Rustle Quotes & Sayings

When he combs his hair that is the colour of dead leaves, dead leaves fall out of it; they rustle and drift to the ground as though he were a tree and he can stand as still as a tree, when he wants the doves to flutter softly, crooning as they come, down upon his shoulders, those silly, fat, trusting woodies with the pretty wedding rings round their necks. He makes his whistles out of an elder twig and that is what he uses to call the birds out of the air--all the birds come; and the sweetest singers he will keep in cages. — Angela Carter

I love being in my kitchen. I'm quite a traditional cook, but I make a mean omelette. I'd like to open an omelette restaurant. Cheese and ham, chilli and mushroom, whatever you fancy, I'll rustle up. — Suzanne Shaw

When the leaves rustle, they sound very much like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and when they shiver suddenly, and fall, and scatter away along the ground, they might be the patter of a woman's hurrying footsteps, and the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled shoe. — Daphne Du Maurier

At two o'clock in the morning, if you open your window and listen,
You will hear the feet of the Wind that is going to call the sun.
And the trees in the Shadow rustle and the trees in the moonlight glisten,
And though it is deep, dark night, you feel that the night is done. — Rudyard Kipling

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears. — Chief Seattle

When angels visit us, we do not hear the rustle of wings, nor feel the feathery touch of the breast of a dove; but we know their presence by the love they create in our hearts. — Mary Baker Eddy

They are beautiful, heart-rendingly beautiful, those wilds, with a quality of wide-eyed, unsung, innocent surrender that my lacquered, toy-bright Swiss villages and exhaustively lauded Alps no longer possess. Innumerable lovers have clipped and kissed on the trim turf of old-world mountainsides, on the innerspring moss, by a handy, hygienic rill, on rustic benches under the initialed oaks, and in so many cabanes in so so many beech forests. But in the Wilds of America the open-air lover will not find it easy to indulge in the most ancient of all crimes and pastimes. Poisonous plants burn his sweetheart's buttocks, nameless insects sting his; sharp items of the forest floor prick his knees, insects hers; and all around there abides a sustained rustle of potential snakes
que dis-je,of semi-extinct dragons!
while the crablike seeds of ferocious flowers cling, in a hideous green crust, to gartered black sock and sloppy white sock alike. — Vladimir Nabokov

He couldn't look back at the children. He couldn't think of it. All he could do was watch the eyes of his wife.
He pulled her to him, her body soft, her skin warm. She was life, she was his. He took her lips and tasted his freedom once more. The subtle tenderness. The hope hidden in joined breath. He took it into himself. Soaking in the peace that came with it.
And even as the rustling began he felt still, he felt calm. Scratching and scrapping within the stones, and the rustle of wings. But all Eli knew was the nature of love. — Rachel A. Marks

Ars Poetica

I taught my words to love,
I showed them my heart
and would not give up until their syllables
did not start to beat.

I showed them trees
and what words wouldn't rustle
I hanged, without pity, from the branches.

In the end, words
needed to resemble both me
and the world.

Then
I came to me,
I braced myself between two banks
of a river,
to present a bridge,
a bridge between a bull's horn and grass,
between black stars of light and earth,
between the temple of a woman's head and a man's,
letting words travel over me
like racing cars, electric trains,
only so they could cross faster,
only so they would learn to transport the world,
from itself,
to itself. — Nichita Stanescu

Screen'd is this nook o'er the high, half-reap'd field,
And here till sundown, Shepherd, will I be.
Through the thick corn the scarlet poppies peep,
And round green roots and yellowing stalks I see
Pale blue convolvulus in tendrils creep:
And air-swept lindens yield
Their scent, and rustle down their perfumed showers
Of bloom on the bent grass where I am laid,
And bower me from the August sun with shade;
And the eye travels down to Oxford's towers ... — Matthew Arnold

In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing. — Robert Green Ingersoll

Decker lifted his eyes skyward, expecting something to happen. He didn't know what, perhaps for the stars overhead to explode into shimmery fireworks, or for the sky to crack open and pour down rain and thunder to mark the moment. But nothing happened. The most important moment of his life arrived not with a bang as he'd always expected, but with the quiet rustle of wind through the trees and a serene breeze brushing his cheeks. — Lynsay Sands

