Quotes & Sayings About Sirens

No matter how loud the sirens or how numerous the hazard signs, we all touch the flames at least once to prove they're hot. — Richelle E. Goodrich

For indeed when painters themselves wish to represent sirens and satyrs [20] by means of especially bizarre forms, they surely cannot assign to them utterly new natures. Rather, they simply fuse together the members of various animals. Or if perhaps they concoct something so utterly novel that nothing like it has ever been seen before (and thus is something utterly fictitious and false), yet certainly at the very least the colors from which they fashion it ought to be true. And — Rene Descartes

Let's get something straight. I'm supposed to be the bad guy. I will always disappoint you. Your parents will hate me. You should not root for me. I am not your role model. I don't know why everyone seems to forget that. I never do. — Kami Garcia

The diversity of sounds rule my ever presence with their highs and blows, encompassing the totality of sensual experience. I'm a child of the sirens of knowledge, a warrior for the truth in a world of washed perspectives and harsh realities. My voice cries the initial cry of the unborn into the perplexing illusion. I long for the realization of the human drama, the defeat of the dogs war, and the unity of existence. The beloved Gods of virtue have been undersold for the bleeding bread of empathy. I now awaist the triumphant roar of destiny, dressed in the inviting hand of a mother, perplexed by discovering, aroused by spirit. The door is open, the road transformed. The exit code to civilization is hacked beyond dispair, chased but the moon toward the freeing sun, on our journey to light. This is an open plea to the beautiful insanity of your hearts. It is time to consummate the kiss of oblivion into the obsidian of love! — Serj Tankian

The Fates and Furies, as well as the Graces and Sirens, glide with linked hands over life. — Jean Paul Friedrich Richter

I am alone. Alone except for the sirens, alone except for the burning, empty city on the edge of a rotting, pollutedriver green with algae, host to rubber-skinned, gibbous-eyed things with mouths large enough to swallow me whole andprotruding stomachs ready to digest me. — Caitlin Kittredge

Except for the sound of the rain, on the road, on the roofs, on the umbrella, there was absolute silence: only the dying moan of the sirens continued for a moment or two to vibrate within the ear. It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with the rain falling, without love or pity. — Graham Greene

No sirens. Let Parker drive," Frazer ordered. — Toni Anderson

Labor is rest from the sorrows that greet us; from all the petty vexations that meet us; from the sin-promptings that assail us; from the world-sirens that lure us to ill — Frances Sargent Osgood

A city is where you can sign a petition, boo the chief justice, fish off a pier, gaze at a hippopotamus, buy a flower at the corner, or get a good hamburger or a bad girl at 4 A.M. A city is where sirens make white streaks of sound in the sky and foghorns speak in dark grays. San Francisco is such a city. — Herb Caen

Yes, sir. I went downstairs to' - a blurry moment when no words come to me, then it passes and I continue - 'to pursue my investigations further. I sought to liberate the women I found, but they were secured with chains.'

Jackson nods. I'm doing well. 'And you weren't able to call for help, because...'

'Because of the women on the boat. If Sikorsky's men had heard police sirens, the women could have been tossed overboard immediately. I had to let those men come to me, so I could...um...'

Shoot the fuckers.

'Arrest them,' says Jackson.

'Exactly. So I could arrest them. — Harry Bingham

So I'll keep you wondering what time I'm arriving
And you'll drive me crazy with your backseat driving
And I'll talk in my sleep and you'll steal all the covers
We'll argue it out and we'll call ourselves lovers
And I'll stay in my body and you'll stay in your own
'Cause we know that we're born and we're dying alone.
So we turn out the light while the sirens are screaming
And we kiss for the waking, and then join the dreaming. — Dar Williams

For the several thousands of years before they became firefighters and physicians, women were sirens, enchantresses, snares. At times it seems as if female powerlessness is male self-preservation in disguise. And for millennia, this has made for a zero-sum game: A woman's intelligence was a man's deception. — Stacy Schiff

Even a God finds it hard to love and be wise at the same time. — Tina Smith

When I do my vocal warm-ups everyone calls me the dolphin because I do stupid siren noises. — Ella Henderson

[Non-flammable? Challenge accepted.]
[Alan], I texted, [arson is bad.]
[It's in the spirit of academic inquiry! It's SCIENCE!]
['Science' is not a legal defense.]
[Damn them.] — K.D. Sarge

