Quotes & Sayings About Skimming

Media was a battle ground. So was the internet. People began walking openly with their weapons, whether it was a gun or a camera. Drones were always skimming overhead, filming the violence of the second civil war of the United States. — Lindsay Anderson

I have the reports from Gemson and Boyd," Syn replied. His boots were up on the corner of his desk as he reclined back in his chair, skimming the contents of the file.

"How are they?" God asked. He removed his leather coat and draped it over the back of his chair.

"Detailed. Good," Syn answered. He brought his feet down and gave God a pointed look.

The big man shook his head, already knowing what Syn wanted. He wanted everything they knew about this case. Now.

"Alright Syn. Chill out. We're not used to you yet. But we know what it means to have a Sergeant on our team. You're the team's go to, and have just as much command and input regarding decision making as we do," Day responded as God stared. Day chuckled. "Tito was just as important as the other Jacksons."

Syn threw a pen at Day, which he dodged easily. Syn couldn't help but laugh at Day's fucked up comparison. "I'm no fucking Tito, shithead. — A.E. Via

Jim, here's what I'm going to do," Kalinske said, now skimming through his Rolodex. "I think I have the name of someone who might be very interested in hearing about what SGI has to offer." Kalinske scrolled past the beginning of the alphabet, slowing down as he approached the letter L. "Do you have a pen ready?" He kept skimming until he got to the contact information he was searching for: Lincoln, Howard. — Blake J. Harris

Their love as a dragonfly, skimming over echo park, stoppin to visit the lotus. Eating dreams and drinking blue sky. — Janet Fitch

I feel his intense gaze skimming my face and force myself to look him in the eye. This time, when he leans closer, I know what he wants. He traces my jaw with his fingertips, then moves lower to my chin. My eyelids flutter closed when he tips my face up.
Oh my God. Sam Donavon is going to kiss me.
The forest holds its breath.
I hold my breath.
Our lips brush, light as eyelashes. His fingers trail back into my hair, tilting my head. Hot cinnamon dances across my mouth.
I'm drowning.
And then my name, roared at the top of familiar lungs, cracks the silent night. — Kate Avelynn

Noah stood slowly, his body skimming mine as he rose. "Today. Tonight. Tomorrow. Forever." Noah's eyes held mind. his stare was infinite. "I was made for you, Mara. — Michelle Hodkin

Many of our tribe went to the cliff each night to count the number killed during the day. They counted the dead otter and thought of the beads and other things that each pelt meant. But I never went to the cove and whenever I saw the hunters with their long spears skimming over the water, I was angry, for these animals were my friends. It was fun to see them playing or sunning themselves among the kelp. It more fun than the thought of beads to wear around my neck. — Scott O'Dell

From here she could see miles of dark emerald forest with just a few birds erupting from its depths like flying fish skimming an ocean ...
'Annabel!' Ewan called.
She looked down. He was standing in water, after all. So without a moment's trepidation, she launched herself from the downed carriage, coming home to his arms with all the security and the pleasure of child leaping from the second stair. — Eloisa James

He knew he could never jingle change in his pocket or park his car like a confident adult, he was the Adrian he had always been, casting a guilty look over a furtive shoulder, living in eternal dread of a grown-up striding forward to clip his ear.
But there again, when he sipped at the whiskey his eyes failed to water and his throat forgot to burn. The body shamelessly welcomed what once it would have rejected. At breakfast he demanded not Ricicles and chocolate spread, but coffee and unbuttered toast. And if the coffee was sugared he leapt from it like a colt from an electric fence. He ate the crust and left the filling, guzzled the olives and spurned the cherries. Yet inside he remained the same Adrian who fought down the urge to stand and shout 'Bullocks' during church services, smelt his own farts and wasted hours skimming through National Geographic on the off-chance of seeing a few naked bodies. — Stephen Fry