A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. — George R R Martin

The night comes stealing o'er me,
And clouds are on the sea;
While the wavelets rustle before me
With a mystical melody. — Heinrich Heine

My arms quickly grew too tired, and all the heat I'd gained from the shower left me. Giving up, I tossed the towel to the floor, crawled between the covers, and curled into a ball. I couldn't even rub my feet together to try to generate more heat. Clay walked in and turned off the lights. I listened to the familiar rustle of clothes. Instead of the usual bounce of him jumping up on the end of the bed, he peeled back the covers, and the bed dipped as he slid in next to me. I didn't bother to pretend I wasn't interested in what he offered. Heat radiated from him, chasing the chill from the sheets. "I really hope you're wearing shorts or something," I said with a slight slur. I stuck my cold feet right on his legs and shimmied over to his side to huddle against his warmth. Boy, was he warm. It didn't matter, though. The shaking didn't stop, but I was too exhausted to worry about it. Sighing, — Melissa Haag

The tea ritual: such a precise repetition of the same gestures and the same tastes; accession to simple, authentic and refined sensations, a license given to all, at little cost, to become aristocrats of taste, because tea is the beverage of the wealthy and the poor; the tea ritual, therefore, has the extraordinary virtue of introducing into the absurdity of our lives an aperture of serene harmony. Yes, the world may aspire to vacuousness, lost souls mourn beauty, insignificance surrounds us. Then let us drink a cup of tea. Silence descends, one hears the wind outside, autumn leaves rustle and take flight, the cat sleeps in a warm pool of light. And, with each swallow, time is sublimed. — Muriel Barbery

I'll rustle up some dinner. — John Steinbeck

The wind stirred the drying leaves of wild grapevines with a papery rustle behind me, and in the distance a murder of crows passed, squabbling in shrill cries. — Diana Gabaldon

That corner in the drive, too, where the trees encroach upon ... the gravel, is not a place in which to pause, not after the sun has set. When the leaves rustle, they sound very much like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and when they shiver suddenly, and fall, and scatter away along the ground, they might be the patter, patter, of a woman's hurrying footstep, and the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled satin shoe. — Daphne Du Maurier

It is good here: rustle and snow-crunch ...
Ski tracks on the splendid finery
of the snow; a memory
that long ages ago
we passed here together. — Anna Akhmatova

But the pinkness and whiteness of underskirts and camisoles, the frilliness of foundation garments, the rustle about the bustle and the fuss about the bust. — Gregory Maguire

They never exhale, the trees; on a very windy day, they rustle and inhale, and then the leaves and the branches all tremble as though something means to strangle the life from them. The sky watches on. The world is filled with anticipation, as if to wonder if this day will be a great day, or a horrible day, or the last day. — Lauren DeStefano

It would be good now, I thought, to be in Paris. The afternoon city heat would have gone. It would be good to sit under the trees near the marionette theatre. It would be quiet there now. There would be no one there but a student or two reading. There you could listen to the rustle of leaves unconscious of the pains of humanity in labour, of a civilisation hastening to its own destruction. There, away from this brassy sea and blood-red earth, you could contemplate the twentieth-century tragedy unmoved; unmoved except by pity for mankind fighting to save itself from the primeval ooze that welled from its own subconscious being. — Eric Ambler

WHEN I GO ALONE AT NIGHT
WHEN I go alone at night to my love-tryst, birds do not sing, the wind does not stir, the houses on both sides of the street stand silent.
It is my own anklets that grow loud at every step and I am ashamed.
When I sit on my balcony and listen for his footsteps, leaves do not rustle on the trees, and the water is still in the river like the sword on the knees of a sentry fallen asleep.
It is my own heart that beats wildly
I do not know how to quiet it.
When my love comes and sits by my side, when my body trembles and my eyelids droop, the night darkens, the wind blows out the lamp, and the clouds draw veils over the stars.
It is the jewel at my own breast that shines and gives light. I do not know how to hide it. — Rabindranath Tagore

