Quotes & Sayings About Windowpane

The idea of thinking in a linguistic yet nonphonological mode always intrigued me. I had a friend born of deaf parents; he grew up using American Sign Language, and he told me that he often thought in ASL instead of English. I used to wonder what it was like to have one's thoughts be manually coded, to reason using an inner pair of hands instead of an inner voice. With Heptapod B, I was experiencing something just as foreign: my thoughts were becoming graphically coded. There were trance-like moments during the day when my thoughts weren't expressed with my internal voice; instead, I saw semagrams with my mind's eye, sprouting like frost on a windowpane. As — Ted Chiang

How did writing come to me? Like bird's down on my windowpane, in winter. Just then there rose in the heart a struggle of firebrands, which has, still now, not ended. — Rene Char

The snow came after two o' clock. It fell faintly in the cones of lamplight, descending like fleets or fairies through the cold sky. I was awake - the only one in town, I was sure - and I was sure those miniature fallen sylphs were for me and my personal delectation. They came for me, because nature likes a saint. They settled on my window sill, they collected on the dark grass of my lawn, they danced and whirled in the wind gusts before my eyes. I put my hand to the windowpane to greet it, the first snow. By the time I woke in the morning, I saw that after the snow had come to me, it had visited everyone. — Joshua Gaylord

It was a dark, dismal afternoon, like they all seem to be
these days, when I got this call. I could hear the rain
battering the windowpane of my office when the phone rang. — C.S. Woolley

It has happened to all of us. One day, one ordinary day when we imagine we're making our routine rounds in the world with ticket stubs and tobacco shreds in our pockets, our heads full of news items, traffic noise, troublesome monologues, we suddenly realize we are already someplace else, that we are not actually where our feet have taken us.
I had long slipped away, I had melted into a color paler than pale when I stood behind the windowpane made of ice. If you are to come down to earth, or any kind of reality, you must then hold a girl, that girl, hold on to her and win her love. — Orhan Pamuk

Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers. — Charles Baudelaire

All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives there lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. For all one knows that demon is simply the same instinct that makes a baby squall for attention. And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one's own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane. — George Orwell

Here is where we met, we two
wrapped in swirling flakes by my moonlit door;
no sign of our passage, save
the bare step, melted clear beneath your feet,
the mark of your hand, stark
in the tangled tracery on the windowpane.
Here is where our love, sleeping
quiet in the gale, waits for your return. — Juniper Shore

On occasion a traveler will venture from one city to another. Is he perplexed What took seconds in Berne might take hours in Fribourg or days in Lucerne. In the time for a leaf to fall in one place a flower could bloom in another. In the duration of a thunderclap in one place two people could fall in love in another. In the time that a boy grows into a man a drop of rain might slide down a windowpane yet the traveler is unaware of these discrepancies ... If the pace of human desires stay proportionally the same with the motion of waves on a pond how could the traveler know that something has changed — Alan Lightman

The windowpane was freezing, but I was pressing myself against it anyway, like one of those dazzled little kids at the aquarium, the ones that look like they want to melt through the glass, like they're about to swoon from an overdose of beauty. — Alyson Foster

How we rolled up the carpet so we could dance, and the days were bright red, and every time we kissed there was another apple to slice into pieces. Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it's noon, that means we're inconsolable. Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us. These our bodies, possessed by light. Tell me we'll never get used to it. — Richard Siken

He felt all at once like an ineffectual moth, fluttering at the windowpane of reality, dimly seeing it from outside. — Philip K. Dick

Who wins? The Americans or the Russians?" "Both," his father said, glancing to the frost-filled windowpane. "Then who loses?" "Everyone else. — Anthony Marra

She stayed beside me until I slept, waveringly, brilliantly, hooded in diaphanous scarlet, and occasionally she left an imperative written in lipstick on my dusty windowpane. BE AMOROUS! she exhorted one night and, another night, BE MYSTERIOUS! Some nights later, she scribbled: WHEN YOU BEGIN TO THINK, YOU LOSE THE POINT. — Angela Carter

Not I. not I. I can not acquiesce to your request-
I can not tie myself in the knots of your normalcy.
I want to run, run away with the wind-swept rain.
I want to kiss, the fervent lips of reciprocation.
I want to dance to the thunderous drums.
I can not be your quiet little ray of sun.
I have volcanoes in me. I have twilight's playfully cavorting.
I have springs and autumns boldly echoing my senses.
And I have roaring waves crashing upon the sands of my spirit.
I will not sit in supplication while you recite the mantras
that would change me into a quiet girl; a voiceless platitude.
I - to be true to myself - press against the windowpane
watching lightning, smiling, and feeling so awake.
The wildness in me not to be tamed."

