Red River Quotes & Sayings

He felt more soft raindrops, saw bright-red oil against the brown mud, heard his mother calling again, but it was unclear what she was saying, was she calling him home or was it the sea? There was a world and there was him and the thread joining the two was stretching and stretching, he was trying to pull himself up that thread, he was desperately trying to haul himself back home to where his mother was calling. He tried calling to her but his mind was running out of his mouth in a long, long river towards the sea. — Richard Flanagan

A change fell upon all things. Strange brilliant flowers, star-shaped, burst out upon the trees where no flowers had been before. The tints of the green carpet deepened; and when, one by one, the white daisies shrank away, there sprang up, in place of them, ten by ten of the ruby-red asphodel. And life arose in our paths; for the tall flamingo hitherto unseen, with all gay glowing birds, flaunted his scarlet plumage before us. The golden and silver fish haunted the river ... — Edgar Allan Poe

And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.
Aaron's Noise roars up in red and black.
The current takes us on.
"I'm sorry!" I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can't barely breathe. "I'm sorry, Manchee!"
"Todd?" he barks, confused and scared and watching me leave him behind. "Todd?"
"Manchee!" I scream.
Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.
"MANCHEE!"
"Todd?"
And Aaron wrenches his arms and there's a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.
And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside of me. — Patrick Ness

Daybreak has extraordinary hypnotizing influence,
On us, idealistic observers.
When red sun slowly reveals on the rivers surface,
like in a mirror,
It reminds of two lovers embracing,
Just by looking into each others eyes.
In such deep and serious commitment,
Without unnecessary words,
That spoil the instant of confidence.
Water is not stopping it's course,
Neither does the sun.
That's what makes it so exceptional,
So magnificent.
The only tie is their gentle admiration,
As their love is greater than space separating.

And who ever had the chance, to witness that, just once,
Shouldn't say he haven't found God. — Aleksandra Ninkovic

When I returned, not to Berlin, but to Hamburg in the midst of the fog of the beginning of winter, to the road that runs right above it's river and docks, a castle which never existed and a fountain which is really a sewer, a gust of wind far sweeter and more fragrant than any red rose carried the smell of shit and floating soil like a tongue into my nostril. — Kathy Acker

Unkar Delta at Mile 73
The layers of brick red sandstone, siltstone, and mudstone of the Dox formation deposited a billion years ago, erode easily, giving the landscape an open, rolling character very different that the narrow, limestone walled canyon upstream, both in lithology and color, fully fitting Van Dyke's description of "raspberry-red color, tempered with a what-not of mauve, heliotrope, and violet." Sediments flowing in from the west formed deltas, floodplains, and tidal flats, which indurated into these fine-grained sedimentary rocks thinly laid deposits of a restful sea, lined with shadows as precise as the staves of a musical score, ribboned layers, an elegant alteration of quiet siltings and delicious lappings, crinkled water compressed, solidified, lithified. — Ann Zwinger

It's just a superstition, but looking at the river, the boats, the sign leaving Brooklyn that says "Watchtower" in big red letters, is a ritual that reminds me I am small, I am one of thousands--no--one of millions of people who looked at this river before me, from a boat or a car or the window of the D train, who came to New York with a dream, who achieved it or didn't, but nonetheless made the same effort I'm making now. It keeps things in perspective, and strangely, it gives me hope. — Lauren Graham

Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realise that reciting red indian proverbs makes you sound like a fucking muppet. — Banksy

Sleeper in the Valley
The river sings and cuts a hole in the meadow,
madly hooking white tatters on the rushes.
light escalades the strong hills. The small
valley bubbles with sunbeams like a beerglass.
The young conscript bareheaded and open-mouthed,
his neck cooling in the blue watercress;
he's sleeping. The grass soothes his heaviness,
the sunlight is raining in his green bed,
baking away the aches of his body. He smiles,
as a sick child might smile himself asleep.
O Nature, rock him warmly, he is cold.
The fields no longer make his hot eyes weep.
He sleeps in the sun, a hand on his breast lies open,
at peace. He has two red holes in his left side. — Robert Lowell

It's hot enough to make a woman want to go skinny-dippin' in the Red River. You want to join me to cool off? — Carolyn Brown

Listen, we got two stiffs and a river of red in a villa in Herne Bay ... — Rhys Chamberlain

