Piled Up Quotes & Sayings

Dad and I leave town in the early dark. It's the second Sunday of the holidays, and we pack up the old blue car with enough clothes for summer and hit the road. It's so early he's wiping hills of sand piled in the corners of his eyes. I wipe a few tears from mine. Tears don't pile, though. They grip and cling and slide in salty trails that I taste until the edge of the city. — Cath Crowley

Walking the deck with quick, side-lunging strides, Ahab commanded the t'gallant sails and royals to be set, and every stunsail spread. The best man in the ship must take the helm. Then, with every mast-head manned, the piled-up craft rolled down before the wind. The strange, upheaving, lifting tendency of the taffrail breeze filling the hollows of so many sails, made the buoyant, hovering deck to feel like air beneath the feet; while still she rushed along, as if two antagonistic influences were struggling in her - one to mount direct to heaven, the other to drive yawingly to some horizontal goal. And had you watched Ahab's face that night, you would have thought that in him also two different things were warring. — Herman Melville

I do have bad hair days. If I fall asleep with it slightly damp, I wake up and it'll all be piled up on top in a mess. — Georgia Jagger

I quit because that thing inside of me that was driving me to drink that way was causing me so much pain that I was starting to get afraid for my own life, and my own health. It wasn't necessarily one instance. It was a lot that had piled up. — Joe Manganiello

I smiled at the stacks, inhaling again. Hundreds of thousands of pages that had never been turned, waiting for me. The shelves were a warm, blond wood, piled with spines of every color. Staff picks were arranged on tables, glossy covers reflecting the light back at me. Behind the little cubby where the cashier sat, ignoring us, stairs covered with rich burgundy carpet led up to the worlds unknown. 'I could just live here,' I said. — Maggie Stiefvater

It was a grungy, dangerous, bankrupt city without normal services most of the time. The garbage piled up and stank during long strikes of the sanitation workers. A major blackout led to days and days of looting. We gay guys wore whistles around our necks so we could summon help from other gay men when we were attacked on the streets by gangs living in the projects between Greenwich Village and the West Side leather bars ... The upside was that the city was inexpensive ... — Edmund White

I'm going to tell you something that no magazine or novel or television show will ever let on. Love wears you down. We think of it as hearts and flowers and happily ever after but in real life, the things you have to do in the name of love kill you ... You end up doing a thousand things in a day in the name of love that you wouldn't ask a dog to do.
Sex is the most powerful weapon in your arsenal
innocence is attractive in children, but it makes brittle, disappointed adults.
Someone liking you is just the beginning; it always starts nicely but before you know it it's like Persephone being dragged into the Underworld.
Romantic love is an illusion Hughie,. It can be manupulated, twisted, piled up like a bunch of fun-house mirrors. The very nature of it is deceptive. It promises closeness but the only thing is ever really reveals is the dreams and fears of the person with the obsessions. That's why it's so easy to control — Kathleen Tessaro

Emma had been given her own room and so had Julian, but he was hardly ever in it. Drusilla and Octavian were still waking up every night screaming, and Julian had taken to sleeping on the floor of their room, pillow and blanket piled up next to Tavvy's crib. There was no high chair to be had, so Julian sat on the floor opposite the toddler on a food-covered blanket, a plate in one hand and a despairing look on his face. Emma — Cassandra Clare

My sophomore year I placed 2nd, and my junior and senior year - I got smart and piled up enough points between myself and second place where I didn't have to run the mile. — Bo Jackson

When we remove the snowdrift piled up over Chekhov in recent years, we uncover a man profoundly agitated by social problems; a writer whose social ideals are the same as those we live by; a philosophy of the divinity of man, of fervent faith in man - the faith that moves mountains. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

If we piled them up, they would reach God.' 'But God does not exist, Comrade Farmer.' 'Nor do the potatoes, Comrade Stalin.' " "Old one." "Jokes only get old if they're good. Otherwise, who keeps telling them?" "People like you who aren't funny? — David Benioff

For a few years, skeins of yarn piled up in baskets around the house. There weren't enough humans in my mother's orbit to wear all the scarves and sweaters and hats she knitted. And then, as suddenly as she started, she lost interest, leaving needles still entwined in half-finished fragments. — Christina Baker Kline