What need for feathers now? What need to confirm their loss? While the womb-red sky swelled with the promise of tomorrow, and he rode the warm, crimson currents, skimming, wheeling and gliding. — Georgina Anne Taylor

AmYou know, the spark. It could be as simple as a meeting of eyes or as intimate as knuckles skimming down flesh, but one thing it was unmistakable. No denying it once you'd felt it and no sense in trying to conjure one up if it wasn't there from the beginning. Sparks are beginnings, leading to middles of fireworks, finishing like blasts of dynamite. So, long story short, there were no sparks — Nicole Williams

Flora had also learned the degraded art of 'tasting' unread books, and now, whenever her skimming eye lit on a phrase about heavy shapes, or sweat, or howls or bedposts, she just put the book back on the shelf, unread. — Stella Gibbons

Reading aloud means no skipping, no skimming, no cutting to the chase. — Anne Fadiman

For those poor souls who can only think of the terrible fear and danger of a runaway horse, think of this: a speed like water flowing over stone, a skimming sensation that hovers and dips while the world spins around and the wind drags your skin taut across your bones. You can close your eyes and lose yourself in the rhythm, because nothing you do or shout or wish for will happen until the running makes up its mind to stop. So you hold steady, balancing yourself in the wake, and unhook your mind from the everyday while you sit at the silent center of it all and hope that the feeling won't stop till you're good and ready for life to be ordinary once more. — Meg Rosoff

It was the idea of facing a future skimming the surface of life, winging my way in and out of other people's crises, confusions, and passages, engaging them enough to get the story, but never enough to be indelibly touched by what I had seen or heard. — Anna Quindlen

It was like skimming through a novel without fully engaging with the story until a well-turned phrase or powerful bit of imagery snagged her attention, hinting at depths previously unnoticed. — Karen Witemeyer

Now our father lived in a world where we didn't belong, with a needy girlfriend who didn't look much older than Henri, a saltwater pool in need of daily skimming, and a flashy Porsche that needed to be raced around the roads of wine country.
Fortunately, we didn't need him either - that's what Henri said. — Jessica Taylor

Baseball is about homecoming. It is a journey by theft and strength, guile and speed, out around first to the far island of second, where foes lurk in the reefs and the green sea suddenly grows deeper, then to turn sharply, skimming the shallows, making for a shore that will show a friendly face, a color, a familiar language and, at third, to proceed, no longer by paths indirect but straight, to home. — A. Bartlett Giamatti

May my life someday be so limpid that the Muses will deign to mirror themselves in it and that we can see the reflections of their smiles and their dances skimming across its surface. — Marcel Proust

You want me as much as I want you. And all I want is you."
My tongue warred with my mind. "Today," I whispered.
Noah stood slowly, his body skimming mine as he rose. "Today. Tonight. Tomorrow. Forever. — Michelle Hodkin

You can't catch the big fish by skimming the surface. — Andy Gilbert

The best filmmakers, I think, have always had very narrow frameworks for their stories, and then they can go deeply, rather than skimming the surface. — Paul Auster

That place, called the heliopause, is one definition of the outer boundary of the Empire of the Sun. But the Voyager spacecraft will plunge on, penetrating the heliopause sometime in the middle of the twenty-first century, skimming through the ocean of space, never to enter another solar system, destined to wander through eternity far from the stellar islands and to complete its first circumnavigation of the massive center of the Milky Way a few hundred million years from now. We have embarked on epic voyages. — Carl Sagan

Google, as the supplier of the Web's principal navigational tools, also shapes our relationship with the content that it serves up so efficiently and in such profusion. The intellectual technologies it has pioneered promote the speedy, superficial skimming of information and discourage any deep, prolonged engagement with a single argument, idea, or narrative. — Nicholas Carr

Eleanore," he whispered again, tilting his head to mine, his lips skimming past my cheek, his breath in my ear. "I'd wait forever for you, you know. If it mattered. If you'd care."
"I do care," I whispered back, miserable.
His fingers tightened, warm and firm. "No, you don't. Not the way I mean. Not yet. — Shana Abe