A strip of water's spread in the setting sun, Half the river's emerald, half is red. I love the third night of the ninth month, The dew is like a pearl; the moon like a bow. — Bai Juyi

Start with a girl whose blood has been steeped in Korea for generations, imprinted with Confucianism and shamanism and war. Extract her from the mountains. Plant her in wheat fields between the Red River and the Mississippi. Baptize her. Indoctrinate her. Tell her who she is. Tell her what is real.
See what happens.
Witness a love affair with freaks, a fascination with hermaphrodites and conjoined twins, a fixation on Pisces and pairs of opposites. Trace a dream that won't die: a vision of an old woman slumped on a bench, her spirit sitting straight out of the body, joined to the corpse at the waist. — Jane Jeong Trenka

How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet. — Virginia Woolf

The sunset was a red slit of light like a devil's eye, hanging low and depraved over the Mississippi River bluff. — Lisa Turner

Adam Larey gazed with hard and wondering eyes down the silent current of the red river upon which he meant to drift away into the desert — Zane Grey

I stood looking down through the beech trees. When I threw a stone I could count to five before the splash. Then I jumped in a rush of gold to the head, through black and cold, red and cold, brown and warm, giving water the weight and size of myself in order to imagine it, water with my bones, water with my mouth and my understanding. When my body was in some way a wave to swim in, one continuous fin from head to tail, I steered through rapids like a canoe, digging my hands in, keeping just ahead of the river. — Alice Oswald

Finally I found something on the list, something vital: instant coffee. I held the red plastic container, one of the last three on the shelf, held it like the marvel that it was: the seeds inside the purple fruits of coffee plants had been harvested on Andean slopes and roasted and ground and soaked and then dehydrated at a factory in Medellin and vacuum-sealed and flown to JFK and then driven upstate in bulk to Pearl River for repackaging and then transported by truck to the store where I now stood reading the label. It was as if the social relations that produced the object in my hand began to glow within it as they were threatened, stirred inside their packaging, lending it a certain aura
the majesty and murderous stupidity of that organization of time and space and fuel and labor becoming visible in the commodity itself now that planes were grounded and the highways were starting to close. — Ben Lerner

I've only had one platinum album, and it's 'Red River Blue'. — Blake Shelton

Leo gestured to the empty core. "The syncopator goes here. It's a multi-access gyro-valve to regulate flow. The dozen glass tubes on the outside? Those are filled with powerful, dangerous stuff. That glowing red one is Lemnos fire from my dad's forges. This murky stuff here? That's water from the River Styx. The stuff in the tubes is going to power the ship, right? Like radioactive rods in a nuclear reactor. But the mix ratio has to be controlled, and the timer is already operational."
Leo tapped the digital clock, which now read 65:15. "That means without the syncopator, this stuff is all going to vent into the chamber at the same time, in sixty-five minutes. At that point, we'll get a very nasty reaction."
Jason and Piper stared at him. Leo wondered if he'd been speaking English. Sometimes when he was agitated he slipped into Spanish, like his mom used to do in her workshop. But he was pretty sure he'd used English. — Rick Riordan

river, small green flames, red flames, white flames, pursuing, — Joseph Conrad

Where do songs go when you cease to hear them? Where does the turbulence of the air disappear after thousands of birds flap their wings homeward at eventide? Where are the cries of the Rajput women who spatter their red palm prints on the wall and leap into the flames of johar? Where is my childhood, my catapult, my broken slate, my first parrot, my youth and first sin and all those that followed, where is my old age and the first time I saw the woman from Merta? Ask Gambhiree. She knows it all. — Kiran Nagarkar

Murtaugh Allsbrook and his riders spread the news like wildfire. Down every road, over every river, to the north and south and west, through snow and rain and mist, their hooves churning up the dust of each kingdom.
And for every town they told, every tavern and secret meeting, more riders went out.
More and more, until there was not a road they had not covered, until there was not one soul who did not know that Aelin Galathynius was alive - and willing to stand against Adarlan.
Across the White Fangs and the Ruhnns, all the way to the Western Wastes and the red-haired queen who ruled from a crumbling castle. To the Deserted Peninsula and the oasis-fortress of the Silent Assassins. Hooves, hooves, hooves, echoing through the continent, sparking against the cobblestones, all the way to Banjali and the river-front palace of the King and Queen of Eyllwe, still in their midnight mourning clothes.
Hold on, the riders told the world.
Hold on. — Sarah J. Maas