From "The spark (of a Muse)" by Cheri Bauer — Cheri Bauer

And in the shadow of the square below, a small movement betrayed the presence of a man. Waiting. Roger closed his eyes, cold rising from his bare feet up his body, seeing in his mind the sudden vision of a green-eyed woman, lazy in the arms of a fair-haired lover ... and a look of surprise and then of horror on her face as the man vanished from her side. And an invisible blue glow rose in her womb. With his eyes tight shut, he put a hand on the icy windowpane, and said a prayer to be going on with. — Diana Gabaldon

There was nobody. Her words faded. So a rocket fades. Its sparks, having grazed their way into the night, surrender to it, dark descends, pours over the outlines of houses and towers; bleak hillsides soften and fall in. But though they are gone, the night is full of them; robbed of colour, blank of windows, they exist more ponderously, give out what the frank daylight fails to transmit - the trouble and suspense of things conglomerated there in the darkness; huddled together in the darkness; reft of the relief which dawn brings when, washing the walls white and grey, spotting each windowpane, lifting the mist from the fields, showing the red brown cows peacefully grazing, all is once more decked out to the eye; exists again. I am alone; I am alone! — Virginia Woolf

Apparently, now and again adults take the time to sit down and contemplate what a disaster their life is. They complain without understanding and, like flies constantly banging against the same old windowpane, they buzz around, suffer, waste away, get depressed then wonder how they got caught up in this spiral that is taking them where they don't want to go.
The most intelligent among them turn their malaise into a religion: oh, the despicable vacuousness of bourgeois existence! Cynics of this kind frequently dine at Papa's table: "What has become of the dreams of our youth?" they ask, with a smug, disillusioned air. "Those years are long gone, and life's a bitch."
I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what has happened to them, acting big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears. — Muriel Barbery

Sophia stood staring blankly up the stairs for an entire minute before it dawned on her that he'd used the kiss to befuddle her. Blast it all! She fumed to herself as she walked to the front window and stationed herself there.
Time went by. The clock ticked. A bee buzzed against the windowpane. Dust settled. After thirty minutes had passed, Sophia had had enough. She gave the empty lane one last glance, then went upstairs. — Karen Hawkins

Perhaps it's something other than insomnia, to lie listening to children yelling as if they've re-created light; to try to dream, but succeed only in remembering; to toss and sweat in a dirty paste of sheets, while the drone of a ball game is gradually replaced by the buzz of a fly
a fly buzzing like the empty frequencies between stations as its shadow grows enormous between the shade and windowpane. Is it insomnia for a man to wad his ears with the cotton from a pill bottle, to mask his eyes with blinders, and press a stale pillow over his head, praying for another day to burn down, so he can wake into another night? — Stuart Dybek

The double eyelid of the sun rises and falls on life. The birds' feet on the windowpane of the sky are what I used to call stars. The earth itself, whose motion seems so inexplicable as long as one remains beneath the vault, the earth that is webfooted with deserts is itself subject to the laws of migration — Andre Breton

Plain words on plain paper. Remember what Orwell says, that good prose is like a windowpane. Cut every page you write by at least a third. Stop constructing those piffling little similes of yours. Work out what you want to say. Then say it in the most direct and vigorous way you can. Eat meat. Drink blood. Give up your social life and don't think you can have friends. Rise in the quiet hours of the night and prick your fingertips and use the blood for ink; that will cure you of persiflage! But do I take my own advice? Not a bit. Persiflage is my nom de guerre. (Don't use foreign expressions. It's elitist.) — Hilary Mantel

