Strewn About Quotes & Sayings

Mikas had told him once that the place had been hit during the bombing of the city years earlier, that the residents had been herded out of the building and into transports like cattle, never to return. Their things had been left strewn about and forgotten, a derelict snapshot of the lives they had left behind. — A.M. Daily

Eleanor fixated on all the small luxuries strewn and tucked around the house. Packs of cigarettes, newspapers, magazines ... Brand-name cereal and quilted toilet paper. His refrigerator was full of things you tossed into the cart without thinking about it just because they sounded good. — Rainbow Rowell

Gasping for breath, he turned on the lights and saw bits and pieces of his Mom and Dad strewn about the blood-spattered room. He recognized his mother's gold earring on an ear lying next to the bedpost and saw his father's anchor tattoo on a severed forearm. Everywhere he looked, he saw more ghastly evidence that some inhuman monster had sliced and diced his parents almost beyond recognition. — Billy Wells

Also, I do seem attracted to trash, as if the clue
the clue
lies there. I'm always ferreting out elliptical points, odd angles. What I write doesn't make a whole lot of sense. There is fun and religion and psychotic horror strewn about like a bunch of hats. Also, there is a social or sociological drift
rather than toward the hard sciences, the overall impression is childish but interesting. — Philip K. Dick

Empty whiskey bottles strewn about like forgotten failures — Michael Coorlim

Was I the only one who became unsettled and swoonish at the sight of a large, inverted carcass hanging from a tree, its vital organs strewn about like children's toys, the occasional pack of hunting dogs fighting over a lung, another one looking for a quiet place to enjoy the severed head? It happened all the time and nobody else seemed bothered. People just walked up to the bloody carcasses and carried on entirely normal conversations, as though a man wasn't standing there squeezing deer feces out of a large intestine and small children weren't playing football with a liver. — Harrison Scott Key

The great hall was shimmering in light, sun streaming from the open windows, and ablaze with colour, the walls decorated with embroidered hangings in rich shades of gold and crimson. New rushes had been strewn about, fragrant with lavender, sweet woodruff, and balm ... the air was ... perfumed with honeysuckle and violet, their seductive scents luring in from the gardens butterflies as blue as the summer sky. — Sharon Kay Penman

Even if you hadn't entirely deposed (and possibly killed) not one but two governments and destabilized all sorts of political regions you couldn't even pronounce, let alone draft up constitutional monarchies for, even if you'd been far more careful about leaving your toys strewn about everywhere when you tire yourself out with anarchy and run on home, I'd say you really are the lowest sort. — Catherynne M Valente

Are we to look at cherry blossoms only in full bloom, the moon only when it is cloudless? To long for the moon while looking on the rain, to lower the blinds and be unaware of the passing of the spring - these are even more deeply moving. Branches about to blossom or gardens strewn with flowers are worthier of our admiration. — Yoshida Kenko

Though Alec had never seen the occupants of the first floor loft, they seemed to be engaged in a tempestuous romance. Once there had been a bunch of someone's belongings strewn all over the landing with a note attached to a jacket lapel addressed to "A lying liar who lies." Right now there was a bouquet of flowers taped to the door with a card tucked among the blooms that read I'M SORRY. That was the thing about New York: you always knew more about your neighbors' business than you wanted to. — Cassandra Clare

In the gloomy corridor of that sepulchre I had felt Emerson's arms about me for the first time; along the rubble-strewn floor of the wadi we had raced by moonlight to save those we loved from a hideous death. Every foot of the way was familiar to me, and the spot was as fraught with romance as a garden of roses might be to one who had led a more boring life. — Elizabeth Peters

When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. I was greatly excited at the thought of the first lucky passerby who would receive a gift in this way, regardless of merit, a free gift from the universe ... I've been thinking about seeing. There are lots of things to see, unwrapped gifts and free surprises. The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside from a generous hand. — Annie Dillard

He stepped aside to the ledge where the vine leaves yet lay strewn about, collected two or three, and stood wiping his hands upon them, with his back to the light. — Charles Dickens

As rumor had said, he found several corpses strewn carelessly about the floor. Since the glow of the light was feeble, he could not count the number. He could only see that some were naked and others clothed. Some of them were women, and all were lolling on the floor with their mouths open or their arms outstretched showing no more signs of life than so many clay dolls. One would doubt they had ever been alive, so eternally silent they were. — Ryunosuke Akutagawa

My head whips back from the impact and my ribs twang like a dropped guitar. The sky spins above me like a penny. My bike has dematerialized, and my iPod is strewn about the intersection in a million glittering pieces. When I try to move, ten different parts of my body light up at once, like someone's pressing all the buttons at an anatomy exhibit. The magnolia tree blows me a kiss of perfumed air, and I can't decide if what I'm feeling is incredible bliss of excruciating pain. This might just be the greatest moment of my life. It's possible. And if it is, I don't want to waste it lying around in the middle of the road. For a single, golden second I breathe galaxies. — Hilary T. Smith

