Squint Quotes & Sayings

Virtue is always too much of a piece and too ignorant of those shades of feeling and of temperament that enable us to squint when we are placed in a false position. — Honore De Balzac

At a play-off game with the Chargers, goose bumps ran down my arms as I rushed through the smoke-filled tunnel onto the field. The energy and voices of 70,000 screaming fans can turn even a veteran player's determined squint into the wide eyes of a child on Christmas morning.
While the cheerleaders performed and urged on the crowd, running back Danny Woodhead turned to me. "Can you believe we get to do this? — Jake Byrne

Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million. — George Bernard Shaw

I would have winked back - that is - if I could. Ever since I was little and tried to wink, it always looked like a painful squint. — Valerie Biel

Brighter, now brighter, pay no mind to those who squint, burn with all your heat. — Tyler Knott Gregson

As you lay on a summer's day
In a cool and shady place,
Don't look up into the skies;
Instead look down and squint your eyes.
Squint your eyes so very tight,
And if you wish with all your might,
You'll find the land of More-Than-Small.
In this land live buggs
that's all! — Stephen Cosgrove

I give her my best smile. Before the alien Armageddon happened, I was known for my smile. Not bragging too much, but I had to be careful never to smile while I drove. It had the capacity to blind oncoming traffic. But it has absolutely no effect on Ringer. She doesn't squint in its overwhelming luminescence. She doesn't even blink. — Rick Yancey

Squint your eyes and look closer
I'm not between you and your ambition
I am a poster girl with no poster
I am thirty-two flavors and then some
And I'm beyond your peripheral vision
So you might want to turn your head
Cause someday you might find you're starving
and eating all of the words you said. — Ani DiFranco

But wasn't that what religions did? Squint at one another and declare, My unprovable belief is better than your unprovable belief. Suck it. — Laini Taylor

As we reach the next corner, the entire block ahead of us lights up with a rich purple glow. We backpedal, hunker down in a stairwell, and squint into the light. Something's happening to those illuminated by it. They're assaulted by . . . what? A sound? A wave? A laser? Weapons fall from their hands, fingers clutch their faces, as blood sprays from all visible orifices - eyes, noses, mouths, ears. In less than a minute, everyone's dead and the glow vanishes. — Suzanne Collins

What a vapid job title our culture gives to those honorable laborers the ancient Egyptians and Sumerians variously called Learned Men of the Magic Library, Scribes of the Double House of Life, Mistresses of the House of Books, or Ordainers of the Universe. 'Librarian' - that mouth-contorting, graceless grind of a word, that dry gulch in the dictionary between 'libido' and 'licentious' - it practically begs you to envision a stoop-shouldered loser, socks mismatched, eyes locked in a permanent squint from reading too much microfiche. If it were up to me, I would abolish the word entirely and turn back to the lexicological wisdom of the ancients, who saw librarians not as feeble sorters and shelvers but as heroic guardians. In Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian cultures alike, those who toiled at the shelves were often bestowed with a proud, even soldierly, title: Keeper of the Books. - p.113 — Miles Harvey

Mr Phipps seemed to think criminality was passed down through the generations like a stutter, or a squint, or in my case red hair. — Susan Fletcher

There are three types of actions: purposeful, habitual, and gratuitous. Characters, to be immediate and apprehensible, must be presented by all three.' Katin looked toward the front of the car.
The captain gazed through the curving plate that lapped the roof. His yellow eyes fixed Her consumptive light that pulsed fire-spots in a giant cinder. The light was so weak he did not squint at all.
I am confounded, Katin admitted to his jeweled box, 'nevertheless. The mirror of my observation turns and what first seemed gratuitous I see enough times to realize it is a habit. What I suspected as habit now seems part of a great design. While what I originally took as purpose explodes into gratuitousness. The mirror turns again, and the character I thought obsessed by purpose reveals his obsession is only habit; his habits are gratuitously meaningless; while those actions i construed as gratuitous now reveal a most demonic end. — Samuel R. Delany