In the morning this light breasts your windowpane and, having pried your eye open like a shell, runs ahead of you, strumming its lengthy rays - like a hot-footed schoolboy running his stick along the iron grate of the park or garden - along arcades, colonnades, red-brick chimneys, saints and lions. "Depict! Depict!" it cries to you, either mistaking you for some Canaletto or Carpaccio or Guardi, or because it doesn't trust your retina's ability to retain what it makes available, not to mention your brain's capacity to absorb it. Perhaps art is simply an organism's reaction against its retentive limitations. At any rate, you obey the command and grab your camera, supplementing both your brain cells and your pupil. Should this city ever be short of cash, it can go straight to Kodak for assistance - or else tax its products savagely. By the same token, as long as this place exists, as long as winter light shines upon it, Kodak shares are the best investment. — Joseph Brodsky

Your mother's not gone, Libby. You'll see her again one day." I clung to this belief, even as I cursed its complete and utter inability to offer real comfort. I did not want to hear it, even from my own husband. Nor did I want to hear about God having a plan, or all things happening for a reason, or any other number of Hallmark sentiments that pinged against my heart like pebbles on a thin windowpane. — Camille Pagan

With watercolour, you can pick up the atmosphere, the temperature, the sound of snow shifting through the trees or over the ice of a small pond or against a windowpane. Watercolour perfectly expresses the free side of my nature. — Andrew Wyeth

Rose sat all alone in the big best parlor, with her little handkerchief laid ready to catch the first tear, for she was thinking of her troubles, and a shower was expected. She had retired to this room as a good place in which to be miserable; for it was dark and still, full of ancient furniture, somber curtains, and hung all around with portraits of solemn old gentlemen in wigs, severe-nosed ladies in top-heavy caps, and staring children in little bobtailed coats or short-waisted frocks. It was an excellent place for woe; amd the fitful spring rain that pattered on the windowpane seemed to sob,Cry away; I'm with you. — Louisa May Alcott

In a world beyond this one, that river goes on singing sweetly, enchanting us
with what we want to hear, shaping what we need to see in order to keep going. In those waters, all disappointments are forgotten, our mistakes forgiven. Gazing into them, we see a strong father. A loving mother. Warm rooms where we are sheltered, adored, wanted. And the uncertainty of our futures is nothing more than the fog of breath on a windowpane. — Libba Bray

Outside, the Air was Alert and Bright and Hot ... She could see the pattern of the cross-stitch flowers from the blue cross-stitch counterpane on Ammu's cheek. She could hear the blue cross-stitch afternoon.
The slow ceiling fan.
The sun behind the curtains.
The yellow wasp wasping against the windowpane in a dangerous dzzzzzzzzzzzz.
A disbelieving lizard's blink.
High-stepping chickens in the yard.
The sound of the sun crinkling the washing.Crisping white bed-sheets. Stiffened starched saris. Off white and gold.
Red ants on yellow stones.
A hot cow feeling hot. Ahmoo in the distance. — Arundhati Roy

Rosiness is not a worse windowpane than gloomy gray when viewing the world. — Grace Paley

Sasha looked at the windowpane, rinsed continually with rain, smearing lights in the falling dark. She lay with her body tensed, claiming the couch, her spot in this room, her view of the window and the walls, the faint hum that was always there when she listened, and these minutes of Coz's time: another, then another, then one more. — Jennifer Egan

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/By the false azure in the windowpane ... — Vladimir Nabokov

What an ambiance, and such a pity I'm alone: Candles giving off their glow, gusts of wind and the light tapping of rain on the windowpane - a massage for the mind. And a comforting one, too. — Donna Lynn Hope

Why did I become a writer? A bird's feather on my windowpane in winter and all at once there arose in my heart a battle of embers never to subside again. — Rene Char

While the novelist is banging on his typewriter, the poet is watching a fly in the windowpane. — Billy Collins

I write your name for the last time in this mist,
White breath on the windowpane,
And watch it vanish. No, it stays there. — Charles Wright

The old house had a thousand doors in it.