The Ranger moved in closer, thrusting his thumb in and out of the vampire's mouth with a lewd sort of motion. "It's still light out. Where ya gunna go, even if I were to let ya out? Ya not a Day Walker, else ya'd be out already trying to rustle up a Werewolf. So why don't ya just relax an' do what those eyes have wanted to do since we first met. — A.L. Wilson

When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and rustle of the corn. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I cried out at the sudden visitation of pain, everyone in a silent church standing in a rustle of suits and dresses to bend back their longest fingernail. — Eric Sennevoight

What a night it was! The jagged masses of heavy dark cloud were rolling at intervals from horizon to horizon, and thin white wreaths covered the stars. Through all the rush of the cloud river the moon swam, breasting the waves and disappearing again in the darkness.
I walked up and down, drinking in the beauty of the quiet earth and the changing sky. The night was absolutely silent. Nothing seemed to be abroad. There was no scurrying of rabbits, or twitter of the half-asleep birds. And though the clouds went sailing across the sky, the wind that drove them never came low enough to rustle the dead leaves in the woodland paths. Across the meadows I could see the church tower standing out black and grey against the sky. ("Man Size In Marble") — E. Nesbit

My wife and I both love cooking - I am an advanced male - so we argue about who gets to rustle up dinner. — Stephen Bayley

As she reached back for the buckle, her fingers met Mr. Meisner's. She jumped. "I can do this ... Sir."
"Ah." He brushed aside her fingers. "I see you've at least remembered the sir."
"One always calls gentlemen that, just as you
"
With only a rustle of cloth to warn her, his teeth met in the lobe of her ear, sending a spark into her middle. Like the melt of winter snow, she felt heat pool in her lower body. Her fingers curled against her collarbone where her hands still rested either side of her neck.
"I'm not a gentleman, Faith. — Cari Silverwood

No rustle came from the trees, no insect buzz or neighbors call ... The woods were silent in their grief. — Leigh Bardugo

How beautiful the old Glen was, in its August ripeness, with its chain of bowery old homesteads, tilled meadows and quiet gardens. The western sky was like a great golden pearl. Far down the harbour was frosted with a dawning moonlight. The air was full of exquisite sounds - sleepy robin whistles, wonderful, mournful, soft murmurs of wind in the twilit trees, rustle of aspen poplars talking in silvery whispers and shaking their dainty, heart-shaped leaves, lilting young laughter from the windows of rooms where the girls were making ready for the dance. The world was steeped in maddening loveliness of sound and colour. He would think only of these things and of the deep, subtle joy they gave him. — L.M. Montgomery

Be composed
be at ease with me
I am Walt Whitman, liberal and lusty as Nature, Not till the sun excludes you do I exclude you, Not till the waters refuse to glisten for you and the leaves to rustle for you, do my words refuse to glisten and rustle for you. — Walt Whitman

So I just live with my insomnia. I do crossword puzzles, or wander out to the music room and fool around on the piano, or read. Those late hours when the world is completely still, when the only sound is the rustle of the air in the vents and the wind visiting the trees outside, when the darkness is tucked tight around the house and you feel as life itself the movements of your own consciousness-these are wonderful hours to read. There is no interruption. — Stephen Goodwin

A garden is to be enjoyed, and should satisfy the mind and not only the eye of the beholder. Sounds such as the rustle of bamboo and the dripping of water, scents and sensations such as grass or gravel or stone underfoot, appeal to the emotions and play a part in the total impression. — Penelope Hobhouse

Rincewind paused. In the deep canyons of his mind he thought he heard the distant rustle of ancient paper. — Terry Pratchett

The tiniest of earthquakes seemed to rustle through him, the kind that shakes petals off flowers, as Justen became aware of the gulf between what he was supposed to feel for Persis Blake and what he actually did. — Diana Peterfreund

This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter its course, its density and nature. To live around a true poet is to feel your blood run thin, to dream a paradise of anemia, and to hear, in your veins, the rustle of tears. — Emil Cioran

