Rhythmically Quotes & Sayings

There, tam, la-bas, the gaze of men glows with inimitable understanding; there the freaks that are tortured here walk unmolested; there time takes shape according to one's pleasure, like a figured rug whose folds can be gathered in such a way that two designs will meet - and the rug is once again smoothed out, and you live on, or else superimpose the next image on the last, endlessly, endlessly, with the leisurely concentration of a woman selecting a belt to go with her dress - now she glides in my direction, rhythmically butting the velvet with her knees, comprehending everything and comprehensible to me ... There, there are the original of those gardens where we used to roam and hide in this world; there everything strikes one by its bewitching evidence, by the simplicity of perfect good; there everything pleases one's soul, everything is filled with the kind of fun that children know; there shines the mirror that now and then sends a chance reflection here ... — Vladimir Nabokov

Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps of the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout. — E. Lockhart

All that is carried along by the stream's silvery cascade, rhythmically falling from the mountain, carried by its own current
carried where? — Pope John Paul II

We're just musically and rhythmically retarded. We play so hard that we can't tune our guitars fast enough. People can relate to that. — Kurt Cobain

When finally the sky grew ink-black, the trees were visible only as their swaying branches blotted out the stars that crossed in blazing showers, as sometimes they do. The language of the stars, seldom read and heeded less, told beautifully and in silence of all the victories that had ever been won and all the defeats ever suffered. In uncountable lines of light across the widest sphere, the stars spoke of everything notable even down to a leaf blowing rhythmically in the wind. — Mark Helprin

We were just amazed we were putting out a record. We were, and are, still learning. But we've never cared much for professionalism as long as the energy was there. Like our live shows: We're out of tune and use a lot of feedback. That's not on purpose or because we don't care, we're just musically and rhythmically retarded and we play so hard that we can't tune our guitars fast enough. — Kurt Cobain

The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is not due to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that the specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say "Do it afain", and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. — G.K. Chesterton

A great tragedy passes from crest to hollow of passion, rises and sinks again, as rhythmically as sea-waves. — Austin O'Malley

Safeguard your weaknesses, for your enemy will always use them against you. But more importantly ... " He raised a single bony finger, waving it rhythmically to the cadence of his words. "Safeguard your true strengths. If he knows not what you are capable of, he will always underestimate you." He fixed his unflinching eyes on mine. "And you are not to be underestimated. — M.A. George

If I said the light was casting an amber wash around the room, glowing and fading rhythmically like a mood lamp as the tree swayed gently in the breeze, I'd be having you on because I was completely unmoved by the ambience of the place. — Steven Hayward

But the loneliness was still on Danny and demanded an outlet.
'Here we sit,' he began at last.
' - broken-hearted,' Pilon added rhythmically.
'No, this is not a poem,' Danny said. 'Here we sit, homeless. We gave our lives for our country, and now we have no roof over our head.'
'We never did have,' Pilon added helpfully.
Danny drank dreamily until Pilon touched his elbow and took the bottle.
'That reminds me,' Danny said, 'of a story of a man who owned two whore-houses
' His mouth dropped open. 'Pilon! my little fat duck of a baby friend. I had forgotten! I am an heir! I own two houses.'
'Whore-houses?' Pilon asked hopefully. 'Thou art a drunken liar,' he continued.
'No, Pilon. I tell the truth. The viejo died. I am the heir. I, the favourite grandson.'
'Thou art the only grandson,' said the realist Pilon. — John Steinbeck

Science has learned recently that contempt and indignation are addictive mental states. I mean physically and chemically addictive. Literally! People who are self-righteous a lot are apparently doping themselves rhythmically with auto-secreted surges of dopamine, endorphins and enkephalins. Didn't you ever ask yourself why indignation feels so good? — David Brin

The sandcastle, wet and gleaming under the sun, waited for the only thing that could destroy it: the waves. And like the waves returning the sandcastles to its natural state, quickly and rhythmically, he destroyed my being. — Rain Chudori

Classical - perhaps I should say 'orchestral' - music is so digital, so cut up, rhythmically, pitchwise and in terms of the roles of the musicians. It's all in little boxes. The reason you get child prodigies in chess, arithmetic, and classical composition is that they are all worlds of discontinuous, parceled-up possibilities. — Brian Eno

