Prying Quotes & Sayings

A man's features, the bone structure and the tissue which covers it, are the product of a biological process; but his face he creates for himself. It is a statement of his habitual emotional attitude; the attitude which his desires need for their fulfilment and which his fears demand for their protection from prying eyes. He wears it like a devil mask; a device to evoke in others the emotions complementary to his own. — Eric Ambler

I am always moved, with grateful wonder, by the goodness of people. For the few who are prying or meanly critical, for the very few who rejoice in the grief of others, there are the thousands who are kind. I have come to believe that the natural human heart is good, and I have observed that this goodness is found in all varieties of people, and that it can and does prevail in spite of other corruptions. This human goodness alone provides hope enough for the world. I have sometimes — Pearl S. Buck

Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. — Zora Neale Hurston

Rosy's mummy hands Franny a clear plastic bag full of reject biscuits, then Rosy holds her cheek out for Franny's wet kiss. Rosy wipes the slime from her face and Franny cackles, then shows them both into the lounge.
There on Franny's coffee table is a biscuit tin with a Christmas picture on the lid. Proper shop-bought biscuits, not factory rejects.
"Please, may I have a biscuit?" Rosy says.
"Oh, there are no biscuits in that my darling," Franny says, and pulls the tin from Rosy's prying fingers. Franny holds open the bag of crumb-speckled chocolate digestives. "Help yourself, my wee hen."
Rosy settles for a reject.
Franny puts the Christmas tin up high, way up high, way out of reach. — R.G. Manse

As soon as we get the place secure, I'll get in touch," Miller said. "Okay, but don't take too long. If Thoth Station has a whorehouse left standing, I'm going to need help prying Amos out of it. — James S.A. Corey

I hated the place (Hollywood), not the work, but the lack of privacy, those terrible prying fan magazine writers and all the surrounding exploitation. — Jean Arthur

Poetry restores language by breaking it, and I think that much contemporary writing restores fantasy, as a genre of writing in contrast to a genre of commodity or a section in a bookstore, by breaking it. Michael Moorcock revived fantasy by prying it loose from morality; writers like Jeff VanderMeer, Stepan Chapman, Lucius Shepard, Jeffrey Ford, Nathan Ballingrud are doing the same by prying fantasy away from pedestrian writing, with more vibrant and daring styles, more reflective thinking, and a more widely broadcast spectrum of themes. — Michael Cisco

(All those paintings of women, in art galleries, surprised at private moments. Nymph Sleeping. Susanna and the Elders. Woman bathing, one foot in a tin tub - Renoir, or was it Degas? both, both women plump. Diana and her maidens, a moment before they catch the hunter's prying eyes. Never any paintings called Man Washing Socks in Sink.) — Margaret Atwood

I know more about Emily Bronte than anyone I know. I know enough about her family to have been a part. I've walked with her on her damp luscious lonely moors, watched her strain to write on miniscule scraps of paper, seen her hide her works from prying eyes.
I've brooded alongside her and participated in her taciturnity. Before her death at the ripe old age of 30, I nursed her from the things that ultimately killed her: tuberculosis with a side order of Victorian thinking. — Chila Woychik

It was once said that to hide something from prying eyes you must place it where people can see it. — Micheal Rivers

If I had been irritated by him before, now I was positively seething. He had gone beyond mere mockery; now he was "asking around" about me, prying into my character, encouraging everyone around me to unload about all of Dexter's quirks and peccadilloes. It made me so angry that I could calm myself only by picturing Robert duct-taped to a table, with me standing happily above him clutching a fillet knife. Still, I ate his doughnuts. — Jeff Lindsay

I am a free man - and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me! Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to any one. I would be responsible to God alone - if He existed! — Giovanni Papini

I slipped into the shop, wanting to curl up and disappear, wanting the world to blow away until there was nothing left. But before I got my wish, Mama came in after me, slamming the door on Dempsey, on all the prying eyes, on all the swirl of hope and despair and want, and I knew that the world would never go away, but would pull me down right along with it. — Eden Butler

Then why won't you exhibit his portrait?' asked Lord Henry.
'Because without intending it, I have put into it some expression of all this curious artistic idolatry, of which, of course, I have never cared to speak to him. He knows nothing about it. He shall never know anything about it. But the world might guess it; and I will not bare my soul to their shallow, prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. There is too much of myself in the thing Harry - too much of myself! — Oscar Wilde