He beheld in swift succession the incidents in the brief tale of his experience. His wretched home, his still more wretched school-days, the years of vicious life he had led since then, one act of selfish dishonour leading to another; it was all clear and pitiless now, all its squalid folly, in the cold light of the dawn. He came to the hut, to the fight with the Porroh man, to the retreat down the river to Sulyma, to the Mendi assassin and his red parcel, to his frantic endeavours to destroy the head, to the growth of his hallucination. It was a hallucination! He knew it was. A hallucination merely. For a moment he snatched at hope. He looked away from the glass, and on the bracket, the inverted head grinned and grimaced at him ... With the stiff fingers of his bandaged hand he felt at his neck for the throb of his arteries. The morning was very cold, the steel blade felt like ice.
("Pollock And The Porrah Man") — H.G.Wells

He walked on the Embankment once under a dark red sunset. The red river reflected the red sky, and they both reflected his anger. The sky, indeed, was so swarthy, and the light on the river relatively so lurid, that the water almost seemed of fiercer flame than the sunset it mirrored. It looked like a stream of literal fire winding under the vast caverns of a subterranean country. — G.K. Chesterton

May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun. — Arundhati Roy

' Bout time you married someone and stopped tempting every man from here to the Blue Sea," Padera said, slurring the words through toothless gums. "You know, wars have started over women like you."
Moya scoffed. "You're so full of crap, old woman."
"Brin?" Padera called.
Brin tore her eyes away from the doorway. "Augusta of Melen, daughter of Chieftain Eisol, started the Battle of the Red River when she refused to marry Theo of Warric. When Theo's father was killed in the fight, Theo vowed vengeance and summoned all of Clan Warric to his banner. This resulted in what became known as the Ten Year War, which claimed the lives of a thousand men and instigated a famine that lasted two years. — Michael J. Sullivan

WILSON RAWLS was born on a small farm in the Oklahoma Ozarks. He spent his youth in the heart of the Cherokee nation, prowling the hills and river bottoms with his only companion, an old bluetick hound. Rawls's first writing was done with his fingers in the dust of the country roads and in the sands along the river, and his earliest stories were told to his dog. Not until Rawls's family moved to Muskogee and he could attend high school did he encounter books. Where the Red Fern Grows has become a modern classic and has been made into a widely acclaimed motion picture. — Wilson Rawls

On fine summer evenings, at the hour when the warm streets are empty and the maids play shuttlecock in doorways, he would open his window and lean out on the sill. The river, which turns this part of Rouen into a sort of shabby little Venice, flowed by beneath him, yellow, violet or blue between its bridges and its railings. Some workmen were crouched down on the bank, washing their arms in the water. On poles projecting from the lofts up above, skeins of cotton hung out to dry. In front, away beyond the roof-tops, was a pure expanse of sky with a red sun setting. How good it would be over yonder, now! How cool under the beeches! He opened his nostrils to breathe in the wholesome country smells - which failed to reach him here. — Gustave Flaubert

The man's gaze hesitated on the four-inch cut on Joe's left cheek, courtesy of the log that had slapped him in the face on the river. With twenty-some stitches sticking out, the wound looked like a giant red caterpillar was crawling across Joe's face.
"Well, that'll disappoint the ladies." But then the captain grunted. "Never mind. With you, they'll probably like it, think it's all manly." He peered behind Joe. "Anyone naked in there?"
Joe stepped aside. "I'm having an off morning. — Dana Marton

In the Universe all things have their owner; and if it does not belong to me, not a tiny speck can I take. Encounter fresh breeze on the river or bright moon between the hills, any ears can take as music and eyes as sights; nothing prohibits anyone from taking and it will never be depleted with consumption, they are Creator's infinite treasures delighting both you and I. (from Red Cliff Rhapsody by Su Shih) — Sung Yee Poon

Four are the tributaries of the great river. Four are the harvests from floodseason to dust. Four are the great treasures: timbalin, myrrh, lapis, and jungissa. Four bands of color mark the face of the Dreaming Moon. Red for blood. White for seed. Yellow for ichor. Black for bile. — N.K. Jemisin

Marathon

2. Song of the River

Once we were happy, we had no memories.
For all the repetition, nothing happened twice.
We were always walking parallel to a river
with no sense of progression
though the trees across from us
were sometimes birch, sometimes cypress-
the sky was blue, a matrix of blue glass.