I'm trying to learn that in my Christian walk as well. If I'll move to the beat of the Spirit and relinquish control of my life to Him, I'll be able to dance to the music God has playing in His head rather than movin' and agroovin' to the catchy little tunes I've got going in my own. For when I allow the Lord to provide the accompaniment to my life, I discover a richly layered soundtrack more beautiful than anything I could compose myself. But following God's beat, dancing to His rhythm, trusting in His sovereignty - all that can be hard for a rhythmically challenged, control-loving person like me. Because when it comes right down to it, I'm a headstrong little girl who wants her own way in pretty much every area of life. Fortunately, I have a Father who loves me in spite of that. But while He loves me as I am, He also loves me too much to leave me that way. So He insists I follow His lead in order to "grow up" in my salvation (1 Peter 2:2). Becoming more like Jesus and less like me. — Joanna Weaver

He found that he had this sudden desperate longing for the fuming, smoky streets of Ankh-Morpork, which was always at its best in the spring, when the gummy sheen on the turbid waters of the Ankh River had a special iridescence and the eaves were full of birdsong, or at least birds coughing rhythmically — Terry Pratchett

You must prepare yourselves, young people, because Uncle Dave's generation is getting old. We are almost ready to go to the retirement home to spend the rest of our days tapping our bedpans rhythmically in time to "easy listening" rock 'n' roll. We must pass the torch on to you, and you must grasp it, ideally by the end that is not on fire. — Dave Barry

For me Brazilian music is the perfect mix of melody and rhythm. It just bubbles rhythmically. If I had to pick just one music style to play if would be Brazilian. — Herbie Mann

If one thing got off rhythmically, everything would collapse. — Barry Harris

They walked, and the long waves rolled and murmured rhythmically beside them; the fresh salty wind blew free and unobstructed in their faces, wrapped itself around their ears, and made them feel slightly numb and deliciously dizzy. They walked along in that wide, peaceful, whispering hush of the sea that gives every sound, near or far, some mysterious importance. — Thomas Mann

I hope you like big men, sweetness." My eyes dropped reflexively back to the hand still moving rhythmically between his legs; the blunt knob playing hide and seek as he lazily palmed himself. "Think you can handle all this? I guess we'll find out soon enough 'cause you're getting this cock, all of it, and you're gonna take every fucking inch. — Candace Vianna

They say a man's inspiration is visual, but for a woman, it's the narrative.
Abandon both the narrative and the visual. Close your eyes, measure your breath.
Dead weight is sloughed off, dust swept away, forms dissolve into one atmosphere.
The rib cage opens, the lungs fill, the breast rises.
Waves sweep up the body on their swell, rocking it rhythmically.
Feet planted, the back arches, the pelvis reaches forward.
Oxygen kindles a flame, sprawling through the belly, and gathering in a warm blaze.
The hand reaches to meet the sensation.
Calligraphy spills from the inkwell.
Open your eyes, sharpen your focus, and exclaim:
There are no separations. — Craig Thompson

So I concentrated on the rhythmic side of things, and therefore left a lot of holes. I didn't want to use big pad chords everywhere. All of the songs are built up of small melodies and counter melodies all played very rhythmically. — Midge Ure

Well, everybody's a drummer, I'll tell you that right now. Everybody knows what's right rhythmically for a song, so there were always suggestions flying my way. — Sam Fogarino

The swallow's wings popped open, but they flapped awkwardly at the sides of its body like wild oars. And then, as the bird fell with skittering wings, it gave one solid thrum. This slowed its descent, momentarily. It gave another thrum, and another, and then, as if its body remembered what it was supposed to do, the bird began to beat its wings rhythmically. The muscle memory was still within it. It was still losing ground, but it was flapping at least. — Bridget Asher

I have pointed rhythmically at the ceiling to the two-four beat of the same disco music I hated pointing at the ceiling to in 1977. — David Foster Wallace

I don't think my playing style has really changed over the years; it's just gotten better. I can hear the improvement in comparing older records and later records. I'm referring to soloing ability, to having a better sound, to knowing chords better, and getting rhythmically stronger. It also has to do with ideas - learning how to edit your ideas and being better able to follow ideas out to a logical conclusion. — Gary Bartz

Looking down she arched her back, giving him more. His tanned complexion against her milky, slightly freckled skin was visually stark and sexually exciting. She watched as his mouth claimed her other nipple, stroking it with his tongue, and her vision blurred as he rhythmically rocked his erection against her sex.
Hot, damp, desperate, she braced herself with her hands on his knees behind her and met him thrust for thrust, pushing hard. Breathing as heavy as he was, she trembled with the flash fire of passion overtaking them both. — Jennifer St. Giles

