Yellowed Quotes & Sayings

IMPOSSIBLE FRIENDSHIPS For example, with someone who no longer is, who exists only in yellowed letters. Or long walks beside a stream, whose depths hold hidden porcelain cups - and the talks about philosophy with a timid student or the postman. A passerby with proud eyes whom you'll never know. Friendship with this world, ever more perfect (if not for the salty smell of blood). The old man sipping coffee in St.-Lazare, who reminds you of someone. Faces flashing by in local trains - the happy faces of travelers headed perhaps for a splendid ball, or a beheading. And friendship with yourself - since after all you don't know who you are. — Adam Zagajewski

Incredible the mass labor of the fat ugly masturbators of the 82nd AIRBORNE DIVISION! Wow have I seen gallons and gallons of sperm spilled, wasted, in the nights of North Carolina, and tons and tons of sheets stained, yellowed by the juice of these guys of the 82nd! Kilos and kilos! Piles and piles! Truckloads and truckloads of sheets full of vicious and doubtful traces and circles. — Raymond Federman

A couple strolled by behind my chair. For a moment, they got between us and the closest light, casting Freddie in a patch of shadow. As the light peeled away, so did the facade. A desiccated corpse reclined on the divan, with skin turned blue and chapped by arctic windburn. The corpse grinned at me from a lipless mouth, showing sharp yellowed teeth. Her nose and most of one cheek had rotted away, the ragged wounds black with frostbite, and iron talons three inches long curled around the stem of her martini glass. Then the light flooded back and the moment was gone. Freddie must have caught the look on my face. She smiled and gave me a wink. — Craig Schaefer

A series of books, dilapidated and faded, sit bundled together. Most of the bindings are separating from the yellowed pages, but each is at home in its battered state. Their wrinkled pages and discolored skin tell not of old age, but of a good life. These books, unlike so many others, were not just read, but revisited, loved, and experienced. — Kelseyleigh Reber

Wide gape the gates of yellowed bone. A tongue of plank is our path between the teeth as we walk toward the gullet. Here I will be devoured. This is a true thing, near unavoidable on any path. I must enter those jaws. — Robin Hobb

A blundering wind scatters yellowed leaves... — David Mitchell

His brittle, yellowed bones were splintered, crushed and shattered. — Steven Erikson

He flicked through the yellowed rough-cut pages and breathed its musty smell. It filled him with a strange excitement, as if he'd caught a whiff of ancient, buried cities. — Joan London

It was strange to think that one day I might have my own stack of yellowed photos to show skeptical grandchildren - and my own fantastic stories to share. — Ransom Riggs

Voted worst in show the last two years got a refill on my tears another bottle of foam yellowed clear.
Old man twitching on the train reminds us of mortality
the snow everywhere reminds us of the rain. — Brendan Kelly

I could no longer picture Rosalind in my mind's eye; the tender vision of the girl in white had been blown to pieces as if by a nuclear bomb. This was something unimaginable, something hollow as the yellowed husks that insects leave behind in dry grass, blowing with cold alien winds and a fine corrosive dust that shredded everything it touched. — Tana French

Do not make your child your only hobby or you will end up waiting by the telephone in a cheery room covered in brittle, yellowed crayon drawings, regaling those few friends that are left with stale anecdotes about your youngster's accomplishments. Your little baby will be off in college, or backpacking in the Amazon, or on the other side of the country trying to get as far away from home as possible, and you will begin collecting porcelain frogs and feeding stray cats. So now is the time to start getting that life to fall back on. You know what you must do. Do it for your child. Do it for me, and for everyone out there who has to deal with your child for the rest of your child's life. And do it for yourself. — Christie Mellor

If you corner him there will be bloodshed. And I do not like bloodshed.'
Dorin arched a brow. 'Really. You don't like bloodshed.'
'No. It's messy and unsophisticated. There are better ways of doing things.'
'Such as?'
Wu brightened, flashed his yellowed crooked teeth. 'My ways. Lying, trickery, deceit, cheating, or just plain patience. He will come to us. — Ian C. Esslemont

Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again. — Daniel Woodrell

I was looking for a book. A very particular book in a vast and wonderful library. I found what I was looking for. It hadn't been opened for quite a long time judging by the dust that coated the upper edge and by the way the paper had yellowed on all sides creeping toward the gutter. When I opened it, some loose pages different from those in the book fell onto the floor. I picked them up and noticed that they were covered with a text in a language I did not understand. — David Treuer