While, in the river, things were going by-
a few leaves, a child's boat painted red and white,
its sail stained by the water-

As they passed, on the surface we could see ourselves;
we seemed to drift
apart and together, as the river
linked us forever, though up ahead
were other couples, choosing souvenirs. — Louise Gluck

Little Red Riding Hood was a good story, but it wasn't interactive. Sooner or later I wanted to say 'no, I may be Red Riding Hood but I don't care about my grandmother; what I want is heroin and only heroin,' whereas the game had only 'over the river and through the woods' to offer me. Which was a good story, it just might not me mine. — Austin Grossman

Fairy-tale city. From the air, red rooftops hug a kink in a dark river, and by night the forested hills appear as spans of black nothing against the dazzle of the lit castle, the spiking Gothic towers, the domes great and small. The river captures all the lights and teases them out, long and wavering, and the side-slashing rain blurs it all to a dream. This was Akiva's first sight of Prague; — Laini Taylor

When you get real big baby, remember that little old cowgirl. Waiting for you back in that red river valley. — Lana Del Rey

The two men were slowly pacing the terrace in front of Dr. Raymond's house. The sun still hung above the western mountain-line, but it shone with a dull red glow that cast no shadows, and all the air was quiet; a sweet breath came from the great wood on the hillside above, and with it, at intervals, the soft murmuring call of the wild doves. Below, in the long lovely valley, the river wound in and out between the lonely hills, and, as the sun hovered and vanished into the west, a faint mist, pure white, began to rise from the hills. Dr. Raymond turned sharply to his friend. Safe? Of course it is. In itself the operation is a perfectly simple one; any surgeon could do it. — Arthur Machen

Holmes took up the stone and held it against the light. "It's a bonny thing," said he. "Just see how it glints and sparkles. Of course it is a nucleus and focus of crime. Every good stone is. They are the devil's pet baits. In the larger and older jewels every facet may stand for a bloody deed. This stone is not yet twenty years old. It was found in the banks of the Amoy River in soutern China and is remarkable in having every characteristic of the carbuncle, save that it is blue in shade instead of ruby red. In spite of its youth, it has already a sinister history. There have been two murders, a vitriol-throwing, a suicide, and several robberies brought about for the sake of this forty-grain weight of crystallised charcoal. Who would think that so pretty a toy would be a purveyor to the gallows and the prison? — Arthur Conan Doyle

The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery hidden by the curve of the earth's surface. Down here it was still the England I had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, the red buses, the blue policemen - all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked out of it by the roar of bombs. — George Orwell

It calms me to think of blue as the color of death. I have long imagined death's approch as the swell of a wave - a towering wall of blue. You will drown, the world tells me, has always told me. You will descend into a blue underworld, blue with hungry ghosts, Krishna blue, the blue faces of the ones you loved. They all drowned, too. To take a breath of water: does the thought panic or excite you? If you are in love with red then you slit or shoot. If you are in love with blue you fill your pouch with stones good for sucking and head down to the river. Any river will do. — Maggie Nelson

Corey Bryant sank into a great forgetful river, and that river was time, and its waters were red. — Stephen King

I can only tell where I feel most at home, which is in the erosional landscape of the red rock desert of southern Utah, where the Colorado River cuts through sandstone and the geologic history of the Earth is exposed: our home in Castle Valley. — Terry Tempest Williams

Father and son had been on poor terms (even Cicero acknowledged this) and it was arranged for the young man to be accused of parricide. This was among the most serious offenses in the charge book and was one of the few crimes to attract the death penalty under Roman law. The method of execution was extremely unpleasant. An ancient legal authority described what took place: According to the custom of our ancestors it was established that the parricide should be beaten with blood-red rods, sewn in a leather sack together with a dog [an animal despised by Greeks and Romans], a cock [like the parricide devoid of all feelings of affection], a viper [whose mother was supposed to die when it was born], and an ape [a caricature of a man], and the sack thrown into the depths of the sea or a river. — Anthony Everitt

The sand of the desert is sodden red, --
Red with the wreck of a square that broke; --
The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel dead,
And the regiment blind with dust and smoke.
The river of death has brimmed his banks,
And England's far, and Honour a name,
But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks:
'Play up! play up! and play the game! — Henry Newbolt