Hmmm," he said, "Lauren Elizabeth Danner.Elizabeth is a beautiful name and so is Lauren. They suit you."
Unable to endure the sweet torment of having him flirt with her, Lauren said repressively, "I was named after two maiden aunts.One of them had a squint and the other had warts."
Nick ignored that and continued aloud. "Color of eyes,blue." He regarded her over the top of the file, his gray eyes intimate and teasing. "They are definitely blue.A man could lose himself in those eyes of yours-they're gorgeous."
"My right eye used to wobble unless I wore my glasses," Lauren informed him blithely. "They had to operate on it."
"A little girl with wobbly blue eyes and glasses on her nose," he reflected with a slow grin. "I'll bet you were cute."
"I looked studious,not cute. — Judith McNaught

You are gonna shoot me," he says. "One day." He's still holding Lindsay's hand, he's looking down at where their fingers are wound together and not at Lindsay's face, but his voice is clear. "I ain't thick. I know you'll get sick of me. You can't just let me go, I know too much, you'd be freaked out forever in case I snitched. You'll get proper sick of me one day, not just annoyed, and then you'll shoot me. It's okay."
"I won't get sick of you," Lindsay says. He feels numb and far away, as if its somebody else talking, and almost like he's going to throw up, a sort of lurch in his stomach like when you're at the top of the the Angel tube station escalator and somebody a bit too eager to get on the train shoves you from behind.
"Yeah you will. I'm gonna be with you til I die, though. Least I can say that and know its true, how many people can do that? Bit romantic, really. If you squint, and look at it sideways. — Richard Rider

would be made manifest nine years later, when America entered World War I and changed the course of both the war and the world. For the moment, it was enough to know that America was singularly equipped to lead the world into the twentieth century. The America in which the following stories occurred will be, in scattered glimpses, familiar to readers of 2008; if we squint, we might even mistake it for our own. — Jim Rasenberger

(When)
When you call me nugget.
When you take pictures of me.
When you dance.
When you complement me.
When you laugh.
When your eyes squint as you smile.
When we make love when we're sick.
I fall more in love with you. — Crystal Woods

Mamma said that when you don't love someone one bit, you have to try to see them like Jesus would. It's a hard thing to do. Even Mamma has to squint sometimes. — Martha Finley

THE HOUSE straightened up and then go on and fix some of that chicken salad now, say Miss Leefolt. It's bridge club day. Every fourth Wednesday a the month. A course I already got everthing ready to go - made the chicken salad this morning, ironed the tablecloths yesterday. Miss Leefolt seen me at it too. She ain't but twenty-three years old and she like hearing herself tell me what to do. She already got the blue dress on I ironed this morning, the one with sixty-five pleats on the waist, so tiny I got to squint through my glasses to iron. I don't hate much in life, — Kathryn Stockett

Lovely & too charming Fair one, notwithstanding your forbidding Squint, your greazy tresses & your swelling Back, which are more frightful than imagination can paint or pen describe, I cannot refrain from expressing my raptures, at the engaging Qualities of your Mind, which so amply atone for the Horror, with which your first appearance must ever inspire the unwary visitor. — Jane Austen

Then eventually Westwood arrived. He looked nothing like Reacher expected, but the reality fit the bill just as well as the preconceptions had. He was an outdoors type, not a lab rat, and sturdy rather than pencil-necked. He looked like a naturalist or an explorer. He had short but unruly hair, fair going gray, and a beard of the same length and color. He was red in the face from sunburn and had squint lines around his eyes. He was forty-five, maybe. He was wearing clothing put together from high-tech fabrics and many zippers, but it was all old and creased. He had hiking boots on his feet, with speckled laces like miniature mountain-climbing ropes. He was toting a canvas bag about as big as a mail carrier's. — Lee Child

Ever wonder why your cat jumps on the lap of the guest that doesn't like cats?

It is because people who don't like cats will do things cats like during greetings.

They squint their eyes, turn their heads and avoid direct contact with the cat. The cat's view is these people are saying hello and being non-threatening, and, sure enough, he ends up on their lap. — Carol Griglione

I totally feel like an FBI agent right now, with my legs spread and my arms out straight, gripping the gun. I'll bet my butt looks awesome.
... I squint at the target, holding the gun like I've seen FBI guys do it in the movies. I am so badass. — Elle Casey

You're attracted to me?" "Oh, God," I groan. "That's the last thing you need for your ego." "That's probably true," he laughs. "Better hurry up and insult me before my ego gets as big as yours." "You need a hair cut," I blurt out. "Really bad. It gets in your eyes and you squint and you're constantly moving it out of the way like you're Justin Bieber and it's really distracting. — Colleen Hoover