It wouldn't be right, the first night on Mars, to make a loud noise, to introduce a strange, silly bright thing like a stove. It would be a kind of imported blasphemy. There'd be time for that later; time to throw condensed-milk cans in the proud Martian canals; time for copies of the New York Times to blow and caper and rustle across the lone gray Martian sea bottoms; time for banana peels and picnic papers in the fluted, delicate ruins of the old Martian valley towns. Plenty of time for that. — Ray Bradbury

The Nazis knew they were doing wrong, so they hid everything; the Bolsheviks were convinced they were doing right, so they kept everything. Like it or not, you're a Russian historian, a searcher for lost souls, and in Russia the truth is always written not in ink, like in other places, but in innocent blood. These archives are as sacred as Golgotha. In the dry rustle of the files you can hear the crying of children, the shunting of trains, the echo of footsteps down to the cellars, the single shot of the Nagant pistol delivering the seven grams. The very paper smells of blood" (401). — Simon Montefiore

I put a sour cherry pastille on my tongue, but the combination jarred. A meaty, protein taste was called for. With a cool skin, sticky sweet fragrance in the nostrils, the aleatory drip of timeless water echoing in your ears, a limbo beyond the muscle spindles... you become a spiced mummy in a cool chamber beneath the Nile. This salt-surfeited breeze tingling every corpuscle of my skin set me adrift on a cool back eddy near a basser sea... but the wave lap and sibilance of the palm leaves was like the rustle of a costly veil... in what exotic world did a vortex of primary colours drain into the eyes?... did it all make me a taffeted plankter drinking substance from the spectrum of a fractured sun?"

-"Cancerous Kisses of Crocodiles — William Scott Home

His voice was as intimate as the rustle of sheets. — Dorothy Parker

Success soon palls. The joyous time is when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows. — Charles Buxton

When I am upstairs in my little garret I have only to remember and imagine the rustle of your dress, and I am ready to bite off my hands. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I don't believe in symbolic gods.I believe that god exists all around us.In the flow of the river,in the rustle of the trees,in the whisper of the winds. He speaks to us all the time.all we need to do is listen. — Amish Tripathi

My room was in one of those turrets and at night I could hear the sea and the faint rustle of eelgrass in the soft wind. The weather was perfect that summer. No storms. Blue skies and just the right amount of wind every day. The sailors were in heaven. — Katherine Hall Page

Unwinter did not wind his Horn or glance back. He did not lift an armored hand to summon his knights. He did not command them to follow. And yet. The whisper became a rustle, the rustle deepened to a throbbing, the throbbing swelled into a roar. The highborn fullbloods of Unwinter, pale and wasted, sallied forth clasped in their own black armor, riding by two and three on the nightmare mounts enticed from the Dreaming Sea's foaming edge. — Lilith Saintcrow

Wind of the night, Questing, swaying, calling, Rustle of dull grasses, Why do you trouble me? — John Gould Fletcher

I watch as the seasons change. Leaves float in the sky and fall gracefully to the earth. I sit and wish that you were here with me. Night takes the day, and I can feel you near. I can't see your face, but I know you are in my dreams. I hear you. I wait to find you, the one who haunts my soul. Where are you? Only the seasons ever change; leaves continue to fall and then rustle about the earth. Night continues to reign over me. Though the memories are lost, I know a part of you is still with me. — Jillian Peery

Her hand closes on smooth metal. Her fingers test the sharpness of the edge. Perfect. It's a fresh blade.
The girls' voices rustle in her head. Their clamoring pushes out all rational thought. She rolls up her sleeve.
The bite of the blade kills the noise. It wipes out the memory of those staring faces. Willow looks at her arm, at the life springing from her. Tiny pinpricks of red that blossom into giant peonies. — Julia Hoban

Every day or two I strolled to the village to hear some of the gossip which is incessantly going on there, circulating either from mouth to mouth, or from newspaper to newspaper, and which, taken in homeopathic doses, was really as refreshing in its way as the rustle of leaves and the peeping of frogs. — Henry David Thoreau