The river split for the jump of a red-gilled silver salmon, then circled to mark the spot where it fell. Spoonbills shoveled at the crimson mud in the shallows, and dowitchers jumped from cattail to cattail, frantically crying "Kleek! Kleek!" as though the thin reeds were as hot as the pokers they resembled. — Ken Kesey

I am proud to place Tercio Red River into a conservation easement forever protecting this spectacular landscape with Colorado Open Lands. — Louis Bacon

See that day as I remember it. A day in June, River Severn rolling to the sea, diamonded with sunlight, gulls gliding over the quays on a mild breeze that lifted the Red Dragon standard over Camelot. A quiet enough day for the end of my world. — Parke Godwin

Raised herself on one round elbow and looked out on a tiny river like a gleaming blue snake winding itself around a purple hill. Right below the house was a field white as snow with daisies, and the shadow of the huge maple tree that bent over the little house fell lacily across it. Far beyond it were the white crests of Four Winds Harbour and a long range of sun-washed dunes and red cliffs. — L.M. Montgomery

As a youth, I listened to the rain from the bowers of pleasure houses,
Red silk drapes translucent in the glow of candlelight.
In my prime, I listened to the rain as a traveler,
The sky low, the river broad, the calls of the wild geese harsh and cold.
Now, grey at the temples, I listen to the rain beneath the eaves of an abandoned cloister.
Has mine been a futile life?
I have no answers, only the sound of raindrops upon worn stone steps,
And long hours yet to pass before the light of dawn. — Sherry Thomas

The waves Of the mysterious death-river moaned; The tramp, the shout, the fearful thunder-roar Of red-breathed cannon, and the wailing cry Of myriad victims, filled the air. — George D. Prentice

When rowan leaves are dank and rusting And rowan berries red as blood, When in my palm the hangman's thrusting The final nail with bony thud, When, over the foul flooding river, Upon the wet grey height, I toss Before my land's grim looks, and shiver As I swing here upon the cross, Then, through the blood and weeping, stretches My dying sight to space remote; I see upon the river's reaches Christ sailing to me in a boat. — Alexander Blok

The white face of the winter day came sluggishly on, veiled in a frosty mist; and the shadowy ships in the river slowly changed to black substances; and the sun, blood-red on the eastern marshes behind dark masts and yards, seemed filled with the ruins of a forest it had set on fire. — Charles Dickens

When he reached the Neva he stood still for a minute and turned a keen glance up the river into the smoky frozen thickness of the distance, which was suddenly flushed crimson with the last purple and blood -red glow of sunset, still smouldering on the misty horizon ... Night lay over the city, and the — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Necessities
1
A map of the world. Not the one in the atlas,
but the one in our heads, the one we keep coloring in.
With the blue thread of the river by which we grew up.
The green smear of the woods we first made love in.
The yellow city we thought was our future.
The red highways not traveled, the green ones
with their missed exits, the black side roads
which took us where we had not meant to go.
The high peaks, recorded by relatives,
though we prefer certain unmarked elevations,
the private alps no one knows we have climbed.
The careful boundaries we draw and erase.
And always, around the edges,
the opaque wash of blue, concealing
the drop-off they have stepped into before us,
singly, mapless, not looking back. — Lisel Mueller

The Long March The Red Army is not afraid of hardship on the march, the long march. Ten thousand waters and a thousand mountains are nothing. The Five Sierras meander like small waves, the summits of Wumeng pour on the plain like balls of clay. Cliffs under clouds are warm and washed below by the River Gold Sand. Iron chains are cold, reaching over the Tatu River. The far snows of Minshan only make us happy and when the army pushes through, we all laugh. October 1935 — Mao Zedong

On the heights above the river Xzan, at the site of certain ancient ruins, Iucounu the Laughing Magician had built a manse to his private taste: an eccentric structure of steep gables, balconies, sky-walks, cupolas, together with three spiral green glass towers through which the red sunlight shone in twisted glints and peculiar colors. — Jack Vance

On that day so long ago, in the year nineteen hundred and thirty-seven, in the Massacre River, my mother did fly. Weighted down by my body inside hers, she leaped from Dominican soil into the water, and out again on the Haitian side of the river. She glowed red when she came out, blood clinging to her skin, which at that moment looked as though it were in flames. — Edwidge Danticat