From a mile away, the sound. The sirens. — Lauren Groff

Inside, Lucifer chuckled with glee. As usual, things were going along as planned. His plan. His hellcat minion was about to meet the mother of his future litters. Or get enslaved by a bunch of sirens and turned into a stud. Either way, his will would be done. And the ranks of his demonic legion would swell. — Eve Langlais

Socrates and Phaedrus, like Odysseus, must sail by the Sirens without being enchanted: instead of listening to their voices, they will outdo them with their own logos. . . . Plato's Odysseus does not even let the song of the Sirens enter him but deafens it with his own rational discourse. Philosophy is itself a Sirens' song, the antidote against the dispersion and drowning of the soul into the body, that is, against the ultimate wandering. — Silvia Montiglio

There were sirens and the cops were there and they took me to the police station and I got arrested, it was really embarrassing. They actually just- they impeached me over the whole thing, they tried, well, they did impeach me, but I didn't have to actually stop being president, so it was okay. The police weren't actually that involved, it was mostly Congress. — Hank Green

Sebastian, who had begun to laugh, seemed struck by that last comment. "Ahhh," he said softly. "That explains it." He was silent for a moment, lost in some distant, pleasurable memory. "Dangerous creatures, wallflowers. Approach them with the utmost caution. They sit quietly in corners, appearing abandoned and forlorn, when in truth they're sirens who lure men to their downfall. You won't even notice the moment she steals the heart right out of your body - and then it's hers for good. A wallflower never gives your heart back." "Are you finished amusing yourself?" Gabriel asked, impatient with his father's flight of fancy. — Lisa Kleypas

everything is normal we have our tv and mcdonalds people wash their cars on their driveways on a sunday afternoon and mow their lawns hang pictures of their blonde blue-eyed children neatly on magnolia walls and in the future everyone will sidestep questions speak with the vapidity of politicians in a limited language devoid of passion and truth and in the future air-raid sirens will sound every time the sun comes out and no one will ever put a bullet in the head of a politician again everything will be bland and painless and whitewashed and the government will finally have won completely — U.V. Ray

When I was young, I thought it was normal to go to sleep to the sounds of sirens. People on my block were in the biggest gang in the city. They were my close friends - they showed me the ropes, who to watch out for. — Emily Rios

This is how most stories end in the hospital. Not with crash carts and sirens and electric shocks to the chest, but with an empty room, a crisp white bed, silence. — Jacob M. Appel

Three guys and a girl were leaning against a black raised pickup ... I had to do a double take as this group was nothing like I had ever seen before. — Meredith T. Taylor

Renunciation isn't a moral imperative or a form of self-denial. It's simply cooperation with the way things are: for moments do pass away, one after the other. Resisting this natural unfolding doesn't change it; resistance only makes it painful. So we renounce our resistance, our noncooperation, our stubborn refusal to enter life as it is. We renounce our fantasy of a beautiful past and an exciting future we can cherish and hold on to. Life just isn't like this. Life, time, is letting go, moment after moment. Life and time redeem themselves constantly, heal themselves constantly, only we don't know this, and much as we long to be healed and redeemed, we refuse to recognize this truth. This is why the sirens' songs are so attractive and so deadly. They propose a world of indulgence and wishful thinking, an unreal world that is seductive and destructive. (142) — Norman Fischer

That destructive siren, sloth, is ever to be avoided. — Horace

Scheherazade, of course, was always in the back of my mind, because she's also a storyteller identified as female who tells a lot of anti-female stories. There's a parade in The Arabian Nights of sorceresses, adulteresses, ghouls, sirens, harridans. — Marina Warner

Once we build beyond a human scale, once we conceive ourselves as Titans or as gods, we are lost in magnitude; we cannot control or limit what we do. The statistics of magnitude call out like Sirens to the statistics of destruction. If we have built towering cities, we have raised even higher the cloud of megadeath. If people are as grass before God, they are as nothing before their machines ...
... Past the scale of the human, our works do not liberate us - they confine us. They cut off access to the wilderness of Creation where we must go to be reborn - to receive the awareness, at once humbling and exhilarating, grievous and joyful, that we are a part of Creation, one with all that we live from and all that, in turn, lives from us. They destroy the communal rites of passage that turn us the wilderness and bring us home again. — Wendell Berry