An unkindness of ravens flew from the north and landed in a rustle in the surrounding trees with varied sounds of begging and recognition. Years ago, the local ravens had figured out that Lorth not only walked with death but also left portions of his kills for his eldritch companions. The creatures always seemed to know where he was, a sense born of thousands of years of hunting with wolves. — F.T. McKinstry

They shouldered their packs and took up their sticks, and walked round the corner to the west side of Bag End. 'Good-bye!' said Frodo, looking at the dark blank windows. He waved his hand, and then turned and (following Bilbo, if he had known it) hurried after Peregrin down the garden-path. They jumped over the low place in the hedge at the bottom and took to the fields, passing into the darkness like a rustle in the grasses. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I wish I could have found the red juniper for you," she said softly. It seemed such an insignificant gift to offer, but finding the tree was important to Michael and the only thing she could do for him. A rustle of fabric and the tread of his boots signaled that he had come to stand behind her, so close she could smell the scent of leather and sweat and man. "I wish I could build a castle for you," he said simply. — Elizabeth Camden

He interrupted her with a kiss, an embrace, a touch, caresses and then with everything, his whole being, his every thought, his only thought, everything, everything, everything. They broke the silence with sighs and the rustle of clothing strewn on the floor. They broke the silence very gently, lazily, and they were considerate and very thorough. They were caring and tender and, although neither quite knew what caring and tenderness were, they succeeded because they very much wanted to. And they were in no hurry whatsoever. The whole world had ceased to exist for a brief moment, but to them, it seemed like a whole eternity. — Andrzej Sapkowski

The experience of playing music at a young age really opens up one's mind to different melody in life itself, literally - like, when you've even played a recorder, or whatever, it becomes a lot easier to hear the beauty in a bird's song, or the quiet tune in a gentle rustle of the wind. — Dave Smalley

There is a rustle of dead leaves. Dried sap, a branch crack, the whirring teeth of Mr. Omaru's saw. My father
my real father
is a limb that got axed off the family tree a long time ago now. My mother coughs and cleans phantom juices off her silver with a cloth doily. My sisters clench their knives. — Karen Russell

Singing at the Edge of Need by Susan Laughter Meyers (fragment)
Three things I turned my back to: light,
the past, the trunk of an old tree.
One by one each unfastened itself.
To sit is to present when the roll is called.
I knew that. I wore my hat of straw, fringed
like fingers sifting a breeze. My hat
collecting a thousand thoughts ...
... I had no map
and few lessons yet to guide me.
I was a study of questions. O Grandmother,
I was small, sitting in the midst of wildness,
a child thrilling at the boss of thunder.
A rustle of leaves, moss tipping at me-
I was small, I was hunger, I was thirst-
wings flitting in a brush pile. O Grandmother,
I was small, kneeling in the midst of wonder,
quaking and singing at the edge of need. — Susan Laughter Meyers

There was a rustle near his ear, and he turned his head to see the crow. It stood on the grass a foot away, a blotch of wind-ruffled black feathers, regarding him with a bead-bright eye. Deciding that he posed no threat, it swiveled its neck with casual ease and jabbed its thick sharp bill into Jack Randall's eye. — Diana Gabaldon

Only the rustle of those colours waving in the air, impenetrable, lighter than nothingness — Alessandro Baricco

Something about the time of year depressed him deeply. Overcast skies and cutting wind, leaves falling, dusk falling, dark too soon, night flying down before you are ready. It's a terror. It's a bareness of the soul. He hears the rustle of nuns. Here comes winter in the bone. We've set it loose on the land. There must be some song or poem, some folk magic we can use to ease this fear. Skelly Bone Pete. Here it is in the landscape and sky. We've set it loose. We've opened up the ground and here it is. He took Interstate 45 south. He didn't want them to kill Leon. He felt a saturating sense of death, a dread in the soft filling of his bones, the suckable part, approaching Galveston now. — Don DeLillo

Her ivory hands on the ivory keys
Strayed in a fitful fantasy,
Like the silver gleam when the poplar trees
Rustle their pale leaves listlessly,
Or the drifting foam of a restless sea
When the waves show their teeth in the flying breeze. — Oscar Wilde