No Temple made by mortal human hands can ever compare to the Temple made by the gods themselves. That building of wood and stone that houses us and that many believe conceals the great Secret Temple from prying eyes, somewhere in its heart of hearts, is but a decoy for the masses who need this simple concrete limited thing in their lives. The real Temple is the whole world, and there is nothing as divinely blessed as a blooming growing garden. — Vera Nazarian

the station, but Ruth and Marie were against the idea. What if one of the neighbors saw them all waiting for Johanna? It would only lead to prying questions. So Peter was reduced to pacing up and down in front of the door like a prison warden. Ruth and Marie left him to it. It was almost eight o'clock when they finally heard him say, "She's coming!" They all rushed outside. Johanna was as white as a sheet. She didn't wave her hand, or laugh, or call out "We've got a contract!" From the look on her face and her heavy gait, there could only be one explanation. It had all gone terribly wrong. They didn't dare look at each other. They were rooted to the spot as they watched Johanna approach. Neighbors passing by on the street watched the scene in surprise. — Petra Durst-Benning

The pack of media brayed and bellowed outside the house for seven weeks. Sol realized then what he had known and forgotten about very small communities: they were frequently annoying, always parochial, sometimes prying on a one-to-one level, but never had they subscribed to the vicious legacy of the so-called "public's right to know". — Dan Simmons

I was the sort of kid who spent a Sunday afternoon prying little trees out of the foundation of his parents' house. I should have given in to the inevitable truth that this was the sort of person I would become, in the end, but I kept fighting it. — Louise Erdrich

For prying into any human affairs, none are equal to those whom it does not concern. — Victor Hugo

Your pain could be God prying open your life and heart to remove a gift of His that you've been holding on to more dearly than Him. — Tullian Tchividjian

I will not bare my soul to their shallow prying eyes. My heart shall never be put under their microscope. — Oscar Wilde

Retain your peace by refusing to respond to rude, judgemental, or prying people. They won't understand anyway. — Manprit Kaur

-Excuse me,- I said, but my voice seemed to disappear into the dark.
It was my body. In this gloomy, cramped box, I had eaten poison plants and died, hidden away from prying eyes.
Crouching down at the door, I wept. For my dead self. — Yoko Ogawa

No one outside of our family unit would ever guess that away from prying eyes, we were systematically tearing ourselves apart. Away from the outside world, everyone in our family started to fall to pieces, and never really recovered. Even though our times together are always fun and laughter-filled, the closeness we once shared is gone. In its place is guilt, regret, the ability to say the nastiest things and, for the longest minute on earth, mean every word of them — Dorothy Koomson

Afghan human rights campaigners worry that U.S. forces may be using secret detention sites like the one allegedly at Rish-Khor to carry out interrogations away from prying eyes. The U.S. military, however, denies even having knowledge of the facility. — Anand Gopal

What is poetry? Do not enquire. The secret dies by prying. How does the heart beat? I fainted when I saw it on the screen, opening and closing like a flower ... Poetry is like this, it is life moving, terrible, vivid. Look the other way when you write, or you might faint. — Elizabeth Smart

Written on the body is a secret code only visible in certain lights: the accumulations of a lifetime gather there. In places the palimpsest is so heavily worked that the letters feel like Braille. I like to keep my body rolled up away from prying eyes, never unfold too much, or tell the whole story. I didn't know that Louise would have reading hands. She has translated me into her own book. — Jeanette Winterson

Prying into others' private affairs is the preferred occupation of small minds. — Loretta Chase

I find the treatment of royalty distinctly peculiar. The royal family lives in palaces heavily screened from prying eyes by fences, grounds, gates, guards, all designed to ensure the family absolute privacy. And every newspaper in London carried headlines announcing PRINCESS ANNE HAS OVARIAN CYST REMOVED. I mean you're a young girl reared in heavily guarded seclusion and every beer drinker in every pub knows the precise state of your ovaries. — Helene Hanff

I never saw her a burglar prying my windows open with a jimmy to steal whatever she found inside. — Ellen Miller

In private life, human beings spend a great deal of time in seclusion behind closed doors (e.g., in bathrooms and bedrooms) and other partitions designed to shield their bodies from prying eyes. Scientists have determined that too much visual monitoring can be harmful to human health. — David B. Givens