Where I grew up - I grew up on the north side of Akron, lived in the projects. So those scared and lonely nights - that's every night. You hear a lot of police sirens, you hear a lot of gunfire. Things that you don't want your kids to hear growing up. — LeBron James

An ambulance, lights and sirens blaring, sped past us, going in the opposite direction, toward school, and for an instant, I felt a nervous excitement and thought, it could be someone I know. I almost wished it was someone I knew, to give new form and depth to the sadness I still felt. — John Green

The sirens truly had no use for males other than their cocks and semen - the creamy kind, not the sailing kind. — Eve Langlais

We don't talk after that, not really. And it's not perfect, I mean, there aren't, like, rainbows and fireworks and sirens going off, but it's perfect anyway. Because it's Danny almost toppling over when he wrestles out of his jeans, and it's Danny laughing into the skin of my belly when I hit my head on the wall hard enough that we both hear it crack. And it's Danny who tangles our fingers together when we're almost there, holding on tight, watching my face, and it's Danny who lets me touch and explore and whisper and press smiling kisses into his hair and his cheek later, after. — Amy Garvey

New York! I say New York, let black blood flow into your blood.
Let it wash the rust from your steel joints, like an oil of life
Let it give your bridges the curve of hips and supple vines.
Now the ancient age returns, unity is restored,
The recociliation of the Lion and Bull and Tree
Idea links to action, the ear to the heart, sign to meaning.
See your rivers stirring with musk alligators
And sea cows with mirage eyes. No need to invent the Sirens.
Just open your eyes to the April rainbow
And your eyes, especially your ears, to God
Who in one burst of saxophone laughter
Created heaven and earth in six days,
And on the seventh slept a deep Negro sleep. — Leopold Sedar Senghor

We lived in Manhattan, which was unbearable sometimes because it was so noisy. There were sirens blaring, construction sites going, people shouting and swearing at each other. — Rachel Tucker

Because prime numbers are fucking serious, man. Some serious shit. They can make you lose it. They're like sirens. They call you in with their isolated beauty and before you know it you are in some major mind-shit. — Matt Haig

Right at that moment it was as if we were the only two people left in the world. And I don't mean that to sound corny; it just honestly did. The only sounds were the droning crickets and chip-chips of the bats, the farawy wind against the sand, and the occasional distant yowl of a dingo. There were no car horns.No trains. No jack-hammers. No lawnmowers No planes. No sirens. No alarms. No anything human. If you'd told me that you'd saved me from a nuclear holocaust, I might have believed you. — Lucy Christopher

By evening, when the winds rose yet again, the power began to stutter at half-strength, and the sirens to fail. From those streetlights whose bulbs hadn't been stoned, a tea-colored dusk settled in uncertain tides. It fell on the dirty militias of pack dogs, all bullying and foaming against one another, and on the abandoned cars, and everything - everything - was flattened, equalized in the gloom of half-light. Like the subjects in a browning photograph in some antique photo album, only these times weren't antique. They were now. — Gregory Maguire

Then, in the dark hour before dawn, sirens blared. They were announcing departures for a world that now and forever meant nothing to me. — Albert Camus

If anyone asks you if you're taken," I said, "the answer is yes."
"I think I can live with that," he promised.
"Good," I said. "Because you don't want to see me be cross."
"Too late."
"Shut up and dance, Walt."
"Shut up and dance, Walt."
We did - with the music of a psychotic griffin screaming behind us, and the sirens and horns of Brooklyn wailing below. It was quite romantic. — Rick Riordan

Is it dawn? She climbs the ladder and presses her ear to the trapdoor. No more sirens. Maybe the house burned — Anthony Doerr

Listen -

You are not a lonesome freeway with a history
of accidents, or the damaged record of
every pair of palms that tried to unravel you. You are
not a regret, not a letdown. Here you are, living
like a scarlet war - no part of you wants to be
real. This is when you need to open like a bud
to the arms that hold you, even if you prefer to run
from the sun into the shadowy sirens that call
your name like a prayer.