A slave, Marcus Cato said, should be working when he is not sleeping. It does not matter whether his work is needed or not, he must work, because work in itself is good - for slaves, at least. This sentiment still survives, and it has piled up mountains of useless drudgery. — George Orwell

My home has a split personality. Some of the rooms are very French antique. Think Aubusson rugs, turquoise ceramic jugs, sandbag pillows, and broken birdcages. The other half is very Aztec. Neon ikat fabric pillows, vintage books piled up to the ceiling, and shutters from Bali. — Poppy Delevingne

Zero Holding

I grow to like the bare
trees and the snow, the bones and fur
of winter. Even the greyness
of the nunneries, they are so grey,
walled all around with grey stones -
and the snow piled up on ledges
of wall and sill, those grey
planes for holding snow: this is how
it will be, months now, all so still,
sunk in itself, only the cold alive,
vibrant, like a wire - and all the
busy chimneys - their ghost-breath,
a rumour of lives warmed within,
rising, rising, and blowing away. — Robyn Sarah

We may live in concrete nests piled on top of each other, we may file in and out of our planes and freeways in neat lines, but we are making it all up as we go along. An ant is born into a complex chemical environment where every small instruction had been laid down in advance. Mother tells the workers what to do and they do everything for the greater good of their enormous family.
In contrast, every human being is capable of working for the advancement of their own procreating, their own minuscule families. Yet we somehow recognize the value of a larger form of society, and readily respond to a larger world beyond our own narrow self-interests. With our unique creative capacity, we have modified ourselves as we have modified our physical conditions, and we have developed an extraordinary division of labor. You and I may be as different as night and day, but that is our strength, and it is precisely this diversification that makes my time in Africa so intensely satisfying. — Craig Packer

Albeit nurtured in democracy,
And liking best that state republican
Where every man is Kinglike and no man
Is crowned above his fellows, yet I see,
Spite of this modern fret for Liberty,
Better the rule of One, whom all obey,
Than to let clamorous demagogues betray
Our freedom with the kiss of anarchy.
Wherefore I love them not whose hands profane
Plant the red flag upon the piled-up street
For no right cause, beneath whose ignorant reign
Arts, Culture, Reverence, Honor, all things fade,
Save Treason and the dagger of her trade,
Or Murder with his silent bloody fee. — Oscar Wilde

The full moon rose above the harbor as brightly lit tour boats skimmed along the black water, the brilliant cluster of lower Manhattan piled like stacks of coins from a treasure chest in the distance. Up the river, bridges arched across the wide water all the way up the east side, while the Brooklyn side was marked by soft, round lights, like a string of pearls. — Andrew Cotto

Man's real treasure is the treasure of his mistakes, piled up stone by stone through thousands of years — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

By late 2008, one out of every five mortgage holders owed more than their homes were worth. The banks called in the loans, and the foreclosure notices piled up. — Elizabeth Warren

The Christmas tree, twinkling with lights, had a mountain of gifts piled up beneath it, like offerings to the great god of excess. — Tess Gerritsen

Sometimes when I'm having a boring interview on the telephone, and I'm trying to think about something else because the questions are too boring, and I start looking around the room where I work, you know, full of books piled up to the sky, all different kinds of topics. I start calculating how many centuries would I have to live reading twenty-four hours a day every day of the week to make a dent in what I'd like to learn about things, it's pretty depressing.[ ... ] You know, we have little bits of understanding, glimpses, a little bit of light here and there, but there's a tremendous amount of darkness, which is a challenge. I think life would be pretty boring if we understood everything. It's better if we don't understand anything ... and know that we don't, that's the important part. — Noam Chomsky

The Elm Log
By Alexander Solzhenitsyn
We were sawing firewood when we picked up an elm log and gave a cry of amazement. It was a full year since we had chopped down the trunk, dragged it along behind a tractor and sawn it up into logs, which we had then thrown on to barges and wagons, rolled into stacks and piled up on the ground - and yet this elm log had still not given up! A fresh green shoot had sprouted from it with a promise of a thick, leafy branch, or even a whole new elm tree.
We placed the log on the sawing-horse, as though on an executioner's block, but we could not bring ourselves to bite into it with our saw. How could we? That log cherished life as dearly as we did; indeed, its urge to live was even stronger than ours. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I think, basically, what I'm good for is reading - a lot. I think I'll always be more of a reader than a writer, definitely. There are sooo many books in the world I haven't read, sometimes I feel as if they're all piled on top of my head weighing me down and saying, 'Hurry up.' — Helen Oyeyemi

