“
Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
”
”
Francis Bacon
“
Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
”
”
Francis Bacon (The Essays)
“
A man once asked me ... how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. "Well," said the man, "I shouldn't have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing." I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.
”
”
Dorothy L. Sayers (Are Women Human? Penetrating, Sensible and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society)
“
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
”
”
Francis Bacon (The Essays)
“
This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.
”
”
Elbert Hubbard
“
If I were reading a book and happened to strike a wonderful passage I would close the book then and there and go for a walk. I hated the thought of coming to the end of a good book. I would tease it along, delay the inevitable as long as possible, But always, when I hit a great passage, I would stop reading immediately. Out I would go, rain, hail, snow or ice, and chew the cud.
”
”
Henry Miller (Plexus (The Rosy Crucifixion, #2))
“
Some books should be tasted,some devoured but only few should be chewed and digested thouroughly
”
”
Cornelia Funke (Inkheart (Inkworld, #1))
“
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
”
”
Francis Bacon (The Essays)
“
Writing a book is like sliding down a rainbow! Marketing it is like trudging through a field of chewed bubblegum on a hot, sticky day.
”
”
Betty Dravis
“
My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world.
”
”
Henry Miller
“
She raised her hand to cut me off. "I am aware of your epistolary flirtation. Which is all well and good--as long as it's well and good. Before I ask you some questions, perhaps you would like some tea?"
"That would depend on what kind of tea you were offering."
"So diffident! Suppose it was Earl Grey."
I shook my head. "Tastes like pencil shavings."
"Lady Grey."
"I don't drink beverages named after beheaded monarchs. It seems so tacky."
"Chamomile?"
"Might as well sip butterfly wings."
"Green tea?"
"You can't be serious."
The old woman nodded her approval. "I wasn't."
"Because you know when a cow chews grass? And he or she chews and chews and chews? Well, green tea tastes like French-kissing that cow after it's done chewing all that grass."
"Would you like some mint tea?"
"Only under duress."
"English breakfast."
I clapped my hands. "Now you're talking!
”
”
David Levithan (Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily, #1))
“
There’s strength in observing one’s miniaturization. That you are insignificant and prone to, and God knows, dumb about a lot. Because doesn’t smallness prime us to eventually take up space? For instance, the momentum gained from reading a great book. After after, sitting, sleeping, living in its consequence. A book that makes you feel, finally, latched on.
”
”
Durga Chew-Bose (Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays)
“
Remember some books are meant to be tasted, some books are meant to be chewed and, finally, some books are meant to be swallowed whole.
”
”
Robin Sharma
“
There were some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things. A Confession was a book like that. In it, Tolstoy related a Russian fable about a man who, being chased by a monster, jumps into a well. As the man is falling down the well, however, he sees there's a dragon at the bottom, waiting to eat him. Right then, the man notices a branch sticking out of the wall, and he grabs on to it, and hangs. This keeps the man from falling into the dragon's jaws, or being eaten by the monster above, but it turns out there's another little problem. Two mice, one black and one white, are scurrying around and around the branch, nibbling it. It's only a matter of time before they will chew through the branch, causing the man to fall. As the man contemplates his inescapable fate, he notices something else: from the end of the branch he's holding, a few drops of honey are dripping. The man sticks out his tongue to lick them. This, Tolstoy says, is our human predicament: we're the man clutching the branch. Death awaits us. There is no escape. And so we distract ourselves by licking whatever drops of honey come within our reach.
”
”
Jeffrey Eugenides (The Marriage Plot)
“
Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunch-backed makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed form kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries' vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers, heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters' sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etiolated lacquerers; mottle-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night's rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.
”
”
David Mitchell (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
“
Spiders don't chew. They send a special liquid into their prey. The prey's insides turn to mush. Then the spider sucks up its tasty lunch!
”
”
Julie Murphy (Arachnids (Weird, Wild, and Wonderful))
“
Having placed in my mouth sufficient bread for three minutes' chewing, I withdrew my powers of sensual perception and retired into the privacy of my mind, my eyes and face assuming a vacant and preoccupied expression. I reflected on the subject of my spare-time literary activities. One Beginning and one ending for a book was a thing I did not agree with. A good book may have three openings entirely dissimilar and inter-related only in the prescience of the author, or for that matter one hundred times as many endings.