It was a morning of ground mist, yellow sunshine, and high rifts of blue, white-cloud-dappled sky. The leaves were still thick on the trees, but de-spangled gossamer threads hung on the bushes and the shrill little cries of unrest of the swallows skimming the green open park spaces of the park told of autumn and change. — Flora Thompson

She was a fly, but the others were dragonflies, butterflies, beautiful insects, dancing, fluttering, skimming, while she alone dragged herself up out of the saucer. — Virginia Woolf

In Sacramento it is fiery summer always, and you can gather roses, and eat strawberries and ice cream, and wear white linen clothes, and pant and perspire, at eight or nine o'clock in the morning, and then take the cars, and at noon put on your furs and your skates, and go skimming over frozen Donner Lake...There is transition for you! Where will you find another like it in the western hemisphere? — Mark Twain

The most basic rule of editing is that if you can't bear to read it, no one else can either. So when you find yourself skimming, commit murder. — Marion Roach Smith

Lightly tripping o'er the land, Deftly skimming o'er the main, Scarce our fairy wings bedewing With the frothy mantling brine, Scarce our silver feet acquainting With the verdure-vested ground; Now like swallows o'er a river Gliding low with quivering pinion, Now aloft in ether sailing "Leisurely as summer cloud;" Rising now, anon descending, Swift and bright as shooting stars, Thus we travel glad and free. — Hartley Coleridge

On these occasions I read quickly, voraciously, almost skimming, trying to get as much into my head as possible before the next long starvation. If it were eating it would be gluttony of the famished; if it were sex it would be a swift furtive stand-up in an alley somewhere. — Margaret Atwood

The world is full of power and energy and a person can go far by just skimming off a tiny bit of it. — Neal Stephenson

I just want to thank you," he says, his voice low. "A group of scientists told you that my genes were damaged, that there was something wrong with me - they showed you test results that proved it. And even I started to believe it." He touches my face, his thumb skimming my cheekbone, and his eyes are on mine, intense and insistent. "You never believed it," he says. "Not for a second. You always insisted that I was . . . I don't know, whole." I cover his hand with my own. "Well, you are." "No one has ever told me that before," he says softly. "It's what you deserve to hear," I say firmly, my eyes going cloudy with tears. "That you're whole, that you're worth loving, that you're the best person I've ever known." Just — Veronica Roth

She wore a cantilevered, augmented-breast-skimming satin dress the colour of egg-yolk. Somewhere in deepest Nebraska, a prom queen two sizes smaller than Selena was wondering where the fuck her outfit had disappeared to. — Tabitha McGowan

What happiness this is: to fly, skimming over the earth just as we do in our dreams! Life has become a dream. Can this be the meaning of paradise? — Nikos Kazantzakis

How long have you known about Big Bolliger?"
"Weeks. We're going to be short-staffed. That reminds me, let Rojakke go."
"Why? There's no one like him at the tables."
"Lots of sobs know their way around a deck of cards. Rojakke is a little too quick. He's skimming."
"He's a good dealer, and he has a family to provide for. You could give him a warning, take a finger."
"Then he wouldn't be a good dealer any more, would he? — Leigh Bardugo

I came across an account of a young man named Kim Malthe-Bruun, who was eventually captured and executed by the Nazis when he was only twenty-one years old. I read his story as I had read many others, turning the pages, skimming here and there: this sabotage, that tactic, this capture, that escape. After a while even courage becomes routine to the reader. Then, quite unprepared, I turned the page and faced a photograph of Kim Malthe-Bruun. He wore a turtleneck sweater, and his thick, light hair was windblown. His eyes looked out at me, unwavering on the page. Seeing him there, so terribly young, broke my heart. — Lois Lowry