There's something about that tunnel that leads to downtown. It's glorious at night. Just glorious. You start on one side of the mountain, and it's dark, and the radio is loud. As you enter the tunnel, the wind gets sucked away, and you squint from the lights overhead. When you adjust to the lights, you can see the other side in the distance just as the sound of the radio fades to nothing because the waves just can't reach. Then, you're in the middle of the tunnel, and everything becomes a calm dream. As you see the opening get closer, you just can't get there fast enough. And finally, just when you think you'll never get there, you see the opening right in front of you. And the radio comes back even louder than you remember it. And the wind is waiting. And you fly out of the tunnel onto the bridge. And there it is. The city. A million lights and buildings and everything seems as exciting as the first time you saw it. It really is a grand entrance. — Stephen Chbosky

This is Nick's wife, Amy, who was born and raised in New York City." And her friends, plump and welcoming, immediately suffer some strange Tourettesian episode: They repeat the words - New York City! - with clasped hands and say something that defies response: That must have been neat. Or, in reedy voices, they sing "New York, New York," rocking side to side with tiny jazz hands. Maureen's friend from the shoe store, Barb, drawls "Nue York Ceety! Get a rope," and when I squint at her in confusion, she says, "Oh, it's from that old salsa commercial!" and when I still fail to connect, she blushes, puts a hand on my arm, and says, "I wouldn't really hang you. — Gillian Flynn

Lucas seemed to have realized our prediciment at the same moment I had. "I haven't got my credit card with me. Kinda left in a hurry. We just spent the only cash I had in my pocket." Too-bright signs from the few open stores made mee squint. "We'd have been better off with a slingshot and Oreos. — Claudia Gray

By looking at squinting people you learn to squint. — Ovid

You squint hard enough, and everything starts to look suspicious. — Brian Staveley

Science and mathematics Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it, They never touch it: consider what an explosion Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world If any mind for a moment touch truth. — Robinson Jeffers

Dude. Post-apocalyptic world. Who does job applications anymore?"
"I do."
I squint at it, then him. "What are you paying me?" I angle.
"Dude. Post-apocalyptic world. Who does money anymore."
I snicker. First sign of any sense of humor he's shown. Then I remember where I am and why. I wad it up and throw it at him. It bounces off his chest. — Karen Marie Moning

I finally squint up at the face above and am relieved to find, not a wolf, but a woman, just like me. Until I see the uniform. — Courtney Summers

By Duraden, I have trolls dancing in my head this morning!' Stubble grumbled, screwing his eyes into a squint at the bright morning light. — Carl Sargent

And then I get up because it is the only thing I can do. I step out of the ditch and brush the ants off because it is the only thing I can do. I follow Randall around the house because it is the only thing I can do; if this is strength, if this is weakness, this is what I do. I hiccup, but tears still run down my face. After Mama died, Daddy said, What are you crying for? Stop crying. Crying ain't going to change anything. We never stopped crying. We just did it quieter. We hid it. I learned how to cry so that almost no tears leaked out of my eyes, so that I swallowed the hot salty water of them and felt them running down my throat. This was the only thing that we could do. I swallow and squint through the tears, and I run. — Jesmyn Ward

When you are describing,
A shape, or sound, or tint;
Don't state the matter plainly,
But put it in a hint;
And learn to look at all things,
With a sort of mental squint. — Lewis Carroll

I had a guitar leaning against the wall and I'd squint at it. It was almost like a dog that had been kicked - I didn't think I had anything to offer it. — Feist

one of her eyes was lower than the other, which gave her a distinguished look, and if she seemed to squint a little, it was not because she had bad vision but because one of her eyes had simply got stuck while staring beyond the treshold of the infinite into the very center of an equilateral triangle, into the very heart of being, or, as a chatolic existentialist put it, her defective eye symbolized the diamond's eternal blemish. — Bohumil Hrabal

If you look at the practice of 'crisis management,' and maybe squint at it a little, you can make out in the corners of your vision the ghosts or the vestiges of a much older, but still thoroughly American, form of public life, one centered not on public opinion but on religion. — Jonathan Dee