I fixed her a drink, then lowered myself on the spider's silk of my attention back into One Hundred Years of Solitude and the adventures of the Buendia family. The scene where the prodigal Jose Arcadio hoisted his adopted sister by her waist into his hammock and, in my translation, 'quartered her like a little bird' made my face hot. I bent down the page, whose small triangle marks the instant.
Touching that triangle of yellowed paper today is like sliding my hand into the glove of my seventeen-year-old hand. Through magic, there are the Iowa fields slipping by ... And there is my mother, not yet born into the ziplock baggie of ash my sister sent me years ago with the frank message 'Mom 1/2', written in laundry pen, since no-one in our family ever stood on ceremony. — Mary Karr

I was about to leave when my flashlight caught something. A bright white envelope tacked on the board among the yellowed and faded detritus. It had my name on it in the child's printed hand, which was now familiar to me. I walked over quickly and grabbed it down. Instead of ripping it open, I stuck it inside my jacket. I suddenly had a strong urge to get the hell out of there. But as I moved toward the door, I saw a large dark form pass in front of the side window. There was someone outside. — Lisa Unger

Adventures are funny things.
Some streak down upon you like a storm.
Others emerge after many years have passed and something forgotten is revealed.
They can be discovered on a dusty bookshelf or the yellowed pages of an ancient map.
They promise great reward, but no adventure is without risk. — Wayne Thomas Batson

Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping. — Cormac McCarthy

His fingers were permanently yellowed with chalk dust rather than nicotine, but it was still the residue of an addicting substance. — Stephen King

Pretty girls don't need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family, but girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult. These kinds of girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don't realize that as women age, they are worth less and less, so by the time they get their M.A. or Ph.D., they are already old, like yellowed pearls."

- Xinhua News Agency, 2011. Reposted on All-China Women's Federation website days after International Women's Day. — Leta Hong Fincher

Sacha snaked one arm out from beneath the blankets and reached toward Cinder, grasping her wrist where skin met metal. Cinder squirmed, trying to pull away, but Sacha held tight. Her hand was marked by bluish pigment around her yellowed fingernails. — Marissa Meyer

Jonn Deire picked up eight yellowed and dog-eared cards from the pile, grumbling 'garrn' under his breath, while chewing on a frazzled looking toothpick. Skooch threw down a five of reds and said nothing. There was an impatient pause as the players waited for Beck to remember he had to play for Peeping William, who was still grumbling softly and rolling his eyes at intervals. — Christina Engela

Then, all of a sudden, those pea-green lawns where the first scarlet poppies were flowering, those canary-yellow fields which striped the tawny hills sloping down to a sea full of azure glints, all seemed so trivial to me, so banal, so false, so much in contrast with Ayl's person, with Ayl's world, with Ayl's idea of beauty, that I realized her place could never have been out here. And I realized, with grief and fear, that I had remained out here, that I would never again be able to escape those gilded and silvered gleams, those little clouds that turned from pale blue to pink, those green leaves that yellowed every autumn, and that Ayl's perfect world was lost forever, so lost I couldn't even imagine it any more, and nothing was left that could remind me of it, even remotely, nothing except perhaps that cold wall of gray stone. — Italo Calvino

I've always enjoyed a challenge," Niko remarked, shifting through the powder to lift something out. "I think perhaps there are other things I could enjoy instead. Bonsai trees, painting, forging my own weapons. The opportunities are endless." He opened his hand to show me the small braid of several yellowed hairs. "Voodoo." "Think it would work?" I perked up. Killing from a distance wasn't usually my thing, but in this case, I'd make an exception. — Rob Thurman

For the most part they were dead by rumor. A yellowed scrap of newsprint. A letter. A telegram. — Cormac McCarthy

A long, ear-tearing howl threatened to deafen him, but he was already past the wight as the lanceblade sank in and cut deep, Gallow's body airborne and spinning, his axis almost parallel to the rooftop as the Veil bunched and shivered. Landing, still spinning, the lance a propeller now, the last wight baring its yellowed fangs and hissing. Another curse, this one hurried and malformed, hurtled flapping for Gallow's eyes, but his own spat phrase of the Old Language batted it aside, a dart of moonglow shredding the black wings. Skidding, — Lilith Saintcrow

The mummied dead everywhere. The flesh cloven along the bones, the ligaments dried to tug and taut as wires. Shriveled and drawn like latterday bogfolk, their faces of boiled sheeting, the yellowed palings of their teeth. They were discalced to a man like pilgrims of some common order for all their shoes were long since stolen. — Cormac McCarthy