Kuan Yin is showing me picture of a windsurfer skimming effortlessly along the ocean's surface," describes Ms. Lees.
"While quite skilled, he is nevertheless very focused on the elements around him. The windsurfer is focused upon how to turn the sail. His question must always be, 'what am I going to do with the wind that is blowing right now,'" instructs Kuan Yin: "There are the waves and there is the wind, seen and unseen forces. Everyone has these same elements in their lives, the seen and unseen: karma and free will. The question is, 'how are you going to handle what you have?' You are riding the karmic wave underneath and the wind can shift. Everyone must take what they see and deal with that which is unseen. — Hope Bradford

Almsgiving is a major tenet of Islam. It's also a kick in the pants of the highest order. Nothing is as cool as skimming off a couple of hundred thousand from some multinational corporation and handing it out to random strangers. Or writing a harmless little virus that makes credit counters "forget" to send a surcharge back to the bank after each purchase. Oh, sure, technically I'm supposed to give away my own money, but whatever. I'm sure Allah gets the spirit of what I'm doing here. — Lyda Morehouse

There,of course,was Alex. He wasn't watching Amanda.He was looking over her head, his bored gaze skimming over the room. Before I could turn away, it had found mine. He didn't smile; he certainly didn't wave.But he didn't look away.And I had absolutely no idea what to do. — Melissa Jensen

I have been completely unable to maintain any semblance of relationship on any level I have been a bastard to the people who have actively attempted to deliver me from peril I have been acutely undeserving of the ear that listen up and lip that kissed me on the temple I have been accustomed to a stubborn disposition that admits it wish it's history disassembled I have been a hypocrite in sermonizing tolerance while skimming for a ministry to pretzel I have been unfairly resentful of those I wish that acted different when the bidding was essential I have been a terrible communicator prone to isolation over sympathy for devils I have been my own worse enemy since the very genesis of rebels — Aesop Rock

You read all the way through to the end of one, only to find out that the husband dies. You hurl the book across the room, breaking the bedside lamp. When your mom comes home that night, you tell her what happened. You ask her for books to read where no one dies.

Two days later, you find both of your parents in the living room with a pile of novels on the coffee table. They are skimming through them one by one, making sure every character lives to the end. That night, you have a new stack of books to read and you open up the first one, confident it won't break you down.

It is the first time in a long time that you have felt safe. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

He has only half learned the art of reading who has not added to it the more refined art of skipping and skimming. — Arthur Balfour

Decent is the last way I want you, she said, skimming her fingers over my stomach, my lower stomach. My lower lower stomach, AKA the last part of exposed skin that, had my towel been hanging any lower, would have been considered indecent. — Nicole Williams

Changed expression. Wariness, maybe. I felt a body move so close it was skimming my own, and a warm hand protectively settled at the base of my neck. Without turning I knew it was Ranger. — Janet Evanovich

Height, weight and body mass index.' Gene was skimming ahead. 'Can't you do the calculation yourself?' 'That's the purpose of the question,' I said. 'Checking they can do basic arithmetic. I don't want a partner who's mathematically illiterate. — Graeme Simsion

A traveller moves among real people in their own milieu and learns from them, soaking up their wisdom and philosophy, their way of being in the world. A tourist simply hops from one tourist highpoint to another, skimming across the surface, cramming in quantity rather than quality, and comes away with his soul and imagination unchanged, untouched by the wonder of a life lived differently. — Roxanne Reid

They went down the list of every known charge conceivable to man - rackeering, skimming, kickback, ticket scalping. fixing fights, preordaining fights, vitaiting officials, corrupting judges, all the way down to laundering money. Everything but the Lindbergh baby. — Don King

We kissed again. It grew deeper; Alex wrapped his arms around me, drawing me close against him. His back was smooth and warm. I ran my hands over it as we kissed, loving the feel of his skin, and almost went faint as his lips moved briefly to my neck and then found my mouth again. In my entire life, nothing had ever felt as good as Alex kissing me like that. When we finally pulled apart, both our hearts were pounding.
I cleared my throat, skimming my fingers along his forearm. "Alex, you, um ... you know that I've never
"
"I know," he broke in softly. He reached for my hand, linking his fingers through mine. "Willow, it's OK. We'll do whatever you want. I just want to be with you; I don't care. — L.A. Weatherly