When we depend on anything smaller than God to provide us with the security, significance, meaning, and value that we long for, God will love us enough to take it away. Much of our anger and bitterness, therefore, is God prying open our hands and taking away something we've held onto more tightly than him. — Tullian Tchividjian

I covered Kennedy when she was three years old and the darling daughter of President Kennedy who doted on her and whose mother did everything to protect her from the prying press. — Helen Thomas

The white cat symbolizes the silvery moon prying into corners and cleansing the sky for the day to follow. The white cat is "the cleaner" or "the animal that cleans itself," described by the Sanskrit word Margaras, which means "the hunter who follows the track; the investigator; the skip tracer." The white cat is the hunter and the killer, his path lighted by the silvery moon. All dark, hidden places and beings are revealed in that inexorably gentle light. You can't shake your white cat because your white cat is you. You can't hide from your white cat because your white cat hides with you. — William S. Burroughs

Ouch! Son of a gu - " I scrambled to get up. My hands hit rough upholstery and the edge of a table. Okay, now I was lost. Prying open my bleary eyes, I peered around. "What the ... — Anonymous

The assassination at Sarajevo was certainly the crucial precedent of the European war that its conspirators had sought, but was not the historical cause ... The assassination acted as a lever, prying the various powers into predictable paths. — J. Bowyer Bell

We wore that grief like one wears one's underclothes. An invisible skin, unseen to prying eyes, but knitted to us all the same. We wore it every day. — Alyson Richman

The doctor was a private man, engaged in a dark and dangerous business, and could ill afford the prying eyes and gossiping tongue of the servant class. — Rick Yancey

That would be showing him a part of her soul, a part of her mind, that she's never risked showing anyone. The raw and squirming part that indifferent high-school counselor were always prying at, the part therapists tried to trick her into showing them for free, the part her parents hated her for. The light and the darkness behind her eyes. The soft places. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

I had my Boswell, once," Mason tells Boswell, "Dixon and I. We had a joint Boswell. Preacher nam'd Cherrycoke. Scribbling ev'rything down, just like you, Sir. Have you," twirling his Hand in Ellipses, - "you know, ever . . . had one yourself? If I'm not prying." "Had one what?" "Hum . . . a Boswell, Sir, - I mean, of your own. Well you couldn't very well call him that, being one yourself, - say, a sort of Shadow ever in the Room who has haunted you, preserving your ev'ry spoken remark, - " "Which else would have been lost forever to the great Wind of Oblivion, - think," armsweep south, "as all civiliz'd Britain gathers at this hour, how much shapely Expression, from the titl'd Gambler, the Barmaid's Suitor, the offended Fopling, the gratified Toss-Pot, is simply fading away upon the Air, out under the Door, into the Evening and the Silence beyond. All those voices. Why not pluck a few words from the multitudes rushing toward the Void of forgetfulness? — Thomas Pynchon

Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths. — George Santayana

He rolled in his bed, twisting the sheets, grappling with a problem years too big for him, awake in the night like a single sentinel on picket. And sometime after midnight, he slept, too, and then only the wind was awake, prying at the hotel and hooting in its gables under the bright gimlet gaze of the stars. — Stephen King

As a child, he'd found a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. He'd tried to help it by prying open the husk to set the insect free. It had lain in the sun, beating its wings as they dried, but had never flown and soon died. His grandmother explained the butterfly needed to go through the difficulty of freeing itself in order to have the strength to fly. — Laura Bacchi

Sometimes, son," my father said, prying my fingers free, "you have to help the heroes along. — Brandon Sanderson

Meetings were an important means of Communist control. They left people no free time, and eliminated the private sphere. The pettiness which dominated them was justified on the grounds that prying into personal details was a way of ensuring thorough soul-cleansing. In fact, pettiness was a fundamental characteristic of a revolution in which intrusiveness and ignorance were celebrated, and envy was incorporated into the system of control. — Jung Chang

Whenever a stray thought about Aaron, Taylor, or their relationship with Molly wanders into view, I push it into the folder near the back wall so that I can quickly shove them away from Dacia's prying eyes. I visualize that inner wall as an impenetrable fortress, surrounded by a force field, encased in a Cone of Silence, and covered by a Cloak of Invisibility. — Rysa Walker