Knowing, above all, that I would come looking, and find what he had left for me, all that remained of The Jungle Book in the pocket of his doctor's coat, that folder-up, yellowed page torn from the back of the book, with a bristle of thick, coarse hairs clenced inside. Galina, says my grandfather's handwriting, above and below a child's drawing of the tiger, who is curved like the blade of a scimitar across the page. Galina, it says, and that is how I know to find him again, in Galina, in the story he hadn't told me but perhaps wished he had. — Tea Obreht

Sam counts the money carefully. I watch him in the mirror. "You know what I wish?" he asks when he's done.
"What?"
"That someone would convert my bed into a robot that would fight other bed robots to the death for me."
That startles a laugh out of me. "That would be pretty awesome."
A slow, shy smile spreads across his mouth. "And we could take bets on them. And be filthy rich."
I lean my head against the frame of the stall, looking at the tile wall and the pattern of yellowed cracks there, and grin. "I take back anything I might have
implied to the contrary. Sam, you are a genius. — Holly Black

There is a lady dancing on a cracked plate. A withered spider on the carpet. A piano with a full set of yellowed teeth. — Conchitina Cruz

He stared at the corner of the yellowed ceiling, at the spider web and its solitary occupant. "Why here?" he asked the spider. "You could choose anywhere instead of this house. I know I wouldn't be here if I didn't have to be." The spider said nothing. Come to think of it, Callum was sure the spider hadn't moved even an inch in the last week. Maybe it was dead. Dead and crisp like the untouched wasp carcass on his window sill. — Scott Kaelen

Spring is the fresh green of young corn and the pink blush of blossoms. Autumn contrasts the yellowed foilage with violet hues. Winter is the white of snow against its black forms ... Summer is the contrast of blues and the golden bronze of the corn. — Vincent Van Gogh

It's been well-thumbed, at least triple-read, there's that smell the fat orange-spine Penguins get when their pages have yellowed and the book bulges, basically the smell of complex humanity, sort of sweat and salt and endeavour. Like all the fat orange Penguins, it gets fatter with reading, which it should, because in a way the more you read it the bigger your own experience of the world gets, the fatter your soul. — Niall Williams

I want to be doing things today, not just flipping through crinkled and yellowed mental pictures of what happened a long time ago. — Bob Goff

What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and eroded? Two centuries old. Would he still speak? Would he speak, if he could see it, the grinning, aged skull? What would there be for him to say, to tell the people? What message could he bring?
What action would not be futile, when a man could look upon his own aged, yellowed skull? — Philip K. Dick

What action would not be futile, when a man could look upon his own aged, yellowed skull? Better they should enjoy their temporary lives, while they still had them to enjoy. — Philip K. Dick

sides yellowed by too many unfiltered Camels. The whole place had the feel of a neighborhood hangout for people too stupid to realize they were drinking away an enormous percentage of their — Julia Kent

It seemed to her that the dullness and the boredom of her childhood, her youth, were stored here in the room under the worn dusty red rugs, in the bloated brassware, amongst the dried grasses in the swollen vases, behind the yellowed photographs in the oval frames-everything, everything that she had so hated as a child and that was still preserved here as if this were the storeroom of some dull, uninviting provincial museum. — Anita Desai

I would like to hold your hand as it holds this green leaf, yellowed, that fell early from its tree, this Autumn. And I would like to imagine that it feels your careful care, for your eyes are warmed by your heart, and I would let you sadly nestle into me as a bird folds into its nest, resigning itself to a storm. For my heart is as large as a city, and it glows with the fire that, with the right mischievous love, shall serve to inspire thousands upon thousands to inspire thousands upon thousands. — Waylon H. Lewis

I had joked about my bones being found by the roadside. Notify the four winds. Up here i might never be found. Keen-eyed vultures would pick the bones clean. Wind and rain would bleach them and in time they'd dissolve into the earth.
I looked up, and a gust of wind swirled the mist, and i saw that glint of gold, so close now, just up ahead. one last effort, to haul and drag myself up over ragged rocks, and at last I stood, breath rasping, limbs shaking, my body one long ache, covered in grime and thick greasy sweat, in front of Hakuyu's cave. The patch of colour I'd seen was a simple bamboo blind, yellowed with age, and painted on it was the outline of a dragon, and the dragon's eye was a dot of gold. That was what had led me all this way. — Alan Spence

