Table Shaking Quotes & Sayings

The lower you are on the pole, the more events seem to be governed by chance. Climb up a few steps and you realize that there's an order to the whole thing, the dice are loaded and the cards well marked. — Daniel Polansky

When we reached our hall, Nee offered to share hot chocolate with me. Shaking my head, I pleaded tiredness
true enough
and retreated to my rooms.
And discovered something lying on the little table in the parlor where letters and invitations were supposed to be put.
Moving slowly across the room, I looked down at an exquisite porcelain sphere. It was dark blue, with silver stars all over it, and so cunningly painted that when I looked closer it gave the illusion of depth
as if I stared deeply into the sky.
Lifting it with reverent care, I opened it and saw, sitting on a white silk nest, a lovely sapphire ring. Trying it on my fingers, I found to my delight it fit my longest one.
Why couldn't Bran give me this in person? There were times when I found my brother incomprehensible, but I knew he thought the same of me.
Puzzled, but content, I fell asleep with my ringed hand cradled against my cheek. — Sherwood Smith

Some mornings ... I sit at the kitchen table shaking salt into the hairs on my arm, and a feeling shoves up in me: it's finished. Everything went past without me. — Jennifer Egan

The process of putting the thing you value most in the world out for the assessment of strangers is a confidence-shaking business even in the best of times. But in Lucy's circumstances it was sheer heroism, a real sign of her devotion to her art. She was, in a sense, sitting at a craps table with her last stack of chips, trying again and again to hit it big. — Ann Patchett

She moved suddenly, planting her hands against the kitchen floor. Throwing back her head, she screamed, and that sound was full of sorrow and heartbreak. It started as a low tremble under my feet and then increased, shaking the kitchen table and rattling the plates and cups in the cabinets. Then it was a rumble, causing the house to groan and small clouds of dust to drop from the ceiling. The table scuttled over the floor. A chair toppled over and then another. Somewhere in the living room, a window shattered. Kat was going to bring the house down. Shit. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I've come to the conclusion that it's all about fear- fear that your kid won't come out on top, be a success. Forcing him into these brutal encounters will a) make a dame sure he is a success, and b) all you to see evidence of that success with the added bonus of a cheering crowd. This means that sports are supported with an almost desperate enthusiasm. The football team gets catered dinners before a fame. Honor Society is lucky if it gets a cupcake. Academic success-forget it. That requires too much imagination. There's no scoreboard. — Deb Caletti

The principle component in any genuine friendship is caring, not competition. — Charles F. Glassman

On the not-so-rare occasion that a fight broke out, the regulars were more concerned for the safety of their drinks (they'd sooner save a pitcher from a shaking table than step in to help the man whose falling body shook it), and Lila imagined someone could cry for help in the middle of the room and earn little more than a tip of the cup and a raised brow. — V.E Schwab

Soft flesh is eaten by hard teeth. — Isaac Marion

We sat down and Lend put his arm around me. Every single jaw at the table dropped.
"Man," John said, shaking his head. "All this time I was pretty sure you were gay. — Kiersten White

Whether we know it or not, we are all in a quest after the Great Companion. All study, all art, all music, all literature, all government, all industry are in essence a search after the Infinite. — Lyman Abbott

I think that's one of the biggest problems in rock is people thinking too much, putting too much emphasis on getting things perfect or completely sorted out. Sometimes that sound of not having everything sorted out is kind of cool. — Stone Gossard

When I looked at you, I didn't see the girl I wanted to share my first kiss with, I saw the girl I wanted to share every kiss with. — Lisa De Jong

I want to do everything. That's my problem. — Joshua Bell

I ... What are you saying, Zsadist?" she stammered, even though she'd heard every word.
He glanced back down at the pencil in his hand and then turned to the table. Flipping the spiral notebook to a new page, he bent way over and labored on top of the paper for quite a while. Then he ripped the sheet free.
His hand was shaking as he held it out. "It's messy."
Bella took the paper. In a child's uneven block letters there were three words: I LOVE YOU
Her lips flattened tight as her eyes stung. The handwriting got wavy and then disappeared.

"Maybe you can't read it," he said in a small voice. "I can do it over."