”
”
Flann O'Brien
“
Winter is when I reorganise my bookshelves and read all the books I acquired in the previous year and failed to actually read. It is also the time when I reread beloved novels, for the pleasure of reacquainting myself with old friends. In summer, I want big, splashy ideas and trashy page-turners, devoured while lounging in a garden chair or perching on one of the breakwaters on the beach. In winter, I want concepts to chew over in a pool of lamplight—slow, spiritual reading, a reinforcement of the soul. Winter is a time for libraries, the muffled quiet of bookstacks and the scent of old pages and dust. In winter, I can spend hours in silent pursuit of a half-understood concept or a detail of history. There is nowhere else to be, after all.
”
”
Katherine May (Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times)
“
Unrequited love," I'd say. He'd look at me sideways in that cunning way he did and say, "what about it?" and I'd reply, "it's not your color." Pithy. Just to show him that I'd noticed. Or maybe I'd show myself to her and say, "Guess I'm not the only one who uses humans around here." And then I'd summon some of Owain's hounds to chew off the bottom bits of her legs. Then she wouldn't fit just right into his arms. She'd be too short. It'd be like hugging a midget.
Nuala- pg. 75
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie (Books of Faerie, #2))
“
A book can be pocketed and discarded, scrawled and torn into pages, lost and bought again. It can be dragged out from a suitcase, opened in front of you when having a snack, revived at the moment of waking, and skimmed through once again before falling asleep. It needs no notice by phone if you can’t attend the appointment fixed in the timetable. It won’t get mad if awakened from its slumber during your sleepless nights. Its message can be swallowed whole or chewed into tiny pieces. Its content lures you for intellectual Why and What adventures and it satisfies your spirit of adventure. You can get bored of it—but it won’t ever get bored of you.
”
”
Kató Lomb (Polyglot: How I Learn Languages)
“
England once there lived a big
And wonderfully clever pig.
To everybody it was plain
That Piggy had a massive brain.
He worked out sums inside his head,
There was no book he hadn't read.
He knew what made an airplane fly,
He knew how engines worked and why.
He knew all this, but in the end
One question drove him round the bend:
He simply couldn't puzzle out
What LIFE was really all about.
What was the reason for his birth?
Why was he placed upon this earth?
His giant brain went round and round.
Alas, no answer could be found.
Till suddenly one wondrous night.
All in a flash he saw the light.
He jumped up like a ballet dancer
And yelled, "By gum, I've got the answer!"
"They want my bacon slice by slice
"To sell at a tremendous price!
"They want my tender juicy chops
"To put in all the butcher's shops!
"They want my pork to make a roast
"And that's the part'll cost the most!
"They want my sausages in strings!
"They even want my chitterlings!
"The butcher's shop! The carving knife!
"That is the reason for my life!"
Such thoughts as these are not designed
To give a pig great piece of mind.
Next morning, in comes Farmer Bland,
A pail of pigswill in his hand,
And piggy with a mighty roar,
Bashes the farmer to the floor…
Now comes the rather grizzly bit
So let's not make too much of it,
Except that you must understand
That Piggy did eat Farmer Bland,
He ate him up from head to toe,
Chewing the pieces nice and slow.
It took an hour to reach the feet,
Because there was so much to eat,
And when he finished, Pig, of course,
Felt absolutely no remorse.
Slowly he scratched his brainy head
And with a little smile he said,
"I had a fairly powerful hunch
"That he might have me for his lunch.
"And so, because I feared the worst,
"I thought I'd better eat him first.
”
”
Roald Dahl
“
Victor didn’t entirely understand my love for Rory, but he couldn’t disagree that Rory was probably the best raccoon corpse that anyone had ever loved. Rory’s tiny arms perpetually reached out as if to say, “OHMYGOD, YOU ARE MY FAVORITE. PERSON. EVER. PLEASE LET ME CHEW YOUR FACE OFF WITH MY LOVE.” Whenever I’d accomplished a particularly impossible goal (like remembering to refill my ADD meds even though I have ADD and was out of ADD meds) Rory was always there, eternally offering supportive high fives because he understood the value of celebrating the small victories.
”
”
Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things)
“
Green tea?"
"You can't be serious."
The old woman nodded her approval. "I wasn't."
"Because you know when a cow chews grass? And he or she chews and chews and chews? Well, green tea tastes like French-kissing that cow after it's done chewing all that grass.
”
”
David Levithan (Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily, #1))
“
Just because you can put something in your mouth, chew it, swallow it, and then poop it out doesn’t mean it’s food. It just means you can chew it, swallow it, and poop it out.
”
”
Cameron Díaz (The Body Book: The Law of Hunger, the Science of Strength, and Other Ways to Love Your Amazing Body)
“
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few are to be chewed and digested.