And later, of course, she got too busy. She asks Royce if he heard anything from Grace, ever. "No. No. Why should I?" "I just thought." "No." "I thought you might have looked her up later on." "Not a good idea." She has disappointed him. Prying. Trying to get at some spot of live regret right under the ribs. A woman. — Tom Perrotta

We have not the reverent feeling for the rainbow that the savage has, because we know how it is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into that matter. — Mark Twain

God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination, and the divine sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say, "0 Lord, Thou knowest." Those things belong to the deep and mysterious Profound of God's omniscience. Prying into them may make theologians, but it will never make saints. — A.W. Tozer

Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin. They built this castle together, far from prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution. — J.K. Rowling

To me, the best, if not the only function of imaginative writing, is to lead the human imagination outward, to take it into the vast external cosmos, and away from all that introversion and introspection, that morbidly exaggerated prying into one's own vitals - and the vitals of others - which Robinson Jeffers has so aptly symbolized as "incest." What we need is less "human interest," in the narrow sense of the term - not more. Physiological - and even psychological analysis - can be largely left to the writers of scientific monographs on such themes. Fiction, as I see it, is not the place for that sort of grubbing. — Clark Ashton Smith

There are horrors beyond life's edge that we do not suspect, and once in a while man's evil prying calls them just within our range. — H.P. Lovecraft

I could spend my whole life prying loose the secrets of the insane. These people are honest to a fault, and their naivety has no peer but my own. — Andre Breton

Why look'e, young gentleman," said Toby, "when a man keeps himself so very ex-clusive as I have done, and by that means has a snug house over his head with nobody a-prying and smelling about it, it's rather a starling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young gentleman (however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with at conweniency) circumstanced as you are. — Charles Dickens

In the evangelical world, prying can be an indicator of compassion. — Kevin Roose

It is time to stop personal destruction and prying into private lives — William J. Clinton

Keep from prying into other people's affairs, for such prying gives occasion for slander, judgment, and other grievous sins. Why do you need to be concerned about others? Know and examine your own self. — Tikhon Of Zadonsk

I try to be authentic - but at the same time I don't really want people prying into my personal life. — Zooey Deschanel

The age looks steadily to the redressing of wrong, to the righting of every form of error and injustice; and a tireless and prying philanthropy, which is almost omniscient, is one of the most hopeful characteristics of the time. — Mary Baker Eddy

I had so much fun writing this book and I want readers to have fun also. A Passion for Prying is a feel-good, fun read. It's like eating a delicious, sinful hot fudge sundae--pure fun and indulgence. — Nancy Mangano

MASTERED, the Poem Weary of secrets, Of shame and denying, A lifetime of stories, Excuses, and lying, Dark nights lying awake, Frightened and crying, With society's eyes Judgmental and prying. Existing in limbo, No peace in her soul Just shadow and smoke, And a vast gaping hole. Submissive by nature, Now taking its toll, Shan't ever confess, Yearns a Master's control — K.L. Silver

I want to see mountains again, Gandalf, mountains, and then find somewhere where I can rest. In peace and quiet, without a lot of relatives prying around, and a string of confounded visitors hanging on the bell. I might find somewhere where I can finish my book. I have thought of a nice ending for it: and he lived happily ever after to the end of his days. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I remember an era when you could get your nose sliced off for sticking it too far into another man's business. Now you can find out anything about anyone with the click of a button. There is no privacy and no consideration, and everyone is prying into things that aren't their affair. You can probably check on the intertube and find out what color underwear I have on today. — Joe Hill

And Pasquale forced himself to look away from her then. It was like prying a magnet off steel, but he did it: he turned forward in the boat, closed his eyes, still seeing her standing there in his memory. He shook with the strain of not looking back until they rounded the breakwater into the open sea and Pasquale exhaled, his head falling to his chest.
"You are a strange young man," Tomasso the Communist said. — Jess Walter

There is a unique bond between the land and the people in the Crescent City. Everyone here came from somewhere else, the muddy brown current of life prying them loose from their homeland and sweeping them downstream, bumping and scraping, until they got caught by the horseshoe bend that is New Orleans. Not so much as a single pebble 'came' from New Orleans, any more than any of the people did. Every grain of sand, every rock, every drip of brown mud, and every single person walking, living and loving in the city is a refugee from somewhere else. But they made something unique, the people and the land, when they came together in that cohesive, magnetic, magical spot; this sediment of society made something that is not French, not Spanish, and incontrovertibly not American. — James Caskey