Books for me were what the ocean is to the fearless explorer-deep and mysterious, boundless and soothing. I loved the smell of books, the feel of their weight in my hands, the rustle of the pages as I turned them, the magnificent illustrations on the covers that promised hidden treasures within. — Steve Pemberton

But love ... of whom?" I say at last. "Of what? What great passion would forestall death?"
Her graceful eyebrow arches, "You do not know? You, a poet?"
I do not know. I say as much.
She leans forward so that I can hear the rustle of her starched cotton blouse and silk beneath. Our faces are so close that I can feel the warmth from her skin. "Then you need more time to learn," she whispers, her voice as filled with emotion as when she cried out last night. — Dan Simmons

Wine makes all things possible. GEORGE R. R. MARTIN, The Mystery Knight A cold wind was blowing from the north, and it made the trees rustle like living things. GEORGE R. R. MARTIN, A Game of Thrones Nothing burns like the cold. GEORGE R. R. MARTIN, A Game of Thrones Laughter is poison to fear. — George R R Martin

What struck me most was the silence. It was a great silence, unlike any I have encountered on Earth, so vast and deep that I began to hear my own body: my heart beating, my blood vessels pulsing, even the rustle of my muscles moving over each other seemed audible. There were more stars in the sky than I had expected. The sky was deep black, yet at the same time bright with sunlight. — Alexey Leonov

The mind is constantly generating thoughts and the voice of the heart is literally drowned out by the 'thought-churn' making it difficult to access intuitive knowledge. If you stop the train of thoughts and simply contemplate the emptiness, you will hear the rustle of the morning stars, the inner voice that has no words. The heart could provide answers to many of our questions if only we could hear its voice. — Vadim Zeland

The dew seemed to sparkle more brightly on the green leaves the air to rustle among them with a sweeter music and the sky itself to look more blue and bright. Such is the influence which the condition of our own thoughts, exercise, even over the appearance of external objects. — Charles Dickens

Phaedra's body pulled at the light, testing the softer side of midnight. Hyacinth usually slipped out of bed in the middle of the night, careful to fit her rustle inside Phaedra's dreams. — Naomi Jackson

Nothing chased nightmares away faster than the rustle of printed paper. — Cornelia Funke

The White Seal Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green. The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow, Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas! Seal Lullaby — Rudyard Kipling

Yes, well, irony is no protection when you can feel the breeze from his scythe on your skin and hear the rustle of his wings. — Michael Gruber

The gentle rustle of armies crawling the planet like ants. Anybody with any sense knows what's coming. — Vanessa Veselka

And Oliver, rising, could hear the rustle of the dress of the Duchess as she came down the passage. — Virginia Woolf

Not that Strider was intoxicated. He was the sober one. He reclined on a delightfully cushioned lounge in the sprawling ranch Paris had rented. In Dallas, Texas, of all places. Promiscuity had decked himself out, too, wearing a Stetson (weird), no shirt (understandable), unfastened jeans (smart) and cowboy boots (weird again). Dude looked ready to rustle cattle or something. At — Gena Showalter

I haven't been here long, but, nevertheless, all the same, what I've managed to observe and verify here arouses the indignation of my Tartar blood. By God, I don't want such virtues! I managed to make a seven-mile tour here yesterday. Well, it's exactly the same as in those moralizing little German picture books: everywhere here each house has its Vater, terribly virtuous and extraordinarily honest. So honest it's even frightening to go near him. I can't stand honest people whom it's frightening to go near. Each such Vater has a family, and in the evening they all read edifying books aloud. Over their little house, elms and chestnuts rustle. A sunset, a stork on the roof, and all of it extraordinarily poetic and touching ... — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable ... the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street ... by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese. — Hal Borland

At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were to exchange. 'I cannot swim. You know it?"