I just wanted to thank you' he says, his voice low.
'A group of scientists told you that my genes were damaged, that there was something wrong with me - they showed you the test results that proved it. And even I started to believe it.'
He touches my face, his thumb skimming my cheekbone, and his eyes are on mine, intense and insistent.
'You never believed it,' he says 'Not for a second. You always insisted I was ... I don't know, whole. — Veronica Roth

Like the long gone captains of the Confederacy, he stood watch at the edge of Dauphin Island, his old life just out of sight across the water. What he felt in those moments, pelicans skimming the chop, tankers lugging cargo to ports unknown, was not loneliness or loss, as you might expect, nor the weight of tragedy but its opposite, pure lightness, the hole left inside him by Suzette's death as big and hollow as a zeppelin and just as buoyant, as if the shape of her absence might lift him up and carrying him away. — Michael Knight

Or more accurately, since we were in the plane, our shadows figured as well inside the shadow of the airplane skimming over mountain and field. Which would mean we too were imprinted into the earth. — Haruki Murakami

Additionally, Adam's room had an absolutely massive bed with a plump feather tick that she knew they would put to good use.
"Shall we christen it now?" Adam whispered in her ear, his arms stealing around her from behind in spite of the footmen who were still busy bringing up their luggage. Skimming his lips over her cheek, he playfully caressed her nape in a way that never failed to drive her wild. "I could shoo them all out and lock the door. We wouldn't even have to take off our clothes, I could just tumble you down and toss up your skirts. What do you say, wife, shall I tup you now, or would you rather wait until later? — Tracy Anne Warren

Once more, he was immersing himself in books, reaching the end of long articles, even going back over paragraphs to make sure he'd grasped things. How much more satisfying it was than all that skimming, all that jumping around. At present, he was working his way, deliciously, through a book on Mendel, the father of genetics. A man who might not have spend seven years watching peas, if he'd had the internet. — Julie Highmore

What if I told you I know the risks, and I'm willing to take my chances?"
"It wouldn't change a thing. Those walls, as you call them. . . They're apart of me now, and they are iron strong." He lifted a hand to her face, skimming his thumb over her lower lip. "Even if I wished to, I wouldn't know how to dismantle them."
"I know," she said quietly. "I know." She wreathed her arms around his neck. "That's why you need me. I'm going to burn them to the ground. — Tessa Dare

It is not a question of skimming the surface of the art, it must be probed to its depths, for to seize upon superficial things only is to degenerate into mediocrity and obscurity. — Jean-Georges Noverre

What I mean by reading is not skimming, not being able to say as the world saith, "Oh, yes, I've read that!," but reading again and again, in all sorts of moods, with an increase of delight every time, till the thing read has become a part of your system and goes forth along with you to meet any new experience you may have. — C.E. Montague

I read hard, or not at all; never skimming, never turning aside to merely inciting books; and Plato, Aristotle, Butler, Thucydides, Sterne, Jonathan Edwards, have passed like the iron atoms of the blood into my mental constitution. — Frederick William Robertson

What is different, and troubling, is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of reading. Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for deeper study, scanning is becoming an end in itself - our preferred way of gathering and making sense of information of all sorts. — Nicholas Carr

The hedges and driveways were black and silent, but he imagined the silhouette of a jacket hood could move into view at any time, skimming past the light of a window like a shark's fin. — Teresa Flavin

I just think the idea of moving away from the body and discovering sensuality by skimming the body, not tightening the body, seems rather new to me. Especially in this world where we're living right now, where the idea of giving freedom to women, especially in politics what's happening, it seemed so appealing to me, so that was the starting point. — Prabal Gurung