Repeat after me - you are a vessel of roses, and
you wont always be in bloom, but I promise that
the frost never stays for long. I promise that the
light will find you. — Bianca Sparacino

I find that I'm always struggling with the noise of the city. When I get a good take, there will be a horn or a siren or something. So it makes me very conscious of outside sounds, which in a way maybe led me to incorporate the field recordings. — Julia Kent

One morning every spring, for exactly two minutes, Israel comes to a stop. Pedestrians stand in place, drivers pull over to the side of the road, and nobody speaks, sings, eats, or drinks as the nation pays respect to the victims of the Nazi genocide. From the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, the only sounds one hears are sirens. — Michael Specter

Genevieve Windham was not pretty, she was exquisite. Pretty in present English parlance meant blond hair and blue eyes, regular features, and a willingness to spend significant sums at the modiste of the hour. Unless a woman was emaciated or obese, her figure mattered little, there being corsets, padding, and other devices available to augment the Creator's handiwork. Failing those artifices, one resorted to the good offices of the portraitist, who could at least render a lady's likeness pretty even if the lady herself were not. Lady Jenny left pretty sitting on its arse in the mud several leagues back. Her eyes were a luminous, emerald green, not blue. Her hair was gold, not blond. Her figure surpassed the willowy lines preferred by Polite Society and veered off into the realms of sirens, houris, and dreams a grown man didn't admit aloud lest he imperil his dignity. The itching over Elijah's body faded in the face of the itch he felt to sketch her. She — Grace Burrowes

The sirens sing sotto voce these days, and the young already have enough wax in their ears to pass them by without danger. — Allan Bloom

The cakes and pies and casseroles beckoned like gastronomic sirens, and there was no one to lash me to the mast. — Chris Fabry

For all the sirens, game-show buzzers, and drum-rolls of life, it is the nature of men to die quietly. — D.B.C. Pierre

Abroad, she discovered that the transformation of music into noise was a planetary process by which mankind was entering the historical phase of total ugliness. The total ugliness to come had made itself felt first as omnipresent acoustical ugliness: cars, motorcycles, electric guitars, drills, loudspeakers, sirens. The omnipresence of visual ugliness would soon follow. — Milan Kundera

A bookshop is powder-magazine, a dynamite-shed, a drugstore of poisons, a bar of intoxicants, a den of opiates, an island of sirens. — John Cowper Powys

We have to be vigilant on two fronts: (1) to not let our anti-imperialism lead to the defense of authoritarian regimes in the region and (2) to not let our enthusiasm for rebellion lead to cheering on the cruise missiles from US warships. These two sirens should worry us as we make our hesitant way alongside the rebirth of a New Left in the Arab world. — Vijay Prashad

Run! Helena cried and ran down the staircase. Maryse took the steps two at a time, passing Helena on the way, and almost fell as she hit the foyer floor. The scream of police sirens was far too close for comfort, and Maryse struggled to pick up the pace. Skidding on the polished wood, she dashed around the corner and onto the textured tile in the kitchen, where her shoes had a much better grip and she picked up some speed. She ran into the laundry room, shoving down the window where she'd entered the house. Then she rushed out the side door, locking it before she slammed it behind her. She made for the huge hedge of bushes that separated Helena — Jana Deleon

It's strange how money seems to silence a neighborhood," I say quietly. "On my street, where no one has money, it's so loud. Sirens blaring, people shouting, car doors slamming, stereos thumping. There's always someone, somewhere, making noise. — Colleen Hoover

It's going to be okay," she said.
The woman slowly nodded, then started crying. Khaki pulled the woman against her numb shoulder, keeping an eye out as the sounds of sirens approached from a distance. About time.
As the sirens got louder, Khaki wondered again why she wasn't in more pain. And why the hell had it taken backup so long to get here? — Paige Tyler

Listen when the sirens sing. How else will you learn? — Marty Rubin

The Sirens flicked their wings at the wall, inscribing it with their own blue ink: Even in penance is beauty; blessed are all the ocean's drowned! — Catherynne M Valente

Ready over there, Goblin?" I ask Sevro over the com. "Cacatne ursus in silvis?" Does a bear shit in the woods? The ship spins and shudders. More sirens howl. "Latin, now?" "Audentes fortuna juvat," Sevro chuckles. "Fortune favors the bold? You deserve to die if that's really going to be the last thing you say in this life." "Yes? Well, you may suck my - " My — Pierce Brown

Labor is rest
from the sorrow that greet us;
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us,
Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us,
Rest from the world-sirens that hire us to ill.
Work
and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow;
Work
thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow;
Lie not down wearied 'neath Woe's weeping willow!
Work with a stout heart and resolute will! — Frances Sargent Osgood