”
”
Francis Bacon
“
I’m too busy to chew. That’s why I blend all my meals into smoothies, and I make love as slowly as ice cream melts in the Sahara.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
Reading book reviews is like asking other people to chew your food for you.
”
”
Ron Brackin
“
It is so very easy and so very pleasant, too, to read only books which lead to nothing, light and interesting books, and the more the better, that it is almost as difficult to wean ourselves from it as from the habit of chewing tobacco to excess, or of smoking the whole time, or of depending for stimulus upon tea or coffee or spirits.
”
”
Charles Francis Adams
“
When I take my hand out of this blanket," he thought, "my nail will be grown back, my hands will be clean. My body will be clean. I'll have on clean shorts, clean undershirt, a white shirt. A blue polka-dot tie. A gray suit with a stripe, and I'll be home, and I'll bolt the door. I'll put some coffee on the stove, some records on the phonograph, and I'll bolt the door. I'll read my books and I'll drink coffee and I'll listen to music, and I'll bolt the door. I'll open the window, I'll let in a nice, quiet girl--not Frances, not anyone I've ever known--and I'll bolt the door. I'll ask her to read some Emily Dickinson to me--that one about being chartless--and I'll ask her to read some William Blake to me--that one about the little lamb that made thee--and I'll bolt the door. She'll have an American voice, and she won't ask me if I have any chewing gum or bonbons, and I'll bolt the door.
”
”
J.D. Salinger (A Boy in France (Babe Gladwaller, #2))
“
This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in. Those who have read of every thing are thought to understand every thing too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.
”
”
John Locke (Locke's Conduct of the Understanding)
“
I claim that this bookless library is a dream, a hallucination of on-line addicts; network neophytes, and library-automation insiders...Instead, I suspect computers will deviously chew away at libraries from the inside. They'll eat up book budgets and require librarians that are more comfortable with computers than with children and scholars. Libraries will become adept at supplying the public with fast, low-quality information.
The result won't be a library without books--it'll be a library without value.
”
”
Clifford Stoll
“
By the following morning, Anthony was drunk. By afternoon, he was hungover.
His head was pounding, his ears were ringing, and his brothers, who had been surprised to discover him
in such a state at
their club, were talking far too loudly.
Anthony put his hands over his ears and groaned.Everyone was talking far too loudly.
“Kate boot you out of the house?” Colin asked, grabbing a walnut from a large pewter dish in the middle
their table and
splitting it open with a viciously loud crack.
Anthony lifted his head just far enough to glare at him.
Benedict watched his brother with raised brows and the vaguest hint of a smirk. “She definitely booted
him out,” he said to Colin. “Hand me one of those walnuts, will you?”
Colin tossed one across the table. “Do you want the crackers as well?”
Benedict shook his head and grinned as he held up a fat, leather-bound book. “Much more satisfying to
smash them.”
“Don’t,” Anthony bit out, his hand shooting out to grab the book, “even think about it.”
“Ears a bit sensitive this afternoon, are they?”
If Anthony had had a pistol, he would have shot them both, hang the noise.
“If I might offer you a piece of advice?” Colin said, munching on his walnut.
“You might not,” Anthony replied. He looked up. Colin was chewing with his mouth open. As this had
been strictly forbidden while growing up in their household, Anthony could only deduce that Colin was
displaying such poor manners only to make more noise. “Close your damned mouth,” he muttered.
Colin swallowed, smacked his lips, and took a sip of his tea to wash it all down. “Whatever you did,
apologize for it. I know you, and I’m getting to know Kate, and knowing what I know—”
“What the hell is he talking about?” Anthony grumbled.
“I think,” Benedict said, leaning back in his chair, “that he’s telling you you’re an ass.”
“Just so!” Colin exclaimed.
Anthony just shook his head wearily. “It’s more complicated than you think.”
“It always is,” Benedict said, with sincerity so false it almost managed to sound sincere.
“When you two idiots find women gullible enough to actually marry you,” Anthony snapped, “then you
may presume to
offer me advice. But until then ...shut up.”
Colin looked at Benedict. “Think he’s angry?”
Benedict quirked a brow. “That or drunk.”
Colin shook his head. “No, not drunk. Not anymore, at least. He’s clearly hungover.”
“Which would explain,” Benedict said with a philosophical nod, “why he’s so angry.”
Anthony spread one hand over his face and pressed hard against his temples with his thumb and middle
finger. “God above,”
he muttered. ‘‘What would it take to get you two to leave me alone?”
