last word was drawn out, until its syllable was lost in more growling.
Dead silence.
Until Doc Jane said dryly, "Annnnd this is why they say the female of the species is more dangerous than the male. — J.R. Ward

She day-dreams just as I do. She is addicted to her solitude just as I am. She loves watching the rain-drops fall slowly on to the green leaves of an old guava tree just as I do. She loves drifting in time and time travel just as I do. She loves looking at the waves dashing against the rocks just as I do. — Avijeet Das

I dreamt of turrets and craggy ledges where the windswept rain blew in from the ocean with the odor of violets. A pale woman in Elizabethan dress stood beside my bed and whispered in my ear that the bells would ring. An old salt in an oilcloth jacket sat atop a piling, mending nets with an awl, while far out at sea a tiny aeroplane winged its way towards the setting sun. — Alan Bradley

I heard a tale once,' said Isi, 'of the gifts of language. Do you know it? How in faraway places, there are people who can speak with birds or horses or rain, and some when they speak to other people have the unnatural power to persuade, their every word a kind of magic? Once in Ingridan I heard Sileph speak and wondered if he had not just walked out of that old tale.' Enna's skin tingled with an icy chill. Isi was trying to tell her something - Sileph had the gift of people-speaking. A dangerous gift, Isi had said once. When one with this gift speaks, it's not easy to resist the power of their persuasion. It's difficult not to adore them. — Shannon Hale

It drips on her head most days, says Champaben, but in the monsoon season it's worse. In rain, worms multiply. Every day, nonetheless, she gets up and walks to her owners' house, and there she picks up their excrement with her bare hands or a piece of tin, scrapes it into a basket, puts the basket on her head or shoulders, and carries it to the nearest waste dump. She has no mask, no gloves, and no protection. She is paid a pittance if she gets paid at all. She regularly gets dysentary, giardia, brain fever. She does this because a 3,000-year-old social hierarchy says she has to. — Rose George

The other day, when my 4-year-old saw a flowering tree and said, "Daddy, it's raining petals," that was poetry that just melted my heart into a mushy, yummy Fudgsicle. — Brendan Fraser

You're in a rather odd mood today."
I'm soaking wet, Eloise."
No need to snap at me about it, I didn't force you to walk across town in the rain."
It wasn't raining when I left,". There was something about a sibling that brought out the eight-year-old in a body.
I'm sure the sky was gray,"
Clearly, she had a bit of the eight-year-old in her as well. — Julia Quinn

The Old Testament contains in many places, but especially in the book of Job, one of the most far-reaching defenses ever written of wilderness, of nature free from the hand of man. The argument gets at the heart of what the loss of nature will mean to us ... God seems to be insisting that we are not the center of the universe, that he is quite happy if it rains where there are no people - that God is quite happy with places where there are no people, a radical departure from our most ingrained notions. — Bill McKibben

The forest has been growing for hundreds of years. Each time a child is born, a tree is planted. You could see from his tree how old a person was. The tall and thick tree trunks, which gave the most shade, belonged to people who had already returned to the spirit world. But the trees of the living and the dead stood in the same grove, sought their nourishment from the same soil and the same rain. They stood there waiting for the children that were not yet born, the trees that had not yet been planted. In that way the forest would grow, and the age of the village would be visible for all time. No one could tell from a tree whether someone was dead, only that he had been born. — Henning Mankell

In fact, I can't think of much I'd like better than for him to step into the room right now, glasses fogged and smelling of damp wool, shaking the rain from his hair like an old dog and saying: 'Dickie, my boy, what you got for a thirsty old man to drink tonight? — Donna Tartt

She started reading. She didn't mean to spend long at it, but soon she was devouring every word, oblivious to the creaking old home and the rain outside. — Derek Landy

Mortality
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift-fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of the lightning, a break of the wave,
He passes from life to his rest in the grave.
The leaves of the oak and the willow shall fade,
Be scattered around, and together be laid;
And the young and the old, the low and the high,
Shall molder to dust, and together shall lie.
Yea, hope and despondency, pleasure and pain,
Are mingled together in sunshine and rain;
And the smile and the tear, the song and the dirge,
Still follow each other, like surge upon surge.
'Tis the wink of an eye - 'tis the draught of a breath -
From the blossom of health to the paleness of death,
From the gilded saloon to the bier and the shroud
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud? — William Knox