Prying out a stump reminded him of how deeply a tree clung to the ground, how tenacious a hold it had on a place. Though he was not a sentimental man - he did not cry when his children died, he simply dug the graves and buried them - James was silent each time he killed a tree, thinking of its time spent in that spot. He never did this with the animals he hunted - they were food, and transient, passing through this world and out again, as people did. But trees felt permanent - until you had to cut them down. — Tracy Chevalier

Max marvels that you can't tell at all from his voice how this type of thing
the casual prying, snooping and implications
royally pisses him off. He really should have gone into acting. It's a tragically wasted talent. — Lynn Kelling

This day have I begotten thee. If this refers to the Godhead of our Lord, let us not attempt to fathom it, for it is a great truth, a truth reverently to be received, but not irreverently to be scanned. It may be added, that if this relates to the Begotten One in his human nature, we must here also rejoice in the mystery, but not attempt to violate its sanctity by intrusive prying into the secrets of the Eternal God. The things which are revealed are enough, without venturing into vain speculations. In attempting to define the Trinity, or unveil the essence of Divinity, many men have lost themselves: here great ships have foundered. What have we to do in such a sea with our frail skiffs? — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Learning is by nature curiosity ... prying into everything, reluctant to leave anything, material or immaterial, unexplained. — Philo Of Alexandria

An infant is born with a clenched fist; a man dies with an open hand. Life has a way of prying free the things we think are so important. — John C. Maxwell

Private lives should be no business of the State. The State is bad enough as it is. It cannot educate or medicate or feed the people; it cannot do anything but kill the people. No State like that do we want prying into our private lives. — Gore Vidal

Loveliness and stillness clasped hands in the bedroom, and among the shrouded jugs and sheeted chairs even the prying of the wind, and the soft nose of the clammy sea airs, rubbing, snuffling, iterating, and reiterating their questions - "Will you fade? Will you perish?" - scarcely disturbed the peace, the indifference, the air of pure integrity, as if the question they asked scarcely needed that they should answer: we remain. — Virginia Woolf

When the government is quite unobtrusive, people are indeed pure. When the government is quite prying, people are indeed conniving. — Laozi

I realize then, what my mother already knows - has known for a long time. Motherhood is a procession of goodbyes. Some bittersweet and filled with promise and hope, some gradual, a gentle prying away of your fingers from something precious, some more violent, unexpected. — Heather Gudenkauf

All patriarchists exalt the home and family as sacred, demanding it remain inviolate from prying eyes. Men want privacy for their violations of women ... All women learn in childhood that women as a sex are men's prey. — Marilyn French

Oliver, my professor, was a scientific bounder, a journalist by instinct, a thief of ideas, - he was always prying! And you know the knavish system of the scientific world. I simply would not publish, and let him share my credit. I went on working, I got nearer and nearer making my formula into an experiment, a reality. I told no living soul, because I meant to flash my work upon the world with crushing effect and become famous at a blow. I took up the question of pigments to fill up certain gaps. And suddenly, not by design but by accident, I made a discovery in physiology. — H.G.Wells

And he had no qualms whatsoever about prying into someone's private thoughts and experiences. And no guilt about hoarding his own. — Nora Roberts

Mr. Speaker, Americans want, need, and rightfully expect Congress to protect them from the prying eyes of identity thieves and give them back control of their Social Security numbers and personal health information. — Luis Gutierrez

In the cool of the evening I take to the bridges over the creek. I am prying into secrets again, and taking my chances. I might see anything happen; I might see nothing but light on the water. I walk home exhilarated or becalmed, but always changed, alive. "It scatters and gathers," Heraclitus said, "it comes and goes." And I want to be in the way of its passage and cooled by its invisible breath. — Annie Dillard

It's often pretty hard to speak to others about my cancer. I have a number of pet peeves. Many folks are overly solicitous. They can't do enough for you. There's that Kaiser nurse who keeps asking "Isn't there someone who can drive you here?" And some people are too prying. I think they are voyeuristic and attempt to satisfy their morbid curiosity about having cancer. I don't like that and have sometimes wanted to say, "Go get your own damn fatal illness. — Irvin D. Yalom