But how?" my students ask. "How do you actually do it?"
You sit down, I say. You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. So you sit down at, say, nine every morning, or ten every night. You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on the computer and bring up the right file, and then you stare at it for an hour or so. You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. You look at the ceiling, and over at the clock, yawn, and stare at the paper again. Then, with your fingers poised on the keyboard, you squint at an image that is forming in your mind
a scene, a locale, a character, whatever
and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. — Anne Lamott

Surmise is the gossamer that malice blows on fair reputations, the corroding dew that destroys the choice blossom. Surmise is primarily the squint of suspicion, and suspicion is established before it is confirmed. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

If you were to hold me down and tickle me to pick my favorite 'plus-comic,' it would have to be Kevin James, a broad physical pratfaller capable of deadpan underplay, a technique honed from years of reaction-shot close-ups on TV, where every teeny fraction of a squint registers. — James Wolcott

My only wish is that we leave room for hope. There is good and bad in all things. We find what we expect to find. We see what we expect to see. I have learned that if I tilt my head just right and squint, the world outside is beautiful. The future is bright. There are good things to come. — Hugh Howey

You stare at your dream from a distance, longing, sighing, seeing what you deem is a warning of IMPOSSIBLE. But if you would squint real hard you would see the truth; the sign correctly reads 'I'M POSSIBLE. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The sunset has turned the sky into a carnival of color as Noah and Brian walk out of the forest, hand in hand. Brian notices Dad and me first and shrugs his hand away, but Noah immediately finds it again. At this, Brian's eyes squint up and his face cracks open in a heart-crushing smile. Noah, like always around Brian, can barely keep his head on his neck, he's so happy. — Jandy Nelson

Are you going to rape me at any point or anything?" I just figured it was good to get things out in the open, get myself in the right headspace. He whipped his head around and looked at me like I'd just insulted his grandmother.
"The fuck? No, I'm not." He gave me the squint side-long. "Are you going to rape me? — Domashita Romero

Girl with a pie, I'll call it. It's almost like guy with an axe, if you squint hard enough. — Charlotte Stein

A cat loped across my gaze with a squint-eyed, piratical look, and a suave grin. — William Styron

Gabe pulled the card from the envolope.

I want to help you.

He flipped the card over.

You are the best thing to ever happen to Vernon.

Then in the tiniest script were words that Gabe had to squint to read:

PS. The dog's name is Guppy. — Audrey Shafer

The Simi gots some barbecue sauce in her bag. It kind of looks like blood if you squint at it the right way. And it don't coagulate between your teeth like blood or give you them funky burps, not to mention it tastes a lot better too. Especially over that type A stuff. Bleh! I'd rather eat my shoes. But that O-flavored blood ... yum! (She straightened and held one finger up in a gesture that strangely reminded him of Smokey the Bear.) And just remember, kids, three out of four demons all prefer barbecue sauce over hemoglobin. (Simi) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Love makes a good eye squint. — George Herbert

The truth is dark under your eyelids.
What are you going to do about it?
The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.
All day long you'll squint at the gray sky.
When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw.

A meek little lamb you grew your wool
Till they came after you with huge shears.
Flies hovered over open mouth,
Then they, too, flew off like the leaves,
The bare branches reached after them in vain.

Winter coming. Like the last heroic soldier
Of a defeated army, you'll stay at your post,
Head bared to the first snow flake.
Till a neighbor comes to yell at you,
You're crazier than the weather, Charlie. — Charles Simic

We've been trained to squint into a legal microscope, hoping that we can judge any dispute against the standard of a perfect society, where everyone will agree what's fair, and where accidents will be extinct, risk will be no more. — Philip K. Howard

Wishes are held to be ominous; according to which belief the order of the world is so arranged that if you have an impious objection to a squint, your offspring is more likely to be born with one; also, that if you happen to desire a squint, you would not get it. This desponding view of probability the hopeful entirely reject, taking their wishes as good and sufficient security for all kinds of fulfilment. — George Eliot

My grandfather was a railroad brakeman, sixty years with the D&H. I'd sit on his lap when I was little, I remember, at the upstairs apartment on Watkins Avenue in Oneonta overlooking the tracks, and we'd look out at the yard together and watch the trains hooking up, and he'd pull his gold watch out of his vest pocket and squint at the dial, a gold pocket watch, and the bulging surface of the watch case was all scritch-scratched, etched with tiny soft lines, hundreds of tiny scratches, interlaced. And then he'd check the yard, my Grandpa, to see if the trains were running on time. In those days there was a rhythm to everything, there was an order to things, but now we're riding a runaway train that's carrying us all away to that final night where nothing is remembered and nothing matters. — Donald O'Donovan