She asked if she could sleep in my bed that night and I said yes and we went upstairs and lay close together in the narrow bed and I wondered if maybe she missed her mother, and then around halfway through the night Edmond came in saying he was lonely and he lay down too only facing in the other direction since it was the only way he could fit, and then around sunrise Isaac wandered in too wondering where everyone had gone and when he saw us he just smiled a little and went down to the kitchen and brought up the big brown teapot and some mugs on a tray and we all piled together on the bed on top of each other like puppies and drank our tea while the sun streamed in thick and yellow through the window. And — Meg Rosoff

And all that we built, and all that we breathed And all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocably And we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me. — Joanna Newsom

More tears rushed from the depths of her tortured soul ... The losses piled up. — Karen Kingsbury

So young Collins was there to select one of the girls, as you'd choose an apple from a costermonger's stall. A brisk look over the piled-up stock: one of the bigger ones, the riper ones
that one will do. They were all the same, after all, weren't they? The were of good stock. All the same variety , from the same tree. Why bother looking any further, or making any particular scrutiny of the individual fruits? — Jo Baker

When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries. — Kenneth Grahame

ROOT CELLAR
Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath. — Theodore Roethke

Why am I more cautious as I age instead of the other way around? I wonder if it's all tied in to failure. I tend to forget my gains and remember only the losses. The failures have piled up, wreaking havoc with my confidence until, as an adult, I've become afraid to take chances. — Joan Anderson

I was a wild kid. I was left to climb trees. And you know those railways logs, they piled them up, six feet apart, and I'd jump from one to the other. Without a safety net! I was an incredible tomboy. — Shirley Bassey

A moment, and its glory was no more. The sun went down beneath the long dark lines of hill and cloud which piled up in the west an airy city, wall heaped on wall, and battlement on battlement; the light was all withdrawn; the shining church turned cold and dark; the stream forgot to smile; the birds were silent; and the gloom of winter dwelt on everything. — Charles Dickens

The room was lit with small reading lamps and there were books everywhere: piled on the coffee table, under the coffee table, on the sofa and under it, too. Books were stacked up the stairs and through the hall. Fern could see a small forest of books in the kitchen, books stacked on the table, the counters, like dishes in the the dish rack. Books lined every wall so that you couldn't see the walls at all. In fact, a mirror had been hung over the books as if the wall were made of books. And the oil paintings, which hung over the stacked books, depicted books. — N.E. Bode

SHE TOLD THE TRUSTEES, who had surely vacationed in the Caribbean, about the Carib Indian chief who was about to be burned at the stake by Spaniards. His crime was his failure to see the beauty of his people's becoming slaves in their own country.
This chief was offered a cross to kiss before a professional soldier or maybe a priest set fire to the kindling and logs piled up above his kneecaps. He asked why he should kiss it, and he was told that the kiss would get him into Paradise, where he would meet God and so on.
He asked if there were more people like the Spaniards up there.
He was told that of course there were.
In that case, he said, he would leave the cross unkissed. He said he didn't want to go to yet another place where people were so cruel. — Kurt Vonnegut

So I get all the references and I totally get the humor and it's really fun. This - it's kind of a mash up of so many different genres and things that kind of, sort of are just part of youth culture right now. Music and action and video games, and it's kind of amazing to see it all piled into one film. — Mary Elizabeth Winstead

To transport this way along bouncy mountain roads is not the way to die. Every woman deserves the simple dignity of dying in a bed with clean sheets and an electric light at hand. They wanted me to participate in a horrible abomination. I simply will not countenance the lack of respect for the poor mother of those boys. Imagine how she would feel if she woke up and saw her sons piled at her side.
-spoken by Sara to Matt regarding a victim of Amanita Phalloides [poisoning — Joe Niemczura

Sophie said a bad word. In the dim light she had stubbed her toe on one of the many dusty bricks piled around the place.
Naughty-naughty" Twinkle said.
Oh shut up!" Sophie said , standing on one leg to hold her toe. "Why don't you grow up? — Diana Wynne Jones

Facing problems is like looking at a sink piled up with dirty dishes. More you think more they stink. It takes only to roll up the sleeves and start washing them, one by one. In just ten minutes they are done. — Vinko Vrbanic