One last thing," he said. "Stop looking for me."
"I'm not looking for you." I scoffed.
He touched his index finger to my forehead, my skin absurdly warming under his touch. It didn't escape me that he couldn't seem to stop finding reasons to touch me. Nor did I miss that I didn't want him to stop. "Under all the layers, a part of you remembers. It's the part that came looking for me tonight. It's that part that's going to get you killed, if you're not careful."
We stood face-to-face, both of us breathing hard. The sirens were so close now.
"What am I supposed to tell the police?" I said.
"You're not going to talk to the police."
"Oh, really? Funny, because I plan on telling them exactly how you rammed that tire iron into Gabe's back. Unless you answer my questions."
He gave an ironic snort. "Blackmail? You've changed, Angel. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Next time when I dive into the territory that I had lived next to, where my sister grew up, I know what to expect. I would be ready. I would be prepared. — Erica Sehyun Song

In me was shaping a yearning for a kind of consciousness, a mode of being that the way of life about me had said could not be, must not be, and upon which the penalty of death had been placed. Somewhere in the dead of the southern night my life had switched onto the wrong track and without my knowing it, the locomotive of my heart was rushing down a dangerously steep slope, heading for a collision, heedless of the warning red lights that blinked all about me, the sirens and the ells and the screams that filled the air. — Richard Wright

As he pushed her by the shoulder toward the gate, the rising howl commenced. Nightmares had beome a science. Someone, a mere human, had taken the time to dream up this satanic howling. And what success! It was the sound of panic itself, mounting and straining toward the extinction they all knew, individually, to be theirs. It was a sound you were obliged to take personally. — Ian McEwan

That was the attraction of the sirens: not promises of power or riches, but bewildering, tantalizing prophecies that made men leap from their ships to go ask the crazy bitches what the fuck they were talking about. — Kevin Hearne

Have I ever said that Turner once actually had himself lashed to the mast of a ship, to be able to later do a painting of a storm?
Which has never failed to remind me of the scene in which Odysseus does the identical thing, of course, so that he can listen to the Sirens singing but will stay put. — David Markson

The sheer violence of it, the howl of air raid sirens and the air-cutting fall of the missiles carried its own political message; not just to President Saddam but to the rest of the world. We are the superpower, those explosions said last night. This is how we do business. — Robert Fisk

These are the seductive voices of the night; the Sirens, too, sang that way. It would be doing them an injustice to think that they wanted to seduce; they knew they had claws and sterile wombs, and they lamented this aloud. They could not help it if their laments sounded so beautiful. — Franz Kafka

Their faces showed beautiful smiles boasting magnificent teeth. Their skin gleamed in the perfect lighting. Even their scarred flesh seemed to hold its own intricate designs, as crazy as it seemed. Luscious curves still decorated their hips and the swell between their legs. They were striking and endearing like a tribe of taunting sirens on top of a cliff in the middle of the sea. I gazed at them for longer than I should have ... — Kenya Wright

It seems to me that women would make much better sailors," Miss Ophelia interjected, setting aside her cup of rosehip tea. "You men are susceptible to all sorts of magical mischief, from mermaids to sirens to rusalki to whatever else has a female form and a nice voice. I have never heard of a woman wrecking a ship over some singing seahorse! — Diana Parparita

That whole thing of replicating what others do is a siren call. The sirens lure you to the rocks of unoriginality. — Stewart Copeland

An avalanche descends onto the city. A hurricane. Teacups drift off shelves. Paintings slip off nails. In another quarter second, the sirens are inaudible. Everything is inaudible. The roar becomes loud enough to separate membranes in the middle ear. — Anthony Doerr

We'd read about sirens in English this fall; Greek mythology bullshit about women so beautiful, their voices so enchanting, that men did anything for them. Turned out that mythology crap was real because every time I saw her, I lost my mind. — Katie McGarry

Caught between the longing for love, and the struggle for the legal tender, where the sirens sing and the church bells ring, and the junk man pounds his fender. Where the veterans dream of the fight, fast asleep at the traffic light, and the children solemnly wait for the ice cream vendor. — Jackson Browne

A rap at the back door made her jump, and she peered through the window for a long time before she eased open the door a crack. She left the security chain on. 'What do you want, Richard?'
Richard Morrell's police cruiser was parked in the drive. He hadn't flashed any lights or howled any sirens, so she supposed it wasn't an emergency, exactly. But she knew him well enough to know he didn't pay social visits, at least not to the Glass House.
'Good question,' Richard said. 'I guess I want a nice girl who can cook, likes action movies, and looks good in short skirts. But I'll settle for you taking the chain off the door and letting me in. — Rachel Caine