Alexander and Tatiana danced to their wedding song, unable this once to hide their intimacy from prying, idly curious eyes; their hands entwined, their bodies pressed together, they waltzed by the banks of the Kama in their Lazarevo clearing under the crimson moon, an officer in his Red Army uniform, a peasant girl in her wedding dress - her white dress with red roses - and when Tatiana lifted her glistening eyes to him, Alexander was looking down at her with his I'll-get-on-the-busfor-you-anytime face. She couldn't believe it - he bent his head and kissed her, openly and deeply, as they continued to swirl away the minutes of someone else's wedding. — Paullina Simons

When individuals get crowbars and start prying open doors to loot, they're not protesting. They're not making a statement. They're stealing. When they burn down a building, they're committing arson. — Barack Obama

Who forces himself on others is to himself a load. Impetuous curiosity is empty and inconstant. Prying intrusion may be suspected of whatever is little. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

This had been part of her training, part of her career, part of herself: whatever was going on, live like a normal person. Do normal things, see normal people. Don't give anyone a reason to question you, investigate you. Don't give them any meaningful answers to prying questions that might be asked after you've disappeared. Don't create any suspicion that you were not who you claimed to be. — Chris Pavone

Politicians, they take pleasure a-prying into a man's affairs and I aimed to please 'em. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

I have a confession to make.
I hate voir dire.
I despise prying into other people's lives because I wouldn't want them prying into mine. — Paul Levine

It's different when you're an actor and playing a part, but when it's just you, you feel immensely vulnerable have strangers prodding and prying. — Helena Bonham Carter

Slowly, painfully, I let go. It was like prying my own fingers off the edge of the cliff. And that hurt too-particularly the falling part, and not being sure what was at the bottom.
But I did know. Now was what was at the bottom. I was already there. — Robin McKinley

Angels are happier than men and devils, because they are not always prying after good and evil in one another, and eating the tree of knowledge for Satan's gratification. — William Blake

The right to personal privacy is precious. Without it, we are all potential victims for a prying secret police. — Lewis B. Smedes

The U.S. Constitution protects our privacy from the prying eyes of government. It does not, however, protect us from the prying eyes of companies and corporations. — Simon Sinek

We know the point of the 2010 Census is to count us, one by one, to tally every last resident, but the massive project of course has more prying, if limited, interests. — Chang-rae Lee

I really think that reading a whole script is kind of prying and neurotic, don't you? — Tom Baker

If they come prying they can leave curious. — Ursula K. Le Guin

His mother had always been a headstrong woman, and with her grayish-white mane and unsmiling face, she appeared as regal and intimidating as she had ever been. Still, seeing her through other people's eyes, Hanfeng realized that all that made her who she was - the decades of solitude in her widowhood, her coldness to the prying eyes of people who tried to mask their nosiness with friendliness, and her faith in the notion of living one's own life without having to go out of one's way for other people - could be deemed pointless and laughable. Perhaps the same could be said of any living creature: a caterpillar chewing on a leaf, unaware of the beak of an approaching bird; an egret mesmerized by its reflection in a pond, as if it were the master of the universe; or Hanfeng's own folly of repeating the same pattern of hope and heartbreak, hoping despite heartbreak. — Yiyun Li

The sun was prying up the clouds and lighting the brick front of the hospital rose red. A thin breeze worked at sawing what leaves were left from the oak trees, stacking them neatly agains the wire cyclone fence. There were little brown birds occasionally on the fence: when a puff of leaves would hit the fence the birds would fly off with the wind. It looked at first like the leaves were hitting the fence and turning into birds and flying away. — Ken Kesey

I said, "Pretty." "Yes. She is." "You had to be seeing her, when, before you knew me?" His eyes never left the picture. "I knew you, but I was still on the job." I remember Joe dating back then, but the relationships seemed as they were now, none more important than any other. "I guess you were tight with this girl." Joe nodded. "So what happened?" Pike handed back the picture. "I broke her heart." "Oh." Sometimes prying is a lousy idea. — Robert Crais

It would probably be wiser to nail up over the door of the new quantum theory a notice, 'Structural alterations in progress - No admittance except on business', and particularly to warn the doorkeeper to keep out prying philosophers. — Arthur Stanley Eddington

Manfried imagined the stars to be jewels shining in the depths of a long-sealed crypt and, drifting off, he almost glimpsed himself prying open the lid of night and stuffing his pockets with the glittering gems. — Jesse Bullington