Are you ready, baby?" I asked her. "I'm ready, daddy." "Follow my lead," I said. "Like old times." "Like old times," she said. The — J.R. Rain

A poor old Widow in her weeds
Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;
Not too shallow, and not too deep,
And down came April -- drip -- drip -- drip.
Up shone May, like gold, and soon
Green as an arbour grew leafy June.
And now all summer she sits and sews
Where willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,
Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet,
Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit;
Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells;
Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells;
Like Oberon's meadows her garden is
Drowsy from dawn to dusk with bees.
Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,
And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes;
And all she has is all she needs --
A poor Old Widow in her weeds. — Walter De La Mare

You must know the story of how the race of ancient days reached the stars, and how they bargained away all the wild half of themselves to do so, so that they no longer cared for the taste of the pale wind, no for love or lust, nor to make new songs nor to sing old ones, nor for any of the other animal things they believed they had brought with them out of the rain forests al the bottom of time
though in fact, so my uncle told me, those things brought them — Gene Wolfe

My one-time roommate Claire had inherited the house from her uncle, and when she went off to bigger and better things, she'd left it in my care. And it needed a lot of it.
Most importantly, it needed a new roof. There was a worrying stain on the ceiling of my bedroom that had started out roughly the shape of Rhode Island, but now looked more like North Carolina. Another few more days of rain and it was going to be Texas. And then it wouldn't be anything at all because the battered old shingles were going to cave in on my head. — Karen Chance

Despite the rain, it's still raining here at Old Trafford. — Jimmy Hill

The rain pummeled the old Dragon bones as though to provide the rhythm to the song of their mortality, but death was not what they had on their minds - or wasn't love sometimes called the small death? — Cornelia Funke

I was, I remember, nineteen years old, wrote poems, still wore no proper collar, ran out in the rain and snow, always woke up early in the morning, read Lenau, considered an overcoat a superfluous item, received a monthly salary of one hundred twenty-five francs and didn't know what to do with all that money. — Robert Walser

Have you ever been in love, Hadrian?"
"I'm not sure. How do you tell?"
"Love? Why, it's like coming home."
Hadrian considered the comment.
"What are you thinking?" Bulard asked.
Hadrian shook his head. "Nothing."
"Yes, you were. What? You can tell me. I'm an excellent repository for secrets. I'll likely forget, but if I don't, well, I'm an old man in a remote
jungle. I'm sure to die before I can repeat anything."
Hadrian smiled, then shrugged. "I was just thinking about the rain. — Michael J. Sullivan

The politeness was unbearable. They avoided touching each other, careful as strangers on a train ... A family can go on for years without the love that once bound it together, like a lovely old wall that stays standing long after rain has crumbled the mortar. — Kathleen Winter

As much as Merthyr is a fighting town, these people also have hearts of gold. I worked all over Monmouth, and then the Aberfan disaster happened! That was a very emotional episode in my life. I never want to see anything like that ever again! In my opinion, the tip should have been moved well before the rain got in to it, and the old tip came rolling down the hillside on the school and the walls just caved in! — Stephen Richards

After he pulled the trigger, Bing sat with the old man and listened to the rain rattle off the roof of the garage, while John Partridge sprawled on the floor, one foot twitching and a urine stain spreading across the front of his pants. Bing had sat until his mother entered the garage and began to scream. Then it had been her turn - although not for the nail gun. — Joe Hill

I was cutting and threading pipe in the tunnels to get water into the shower rooms for athletics. I was repairing old metal windows, fixing cement walls where rain was coming through, and drying out the maple gym floors in hopes of removing the warping. — Tom Baker

I sort through piles of sheets with gloved hands. The dirties are brought down by orderlies, morenas mostly. I never see the sick; they visit me through the stains and marks they leave on the sheets, the alphabet of the sick and dying. A lot of the time the stains are too deep and I have to throw these linens in the special hamper. One of the girls from Baitoa tells me she's heard that everything in the hamper gets incinerated. Because of the sida, she whispers. Sometimes the stains are rusty and old and sometimes the blood smells sharp as rain. You'd think, given the blood we see, that there's a great war going on out in the world. Just — Junot Diaz