I make jokes about it, but it's the truth that I kind of patterned my look after the town tramp. I didn't know what she was, just this woman who was blond and piled her hair up, wore high heels and tight skirts, and, boy, she was the prettiest thing I'd ever seen. Momma used to say, "Aw, she's just trash," and I thought, That's what I want to be when I grow up. Trash. — Dolly Parton

In that darkness they exchanged rumors: A dozen victims had been drawn and quartered. John Brown had eaten their flesh. Slaves were rising up everywhere, holding secret meetings in an old cemetery at the edge of town. Arden had heard that the first sign of the uprising would be the discovery of all the dogs in Winchester piled in a heap at the edge of town, their throats cut. even families like the Beales who owned no slaves would not be spared. revenge would trade color for color; whites would die for no other crime than being white. At that very moment, John Brown's disciples were trying to free him from jail before his execution. — Kathy Hepinstall

The old man was peering intently at the shelves. 'I'll have to admit that he's a very competent scholar.'
Isn't he just a librarian?' Garion asked, 'somebody who looks after books?'
That's where all the rest of scholarship starts, Garion. All the books in the world won't help you if they're just piled up in a heap. — David Eddings

Rogers had been open about a year, and everything was just piled up on tables, with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. Sam asked me to kind of group the stuff by category or department, and that's when we began our department system. The thing I remember most, though, was the way we priced goods. Merchandise would come in and we would just lay it down on the floor and get out the invoice. Sam wouldn't let us hedge on a price at all. Say the list price was $1.98, but we had only paid 50 cents. Initially, I would say, 'Well, it's originally $1.98, so why don't we sell it for $1.25?' And he'd say, 'No. We paid 50 cents for it. Mark it up 30 percent, and that's it. No matter what you pay for it, if we get a great deal, pass it on to the customer.' And of course that's what we did." It — Sam Walton

Geologists search for the meaning to be read into the piled-up strata of the earth much as a historian might turn the pages of an ancient, damaged manuscript. The astronomer seeks the answer to his questions in the depths of space. Still other men concentrate on the scriptures alone. The wise man searches all these and other sources, knowing that all are communications from the same divine source and certain that, if followed far enough, all will guide him back to the Divine Presence. — Henry B. Eyring

away from fast food - for three weeks already. And I was starting to miss the occasional burger and fries. I assumed there'd be a few of the other lads feeling the same way. I talked to Sven, who thought it wouldn't do any harm, and then had a word with the England chefs. On the Wednesday night we all trooped down to dinner. The doors of the dining room were shut and there were two giant golden arches stuck up on them. We all went inside and there was a McDonald's takeaway mountain waiting for us: more burgers, cheeseburgers and chips than you've ever seen piled up in one room in your life. It was a complete surprise to all the players. We just devoured everything: it was like watching kids going mad in a candy store. And it worked. We did it again before we played Denmark. Maybe fast food was what was missing from our preparations for facing Brazil. — David Beckham

As the days piled up into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, and fall slid into winter, I realized one of the great truths about tragedy: You can dream of disappearing. You can wish for oblivion, for endless sleep or the escape of fiction, of walking into a river with your pockets full of stones, of letting the dark water close over your head. But if you've got kids, the web of the world holds you close and wraps you tight and keeps you from falling no matter how badly you think you want to fall. — Jennifer Weiner

We meant well, she thought, looking up at a sky piled with cumulus clouds turning amethyst and indigo above the clearing. No one was deliberately evil. We all did the best we could. Even so, what a mess we made of everything ... — Mary Doria Russell

bees and elephants and dogs piled up in squirmin' mounds like Loma's dang cats tryin' to keep warm in the wintertime. Does all this make any sense, Will Tweedy?" "Yessir, Grandpa." I wanted to go lay down. But I also wanted some more answers. "Grandpa, uh, why you think Jesus said ast the Lord for anything you want and you'll get it? 'Ast and it shall be given,' the Bible says. But it ain't so." I felt blasphemous even to think it, much less say it out loud. Grandpa was silent a long time. "Maybe Jesus was talkin' in His sleep, son, or folks heard Him wrong. Or maybe them disciples tryin' to start a church thought everbody would join up if'n they said Jesus Christ would give the Garden a-Eden to anybody believed He was the son a-God and like thet." Grandpa laughed. Gosh, I'd get a whipping if Papa knew what was going on with the Word in his kitchen. "All I know," he added, "is thet folks pray for food and still go hungry, and — Olive Ann Burns