“Go home, Anthony,” Benedict said, his voice surprisingly gentle.
”
”
Julia Quinn (The Viscount Who Loved Me (Bridgertons, #2))
“
This was one of those mid-thirties moments when you take a look at the stale, half-chewed bagel your life has become and kiss jealousy on its smokey mouth.
”
”
Steve Almond (Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book by and for the Fanatics Among Us)
“
Is it okay?”
I nodded and continued chewing. “Y-you made me my first sub.”
He smiled. “You remembered.
”
”
Shaye Evans (Seduction Squad (Seduction Squad book 1))
“
Some books are to be tasted, others are to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
”
”
Francis Bacon
“
Some books are to be tasted, others are to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested.
”
”
Francis Bacon
“
Vimes shook his head. “That always chews me up,” he said. “People killing one another just because their gods have squabbled—” “Oh, they’ve got the same god, sir. Apparently it’s over a word in their holy book, sir. The Elharibians say it translates as ‘god’ and the Smalies say it’s ‘man.’” “How can you mix them up?” “Well, there’s only one tiny dot difference in the script, you see. And some people reckon it’s only a bit of fly dirt in any case.” “Centuries of war because a fly crapped in the wrong place?” “It could have been worse,” said Carrot. “If it had been slightly to the left the word would have been ‘liquorice.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Jingo (Discworld, #21))
“
When all the birds and all the fish join forces, the politicians will be forced to chew on and swallow their own slimy, wormlike words. But until the time that the sky and the sea blend into one, I’ll leave my fishing pole in a tree, disguised as a branch.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
If your life can hang from a chewing gum wrapper it can hang from anything in the book. It can hang from a bullet no bigger than a bean, or from a cigarette smoked in bed, or a bad breakfast that causes the doctor to sew the absorbent cotton inside you. From a slick tire tread or the hiccups or from kissing the wrong woman. Life is a rental proposition with no lease. For everybody, tall and short, muscles and fat, white and yellow, rich and poor. I know that now. And it is good to know at a time like this
”
”
Elliott Chaze (Black Wings Has My Angel)
“
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
”
”
Francis Bacon
“
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.
”
”
Francis Bacon
“
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few books to be read wholly, and with diligence and attraction.
”
”
Francis Bacon
“
Some books are to be tasted (0-2), others to be swallowed (3), and some few to be chewed and digested(4-5); that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention
”
”
Francis Bacon
“
She had thought the chewing and digesting were meant literally and wondered, horrified, why Mo had hung on his workshop door the words of someone who vandalized books.
”
”
Cornelia Funke (Inkheart (Inkworld, #1))
“
This place looks like a Cracker Barrel had a baby with a honky-tonk, and now that baby is a teenager who doesn’t shower enough and chews on his sweatshirt sleeves.
”
”
Emily Henry (Book Lovers)
“
My cat’s favorite chew toy is a pen. I’d wager that he is a better writer than me.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks (This isn't really my best book))
“
My name is Two Dogs Wink While Chewing. It’s not an Indian name, nor one that reflects my cat-loving nature.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book Has No Title)
“
I chew the inside of my lip, considering for a second what it would be like to slap this skinny little witch right across her tight-lipped little face. ~Kelly about Suni
”
”
Bill Blais
“
Her cabin was half-swallowed in shadow and rolling fog, haloed by fireflies chewing through the darkness.
”
”
Kim Michele Richardson (The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek)
“
He sat before a note book of blank pages, saying: I swallow my own words. I chew and chew everything until it deteriorates. Every thought or impulse I have is chewed into nothingness. I want to capture all my thoughts at once, but they run in all directions. If I could do this I would be capturing the nimblest of minds, like a shoal of minnows. I would reveal innocence and duplicity, generosity and calculation, fear and cowardice and courage. I want to tell the whole truth, but I cannot tell the whole truth because I would have to write four pages at once, like four columns simultaneously, four pages to the present one, and so I do not write at all. I would have to write backwards, retrace my steps constantly to catch the echoes and overtones.
”
”
Anaïs Nin
“
In books "we converse with the wise, as in action with fools." That is, if we know how to select our books. "Some books are to be tasted," reads a famous passage, "others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested"; all these groups forming, no doubt, an infinitesimal portion of the oceans and cataracts of ink in which the world is daily bathed and poisoned and drowned.