There's more than one way to share pleasure."
She was quiet for a long moment. "How many ways?"
He rolled onto his side to face her, skimming a single finger from her breastbone to her belly. Here's an idea. I'll demonstrate them, and you keep count. — Tessa Dare

Your voice at times a fist
Tight in your throat
Jabs ceaselessly at phantoms
In the room,
Your hand a carved and
Skimming boat
Goes down the Nile
To point out Pharaoh's tomb.
You're Africa to me
At brightest dawn.
The Congo's green and
Copper's brackish hue,
A continent to build
With Black Man's brawn.
I sit at home and see it all
Through you. — Maya Angelou

In your house, do you use the term "scanning" when you refer to skimming through posts and texts and reserve the word "reading" for ONLY longer articles and books? Doing so may sound picky, but it promotes awareness. — Anonymous

Sartre gazed upon Freya's beauty, continuously reminding himself that he should not stare. Every time that he let his guard down, his eye wandered back to her cherry lips. He wanted to know if they tasted as good as they looked. He trailed down and noticed how the slight cleft in her chin served to accentuate the much deeper cleft between her breasts.

Freya detected Sartre skimming her body. She liked it. This frail little man with the crazy eye was so much different than the strong, muscular brutes that she was used to. He was a cute little oddity. — Dylan Callens

If you had swum across the furthest ocean
And seen the vastness of infinity
Though dread of death might seize you, you'd still see
The rolling waves in never-ceasing motion
You'd still see something: Schools of dolphins swimming
Across the green and placid waters, skimming
The clouds, the sun and the moon, stars overhead -
You will see nothing in that void all round
You will not hear your footsteps where you tread
Beneath your feet, you'll feel no solid ground — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The key to excellent report writing' he said between chews, 'is to take every bit of passion out of it. Use an extra heaping portion of superflously extraneous tautological redundancies in order to make it mind-numbingly boring. So that when one's superior officers read it, they zone out and start skimming and maybe don't notice the fact that one has been spinning one's wheels since the body turned up and hasn't solved a goddamn thing. — Jonathan Kellerman

It's a dreadfully long monster of a book, and I certainly won't have time to read it, but I'm giving it a thorough skimming. The authors are utterly incompetent - no sense of style or structure at all. It starts out as a detective story, switches to science-fiction, then goes off into the supernatural, and is full of the most detailed information of dozens of ghastly boring subjects. And the time sequence is all out of order in a very pretentious imitation of Faulkner and Joyce. Worst yet, it has the most raunchy sex scenes, thrown in just to make it sell, I'm sure, and the authors - whom I've never heard of - have the supreme bad taste to introduce real political figures into this mishmash and pretend to be exposing a real conspiracy. You can be sure I won't waste time reading such rubbish. — Robert Shea

In front of the inn was a beautiful mountain stream where one could catch lots of firm, colorful fish. Noisy birds were always skimming over the surface of the stream, their calls piercing, and it wasn't unusual to spot wild boar or monkeys roaming around nearby. The mountains were a treasure trove of edible wild plants. In this isolated environment, young Haida was able to indulge himself in reading and contemplation. He no longer cared what was happening in the real world. — Haruki Murakami

To Fred, those years seemed to pass like quickly skimming a book and then finding the ending wasn't what he expected. He wished he'd paid more attention to the story. — Sarah Addison Allen

We're in Borneo, can't you tell? We're skimming the treetops now, big leaves are glimmering below us, and there are coffee bushes over there, smell them? and Marie-Laure will indeed smell something, whether because her uncle is passing coffee grounds beneath her nose, or because they really are flying over the coffee trees of Borneo, she does not want to decide. — Anthony Doerr

Open skies painted above painted doorways and painted birds skimming across bricks trying to fly away. Little bird, what are you thinking? You come from a can. — Cath Crowley