A button clicked beneath his finger and the noise stopped, leaving only the blinking red light. I was daydreaming, he thought, not willing to admit to himself he slept in earnest. He'd been back on Melis with his children, playing in the meadow where the river bent and foamed. — David Kristoph

The light bounced off the water and shimmered against the buildings on the other side of the river. Joseph walked, listening to the sound of what was beneath his feet, and soon he noticed he was alone. He turned and saw Frankie had stopped beside Albert and filled her jacket pockets. Looking at the two of them, Joseph wondered for a moment if Leo had ever come down here to go mudlarking, his red hair shining in the sun. the vision seemed so vivid, but then Joseph remembered that Leo wasn't real, and the boy dissolved like smoke into the winter sky. — Brian Selznick

Well I knew when I first laid eyes on her
I could never be free
One look at her and I knew right away
She should always be with me
Well the dream dried up a long time ago
Don't know where it is anymore
True to life, true to me
Was the girl from the red river shore
Well I'm wearing the cloak of misery
And I've tasted jilted love
And the frozen smile upon my face
Fits me like a glove
Well I can't escape from the memory
Of the one I'll always adore
All those nights when I lay in the arms
Of the girl from the red river shore
Well we're living in the shadows of a fading past
Trapped in the fires of time
I've tried not to ever hurt anybody
And to stay out of the life of crime
And when it's all been said and done
I never did know the score
One more day is another day away
From the girl from the red river shore. — Bob Dylan

I murmur: "It's a seat," a little like an exorcism. But the word stays on my lips: it refuses to go and put itself on the thing. It stays what it is, with its red plush, thousands of little red paws in the air, all still, little dead paws. This enormous belly turned upward, bleeding, inflated - bloated with all its dead paws, this belly floating in this car, in this grey sky, is not a seat. It could just as well be a dead donkey tossed about in the water, floating with the current, belly in the air in a great grey river, a river of floods; and I could be sitting on the donkey's belly, my feet dangling in the clear water. — Jean-Paul Sartre

I dreamt I saw a shadow with a burning heart butchering a golden stag, aye. I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings. I dreamt of a roaring river and a woman that was a fish. Dead she drifted, with red tears on her cheeks, but when her eyes did open, oh, I woke from terror. All this I dreamt, and more. — George R R Martin

It's to bad we didn't stay longer", I murmur, looking out at the river. "I would have liked to die close to home. — Victoria Aveyard

Don't do anything quickly, Tag had told him. And whatever you do, don't hit your brakes. You'll end up in the ditch.

He caught something in his headlights. It took him a moment to realize what he was seeing before his heart took off at a gallop.

A car was upside down in the middle of the highway, its headlights shooting out through the falling snow toward the river, the taillights a dim red against the steep canyon wall. The overturned car had the highway completely blocked. — B. J. Daniels

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

Then she gave one last burst of music. The white Moon heard it, and she forgot the dawn, and lingered on in the sky. The red rose heard it, and it trembled all over with ecstasy, and opened its petals to the cold morning air. Echo bore it to her purple cavern in the hills, and woke the sleeping shepherds from their dreams. It floated through the reeds of the river, and they carried its message to the sea. — Oscar Wilde

May with its light behaving
Stirs vessel, eye and limb,
The singular and sad
Are willing to recover,
And to each swan-delighting river
The careless picnics come
In living white and red.

Our dead, remote and hooded,
In hollows rest, but we
From their vague woods have broken,
Forests where children meet
And the white angel-vampires flit,
Stand now with shaded eye,
The dangerous apple taken.

The real world lies before us,
Brave motions of the young,
Abundant wish for death,
The pleasing, pleasured, haunted:
A dying Master sinks tormented
In his admirers' ring,
The unjust walk the earth.