To tell a person who has ADD to try harder is about as helpful as telling someone who is nearsighted to squint harder. — Edward M. Hallowell

I ate the roll, and forced down some more sparkling wine. When your eyes closed against the sun again, and I had nothing else to look at I glanced quickly at your chest, curious, really. I'd only seen chests like that in magazines. I wondered if that's how you'd got all your money ... modeling. I looked down at my stomach. I grabbed at it, seeing how much fat I could lift up in a roll.
"Don't worry," you said, one eye open again like a crocodile, watching me. "You're beautiful." You tipped your head back again "Beautiful," you murmured. "Perfect."
"You wouldn't know. You're built like some sort of supermodel." I bit my lip, wishing I hadn't complimented you like that. "Or a stripper," I added. "Prostitute."
"I wouldn't want you to think I'm repulsive," you said, half smiling.
"Too late."
You opened your other eye to squint at me. "Will you ever give me a break? — Lucy Christopher

I see Dr. Johnston at the end of the hall, walking toward us. He stops talking to the other doctors and gestures for me to wait. He holds up his hand: Stop. His face is eager yet unsmiling. I look in the other direction then back at him. His steps quicken, and I squint, for some reason pretending I don't recognize him. And I think: What if I'm wrong? What if Joanie doesn't make it out of this?
"Scottie," I say. "This way."
I walk in the other direction, away from Dr. Johnston, and she turns and follows me.
"Walk quickly," I tell her.
"Why?"
"It's a game. Let's race. Walk fast. Run."She takes off, her backpack jiggling on her back, and I follow her, walking quickly then breaking into a slow jog, and because Dr. Johnston is my friend's dad and was a friend of my father's, I feel like I'm fourteen again, running from the patriarchs. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

Couldn't inquisitiveness be called just real affection with a kind of squint in its eye? — Maria Thompson Daviess

Dear ignoramuses,
Halloween is not 'a yankee holiday' celebrated only by gigantic toddlers wearing baseball caps back to front and spraying 'automobiles' with eggs. This is ignorance.
Halloween is an ancient druidic holiday, one the Celtic peoples have celebrated for millennia. It is the crack between the last golden rays of summer and the dark of winter; the delicately balanced tweak of the year before it is given over entirely to the dark; a time for the souls of the departed to squint, to peek and perhaps to travel through the gap. What could be more thrilling and worthy of celebration than that? It is a time to celebrate sweet bounty, as the harvest is brought in. It is a time of excitement and pleasure for children before the dark sets in. We should all celebrate that.
Pinatas on the other hand are heathen monstrosities and have no place in a civilised society. — Jenny Colgan

I squint. "Married?" Lily nods enthusiastically. "At the Drive-Through Wedding Chapel. We took some great pictures. And now I'm Mrs. Billy Warren." Nope, still can't wrap my head around it. "Married? Really?" Warren's expression goes from sappy to annoyed. "Yeah, Long Duck Fuckin' Dong - married. What's your problem? — Emma Chase

Leave home. Fail marvelously, and succeed even better. Kick your feet up and wonder when you will be back. Stay out late. Make telephone calls from unfamiliar street corners. When your mother's voice comes from far away and asks where you are, squint down the road and tell her you aren't sure. Make uncertainty your home. Put the mat out for yourself. Look at your watch and think of how you're almost home. — Nick Burd

Sometimes when I look at them from a distance, I try and squint my eyes and clear my mind. I peer at them the way a stranger would - without any emotions, just observations. In this large fortress I had created around my heart, the one that let me enter situations easily and leave even more easily, how did they find a cat flap that allowed them to crawl into my soul? — Twinkle Khanna

Friendship is about more than facts. It's about knowing what someone is thinking, or knowing enough to know that you don't. But I guess it's also about not letting too much time go by without asking them questions, so you don't end up looking at them one afternoon, the sun so bright you have to squint, realizing that you hardly recognize the person they've become. — Nina LaCour