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others. — Virginia Woolf

With a room of his own, a room at the top, he could proffer a temporary refuge to some lovely, fatigued, world-weary, sophisticated, black-turtlenecked, heavily-eyelinered girl he might lure up the stairs into his newspaper-strewn boudoir and onto his Indian-bedspreaded bed with the promise of artistic talk about the craft of writing, and the throes and torments of creation, and the need for integrity, and the temptations of selling out, and the nobility of resisting such temptations, and so forth. A promise offered with a hint of self-mockery in case such a girl might think he was pompous and cocksure and full of himself. Which he was, because at that age you have to be that way in order to crawl out of bed in the morning and sustain your faith in your own illusory potential for the next twelve hours of being awake. — Margaret Atwood

All the way back she talked haltingly about herself, and Amory's love waned slowly with the moon. At her door they started from habit to kiss good night, but she could not run into his arms, nor were they stretched to meet her as in the week before. For a minute they stood there, hating each other with a bitter sadness. But as Amory had loved himself in Eleanor, so now what he hated was only a mirror. Their poses were strewn about the pale dawn like broken glass. The stars were long gone and there were left only the little sighing gusts of wind and the silences between ... but naked souls are poor things ever, and soon he turned homewards and let new lights come in with the sun. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The dismembered limbs of dolls and puppets are strewn about everywhere. Posters, signs, billboards, and leaflets of various sorts are scattered around like playing cards, their bright words disarranged into nonsense. Countless other objects, devices, and leftover goods stock the room, more than one could possibly take notice of. But they are all, in some way, like those which have been described. One wonders, then, how they could add up to such an atmosphere of ... isn't repose the word? Yes, but a certain kind of repose: the repose of ruin. — Thomas Ligotti

Jeremy had a mysterious, breath-taking allure about him, the feel of autumn, like riding down a leaf-strewn road, churning up the fragrance of tomorrow in her wake. Yes, Jeremy was a dangerous mix of something sweetly familiar and the enticing scent of change. — Susan May Warren

Alone in this city, alone on this sea. The days were strewn about him, he was a drunkard of days. He had achieved nothing. He had his life
it was not worth much
not like a life that, though ended, had truly been something. If I had had courage,he thought, if I had had faith. We preserve ourselves as if that were important, and always at the expense of others. We hoard ourselves. We succeed if they fail, we are wise if they are foolish, and we go onward, clutching, until there is no one
we are left with no companion save God. In whom we do not believe. Who we know does not exist. — James Salter

The next morning, the earth was strewn with debris from the windstorm the night before. An audience of trees looked down on severed limbs cast about the ground, their hunched and beaten postures reminding me of a congregation of amputees gathered in the wake of a war. — John Burley

Dean is still asleep. His clothes are strewn about. The shutters are closed. He never dreams. He's like a dead musician, like a spent runner. He hasn't the strength to dream, or rather, his dreams take place while he is awake and they are marvelous for at least one quality: he has the power to prolong them. — James Salter

They left their encampment with dirt-covered linen strewn about the abandoned grounds amongst clothes, shoes, children's toys and other discarded belongings. The handcart wheels crunched over them, and the dry wheels screamed as the Willie Company started for Zion. — Sage Steadman

I love being outdoors and think a tan is very sexy. I'll lie out on white towels strewn with pillows. I don't like to hide under hats. If anyone knows about spending lots of the time on the beach, with kids and dogs in tow, it's me. — Pamela Anderson

Amory had loved himself in Eleanor, so now what he hated was only a mirror. Their poses were strewn about the pale dawn like broken glass. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I never saw a man fight as Conan fought. He put his back to the courtyard wall, and before they overpowered him the dead men were strewn in heaps thigh-deep about him. But at last they dragged him down, a hundred against one. — Robert E. Howard

This is American two-one-three to the cockpit voice recorder. Now we know what it's like. It is worse than we'd ever imagined. They didn't prepare us for this at the death simulator in Denver. Our fear is pure, so totally stripped of distractions and pressures as to be a form of transcendental meditation. In less than three minutes we will touch down, so to speak. They will find our bodies in some smoking field, strewn about in the grisly attitudes of death. I love you, Lance." This time there was a brief pause before the mass wailing recommenced. Lance? — Don DeLillo

Mahatma Gandhi was a man of peace and non-violence and lived by the Hindu principle of ahimsa, action based on refusal to do harm. As his war-strewn presidency shows, George Bush knows nothing about ahimsa and non-violence. Bush should reconsider this cynical, disrespectful display of symbolism. — Kevin Martin

Oh, why did nobody warn me?" cried Grimes in agony. "I should have been told. They should have told me in so many words. They should have warned me about Flossie, not about the fires of hell. I've risked them, and I don't mind risking them again, but they should have told me about marriage. They should have told me that at the end of that gay journey and flower-strewn path were the hideous lights of home and the voices of children. — Evelyn Waugh

The shock of twentieth-century technology numbed our brains and we are just beginning to notice the spiritual and social debris that our technology has strewn about us. — Neil Postman

Trout said this about all the stories he had torn to pieces and flushed down toilets or tossed into trash-strewn vacant lots, or whatever: 'Easy come, easy go. — Kurt Vonnegut

there's no way I can sleep in any position with so much still unwritten about the glory of basements, where,
with all the promise in crock pot boxes, small animals go to die, piles of laundry hide the machines, rusted tools fall into other rusted tools giving way to unsung sculpture, soiled playing cards and unmatched socks strewn atop a punched-out screen door make a shaggy parquet; and a famished, leggy fluorescent tube barely winks on the entire scene. — Kristen Henderson