Turret Quotes & Sayings

We Built a Castle Near the Rocks,
we built it out of sand.
Our fortress was an ice-cream box
with turret, tall and grand.
Our men were twigs, our gun were straws
from which we'd sipped at lunch.
We had the best of wars ...
till someone's foot
went
CRUNCH!
[Joan Walsh Anglund] — Jack Prelutsky

I've learned to live simply, wisely
I've learned to live simply, wisely,
To look at the sky and pray to God,
And to take long walks before evening
To wear out this useless anxiety.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
And the yellow-red clusters of rowan nod,
I compose happy verses
About mortal life, mortal and beautiful life.
I return. The fluffy cat
Licks my palm and sweetly purrs.
And on the turret of the sawmill by the lake
A bright flame flares.
The quiet is cut, occasionally,
By the cry of a stork landing on the roof.
And if you were to knock at my door,
It seems to me I wouldn't even hear.
(English version by Judith Hemschemeyer
Original Language Russian) — Anna Akhmatova

Every thought and word that a novelist thinks or writes is part of that castle constructed from sands on the beach of Me, including the turret or rampart or moat he may have thought or written on behalf of someone or something else. — Steve Erickson

The turret was shot with holes, and the floor was jingling with flakes of metal and turret motor. — Laura Hillenbrand

Gossip says she hanged herself from the turret on the tower, but when you have a house like Hill House with a tower and a turret, gossip would hardly allow you to hang yourself anywhere else. — Shirley Jackson

During the air war of 1944, a four-man combat crew on a B-17 bomber took a vow to never abandon one another no matter how desperate the situation. The aircraft was hit by flak during a mission and went into a terminal dive, and the pilot ordered everyone to bail out. The top turret gunner obeyed the order, but the ball turret gunner discovered that a piece of flak had jammed his turret and he could not get out. The other three men in his pact could have bailed out with the parachutes, but they stayed with him until the plan hit the ground and exploded. They all died. — Sebastian Junger

There was precious little nobility in the features of the High King's fleshy face. Like his body, his face was broad and heavy, with a wide stub of a nose, a thick brow, and deep-set eyes that seemed to look out at the world with suspicion and resentment. His hair and beard were just beginning to turn grey, but they were well combed and glistening with fresh oil perfumed ... heavily ... He was broad of shoulder and body, built like a squat turret, round and thick from neck to hips. He wore a sleeveless coat of gilded chain mail over his tunic ... Over the mail was a harness of gleaming leather, with silver buckles and ornaments. A jewelled sword hung at his side. His sandals had gold tassels on their thongs. — Ben Bova

Do you remember what Douglas said when Marmion, his guest, offered to shake hands with him?" "Yes," said Father Brown. "'My castles are my king's alone, from turret to foundation stone,'" said Musgrave. "'The hand of Douglas is his own.'" He — G.K. Chesterton

From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose. — Randall Jarrell

No end of blessings from heaven and earth. As we climb up out of the Moab valley and reach the high tableland stretching northward, traces of snow flying across the road, the sun emerges clear of the overcast, burning free on the very edge of the horizon. For a few minutes the whole region from the canyon of the Colorado to the Book Cliffs - crag, mesa, turret, dome, canyon wall, plain, swale and dune - glows with a vivid amber light against the darkness on the east. At the same time I see a mountain peak rising clear of the clouds, old Tukuhnikivats fierce as the Matterhorn, snowy as Everest, invincible. "Ferris, stop this car. Let's go back." But he only steps harder on the gas. "No," he says, "you've got a train to catch." He sees me craning my neck to stare backward. "Don't worry," he adds, "it'll all still be here next spring." The — Edward Abbey

It was amazing to think that the complete Hetzer vehicle, at barely sixteen tonnes, weighed less than the turret on a King Tiger, which I believe weighed eighteen tonnes. How many more Hetzers could Germany have built, for the cost of the five hundred King Tigers which we produced in total in our factories? Two thousand Hetzers, or three thousand? What effect would this have had on the war? Such questions can lead to all manner of calculations and alternatives. — Wolfgang Faust