All old houses do. You can see them if you know how to look: the noontime shadow of a windowpane crawling with intent across a floor; unmeasured angles of wall meeting wall; fireplaces grown chill with unused years. Archways with unseen contours you can trace with a finger in the cracks as brick grinds against brick in settling walls. Some nights, and some houses are doorways entire, silhouettes against the evening's last light black on black like an opening into a darker sky. You just have to look. An eye-corner glance will do, if you don't turn and stare and explain it away. — Michael Montoure

Song

This is the love I bring,
Absolute and nothing:
A tree but with no roots,
A cloud heavy with fruit,
A wide stone stair
That leads nowhere
But to empty sky,
Ambiguous majesty.

This is the love I bear:
It is light as air,
Yet weighs like an earth;
It is water flowing,
Yet adamant as fire.
It is coming from going.
It is dying and growing.

A love so rare and hard
It cuts a diamond word
Upon the windowpane,
"Never, never again,
Never upon my breast,"
Having no time to bring,
Having no place to rest,
Absolute and nothing. — May Sarton

Fate, Chance, God's Will - we all try to account for our lives somehow. What are the chances that two raindrops, flung from the heavens, will merge on a windowpane? Gotta be Fate. — Robert Breault

So I sit there kicked my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly attempt to commit suicide by butting his head against the windowpane. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Suddenly, sitting at the window, and with a violence unprecedented, there arose in John a flood of fury and tears, and he bowed his head, fists clenched against the windowpane, crying, with teeth on edge: "What shall I do? What shall I do? — James Baldwin

Good prose is like a windowpane. — George Orwell

When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief. — Sarah Addison Allen

May there always be work for your hands to do. May your purse always hold a coin or two. May the sun always shine on your windowpane. May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain. Irish blessing — Stephen Revell

Good writing is like a windowpane. — George Orwell

Memory deludes me. I have just remembered something that I completely forgot after it happened. I remembered it again when I was about sixteen, and then I forgot it again. And this morning I remembered not the event itself but the previous recollection, which itself was more than forty years ago, as though an old moon were reflected in a windowpane from which it was reflected in a lake, from where memory draws not the reflection itself, which no longer exists, but only its whitened bones. — Amos Oz

Imagine a morning in late November. A coming of winter morning more than twenty years ago. Consider the kitchen of a spreading old house in a country town. A great black stove is its main feature; but there is also a big round table and a fireplace with two rocking chairs placed in front of it. Just today the fireplace commenced its seasonal roar. A woman with shorn white hair is standing at the kitchen window. She is wearing tennis shoes and a shapeless gray sweater over a summery calico dress. She is small and sprightly, like a bantam hen; but, due to a long youthful illness, her shoulders are pitifully hunched. Her face is remarkable - not unlike Lincoln's, craggy like that, and tinted by sun and wind; but it is delicate, too, finely boned, and her eyes are sherry-colored and timid. "Oh my," she exclaims, her breath smoking the windowpane, "it's fruitcake weather! — Truman Capote

Tricky the paths a long love might follow, like the spiral down twists of a raindrop on a windowpane. — Kevin Barry

The slanted light of dawn was rippling through the windowpane, and Miss Anne Sainsbury was huddled beneath her thin blanket, wondering, as she often did, where she would find money for her next meal.
That was really good. Even he wanted to know what happened to Miss Sainsbury, and he was making it up. — Julia Quinn

The uncertainty of our future is nothing more than a fog of breath on a windowpane. — Libba Bray

At home, loss was everywhere; she could barely see past it, like trying to look out a windowpane covered in fingerprints. She would always feel trapped behind that window, between her and the rest of the world, but at least in Ann Arbor, the glass was clearer. Whenever — Brit Bennett

They leave things behind sometimes, the guests. A bottle of scent. A crumpled handkerchief. A pearl button that fell off a dress and rolled under a bed. And sometimes they leave other sorts of things. Things you can't see. A sigh trapped in a corner. Memories tangled in the curtains. A sob fluttering against the windowpane like a bird that flew in and can't get back out. I can feel these things. They dart and crouch and whisper. — Jennifer Donnelly

[I]t was the knowledge that I was surrounded by adults with lives that I could never imagine living. It was the humming noise inside me that told me to do something and found nothing to do that meant anything, the bit of me that was like a fly smashing itself again and again on a windowpane. It was the futility of aging ... It was the realization that this was life, and I didn't belong here. — Maggie Stiefvater