[W]hat upset grownups of both sexes about Elvis' performance was that he had broken the deepest taboo of all. He used his body as rhythmically and erotically and seductively as a woman
that was the forbidden territory he had entered. It was not only repulsive and offensive
it was nauseating
the word most used. It was an attack on male dignity.
The kids, however, not yet grown into the stereotypes of gender, saw in him an exhilarating physical freedom. — Elaine Dundy

My mother's very proud of the name she gave me. She thought it sounded rhythmically better. It doesn't really make a difference to me what people call me, but since my mother calls me Holly Marie when she's angry, I prefer just my first name. — Holly Marie Combs

I have to say that the situation didn't look very promising. There was a woman in the bed right enough. But there was a man there too. Fully clothed, enormous in midnight-blue serge suit and peaked cap, he knelt above her rhythmically slapping her face with a pendulum action of his heavy-gloved hand. No, this didn't look like our kind of thing at all. Warily John slipped out of his socks and shirt. You have to give him credit: he keeps his cool and works the percentages. Now the two mean moved strangely past each other; and with some diffidence John climbed into bed. The other guy stared at us, with raised, with churning face. Then he did some shouting and strode out of there - though he paused, and thoughtfully dimmed the lights, as he left the room. We heard his boots on the stairs. The lady clutched me.

"My husband!" she explained. — Martin Amis

I play more rhythmically than I do a lot of notes. — Bobby Keys

I always thought if I had a band it would have the energy and feel of early Police, since that's where my roots are, and then the harmonies of the Eagles, and the technique of King Crimson or something like that. Fast, up-tempo, beat-the-hell-out-of-the-drums, because that's my style. Energy, but sophistication, rhythmically and melodically. — Taylor Hawkins

If string theory is right, the microscopic fabric of our universe is a richly intertwined multidimensional labyrinth within which the strings of the universe endlessly twist and vibrate, rhythmically beating out the laws of the cosmos. — Brian Greene

Something started thumping rhythmically against the door. Julianne hiccoughed and stared in horror, fearing whoever was in there would fling it open.
A man grunted again and again.
Georgette frowned. "Is he ill?"
The door thumped harder. A woman started making repetitive high-pitched noises, sounding like a squealing pig.
Julianne frowned. "What are they - hic - doing?"
"We must leave," Anne whispered.
The thumping turned into banging, and the man's grunting grew louder. "Feel my mighty sword."
"He has a sword?" Georgette asked.
The woman behind the door screamed.
Georgette gasped. "He killed her."
"I'm coming," the man said.
"Not inside me," the woman said in a curt voice. "I don't want a brat."
Julianne dropped the candle and clapped her hand over her mouth. She'd thought a bed was required. As she stared at the door, she tried to figure out how the amorous couple had managed, but she failed. — Vicky Dreiling

Noah Baumbach writing is really wonderful. I think the way he plays out each character with a unique voice is really impressive, and rhythmically his dialogue works. — Naomi Watts

In some ways Lester Young is the most complex rhythmically of any musician. He does some things which are just phenomenal. — Lee Konitz

The art of change-ringing is peculiar to the English, and, like most English peculiarities, unintelligible to the rest of the world. (The change-ringer's) passion - and it is a passion - finds its satisfaction in mathematical completeness and mechanical perfection, and as his bell weaves her way rhythmically up from lead to hinder place and down again, he is filled with the solemn intoxication that comes of intricate ritual faultlessly performed. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Dear Nintendo, We need a new Mario game, where you rescue the princess in the first ten minutes, and for the rest of the game you try and push down that sick feeling in your stomach that she's 'damaged goods', a concept detailed again and again in the profoundly sex negative instruction booklet, and when Luigi makes a crack about her and Bowser, you break his nose and immediately regret it. When Peach asks you, in the quiet of her mushroom castle bedroom 'do you still love me?' you pretend to be asleep. You press the A button rhythmically, to control your breath, keep it even. — Joey Comeau

The prerequisite of contrapuntal art, more conspicuous in the work of Bach than in that of any other composer, is an ability to conceive a priori of melodic identities which when transposed, inverted, made retrograde, or transformed rhythmically will yet exhibit, in conjunction with the original subject matter, some entirely new but completely harmonious profile. — Glenn Gould

I had great difficulties learning to play initially because I could not think rhythmically properly, although it's an even-paced rhythm, I was not phrasing properly, I was too Western. It took me a while to learn to think in needed form, and the only way I could learn was just by ear. — Richard Meale

Here we sit," he began at last. " - broken-hearted," Pilon added rhythmically. — John Steinbeck