The masses do not see the Sirens. They do not hear songs in the air. Blind, deaf, stooping, they pull at their oars in the hold of the earth. But the more select, the captains, harken to a Siren within them ... and royally squander their lives with her. — Nikos Kazantzakis

At around 8 pm we heard the sound of sirens. As the sound drew nearer and nearer, we caught sight of a fire truck. As it reached the hotel, the truck pulled into the parking lot with emergency lights shining and horns blasting. It came to a stop in front of our congregation. We didn't see a fire or any other emergency in the immediate vicinity, so this was quite unexpected. Perhaps our smell had been reported as some kind of toxic leak or spill? Firemen began to pour out of the truck carrying different trays covered in foil. I could hardly believe my eyes. The local Franklin Fire Department had brought us all a spaghetti and meatball dinner! They also brought salad and pudding for desert. This was an example of trail magic at its finest. — Kyle Rohrig

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls. — Sylvia Plath

That was something else he had learned from clever Odysseus, who had tied himself to the mast of his ship so that he might hear the captivating song of the sirens without being tempted to his death. If you ever allowed your most sacred promises to be broken - if you set sail with a rope you knew was weak - then you would never be able to enjoy all the best kinds of music. — Anonymous

There, amongst the angry water was the glow of green eyes, hundreds of them encompassed the entire area ... We were completely and totally surrounded. They all hung just below the water waiting for a sign to attack. There was no hope. We would all perish ... — Meredith T. Taylor

There are any number of magical creatures, mostly female, whose singing can bring about horror and death. Sirens, undines, banshees, Bananarama tribute bands ... — Simon R. Green

But unlike sirens, selkies don't mean any harm with their songs. They don't sing to seduce or to kill. Their songs have nothing to do with anyone but themselves. They sing for the simple joy of it, and because of that, I imagine their songs are more beautiful than those of any siren. — Betsy Cornwell

I try to avoid Twitter. I occasionally can't resist the siren call of email. — Diablo Cody

You had a smile like the Mona Lisa...
I had a pocket full of drugs
and nothing much to do that day.

And that night I rode my bike
back downtown from Hells Kitchen
and let go of the handlebars...
And I opened the buttons on my shirt
and it flapped around me like wings...
And the city flew away behind me
in a blur of neon, sirens and shattered glass...

And I swear to God every traffic light turned green for me... — S. Pierce

Successful gamblers - and successful forecasters of any kind - do not think of the future in terms of no-lose bets, unimpeachable theories, and infinitely precise measurements. These are the illusions of the sucker, the sirens of his overconfidence. — Nate Silver

New York has a thousand universes in it that don't always connect but we do all walk the same streets, hear the same sirens, ride the same subways, see the same headlines in the Post, read the same writings on the walls. That shared landscape gets inside of all of us and, in some small way, unites us, makes us think we know each other even when we don't. — Jay-Z

In the distance, Amanda heard the sirens. Just a little bit longer. She didn't know what was wrong with her, but she was scared of dying before she had the chance to tell Ryker goodbye. In their capable hands, though, surely they could keep her alive long enough for him to return. They had to. — Rose Wynters

First she said we were to keep clear of the Sirens, who sit and sing most beautifully in a field of flowers; but she said I might hear them myself so long as no one else did. Therefore, take me and bind me to the crosspiece half way up the mast; bind me as I stand upright, with a bond so fast that I cannot possibly break away, and lash the rope's ends to the mast itself. If I beg and pray you to set me free, then bind me more tightly still. — Homer

If you feel ... that well-read people are less likely to be evil, and a world full of people sitting quietly with good books in their hands is preferable to world filled with schisms and sirens and other noisy and troublesome things, then every time you enter a library you might say to yourself, 'The world is quiet here,' as a sort of pledge proclaiming reading to be the greater good. — Lemony Snicket

I looked up at the ivory towers above us all. Nowhere else equals the feral design of this city. Tall skyscrapers that act as gorges hollowing out between flat cement dancing into narrow alleyways like bottomless pits. Building walls rusted the color of blood. Sometimes when you look down the horizon from afar the city looks wider than it is, like a thin field of magical lights gleaming with the hopes of children and idealists; a light on at midnight in one of the penthouses or the changing hues of the Empire State Building. Most of the time though, the city is covered with a layer of honking cars and greed, sirens and the war cry of solicitors, all full of brambles and impenetrable conscience; garbage, steaming manholes, and heat waves twirling smog and pollution through your lungs like mirages as you walk breathlessly through a boiling desert. — Bruce Crown