You build your world around someone, and then what happens when he disappears? Where do you go- into pieces, into atoms, into the arms of another man? You go shopping, you cook dinner, you work odd hours, you make love to someone else on June nights. But you're not really there, you're someplace else where there is blue sky and a road you don't recognize. If you squint your eyes, you think you see him, in the shadows, beyond the trees. You always imagine that you see him, but he's never there. It's only his spirit, that's what's there beneath the bed when you kiss your husband, there when you send your daughter off to school. It's in your coffee cup, your bathwater, your tears. Unfinished business always comes back to haunt you, and a man who swears he'll love you forever isn't finished with you until he's done. — Alice Hoffman

There's a current running and a pretty stiff offshore breeze." "Merde," said Freycinet again. He went forward along the rail and lay down beside the anchor windlass, peering into the chains. "He's a cook too," Gillian said, speaking softly. "How come you're not more like him?" "An accident of birth," Blessington said. "If we were married," she said, "you wouldn't have to skip on your visa." "Ah," said Blessington, "don't think it hasn't occurred to me. Nice to be a legal resident." "Legal my ass," she said. Freycinet suddenly turned and watched them. He showed them the squint, the bared canines. "What — Robert Stone

Fate isn't some middle-aged man with a squint who won't recognize you if you change your clothes. — Meg Rosoff

The combination to be on guard for is young and bored, or young and resentful. You can spot them at social gatherings, the grad students or interns who tell you about syndromes, conditions, deviances, and disorders, and they love, love, love to talk. They speak in half-sentences with a knowing smile-squint, watch you falter at the pause, and then keep talking. — Craig Clevenger

There is no pleasure like leaving
before dawn in last night's clothes.
Light snow or thick dew in the grass-
no one's passed this way before.
The note you left needed only a few words,
no explanation where lies could creep in.
Your eyes, blinked clear, won't squint or glance off,
it's the stars that turn their faces away.
He or she is or is not the one you love
and you cannot stay. The dark
turns to mist and the mist cannot stay
but for once there's no need for alarm.
You're getting a good head start.
Maybe the world isn't made of dust.
Maybe you won't make another mistake.
You're as young as you'll ever be. — Dean Young

Squint at the world. You will see more, by seeing less. — John Maeda

The closest you will ever come to seeing vampires burnt by daylight is by inviting a group of Danes for a hygge dinner and then placing them under a 5,000K fluorescent light tube. At first, they will squint, trying to examine the torture device you have placed in the ceiling. Then, as dinner begins, observe how they will move uncomfortably around in their chairs, compulsively scratching and trying to suppress twitches. — Meik Wiking

And I'd stand there trying to see it, the way you try to remember a dream, where you squint and it's right there on the tip of your psychic tongue but you can't get it back. The image is gone. That is one of the worst feelings I can think of, to have had a wonderful moment or insight or vision or phrase, to know you had it, and then to lose it. — Anne Lamott

She looked down a slope, needing to squint for the sunlight, onto a vast sprawl of houses which had grown up all together, like a well-tended crop, from the dull brown earth; and she thought of the time she'd opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her now with the same unexpected, astonishing clarity as the circuit card had. Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate. There'd seemed no limit to what the printed circuit could have told her (if she had tried to find out); so in her first minute of San Narciso, a revelation also trembled just past the threshold of her understanding. — Thomas Pynchon

As you enter the tunnel, the wind gets sucked away, and you squint from the lights overhead. When you adjust the lights, you can see the other side in the distance just as the sound of the radio fades to nothing because the waves just can't reach. Then, you're in the middle of the tunnel, and everything becomes a calm dream. As you see the opening get closer, you just can't get there fast enough. And finally, just when you think you'll never get there, you see the opening right in front of you. And the radio comes back even louder than you remember it. And the wind is waiting. And you fly out of the tunnel onto the bridge. And there it is. The city. A million lights and buildings and everything seems as exciting as the first time you saw it. — Stephen Chbosky

Do not resent your place in the story. Do not imagine yourself elsewhere. Do not close your eyes and picture a world without thorns, without shadows, without hawks. Change this world. Use your body like a tool meant to be used up, discarded, and replaced. Better every life you touch. We will reach the final chapter. When we have eyes that can stare into the sun, eyes that only squint for the Shenikah, then we will see laughing children pulling cobras by their tails, and hawks and rabbits playing tag. — N.D. Wilson

