Swab Quotes & Sayings

Dr. Grime carries a Tide stain pen. He does not use his own spit. Art conservators do. "We make cotton swabs on bamboo sticks and moisten the swab in our mouths," says Andrea Chevalier, senior paintings conservator with the Intermuseum Conservation Association. — Mary Roach

He was by far the fiercest, most ruggedly handsome, yet, formidable man she had ever laid eyes on. She couldn't stop staring at him. He had dark brown hair which skimmed his shoulders, a short-haired beard around his lips and chin, and gorgeous greenish-blue eyes that reminded her of the sea. There was something dangerously wicked about the look of his face, and she half expected him to yell for his men to batten down the hatches or swab the deck. — Madison Thorne Grey

...and is there anything to compare to love? Is there anything at all, anything that has ever been built, grown or coalesced that can compare to love? Love as deep as the Mariana Trench and wild as a summer storm? — Daniel Polansky

It was a secret time and place, you next to me, untraceable and out of this world. — Daniel Handler

Land could not be minted! Land could only be lived upon, and loved. — Eleanor Catton

Love changes you. No matter how strong you are, it makes you stronger. No matter how weak you are, it makes you weaker. No matter how hard you are to conquer, it will bring you to your knees. — R.K. Lilley

I gave him a mocking smile. "Come on, Jack. Don't deprive me of the pleasure of watching you donate a DNA sample. I'll even pay for it."
"That offer might interest me," he said, "if it involved anything more exciting than a buccal swab."
-Ella & Jack — Lisa Kleypas

So I told [the doctor] about my hay fever, which used to rage just in summertime but now simmers the year round, and he listened listlessly as though it were a cock and bull story; and we sat there for a few minutes and neither of us was interested in the other's nose, but after a while he poked a little swab up mine and made a smear on a glass slide and his assistant put it under the microscope and found two cells which delighted him and electrified the whole office, the cells being characteristic of a highly allergic system. The doctor's manner changed instantly and he was full of the enthusiasm of discovery and was as proud of the two little cells as though they were his own. — E.B. White

Everything makes you who you are, so I was lucky that I had a good family that was horrified by what I wanted to do but was also supportive of it, right to the very end. — John Waters

Think about this for a moment. What would happen if you were to begin speaking to people's potential rather than their performance? What if you made it a habit to dispense the same type of grace to others as has been poured out on you? What would happen if you intentionally laced your conversations with notions of what could be true of the people around you? — Andy Stanley

Not all of the women were influenced by the pheromones, but enough of them were to elevate the findings to robust statistical significance and to demonstrate with fair firmness that human pheromones exist. What we see in this carefully controlled experiment is that women can push and women can pull, and they can respond to other women in varying ways, all unconsciously, without knowing why, without the benefit even of olfaction, for the women in the study said they smelled nothing when the swab was applied under their nose, save for the scent of rubbing alcohol used as a prep in the experiment. — Natalie Angier

There's this misconception that the Navy is this cruise ship, and you get to go out and sail around, and every now and then, you have to swab the deck. But, no, it is a very impressive group of young people that live at sea, in this place that's very uncomfortable. They exude a pride that is well-deserved. — Tom Hanks

Great!" I rubbed my hands together. "Which one first?"
Anders's eyebrows rose. "Tory, that's a hefty request. Those machines are extremely expensive. We rarely log time on them for side projects." He pauses, lips pursed. "Your teacher couldn't have reasonably expected you to conduct a full microscopic analysis. How would you? I think you'll be okay with just the swab."
"Of course we will." Hi elbow-jabbed my side. "Tory's such a kidder. Let's run the mass spectrometer." He flashed a "get a load of this guy" face at Anders while aiming a thumb back at me. "What a joker! — Kathy Reichs

I regret always writing, writing. I gave
my kid the whole plastic bag of marshmallows,
so i could have 20 minutes to write.
I sat at my mother's deathbed, writing.
I did swab her mouth with water, and feel
her pliant tongue enjoy water, then harden
and die. Before I had language,
before I had stories, I wanted to write.
That desire is going away.
I've said what I have to say.
I'll stop and look at things I called
distractions. Become a reader of the world,
no more writer of it. — Maxine Hong Kingston

I had to de-program myself. From myself. Had to reinvent rituals of purification. So full of the vagrant pollutions of others. It was time to detox. Not only from alcohol, sex, and drugs, but from needy leeches who looked to swab me with their sores. Detox from my own needy lechery. Had to locate the center wound and cauterize. Undo the original sin, the origin of my sickness ... Had to learn to replace Them, It, Want, Hurt, Anger, Sorrow, Loss, with Power, Healing, Wisdom, Fulfillment, Satisfaction. — Lydia Lunch

With a sudden pressure heralded by pricks of sweat along my drastically receding hairline, I swab the bottom of my salad plate with a vast hunk of bread and jam it into my mouth like a dentist packing a tooth. And just then-ah yes-I feel the niggling onset of a sneeze; here it comes, Hail Mary, bread or no bread, nothing can halt the shouting simultaneous eruption of every cavity in my head. — Jennifer Egan

Closure means the door is "kinda shut"..we use it like a temporary swab to dab a bleeding wound that will never heal
only clot. — Will Leamon

I took the swab using the collection kit that I'd borrowed from Dominic who, I realized, had left the Boy Scout scale behind and was now verging on Batman levels of crazy preparedness. — Ben Aaronovitch

Why is it that fancy hotels always locate the rooms that are supposed to be accessible to folks in wheelchairs and walkers at the end of the hall as far from the elevators as possible? And why is it those rooms are always the ones with the worst views? — Jayne Ann Krentz

Before they give you a lethal injection, they swab your arm with alcohol. It's true. Well, they don't want you to get an infection, and you can see their point. They don't want some guy go to hell and be sick. — George Carlin

Sin is rarely without complication — Chelsea Cain

are limited by procedure to — Dale Brown

Literature is a vast forest and the masterpieces are the lakes, the towering trees or strange trees, the lovely, eloquent flowers, the hidden caves, but a forest is also made up of ordinary trees, patches of grass, puddles, clinging vines, mushrooms, and little wildflowers. — Roberto Bolano

When the Constitution declares that 'all men are created equal,' it is not referring to intelligence, good looks, good humor, height, weight, or income. It is talking about certain rights, 'inalienable', in that they cannot be taken away. — Elisabeth Elliot

With the "SWAB JOB" school prank sign — Walter Isaacson

A championship contender in the early twentieth century needed charisma and a knack for cultivating sponsorship, and Rubinstein was the epitome of the shy and unsocial chess player. Now matter how great his chess skills, he lacked the people skills to be a self-promoter and fund-raiser. — Garry Kasparov

If you bend a branch until it's horizontal, the sap will slow to a stopping point: a comma or colon, made of leaves grown into one another and over one another and hardened. Out of this pause comes a flower, which unfolds itself in spirals, as if the leaf form, unable to keep to its line, had begun to pivot. — Alice Oswald