If you focus your eyes towards the horizon, everything and everyone walking in front of you becomes a blurry mass. That's what everyone else became. All of their dark wool suits began to mesh into one, and they began to rhythmically march in unison, all while I gazed at the sliver of sky that seemed to be pressed tightly in between the skyscrapers. I kept on walking and staring at the sky, and I began to notice the skyscrapers becoming larger and larger, and before I knew it, I had to turn to get to my building, and of course, the automat. — Cristina Martin

Music and text have several commonalities, and one is meter and rhythm. Both spoken word and music have certain regularities, and they can be sub-divided rhythmically. — Jeff Britting

Imagine yourself standing on a shore: waves rhythmically rising, rising, and then suddenly they stay there, they set, they freeze. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

In the dimension of space and time,
We chew as rhythmically as we breathe.
Maintaining the lives of all our ancestors,
Opening an upward path for descendants. — Thich Nhat Hanh

In his delicate state he rushed to the cupboard searching something to settle his nerves only to find his larder empty. Feeling a fit of panic, he grabbed at the empty bottles littered about the room, tipping them up seeking some last dregs, drops to quench his nervous thirst. It was at this vulnerable moment that he saw her, standing in the darkness watching him, the red ember of her cigarette rhythmically swallowed by the shadows. He froze. — Parker T. Geissel

The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a single word - a glance. The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained. — Ian McEwan

The humming of Kayn's blood that coursed through her veins seemed to sing along to the steady, almost tribal, beat of her feet as they pounded rhythmically into the dirt. A veil of earth flowed behind her; she resembled a flaxen haired angel attempting to outrun a cloud. The cloud of dust seemed to follow her for a moment or two longer than it should, with not one whisper of wind in the afternoon air. (The Children of Ankh series) — Kim Cormack

Sometimes when you're writing on a ukulele, you're in a totally new land, rhythmically or melodically. — Tift Merritt

If you can rhythmically slow down your breath to four breaths a minute, you can indirectly control your mind and slow it down from its obnoxious behavior. — Harbhajan Singh Yogi

Good though his eyesight was, however, he would have been unlikely to spot the Stanley knife being turned rhythmically between long, fine fingers. — Robert Galbraith

I would say poetry is language charged with emotion. It's words, rhythmically organized ... A poem is a complete little universe. It exists separately. Any poem that has any worth expresses the whole life of the poet. It gives a view of what the poet is. — William Carlos Williams

Her voice floats past me, swaying rhythmically, creating the sweetest song imaginable — Emlyn Chand

Writing stories not only involved secrecy, it also gave her all the pleasures of miniaturization. A world could be made in five pages, and one that was more pleasing than a model farm. The childhood of a spoiled prince could be framed within half a page, a moonlit dash through sleepy villages was one rhythmically emphatic sentence, falling in love could be achieved in a single word
a glance . The pages of a recently finished story seemed to vibrate in her hand with all the life they contained. Her passion for tidiness was also satisfied, for an unruly world could be made just so. — Ian McEwan

I've been avoiding you because I'm just so damn annoyed ... " He shakes his head, sloshing water. The strands brush his shoulders rhythmically. "I don't want you risking yourself again. The human world ... Will. It's too dangerous." Cassian takes my hand. I feel his heartbeat through the simple touch, the thud of his life meeting with mine. "You dead ... it would break me." His voice whips sharply over the drum of the rainfall. "Everything I ever said to you was the truth. My feelings haven't changed for you, Jacinda. Even if you drive me crazy, here, in the pride ... you're still that single bright light for me. — Sophie Jordan

They're naked, covered in black, glossy skin, with huge eyes and mouths like gashes... they're striding rhythmically ahead, towards the fortifications, towards death, with reckless abandon, without wavering, closer and closer... there are three, five, eight beasts... and the first among them suddenly throws back its head and emits a howl like a requiem. — Dmitry Glukhovsky

I started singing rhythmically, and now I'm learning from Otis Redding to push a song instead of just sliding over it — Janis Joplin

George's voice became deeper. He repeated his words rhythmically as though he had said them many times before. 'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch. They ain't got nothing to look ahead to. — John Steinbeck

The primary function of art is not to imitate or represent or interpret, but to create a living thing; it is the reduction of all life to a perfectly composed and dynamic miniature - a microcosm where there is perfect balance of emotion and intellect, stress and strain resolving itself, form rhythmically poised in three dimensions. — Lawren Harris

I glanced at Carson, who had promised things would be alright. His gaze was on the floor, and a muscle in his jaw flexed rhythmically but unhelpfully. If he was trying to send me a message, I was out of luck, because I'd never learned Morse Code for Assholes. — Rosemary Clement-Moore