I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story. — Tim O'Brien

We can see through all your disguises: the paths of day, the paths of darkness, whichever paths you take - we're right behind you, following you like a trail of smoke, like a long tail, a tail made of girls, heavy as memory, light as air: twelve accusations, toes skimming the ground, hands tied behind our backs, tongues sticking out, eyes bulging, songs choked in our throats. — Margaret Atwood

Little Montenegro! He lifted up the words and nodded at them-with his smile. The smile comprehended Montenegro's troubled history and sympathized with the brave struggles of the Montenegrin people. It appreciated fully the chain of national circumstances, which had elicited this tribute from Montenegro's warm little heart. My incredulity was submerged in fascination now; it was like skimming hastily through a dozen magazines. — F Scott Fitzgerald

My tongue warred with my mind. "Today," I whispered.
Noah stood slowly, his body skimming mine as he rose. "Today. Tonight. Tomorrow. Forever." Noah's eyes held mine. His stare was infinite. "I was made for you, Mara."
And at that moment, even though I didn't know how it was possible or what it meant, I believed him. — Michelle Hodkin

Old age is
a flight of small
cheeping birds
skimming
bare trees
above a snow glaze. — William Carlos Williams

some people go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been made to see all it may contain; and — Evan S. Connell

Things were getting heated fast. Syn pressed Furi hard against the railing, gripping his ass and grinding his hard dick into him. Furi's own cock jerked excitedly in his pants while Syn dug his hand into his crease, skimming over his hole. "Fuck, Syn," Furi gasped. His hole was clenching, wanting to be filled by this man. "Say it's time, please," Furi whimpered. He didn't give a fuck tonight. He was beyond ready to bottom for Syn he needed to so badly. Needed to completely wipe out all the times he'd been made to bottom for Patrick. "Yes." Was Syn's response. He kissed Furi again before pulling back offering him his hand. Furi took it and they walked together back through the salon and down a narrow hall that led to a staircase. — A.E. Via

In my skimmings over fiction I cannot recall any writer so continuously implicated in his own work as George Moore. — Susan Mitchell

What's been coming to Becca, since all this began, is this: real isn't what they try to tell you. Time isn't. Grown-ups hammer down all these markers, bells schedules coffee-breaks, to stake down time so you'll start believing it's something small and mean, something that scrapes flake after flake off of everything you love till there's nothing left; to stake you down so you won't lift off and fly away, somersaulting through whirlpools of months, skimming through eddies of glittering seconds, pouring handfuls of hours over your upturned face. — Tana French

Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as
some men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into
a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been
made to see all it may contain of perfidy, of violence, and of terror.

There are on sea and land such men thus fortunate--or thus disdained by
destiny or by the sea. — Joseph Conrad

Mr. Earbrass has rashly been skimming through the early chapters, which he had not looked at for months, and now sees TUH for what it is. Dreadful, dreadful, DREADFUL. He must be mad to go on enduring the unexquisite agony of writing when it all turns out drivel. Mad. Why did n't he become a spy? How does one become one? He will burn the MS. Why is there no fire? Why are n't there the makings of one? How did he get in the unused room on the third floor? — Edward Gorey

Flight is many things. Something clean and swift, like a bird skimming across the sky. Or something filthy and crawling; a series of crablike movements through figurative and literal slime, a process of creeping ahead, jumping sideways, running backward.
It is sleeping in fields and river bottoms. It is bellying for miles along an irrigation ditch. It is back roads, spur railroad lines, the tailgate of a wildcat truck, a stolen car and a dead couple in lovers' lane. It is food pilfered from freight cars, garments taken from clotheslines; robbery and murder, sweat and blood. The complex made simple by the alchemy of necessity — Jim Thompson

He cleared his throat. "I did get carried away with you. Couldn't help myself. And when I said it wouldn't happen again ... " He risked skimming his fingers up her smooth shin. "I hope I lied. — Tracy March

General jackdaw culture, very little more than a collection of charming miscomprehensions, untargeted enthusiasms, and a general habit of skimming. — William Bolitho