Where are your glasses?"
She shrugged. "Lost. How did you know I wore some?"
"You squint, Pima."
"Pima? My name is Vicky."
"I know what your name is. But I choose to call you Pima. Pain in my ass."
"Well excuse me, Nobody," she sassed back with the first ounce of fire he'd seen in her. — Eve Langlais

I squint my eyes and glare at him.
"I don't have a crush on Quinn anymore."
He raises a golden eyebrow.
"No?"
I shake my head. "No."
"Why is that?"
I stare at him long and hard, trying to decide what to say. Should I be downright, painfully honest? I've always found that the best way to be, so I nod.
"Two words."
He waits.
"Dante. Giliberti."
I hear him suck in his breath and I smile. Sometimes, honesty is refreshing and so very worth it.
"Me?" He sounds so surprised, as though he doesn't know that he is practically a living breathing Adonis. I nod.
"You."
He studies me again and I fight the need to fidget as I wait for his reaction.
After a minute of nerve-wracking silence, he finally answers.
"So, will you keep the bracelet?"
I nod.
"Can I kiss you again?"
I nod.
So he does. — Courtney Cole

She tried discreetly to squint and instead came off looking as if she had discreetly farted. — Alessandra Torre

Halloween is an ancient druidic holiday, one the Celtic peoples have celebrated for millennia. It is the crack between the last golden rays of summer and the dark of winter; the delicately balanced tweak of the year before it is given over entirely to the dark; a time for the souls of the departed to squint, to peek and perhaps to travel through the gap. What could be more thrilling and worthy of celebration than that? It is a time to celebrate sweet bounty, as the harvest is brought in. It is a time of excitement and pleasure for children before the dark sets in. We should all celebrate that. — Jenny Colgan

High school taught me a valuable lesson about glasses: Don't wear them. Contacts have always seemed like too much work, so instead I just squint, figuring that if something is more than ten feet away, I'll just deal with it when I get there. — David Sedaris

a few of them even looked like soldiers. In a bad light. If you squint. — George R R Martin

Lucy paused, hands full of green beans, her memory flashing back to the giant pots of crawfish on the stove. Her Mama's green eyes would squint into the steam, hair pulled back, a frown of concentration on her face. The salted water was flavored and ready to receive the "mudbugs" out of their burlap sacks. Other than an onion or maybe an ear of corn, if it wasn't alive when you threw it in, then it shouldn't be in the pot, she'd say. Did her Mama mind that Lucy didn't cook those old family recipes? Was she turning her back on her culinary heritage as surely as Paulette was?
She snapped the ends of the beans faster, glancing at the clock. This whole dinner was breaking her Mama's cardinal rule: don't hurry. She thought if a cook was in a hurry, you might as well just make a sandwich and go on your way. — Mary Jane Hathaway

The sun
Setting
Through
Pines Trees
At the edge
Of town
Makes me squint and
Smie — Matthew Quick

Sometimes, when I look at my work at the newspaper and squint in just the right way, I can even see it as a microcosm of democracy itself. After all, every staff member participates in the creation of each issue. I solicit their ideas. I value the contributions of women and minorities. Of course, I wasn't democratically elected, but what newspaper chief ever was? — Jennifer Steil

He nods, then squints across the room. "Not all those who wander are lost," he says. He's still squinting. I wonder if he's practiced this squint - a squint-stare off into the metaphysical distance. I'm realizing he's kind of handsome. But then again, it might just be that he cares about something.
"What is that?" I ask. "Did Jesus Christ say that?"
"No," he says. "Bilbo Baggins said that. — Patrick Somerville

I always imagine divine mercy giving us back to ourselves and letting us laugh at what we became, laugh at the preoisterous disguises of crouch and squint and limp and lour we all do put on. — Marilynne Robinson

You know just because you don't like the way it sounds when I say it or you don't like my haircut or you don't like that I'm gay, it does not mean that what we say is not true. If you squint a little bit, it is true I do sometimes look like a dude, and I am definitely gay. — Rachel Maddow

With a sort of mental squint. — Lewis Carroll

There, all gone, Luce." And the little girl continued to open and squint shut her eyes. "All gone," she said eventually. Then, "More 'tato!" and the hunt began again. Inside, Isabel swept the floor in every room, gathering the sandy dust into piles in the corner, ready to gather up. Returning from a quick inspection of the bread in the oven, she found a trail leading all through the cottage, thanks to Lucy's attempts with the dustpan. — M.L. Stedman