Damn it. Why didn't the United States know when to declare a real war? Those running the country he loved were making a mockery of it. Misusing the word war had become a joke, like The War on Drugs or The War on Women. What was taking place in Guatemala was being run the same way as the fake War on Terror. Similar to Afghanistan, it didn't take long before he realized he was in a no man's land where the dead piled up in silence and the living had nothing to say. Hordes of beggars and gang members roamed the area seeking food, money or young women to rape. Life was cheap. People were killed for a pair of shoes or a handful of pills. — Ava Armstrong

It can't be anyone but you
I always wondered why
A million "thank you"'s piled up
And before I knew it, it was love
I was in love with you — Kozue Chiba

Back on the beach, everyone was tearing off their costumes piece by piece. It was like some kind of crazy dream, the sight of all those people emerging from their disguises, shedding the fake muscles and plastic armor, the fairy wings and angel wings, and devils horns, all of it piled up like a mass grave for make-believe. — Tommy Wallach

Why do you butcher your carabao and feed a throng because your son is getting a wife?" Father always blustered to them who come asking for loans. But always, in the end, the tenants got the money
what they needed for a "decent" funeral, a baptism, a wedding. And as their debts piled up, they promised, "Next harvest will be good ... — F. Sionil Jose

Perhaps so many journals had piled up in the lighthouse because on some level most came, in time, to recognize the futility of language. Not just in Area X but against the rightness of the lived-in moment, the instant of touch, of connection for which words were such a sorrowful disappointment, so inadequate an expression of both the finite and the infinite. — Jeff VanderMeer

We'd arrived on the outskirts of a little ski town nestled in the mountains. The sign said WELCOME TO CLOUDCROFT, NEW MEXICO. The air was cold and thin. The roofs of the cabins were heaped with snow, and dirty mounds of it were piled up on the sides of the streets. Tall pine trees loomed over the valley, casting pitch-black shadows, though the morning was sunny. — Rick Riordan

In the place I am from ... a grave is topped off with a huge mound of loose earth - carelessly, as if piled up in child's play, not serious at all - because death is just another way of being, and the dead will not stay put, and sometimes the actions of the dead are more significant, more profound, than their actions in life, and no structure of concrete or stone can contain them. — Jamaica Kincaid

There were many words piled up inside my chest, stories waiting to be told. I wanted to hand all this knowledge to one other person, neither a master nor a disciple. I sought an equal - a companion. — Elif Shafak

The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. — Joseph Conrad

No one will ever know how many novels, poems, analyses, confessions, sufferings and joys have been piled up on this continent called Love, without it ever having turned out to be totally investigated. — Heinrich Boll

We dropped down, and Diego quickly threw the cars into a new arrangement, so that it sort of looked like they'd hit each other rather than been piled up by a giant tantrum-throwing baby.
-Bree — Stephenie Meyer

A relationship with God simply cannot grow when money, sins, activities, favorite sports teams, addictions, or commitments are piled up on top of it.
Most of us have too much in our lives. As David Goetz writes, "Too much of the good life ends up being toxic, deforming us spiritually." A lot of things are good by themselves, but all of it together keeps us from living healthy, fruitful lives for God ... Has your relationship with God actually changed the way you live? — Francis Chan

Spray a book with insect spray, drop it in a bag, add some mothballs and seal it. Put it in another bag and seal it. Another. The packages piled up on the floor, each a book sealed in four plastic envelopes. — Larry Niven

The piled-up dead of political violence are a generic staple of our information diet these days, and according to the generic report all massacres are created equal: the dead are innocent, the killers monstrous, the surrounding politics insane or nonexistent ... The anonymous dead and their anonymous killers become their own context. The horror becomes absurd. — Philip Gourevitch

Stop putting off today madam; you'll find that all those forgotten tomorrows have piled up into a bunch of old yesterdays. — Georg