Annabeth:My fatal flaw. That's what the Sirens showed me. My fatal flaw is hubris.
Percy: the brown stuff they spread on veggie sandwiches?
Annabeth:No, Seaweed Brain. That's HUMMUS. hubris is worse.
Percy: what could be worse than hummus?
Annabeth: Hubris means deadly pride, Percy. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else ... Even the gods. — Rick Riordan

When you're driving, you don't focus on everything at once, but you have peripheral awareness of it, right? You focus on what you need to at any given moment, whether it's the car in front of you, the jackass in the lifted truck passing you, or the sirens behind you, whatever. Everything exists, everything is there, but you don't have to see it all at once. Does that help? You don't have to see all the bindings you're seeing right now. Just focus on the outlines of the physical stuff you saw before. — Kevin Hearne

Thirty minutes out, people," I said. "Where the fuck does she live, Jupiter?" asked Sloane. "Close," I said. "She's in a housing development out near the edge of the wildlife preserve. I guess she likes being close to nature." "Or she's cuckoo-bats," said Sloane. "That's a horrible commute. I'd be road-raging weekly." "That's why we don't let you drive," said Andy. "Henry, you going to light it up?" "No," I said. "No lights, no sirens. We do this quiet." "Because we're so subtle," said Sloane. — Seanan McGuire

...when you hit the expressway to Declinistan there are few exit ramps. That America's animating principles should require a defense at all is a melancholy reflection on how far we've already gone. Live free--or die from a thousand soothing caresses of nanny-state sirens. — Mark Steyn

Think of every fairy-tale villainess you've ever heard of. Think of the wicked witches, the evil queens, the mad enchantresses. Think of the alluring sirens, the hungry ogresses, the savage she-beasts. Think of them and remember that somewhere, sometime, they've all been real.
Mab gave them lessons. — Jim Butcher

He pointed to the burning building as sirens heralded the approach of emergency personnel. "This is your job - this is your life. Blood and death and pain and vengeance and justice. And sometimes it sucks, but it's worth it."

Caleb sighed, but not in resignation. "I know this is the job, and it is worth it. But I refuse to believe it's my life. Not only and not forever."

Samuel pinched the bridge of his nose and waved dismissively with his other hand. "F***ing romantic. — G.S. Jennsen

The doors open and we jump inside from the rooftop just as sirens go off and spotlights cling to us from below. Kylee doesn't even wait for us to sit down before I feel myself melting into the first flashas we head for the planet with the yellow sun - Earth. — Jaclyn Lewis

If you kill a black man, the world is silent. You can hear a garage door opening from twenty blocks away. You can pick up a pay phone and only hear the dial tone. Shooting stars sound exactly like the soft laughter of a little girl in Gasworks Park. If you kill a white man, the world erupts with noise: fireworks, sirens, a gavel pounding a desk, the slamming of doors. — Sherman Alexie

Each of the ladies, being after the fashion of their sex, highly trained in promoting men's talk without listening to it, could think - about the education of children, about the use of fog sirens in an opera - without betraying herself. Only it struck Helen that Rachel was perhaps too still for a hostess, and that she might have done something with her hands. — Virginia Woolf

4. The whole Icarus-flying-too-near-the-sun-and-plummeting-out-of-the-sky thing? That's real. Same with the Sirens who lure you to death with their irresistible song, and the odalisque so beautiful anyone who looks at her dies. And remember: as badass as Grendel was, Beowulf hadn't seen anything until he went up against Grendel's mother. I know, I know - I thought they were just myths too. But the fact is, sometimes, if you don't want to meet a tragic end, your only option is to avert your gaze, tie yourself to the mast with cotton in your ears, or ascend a little less close to the Vault of Heaven. — Todd Hanson

Tomorrow I will curse the dawn, but there will be other, earlier nights, and the dawns will be no longer hell laid out in alarms and raw bells and sirens. — Sylvia Plath

Wouldn't the worst be, isn't the worst, in truth, that women aren't castrated, that they have only to stop listening to the Sirens (for the Sirens were men) for history to change its meaning? — Helene Cixous