In the dark she saw the flash of his smile. 'Trust me.' And he drew her with a strong hand until the green phosphorescence beaded her ankles, and deeper, and deeper, until the thick milk-warm water, almost unfelt, was up to her waist. She heard him swear feelingly to himself as the salt water searched out, discovered his burns. Then with a rustle she saw his pale head sink back into the quiet sea and at the same moment she was gripped and drawn after him, her face to the stars, drawn through the tides with the sea lapping like her lost hair at her cheeks, the drive of his body beneath her pulling them both from the shore. They were launched on the long journey towards the slim shape, black against glossy black, which was the brigantine, with Thompson on board. — Dorothy Dunnett

Though everyone in the bar knew who he was, no one asked him about the death, though one old man did rustle his newspaper suggestively. — Donna Leon

So what you gonna do?"

"Push a stick into the beehive and rustle up some bees. The Larousses are hosting a party today. I think we should avail ourselves of their hospitality."

"We got an invite?"

"Has not having one ever stopped us before?"

"No, but sometimes I just like to be invited to shit, you know what I'm sayin', instead of havin' to bust in, get threatened, irritate the nice white folks, put the fear of the black man on them."

He paused, seemed to think for a while about what he had just said, then brightened.

"Sounds good, doesn't it?" I said.

"Real good," he agreed. — John Connolly

Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,
Amid the rustle of his planted hills,
Life overflows without ambitious pains;
And rains down life until the basin spills,
And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills ... — William Butler Yeats

A few days ago I walked along the edge of the lake and was treated to the crunch and rustle of leaves with each step I made. The acoustics of this season are different and all sounds, no matter how hushed, are as crisp as autumn air. — Eric Sloane

The rustle of the poplar leaves about the house worried her, it sounded so like pattering raindrops, and the dull, far-away roar of the gulf, to which she listened delightedly at other times, loving its strange, sonorous, haunting rhythm, now seemed like a prophecy of storm and disaster to a small maiden who particularly wanted a fine day. — L.M. Montgomery

Believing that the rustle in the grass is a dangerous predator when it is only the wind does not cost much, but believing that a dangerous predator is the wind may cost an animal its life. — Michael Shermer

In the absence of ancient hatreds, chauvinism can easily rustle up modern ones. — Samanth Subramanian

I hope for the experience of people standing together, turning their backs to the city and facing this, and hearing the leaves rustle. Well, maybe it won't be as bucolic as at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but I know you will feel removed from the city. — Michael Arad

When I write this in bed, I can almost hear the echo of the wind over the sand, or the groans of wooden panels around me. I can almost smell the dustiness of the camel, taste the bitterness of saltbush. And when I dream, your warm hands cover my shoulders. Your whispers carry stories and sound like the rustle of spinifex. I still wear that ring, you know ... at night, when no one is watching. — Lucy Christopher

So you're just here - "
"For a couple of days," she said, ducking her head. "To see you."
He smiled. "Really?"
She nodded, wincing already, and he understood why; he knew better than anyone how it sounded, realized how crazy it was to fly halfway around the world to see a person you hardly knew. But he also knew exactly what to say to make her feel better.
"Me too," he said, moving close so that there was only the rustle of clothing and limbs and beating hearts as he looped an arm over her shoulder. "I only came to see you. — Jennifer E. Smith

Girls are important: Remember that very few stories are of great interest without the rustle of a skirt. — Jill Lepore

[Peter Pan] has never broken his terrible habit of eavesdropping. So, maybe that wasn't the rustle of pages you heard while this story lasted, but Peter Pan himself, listening in. In exchanged for a story of yours, he might show you his most prized possession: James Hooks' map of Neverland.
In exchange for a smile, he may show you Neverland itself. — Geraldine McCaughrean

What was that sound? That rustling noise? It could be heard in the icy North, where there was not one leaf left upon one tree, it could be heard in the South, where the crinoline skirts lay deep in the mothballs, as still and quiet as wool. It could be heard from sea to shining sea, o'er purple mountains' majesty and upon the fruited plain. What was it? Why, it was the rustle of thousands of bags of potato chips being pulled from supermarket racks; it was the rustle of plastic bags being filled with beer and soda pop and quarts of hard liquor; it was the rustle of newspaper pages fanning as readers turned eagerly to the sports section; it was the rustle of currency changing hands as tickets were scalped for forty times their face value and two hundred and seventy million dollars were waged upon one or the other of two professional football teams. It was the rustle of Super Bowl week ... — Tom Robbins