And love that makes impatient
Tortoise and roe, that lays
The blonde beside the dark,
Urges upon our blood,
Before the evil and the good
How insufficient is
Touch, endearment, look. — W. H. Auden

New challenges beyond navigation have spawned new conventions and institutions in the Rhine and Danube basins. A separate International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR) was set up in 1950 as a permanent intergovernmental body among the co-riparian states. But the ICPR began fighting pollution of the Rhine in earnest only after a 1986 accident at a Basel plant. For a long time, industrial and domestic wastewater flowed untreated into the Rhine, earning it the sobriquet, "the Sewer of Europe." The Basel accident spewed thirty tons of herbicides, fungicides, pesticides, and dyes into the river, turning a large stretch of it red and destroying some fish species. — Brahma Chellaney

And then we cowards
who loved the whispering
evening, the houses,
the paths by the river,
the dirty red lights
of those places, the sweet
soundless sorrow
we reached our hands out
toward the living chain
in silence, but our heart
startled us with blood,
and no more sweetness then,
no more losing ourselves
on the path by the river
no longer slaves, we knew
we were alone and alive.
(Translated By Geoffrey Brock) — Cesare Pavese

June Afternoon"

Didn't I tell you everything is possible in this deja vu?
Try the river boat, the carousel, feed the pigeons, Bar-B-Q.
Look at all the people, happy faces all around.
Smiling, throwing kisses, busy making lazy sounds

It's a bright June afternoon, it never gets dark.
Wah-wah! Here comes the sun.
Get your green, green tambourine, let's play in the park.
Wah-wah! Here comes the sun

Some folks are on blankets, slowly daydreaming
and reaching for their food.
Let's go buy an ice-cream and a magazine with an attitude
and put on a cassette, we can pretend that you're a star
cos life's so very simple just like la-la-la

It's a bright June afternoon...

There's a painter painting his masterpiece.
There are some squirrels jumping in the trees,
There's a wide-eyed boy with a red balloon.
All my life I've longed for this afternoon. — Roxette

To secure the safety of the navigation of the Mississippi River I would slay millions. On that point I am not only insane, but mad ... I think I see one or two quick blows that will astonish the natives of the South and will convince them that, though to stand behind a big cottonwood and shoot at a passing boat is good sport and safe, it may still reach and kill their friends and families hundreds of miles off. For every bullet shot at a steamboat, I would shoot a thousand 30-pounder Parrots into even helpless towns on Red, Ouachita, Yazoo, or wherever a boat can float or soldier march. — William Tecumseh Sherman

I looked up then, out the far window, and there, just within sight, the sun was going down across the river. It was dull red, no longer shining over the land, its ray brought home to roost, contained within its sphere. The sky was streaked with lavendar, a pulsing pale blue, purple and smudged pink and orange melding into one another all the way to the horizon. — Jane Hamilton

In The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson argues that Brennan should have won awards for even better performances in To Have and Have Not (1944), My Darling Clementine (1946), Red River (1948), The Far Country (1955), and Rio Bravo (1959). Thomson counts no less than twenty-eight high caliber Brennan performances in still more films, including These Three (1936), Fury (1936), Meet John Doe (1941), and Bad Day At Black Rock (1955). Brennan worked with Hollywood's greatest directors - John Ford, Howard Hawks, William Wyler, King Vidor, and Fritz Lang - while also starring in Jean Renoir's Hollywood directorial debut, Swamp Water (1941). To discuss Brennan's greatest performances is also to comment on the work of Gary Cooper, Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Spencer Tracy, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Anne Baxter, Barbara Stanwyck, Lana Turner, Linda Darnell, Ginger Rogers, Loretta Young, and many other stars. — Carl Rollyson

There is no less holiness at this time- as you are reading this- than there was on the day the Red Sea parted, or that day in the 30th year, in the 4th month, on the 5th day of the month as Ezekiel was a captive by the river Cheban, when the heavens opened and he saw visions of god. There is no whit less enlightenment under the tree at the end of your street than there was under Buddha's bo tree ... . In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger. In any instant the bush may flare, your feet may rise, or you may see a bunch of souls in trees. — Annie Dillard

Nayrol is without speech and therefore never lies ... (Nayrol is) one of the nature gods of the Red River people. Objective evidence is the ultimate authority. Recorders may lie, but Nature is incapable of it. — Walter M. Miller Jr.

I was the one with the open wound, and the river waters turned red when I bathed in them. My sadness is greater than the heavens. — Laura Restrepo

The bright, frosty day declined as they walked and spoke together. The sun dipped in the river far behind them, and the old city lay red before them, as their walk drew to a close. The moaning water cast its seaweed duskily at their feet, when they turned to leave its margin; and the rooks hovered above them with hoarse cries, darker splashes in the darkening air. — Charles Dickens

And travellers, now, within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows see
Vast forms, that move fantastically
To a discordant melody,
While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh - but smile no more. — Edgar Allan Poe