Swiveling in his old wooden chair, the legs squeaking as if startled by the sudden movement, he glanced at the clock on the wall behind him and surveyed the time imprisoned behind its yellowed and crazed plastic dome. — Hugh Howey

It's only sixteen ninety-five," I say with a flutter of my lashes.
"You're serious."
I prop my hands on my waist and stick out a hip, striking a pose worthy of a supermodel. "Look at me. Don't I look serious?"
She collapses into the chair outside the dressing room in a fit of giggles so cute they make my insides fizz. "No! You must be stopped," she says.
"Why?" I strut down an aisle of yellowed lingerie, swiveling my hips, batting bras with flicks of my fingers. "I will be the king of the disco. I will be - " I spin and strike another pose. "An inspiration."
She sniffs and swipes at her eyes. "The real Dylan would die before he'd be seen in public in something like that."
"The real Dylan is boring." I brace my hands on the arms of her chair and lean down until our faces are a whisper apart. "And he's not one fourth the kisser I am."
"Is that right?" Her lips quirk.
"You know it is."
Her smile melts, and her breath comes faster. "Yeah. I do. — Stacey Jay

Even a paperback printed on acidic paper, whose pages have yellowed ten years on, can still be read, no matter how badly the spine is cracked or how inflated it's become from being dropped in the bathtub. The pages might separate from the spine, but a rubber band can keep them together. You may loan a book to your circle of closest friends, but shoes are another matter. A great book will never go out of style - books go with every outfit. — Lewis Buzbee

What are these things that this houses, Eva?" Rovender picked up a crumbling tome. He handed it to her.
"These are books," Eva said as the yellowed bits of paper flaked away in her hands to rest on the floor. "It's what humans used to put all of their writing in long ago. — Tony DiTerlizzi

He is looking down into the toilet bowl. He sees a bright shiny red ball, about the size of his fist, covered with blood and bobbing jauntily in the yellowed water. It throbs in time
with Ernest's pulse. It is his heart. — J. Mulrooney

The wooden shelves were tall and packed with worn covers of books read many times over. Pages were yellowed and paperbacks had arched spines like old sway-backed horses. It was an old folks' home for secondhand books, with that smell of old newsprint and slightly musty wood smell. — Nathan Fillion

Where have I been? she wondered. Is a life that can now be considered an absence a life?

For some time things had been going badly for her. She could cite nothing in particular as a problem; rather, it was as if life in general had a grudge against her. Things persisted in turning grey. Although at first she had revelled in the erudite seclusion of her job, in the protection against the vulgarities of the world that it offered, after five years she now felt that in some way it had aged her disproportionately, that she was as old as the yellowed papers she spent her days unfolding. When, very occasionally, she raised her eyes from the past and surveyed the present, it faded from her view and became as ungraspable as a mirage. Although she had discussed this with the Director, who had waved away her condition of mind as an occupational hazard, she was still not satisfied that this was how the only life she had been offered should be lived. — Marian Engel

No matter how far back Ned searched in the brittle yellowed pages, always he found the gold yielding before the coal. — George R R Martin

Yet she resigned herself: reverently she put away in the chest of drawers her beautiful dress and even her satin shoes, whose soles had been yellowed by the slippery wax of the dance floor. Her heart was like them: contact with wealth had laid something over it that would not be wiped away. — Gustave Flaubert

For what other reason might we cling to objects, old photographs, tarnished jewelry, yellowed letters? They're charms, little pieces of magic. When we touch them, we regain for a second what time has stolen or worn away. — Lisa Unger

Shadowhunter." The creature on the left spoke in a hissing whisper. "We did not know of you in this situation."
Isabelle raised a delicate eyebrow. "And what situation would that be?"
The second subjugate pointed a long gray finger at Simon. The nail on the end of it was yellowed and sharp. "We have dealings with the Daylighter."
"No, you don't," Simon said. "I have no idea who you are. Never seen you before. — Cassandra Clare

Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,
and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labours, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it? — Philip Levine

As their eyes became accustomed to the light, the girls were startled to see the figure in front of them. Hunched over, wearing a dark cloak, was an old man. His long, white hair straggled over his shoulders, his skin was covered with grey whiskers and one of his eyes, hooded, drooped below the other bulging one. His mouth hung open and his yellowed teeth did nothing to stop his rank breath pervading the air. — Helen Laycock