She shook her head. "I can read it just fine. It's ... beautiful."
"I don't expect anything back. I mean ... I know that you don't ... feel that for me anymore. But I wanted you to know. It's important that you knew. — J.R. Ward

You have until midnight."
The silence swallowed them all again. Every head turned, every eye in the place seemed to have found Harry, to hold him frozen in the glare of thousands of invisible beams. Then a figure rose from the Slytherin table and he recognized Pansy Parkinson as she raised a shaking arm and screamed, "But he's there! Potter's there! Someone grab him!"
Before Harry could speak, there was a massive movement. The Gryffindors in front of him had risen and stood facing, not Harry, but the Slytherins. Then the Hufflepuffs stood, and almost at the same moment, the Ravenclaws, all of them with their backs to Harry, all of them looking toward Pansy instead, and Harry, awestruck and overwhelmed, saw wands emerging everywhere, pulled from beneath cloaks and from under sleeves. — J.K. Rowling

Toward nightfall, Khrenov's temperature had risen. The thermometer was warm, alive - the column of mercury climbed high on the little red ladder. For a long time he muttered unintelligibly, kept biting his lips and gently shaking his head. Then he fell asleep. Natasha undressed by a candle's wan flame, and saw her reflection in the murky glass of the window - her pale, thin neck, the dark braid that had fallen across her clavicle. She stood like that, in motionless languor, and suddenly it seemed to her that the room, together with the couch, the table littered with cigarette stubs, the bed on which, with open mouth, a sharp-nosed, sweaty old man slept restlessly - all this started to move, and was now floating, like the deck of a ship, into the black night. — Vladimir Nabokov

When it became obvious that the stranger was no longer a threat, Laeth said congenially, "She doesn't like it when men touch her without an invitation. You're lucky that she's in a good mood or she'd have just cut your hand off - that's what she did to the last man who tried it."
A friend of Laeth's leaned over from a nearby table and said sadly, "Poor Jard was never the same."
"Remember what she did to Lothar?" added another man, shaking his head.
"Took us three days to find all the pieces so that we could bury him," commented one of Laeth's fellow lieutenants, a stocky, bald man with a friendly face. He leaned closer and said softly, "But then, Lothar tried to kiss her. — Patricia Briggs

God and religion before every thing!' Dante cried. 'God and religion before the world.'
Mr Casey raised his clenched fist and brought it down on the table with a crash.
'Very well then,' he shouted hoarsely, 'if it comes to that, no God for Ireland!'
'John! John!' cried Mr Dedalus, seizing his guest by the coat sleeve.
Dante stared across the table, her cheeks shaking. Mr Casey struggled up from his chair and bent across the table towards her, scraping the air from before his eyes with one hand as though he were tearing aside a cobweb.
'No God for Ireland!' he cried, 'We have had too much God in Ireland. Away with God! — James Joyce

She wanted to remind him, whether his family was there or not. She wanted. And wanted. And endured in her wanting: the damp seat, the dry chicken, more champagne, the headache the champagne brought, the midges, the chat, his failure, no refusal, to look, look at me, I caused a thunderstorm with my passion and I sit here shaking under my skin and you don't notice because you're trying so hard not to notice, but all the people at the table there are really only you and me and you know it, the air is charged with it, it's a heat, a hot wind, and Marina and Seely are a sham next to it, Annabel ceases to exist, is simply obliterated in the gale of it, this isn't a fantasy, not my imagination, I can tell by the way you lift your fork, by the set of your jaw, by that sixth cigarette you are smoking me, or would if you could; but how long can we sustain it, how long till eruption, till the storm returns again and they can all see what it is, what it really is? — Claire Messud

So what made you think he was a ghost?" Maggie interrupted.

"The next time I saw him it was five years later, and he hadn't aged at all. Then a few years passed, and I saw him again. He looked exactly the same, same blue jeans and white shirt, same everything right down to the 50s hair do with the duck butt in the back. Pardon the language, Miss Honeycutt." Gus gave a sheepish grin. "I just didn't know what else to call it.

"I'm well aware of what a duck's butt is Gus," Aunt Irene said primly.

"A duck's butt?" Shad hooted. Rising from his seat he squatted down and waddled around the table, shaking his skinny butt wildly. "That's what this move is called, Maggie, a duck's butt."

"Shadrach, sit down." Gus smiled to soften the reprimand.

Maggie tried not to laugh and ended up snorting instead. Aunt Irene looked at her sharply, and Maggie quickly changed the subject. — Amy Harmon

My dad died, I write. almost a year ago. Car accident. My hand is shaking; my eyes sting and fill. I add Not his fault before pushing the notebook and pen back across the table, wiping a hand across my cheeks.
As he reads, my impulse is to reach out, grab the notebook, run outside, dump it in the trash, bury it in the snow, throw it under the wheels of a passing car - something, something, so I can go back fifteen seconds when this part ofme was still shut away and private. Then I look at Ravi's face again, and the normally white white whites of his eyes are pink. This causes major disruption to my ability to control the flow of my own tears. I see myself when I look at him right now: he's reflecting my sadness, my broken heart, back to me.
He takes the pe, writes, and slides it over. You'd think it's something epic from the way it levels my heart. It isn't.
I'm really sorry, Jill.
Four little words. — Sara Zarr