Wake! For the Sun, who scatter'd into flight
The Stars before him from the Field of Night,
Drives Night along with them from Heav'n,
and strikes
The Sultan's Turret with a Shaft of Light — Omar Khayyam

People write always about the doings of the mind; the thoughts that come to it; its noble plans; how it has civilised the universe. They show it ignoring the body in the philosopher's turret; or kicking the body, like an old leather football, across leagues of snow and desert in the pursuit of conquest or discovery. Those great wars which it wages by itself, with the mind a slave to it, in the solitude of the bedroom against the assault of fever or the oncome of melancholia, are neglected. — Virginia Woolf

Don't build yourself an ivory tower" the moralists say. But I am an ivory tower by the mere fact that I am. On the crude physical level the body is a frame of (ivory) bones on which the muscles are stretched, crowned by an (ivory) bone pill-box turret housing the brain - shielding it from the blows of 'reality' so that it can get on with its absurd work undisturbed. On the non-physical level my I-ness is an ivory tower of orderly individual views and vistas shielding 'me' from being swallowed up in chaos. Dear moralists: don't they see that life is a constant flight up and down the endless steps of the dark ivory tower seeking to escape from the horrid chaos of real freedom? — Nanamoli Thera

...I'm momentarily transfixed, torn between curiosity and fear. I can pull it up the gently sloping mud bank, but then what? Already thought is lagging behind events, as the blotchy brown mass slides up wet mud toward me, its amorphous margins flowing into the craters left by retreating feet. In the center of the yard-wide disc is a raised turret where two eyes open and close, flashing black. And it's bellowing. A loud rhythmic sound that is at first inexplicable until I realize that those blinking eyes are its spiracles, now sucking in air instead of water, which it is pumping out via gill slits on its underside. And all the while it brandishes that blade, stabbing the air like a scorpion... — Jeremy Wade

I mean, who the hell has a turret on their house, besides Rapunzel? — Jodi Picoult

How exactly does a steam-powered gun turret differentiate between friend and foe? I wasn't aware that boiled water could form allegiances. — Yahtzee Croshaw

High in a turret of a great castle rising on a black crag above snowy plains, besieged and grand, crammed full of an empire's treasure, and he sitting by a log fire with a sad and lovely princess ... I used to dream about such things, he thought. I used to long for them, ache for them. They seemed the very stuff of life, its essence. So why does all this taste of ashes? — Iain M. Banks

Turn from that road's beguiling ease; return
to your hunger's turret. Enter, climb the stair
chill with disuse, where the croaking toad of time
regards from shimmering eyes your slow ascent
and the drip, drip, of darkness glimmers on the stone
to show you how your longing waits alone.
What alchemy shines from under that shut door,
spinning out gold from the hollow of the heart?
("The Sea's Wash In The Hollow Of The Heart") — Denise Levertov

Every house should have a turret — Heather Vogel Frederick

The magnificent houses, the three old-money brick houses, each with a small turret and a wraparound porch, had been built uptown near the churches when the town was younger and smaller, before the Great War. The wraparound porches were there to hold rainy-day children and morning tea carts and quiet late-evening converstion, cosy, discreet conversation which could not easily take place in front rooms or kitchens or bedrooms, certainly not on the street. — Bonnie Burnard

Septimus had no need to untie Spit Fyre as the dragon had already chewed his way through the rope. They followed Aunt Zelda and Jenna out the side door at the foot of the turret and down to the Palace Gate. Aunt Zelda kept up a brisk pace. Showing a surprising knowledge of the Castle's narrow alleyways and sideslips, she hurtled along. Oncoming pedestrians were taken aback at the sight of the large patchwork tent approaching them at full speed. They flattened themselves against the walls, and, as the tent passed by with the Princess, the ExtraOrdinary Apprentice and a feral-looking boy with bandaged hands - not to mention a dragon - in its wake, people rubbed their eyes in disbelief. — Angie Sage

Sorry, I don't do castles. I hate those winding turret stairs. — Laurie Graham