I'm getting stale. I always do this time of year. I keep my nose to the grindestone and put in long hours and rustle up good meals and do all the chores and run errands and get along with people
and have a fine time doing it and enjoy life. Then I realize, bang, that I'm tired and I don't want to wait on my family for a while and I wish I could go away somewhere and have people wait on me hand and foot, and dress up and go to restaurants and the theater and act like a woman of the world. I feel as if I'd been swallowed up whole by all these powerful DeVotos and I'd like to be me for a while with somebody who never heard the name. — Joan Reardon

A garden without cats, it will be generally agreed, can scarcely deserve to be called a garden at all ... much of the magic of the heather beds would vanish if, as we bent over them, there was no chance that we might hear a faint rustle among the blossoms, and find ourselves staring into a pair of sleepy green eyes. — Beverley Nichols

Here are the basic rules of LNTC, as I understood it:

Leave no evidence that you ever left the comfort of your bed to struggle through the woods with the sole intention of eating starch and beans and lying on your back on a rocky and downward-sloping campsite while you stare at the ceiling of your tent and listen to the sounds of a variety of carnivores as they rustle around outside. Leave no evidence that you are scared witless, that every movement terrifies you, even the most quiet scratching that you will realize in the morning must have been chipmunks. Leave no evidence that you are afraid you didn't dig your glory hole deep enough and that you used twice as much toilet paper as everyone else. Leave as little evidence as possible to indicate that you are the most incompetent camper to ever set foot on the trail.

Needless to say, it was my first time camping. — Erin Saldin

Look beyond that light,' says my father. 'Look hard and you'll see people filing into the theater. You'll see ushers run up and down the aisles; people talk, programs rustle-you'll hear a murmur. When the lights start to dim, the murmur rises, and then, just a moment before the curtain goes up, the noise stops-everyone in the house holds their breath, everyone knows what is going to happen. This is the moment I've always loved most:the anticipation of magic, the expectation of illusion. — Elena Gorokhova

She delighted in the smell of the ink, the rough feel of the paper between her fingers, the rustle of sweet pages, the shapes of letters before her eyes. — Cynthia Hand

There is a language to dying. It creeps like a shadow alongside the passing years and the taste of it hides in the corners of our mouths. It finds us whether we are sick or healthy. It is a secret hushed thing that lives in the whisper of the nurses' skirts as they rustle up and down our stairs. They've taught me to face the language one syllable at a time, slowing creating an unwilling meaning. — Sarah Pinborough

Each October I walk into the woods
looking for bones: rabbit skulls,
a grackle spine, the pelvis of a deer
with the blood bleached out. What died
in the lush of roses and mint
shines out from the tangle of twigs
that bind it to the place
of its last leaping. The living lack
that kind of clarity. In late April,
when the water spreads out and out
till everything is lilies and seepage,
there is only the mystery of tracks,
a rustle receding in the many reeds.
And so the bones accumulate
across my windowsill: the flightless
wings and exaggerated grins,
the silent unmoving reminders
of where the glories of April lead. — Charles Rafferty

The sun, a red wheel, was sinking slowly in the west. Besides being spectacularly beautiful, the early-summer sunset was exceedingly soft and gentle: black mulberry leaves turned as red as roses; pristine white acacia petals shed an enshrouding pale-green aura. Mild evening breezes made both the mulberry leaves and the acacia petals dance and whirl, filling the woods with a soft rustle. — Mo Yan

It did not occur to me that absence of human companionship does not assure solitude. It may, on the contrary, plunge one into an environment compared with which New York or London would appear deserts. For we take memory and imagination with us. The seabirds that scream overhead or waddle along the margins of the surf; the grotesque forms of twisted cedars; the rustle of sea-grass in the wind; the interminable percussion of the breakers; the dead infinity of the sand itself - there can be no solitude, in the sense of freedom from disturbances of thought, in the presence of such things. They draw us back into the maelstrom. ("Absolute Evil") — Julian Hawthorne