By the end of that summer in Ashcroft my father had nearly run out of stories. He'd almost read his father's full library and arrived at last at Moby Dick. The edition I have is a Penguin paperback (Book 2,333, Herman Melville, Penguin, London). It's been well-thumbed, at least triple-read, there's that smell the fat orange-spine Penguins get when their pages have yellowed and the book bulges, basically the smell of complex humanity, sort of sweat and salt and endeavour. Like all the fat orange Penguins, it gets fatter with reading, which it should, because in a way the more you read it the bigger your own experience of the world gets, the fatter your soul. Try it, you'll see. — Niall Williams

Yearning is a red-haired girl sitting on the hood of her silver sedan, reading about Marilyn Monroe. A cherry orchard at night, houselights in the distance. It's the painstaking neatness of a paint-by-number sunset, a yellowed letter held between graceful fingers, a cautious step into the sun-filled lobby of a famous hotel.
It's the way I feel every time I think about Ava. — Nina LaCour

I promised myself that I would talk to her before the summer was over, but schools reopened, the leaves reddened, yellowed, and fell, the rains of winter swept in and wakened Baba's joints, baby leaves sprouted once more, and I still hadn't had the heart, the dil, to even look her in the eye. — Khaled Hosseini

Here and there, in some older houses, old faded daguerreotypes still hang on the walls ... They seem to us to be very simple ... compared with the artistic and skillful portraits made in later days ... Here was a photograph that at one time had been the last word, a very modern portrait ... Today it is just a part of cultural history. The small yellowed surface has acquired depth, an admonishing perspective. We hold in our hand a symbol of the structure and ideology of an epoch. — Isak Dinesen

Patriotic feelings will surely swell, prompting proud proclamations of the wisdom, foresight, and sense of justice shared by the Framers and reflected in a written document now yellowed with age ... [F]or many Americans the bicentennial celebration will be little more than a blind pilgrimage to the shrine of the original document now stored in a vault in the National Archives. [Progressive] — Thurgood Marshall

The pages were yellowed and had gone to brown at the edges. They were brittle, much like the memories the photos evoked. — Michael Connelly

With arms shrunken to little more than bone and yellowed skin, the castaways waved and shouted, — Laura Hillenbrand

In this age when words have lost their value, this age that is therefore dominated by violent words, by words swollen and yellowed with starvation, I have lost the will to speak any more of words. My despair over words is not an admittance of defeat in life. — Kyung-Sook Shin

Therapies administered included but were not limited to: turning things off, then on again; picking them up a couple of inches and then dropping them; turning off nonessential appliances in this and other rooms; removing lids and wiggling circuit boards; extracting small contaminants, such as insects and their egg cases, with nonconducting chopsticks; cable-wiggling; incense-burning; putting folded-up pieces of paper beneath table legs; drinking tea and sulking; invoking unseen powers; sending runners to other rooms, buildings, or precincts with exquisitely calligraphed notes and waiting for them to come back carrying spare parts in dusty, yellowed cardboard boxes; and a similarly diverse suite of troubleshooting techniques in the realm of software. — Neal Stephenson

I could set from memory a replica of the perfect Still Life she laid out on the table each morning: the carefully folded Advertiser, the two canary yellow hemispheres of grapefruit in their bowls, separated by a more richly yellowed cube of butter; the sky blue milk-jug and matching sugar bowl filled to the brim with their differently textured whitenesses; the pot of tea snug in its knitted navy blue cosy, the steam that rose invisibly from its spout suddenly rendered visible, swirling, where it entered the slanting morning light. — Peter Goldsworthy

She devoutly put away in her drawers her beautiful dress, down to the satin shoes whose soles were yellowed with the slippery wax of the dancing floor. Her heart was like these. In its friction against wealth something had come over it that could not be effaced. — Gustave Flaubert

A lover of comfort might shrug after looking at the whole apparent jumble of furniture, old paintings, statues with missing arms and legs, engravings that were sometimes bad but precious in memory, and bric-a-brac. Only the eye of a connoisseur would have blazed with eagerness at the sight of this painting or that, some book yellowed with age, a piece of old porcelain, or stones and coins.
But the furniture and paintings of different ages, the bric-a-brac that meant nothing to anyone but had been marked for them both by a happy hour or memorable moment, and the ocean of books and sheet music breathed a warm life that oddly stimulated the mind and aesthetic sense. Present everywhere was vigilant thought. The beauty of human effort shone here, just as the eternal beauty of nature shone all around.
pp. 492-493 — Ivan Goncharov