In my parents' house, nothing was ever thrown away. Clothes piled up, formed drifts that grew into mountains Philip, Baron, and I would climb and leap from. The heaps of garments filled the hallway and chased my parents out of their own bedroom, so that they eventually slept in the room that was once Dad's office. Empty bags and boxes filled gaps in the clutter, boxes that once held rings and sneakers and clothes. A trumpet that my mother wanted to make into a lamp rested atop a stack of tattered magazines filled with articles Dad planned to read, near the heads and feet and arms of dolls Mom promised she would stitch together for a kid from Carney, all beside an endless heap of replacement buttons, some still in their individual glassine bags. A coffeemaker rested on a tower of plates, propped up on one end to keep coffee from flooding the counters. — Holly Black

Harry's mouth fell open. The dishes in front of him were now piled with food. He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs. The Dursleys had never exactly starved Harry, but he'd never been allowed to eat as much as he liked. Dudley had always taken anything that Harry really wanted, even if it made him sick. Harry piled his plate with a bit of everything except the peppermints and began to eat. It was all delicious. "That does look good," said the ghost in the ruff sadly, watching Harry cut up his steak. — J.K. Rowling

That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms. — Khaled Hosseini

I loved to observe people.. I watched love and life play out in a million ways, but one of the best things I learned was this: You don't outrun pain.. I saw men and women in those barrooms all trying to outrun something, some pain in their life- and man, they had pain... I saw them all trying to bury that pain in booze, sex, drugs, anger, and I saw it all before I was able to indulge in many of those behaviors myself. I saw that no one outran their suffering; they only piled new pain upon their original pain.. I saw the pain pile up into insurmountable mountains, and I saw the price people paid who buried all that pain, and along with it their hope, joy, and chance at happiness. All because they were trying to outrun the pain rather than walk through it and heal. — Jewel

Stalin goes to visit one of the collectives outside of Moscow," began Kolya in his joke-telling voice. "Wants to see how they're getting on with the latest Five-Year Plan. 'Tell me, comrade,' he asks one farmer. 'How did the potatoes do this year?' 'Very well, Comrade Stalin. If we piled them up, they would reach God.' 'But God does not exist, Comrade Farmer.' 'Nor do the potatoes, Comrade Stalin. — David Benioff

Never be discouraged. If I were sunk in the lowest pits of Nova Scotia, with the Rocky Mountains piled on me, I would hang on, exercise faith, and keep up good courage, and I would come out on top. — Joseph Smith Jr.

Cheese runners shouted at it, tried to grab it, and flailed at it with sticks, but the piratical cheese scythed onward, reaching the bottom just ahead of the terrible carnage of men and cheeses as they piled up. Then it rolled back to the top and sat there demurely while still gently vibrating.
At the bottom of the slope, fights were breaking out among the cheese jockeys who were still capable of punching somebody, and since everybody was watching that, Tiffany took the opportunity to snatch up Horace and shove him in her bag. After all, he was hers. Well, that was to say she had made him, although something odd must have gone into the mix since Horace was the only cheese that would eat mice and, if you didn't nail him down, other cheeses as well. — Terry Pratchett

Ten years was not enough. Stone should
not crumble after just a decade of neglect. The filth should not have piled up so quickly - not with so few inhabitants, most of whom were incapacitated. It was as if Elantris were intent on dying, a city committing suicide. — Brandon Sanderson

FORD SAID, "I'LL BELT THE EARTH WITH DEPENDABLE MOTOR CARS," AND HE DID! His decision to trust his own judgment has already piled up a fortune far greater than the next five generations of his descendents can squander. For the benefit of those seeking vast riches, let it be remembered that practically the sole difference between Henry Ford and a majority of the more than one hundred thousand men who work for him, is this
FORD HAS A MIND AND CONTROLS IT, THE OTHERS HAVE MINDS WHICH THEY DO NOT TRY TO CONTROL. — Napoleon Hill

It was closing in on midnight, the kind of midnight you only get on Uranus after a three day bender. Ultramarine fog reeking of ethanol and neon and some passing whore's rosewater. Snow piled up like bodies in tbhe street. Twenty-seven moons lighting up what ought to be a respectable witching hour so you can't help but see yourself staring back in every slick glowpink skyscraper. — Catherynne M Valente

No piled-up wealth, no social station, no throne, reaches as high as that spiritual plane upon which every human being stands by virtue of his humanity. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