Perversnes makes one squint ey'd. — George Herbert

A youth loathes nothing more than his own callowness. Experience is his object. Experience, however ghastly, for the lad longs before all for the lined face and chiseled squint of the veteran. Even his submissions to terror, the very shit with which he paints his thighs under fire is trophy to him; he points it out to his comrades, laughing in the aftercourse of action as if it were a decoration for valour, for it makes him a salt, a veteran, an old hand. — Steven Pressfield

To speak of God, to think of God, is in every respect to show what one is made of. I have always wagered against God and I regard the little that I have won in this world as simply the outcome of this bet. However paltry may have been the stake (my life) I am conscious of having won to the full. Everything that is doddering, squint-eyed, vile, polluted and grotesque is summoned up for me in that one word: God! — Andre Breton

Oh, my stars! Think about Prince Kai! You could dance with Prince Kai!"
This made Cinder pause and squint into Iko's blinding light. "Why would the prince dance with me?"
Iko's fan hummed as she sought an answer. "Because you won't have grease on your face this time. — Marissa Meyer

I looked over at Sara. "I like it," I declared, beaming at the image in front of me. The sun's bright rays filtering through the leaves made me want to squint. With the heavy strokes of the bark, I could imagine dragging my fingertips along the rough texture. "Of course you do," Sara stated, shooting me a look out of the corner of her eye. "She pained the tree in your backyard with the swing you made for her. — Rebecca Donovan

Where is truth, forsooth, and who knoweth it? Is Beauty beautiful, or is it only our eyes that make it so? Does Venus squint? Has she got a splay-foot, red hair, and a crooked back? Anoint my eyes, good Fairy Puck, so that I may ever consider the Beloved Object a paragon! Above all, keep on anointing my mistress's dainty peepers with the very strongest ointment, so that my noddle may ever appear lovely to her, and that she may continue to crown my honest ears with fresh roses! — William Makepeace Thackeray

He pulled the truck onto the shoulder of the road and parked, cell phone tight in one hand, his eyes on the landscape before him. From here he could see the foothills rippling out like a blanket from the ragged edge of the mountains. They spread in loose folds until becoming the flat expanse of prairie that crossed all the way to the Great Lakes. July's bounty was a brash flare of colour: wind combed through golden tracts of wheat and sun-bright canola so brilliant he had to squint.
The truck was balanced along the edge of an invisible wall which blocked Waterton from the rest of the world. He hadn't thought about how very real that barrier was; now that his phone was reconnected, it felt like a physical presence. He wasn't quite sure what he'd find on the other side. — Danika Stone

Quote taken from Chapter 1:
Alma idly wondered if he'd blow his nose, too.
He did. Twice. He made it honk, the sound reminding Alma of Harpo Marx squeezing his bulb horn.
Isabel darted a look at Alma, giving her the don't-you-dare-giggle squint.
Alma dug her fingernails into her palm, the inappropriate laugh rising from her throat as she looked up at the ceiling. Blue refolded his handkerchief and returned it to inside his seersucker jacket. Thankfully, Alma's urge to laugh subsided. — Ed Lynskey

Clearly through my tears I see
you striving to cope in this world
not so easy for a tender one
hard to stand with the wind
blowing all around
disheveling your hair
making your eyes squint so you
can't see where you're going. — Susan Love Fitts

I squint until I find Christopher's gaze. I wish he wouldn't look at me, and I also wish that he'd never stop. — Jessica Park

School and a year into remission. You had to be pretty sick for the Genies to hook you up with a Wish. "I got it in exchange for the leg," he explained. There was all this light on his face; he had to squint to look at me, which made his nose crinkle adorably. "Now, I'm not going to give you my Wish or anything. But I also have an interest in meeting Peter Van Houten, and it wouldn't make sense to meet him without the girl who introduced me to his book." "It definitely wouldn't," I said. "So I talked to the Genies, and they are in total agreement. They said Amsterdam is lovely in the beginning of May. They proposed — John Green

Robert could piss in a cup and men would call it wine, but I offer them cold clear water and they squint in suspicion and mutter to each other about how queer it tastes. — George R R Martin