I always like junkyards. All this metal piled up - they're filled with pathos, those places. Much more pathos than most of the music I've heard. You look at it, and there's more feeling, even though it's depressing, than there is in a lot of music I hear these days. A junkyard is what it is, whereas listening to a record by, say, Styx, is something else. — Tom Verlaine

I hated Sundays as a kid. From the moment I woke up, I could feel Monday looming, could feel another school week all piled up and ready to smother me. How was I supposed to enjoy a day of freedom while drowning in dread like that? It was impossible. A pit would form in my chest and gut - this indescribably emptiness that I knew should be filled with fun, but instead left me casting about for something to do.
Knowing I should be having fun was a huge part of the problem. knowing that this was a rare day off, a welcome reprieve, and here I was miserable and fighting against it. Maybe this was why Fridays at school were better than Sundays not in school. I was happier doing what I hated, knowing a Saturday was coming, than I was on a perfectly free Sunday with a Monday right around the corner. — Hugh Howey

The Lake Isle
O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,
With the little bright boxes
piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragrant cavendish
and the shag,
And the bright Virginia
loose under the bright glass cases,
And a pair of scales not too greasy,
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing,
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.
O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
or install me in any profession
Save this damn'd profession of writing,
where one needs one's brains all the time. — Ezra Pound

Neither of us ever threw anything away. We made
a lot of mix tapes while we were together. Tapes for making out, tapes for dancing, tapes for falling asleep. Tapes for doing the dishes, for walking
the dog. I kept them all. I have them piled up on my bookshelves, spilling out of my kitchen cabinets, scattered all over the bedroom floor. I don't
even have pots or pans in my kitchen, just that old boom-box on the counter, next to the sink. So many tapes. — Rob Sheffield

Hephzibah normally left the dishes until the next day. Piled up in the sink so that it was near impossible to fill a kettle. And what the sink wouldn't take would stay on the kitchen table. Treslove liked that about her. She didn't believe they had to clean up after every excess. There wasn't a price to pay for pleasure. — Howard Jacobson

Karl, oh my Karl!' she cried, as if by gazing at him she were confirming her possession, while Karl saw absolutely nothing and felt uncomfortable in the warm bedding that she seemed to have piled up specially for his benefit. — Franz Kafka

My paternal grandmother would not light a fire on the Sabbath and piled all Sunday's washing-up in a bucket, to be dealt with on Monday morning, because the Sabbath was a day of rest
a practice that made my paternal grandfather, the village atheist, as mad as fire. Nevertheless, he willed five quid to the minister, just to be on the safe side. — Angela Carter

People look at me in many ways. They've said, 'The guy has no regard for money.' That is not true. I have had regard for money. It depends on who's saying that. Some people worship money as something you've got to have piled up in a big pile somewhere. I've only thought about money in one way, and that is to do something with it. I don't think there's a thing I own that I will ever get the benefit of except through doing things with it. I don't even want the dividends from the stock in the studio, because the government's going to take it away. I'd rather have that in (the company) working ... — Walt Disney

one look his fears of a dog-fighting ring were valid. Blood was spattered around a makeshift wooden ring. Chains were piled up in a corner. He could see where the cages had been placed in the grass by the indents, but they were gone now. A dead cat was dangling from a tree branch. — Kathleen Brooks

It was the blue-tinged taste of a regret so deep you could never plumb its depths. It was the victory at Rajal that never came, it was his brother walking away down the long dark wood corridor, it was a life he might have had in Yhelteth if disgust and fury had not sent him away in disgrace instead. It was the slaves he could not free, the screaming women and children of Ennishmin he could not save, the piled-up, silent dead and the smashed-in, ruined homes. It was every wrong decision he'd ever made, every path he'd failed to walk, fanned out and held up for him to understand, and it hurt. — Richard K. Morgan

It was a lovely summer weather in the country, and the golden corn, the green oats, and the haystacks piled up in the meadows looked beautiful. The stork walking about on his long red legs chattered in the Egyptian language, which he had learnt from his mother. The corn-fields and meadows were surrounded by large forests, in the midst of which were deep pools. It was, indeed, delightful to walk about in the country. In a sunny spot stood a pleasant old farm-house close by a deep river, and from the house down to the water side grew great burdock leaves, so high, that under the tallest of them a little child could stand upright. The spot was as wild as the centre of a thick wood. In — Hans Christian Andersen

They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other. — Eugene Delacroix

Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece - all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round - more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back. — Mark Twain

The problem ... is that we have run out of dinosaurs to form oil with. Scientists working for the Department of Energy have tried to form oil using other animals; they've piled thousands of tons of sand and Middle Eastern countries on top of cows, raccoons, haddock, laboratory rats, etc., but so far all they have managed to do is run up an enormous bulldozer-rental bill and anger a lot of Middle Eastern persons. None of the animals turned into oil, although most of the laboratory rats developed cancer. — Dave Barry

This (America) is a land of rich diversity, from the towering skyscrapers of Manhatan all the way to the towering mounds of garbage piled up next to the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan. — Dave Barry

Maybe that first, gigantic deficit the Reaganites piled up was an accident, just a combination of deluded 'supply side' tax cuts and a huge bag of good stuff for the Pentagon. But pretty quickly conservatives discovered that deficits, when done correctly, did something really cool: deficits defunded the Left. — Thomas Frank

Italy has piled up huge public debt because the successive governments were too close to the life of ordinary citizens, too willing to please the requests of everybody, thereby acting against the interests of future generations. — Mario Monti

her hair was piled up under a broad-brimmed — Ben Aaronovitch

My books piled up before me for my use waiting in space where I placed them, they haven't disappeared, time's left its remnants and qualities for me to use
my words piled up, my texts, my manuscripts, my loves. — Allen Ginsberg

In our country they do not permit any information to be X-rayed through and through, nor any discussion to encompass all the facets of a subject. All this is invariably suppressed at the very beginning, so no ray of light should fall on the naked body of truth. And then all this is piled up in one formless heap covering many years, where it languishes for whole decades, until all interest and all means of sorting out the rusty blocks from all this trash are lost. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold. — Archibald MacLeish

It was so undignified and unnecessary, the way married people behaved. The indiscriminate airing of grievances, the incessant flinging of blame and complaint. Of course, I had no idea back then what a marriage required. How the resentments and oversights and misunderstandings could pile up, sometimes moving ordinary kindness beyond reach. Love piled up, too, if you were lucky, but it seemed to be locked away in a separate compartment, sometimes unreachable when it was needed most. — Jan Ellison

WORK, SOMETIMES
I was sad all day, and why not. There I was, books piled
on both sides of the table, paper stacked up, words
falling off my tongue.
The robins had been a long time singing, and now it
was beginning to rain.
What are we sure of? Happiness isn't a town on a map,
or an early arrival, or a job well done, but good work
ongoing. Which is not likely to be the trifling around
with a poem.
Then it began raining hard, and the flowers in the yard
were full of lively fragrance.
You have had days like this, no doubt. And wasn't it
wonderful, finally, to leave the room? Ah, what a
moment!
As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was
the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life. — Mary Oliver

Gypsy cabs jostled and honked...Dollar vans lined the sidewalk and people piled in and out. As I walked down the slope, the buildings grew smaller and squalid. Trees vanished...and the heat picked up. Beyond the brick wall of the Navy Yard, the silver skyline of Manhattan glimmered in the distance like a mirage. The industrial remains of the flats were low and decrepit and mostly abandoned, though a few beeping forklifts unloaded trucks here and there. The storefronts were shuttered except for a bank busy with Orthodox Jews. The funk of a chicken processing plant contaminated the air.

I walked along the high brick wall that separated the Navy Yard from the street, frequently stepping over pulverized vials that sparkled like jewels on the sidewalk. There was no shade. I blinked away the dust. — Andrew Cotto

It was a school photograph and although the face was immediately recognisable she couldn't have pulled it up from her memory, it had long ago been replaced by the bloat of decomposed flesh. Caleb wore the same uniform that she had, shared the same classes and, possibly, aspirations but that's where the similarities with his life ended. On the occasions that Eleanor had forced herself to look at him she'd taste again the cascade of emotions that both defied and defiled her. Caleb was her 'safe word', the boy who had experienced all of the world's horror so she wouldn't have to.
Her hands steadier, she slid the remains back into the box and piled her life back on top of it. — Karen Long

This is very creative, said Mrs. Fretag, and she began to read my essay. The words sounded good to me. Everybody was listening. My words filled the room, from blackboard to blackboard, they hit the ceiling and bounced off, they covered Mrs. Fretag's shoes and piled up on the floor. — Charles Bukowski