”
”
Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy)
“
It is a mistake to read too many good books when quite young. A man once told me that he had read all the books that mattered. Cross-questioned, he appeared to have read a great many, but they seemed to have made only a slight impression. How many had he understood? How many had entered into his mental composition? How many had been hammered on the anvils of his mind and afterwards ranged in an armoury of bright weapons ready to hand? It is a great pity to read a book too soon in life. The first impression is the one that counts….Young people should be careful in their reading, as old people in eating their food. They should not eat too much. They should chew it well.
”
”
Winston S. Churchill (Painting As a Pastime)
“
I’ll watch the Final Four when there are three teams playing at once for two titles and one large bag of regrets. That bag is mostly full of air, like a bag of potato chips, only harder to chew.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
His mind floated in the amniotic fluid of memory, listening for echoes of the past. His father, meanwhile, had no idea that such a vivid scene was burned into Tengo's brain or that, like a cow in the meadow, Tengo was endlessly regurgitating fragments of the scene to chew on, a cud from which he obtained essential nutrients. Father and son: each was locked in a deep, dark embrace with his secrets.
”
”
Haruki Murakami (1Q84 Book 1 (1Q84, #1))
“
From a distance a metronome is ticking through the fog, and I mechanically chew to the familiar caress of its music, counting, along with everyone else, up to fifty: fifty statutory chews for each mouthful. And, still mechanically beating out the time, I go downstairs, and, like everyone else, check off my name in the book as one leaving the premises. But I sense that I'm living separately from everyone else, alone, surrounded by a soft, soundproof wall, and that my world is on my side of this wall.
”
”
Yevgeny Zamyatin (We)
“
Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read
to the end just to find out who killed the cook.
Not the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication.
Not the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punchline, the door, or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don’t regret those.
Not the nights you called god names and cursed
your mother, sunk like a dog in the livingroom couch,b
chewing your nails and crushed by loneliness.
You were meant to inhale those smoky nights
over a bottle of flat beer, to sweep stuck onion rings
across the dirty restaurant floor, to wear the frayed
coat with its loose buttons, its pockets full of struck matches.
You’ve walked those streets a thousand times and still
you end up here. Regret none of it, not one
of the wasted days you wanted to know nothing,
when the lights from the carnival rides
were the only stars you believed in, loving them
for their uselessness, not wanting to be saved.
You’ve traveled this far on the back of every mistake,
ridden in dark-eyed and morose but calm as a house
after the TV set has been pitched out the upstairs
window. Harmless as a broken ax. Emptied
of expectation. Relax. Don’t bother remembering any of it.
Let’s stop here, under the lit sign
on the corner, and watch all the people walk by.
”
”
Dorianne Laux (The Book of Men)
“
She inhaled deeply—and sneezed. Stupid allergies. “Gods bless you,” Rishi said.
Dimple arched an eyebrow. “Gods?”
He nodded sagely. “As a Hindu, I’m a polytheist, as you well know.”
Dimple laughed. “Yes, and I also know we still only say ‘God,’ not ‘gods.’ We still believe Brahma is the supreme creator.”
Rishi smiled, a sneaky little thing that darted out before he could stop it. “You got me. It’s my version of microaggressing back on people.”
“Explain.”
“So, okay. This is how it works in the US: In the spring we’re constantly subjected to bunnies and eggs wherever we go, signifying Christ’s resurrection. Then right around October we begin to see pine trees and nativity scenes and laughing fat white men everywhere. Christian iconography is all over the place, constantly in our faces, even in casual conversation. This is the bible of comic book artists . . . He had a come to Jesus moment, all of that stuff. So this is my way of saying, Hey, maybe I believe something a little different. And every time someone asks me why ‘gods,’ I get to explain Hinduism.”
Dimple chewed on this, impressed in spite of herself. He actually had a valid point. Why was Christianity always the default? “Ah.” She nodded, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “So what you’re saying is, you’re like a Jehovah’s Witness for our people.”
Rishi’s mouth twitched, but he nodded seriously. “Yes. I’m Ganesha’s Witness. Has a bit of a ring to it, don’t you think?
”
”
Sandhya Menon (When Dimple Met Rishi (Dimple and Rishi, #1))
“
My guess? Romance novels. My guess? She started reading them early. My guess? She started them at a time where they made a huge impression on her and changed her perceptions. She isn't cocooned, she pays attention and she knows there are no men out there like the men in those books she reads so she prefers being with them than trying to find someone like them which, she thinks, is a fruitless endeavor. That fantasy is far better than any reality and, you know what? She's right. Men are a pain in the ass and a lot of them are dicks who cause heartbreak. And her, a girl like Faye? Well, she knows she's the kind of girl men like that will chew up and spit out. So she's smart and she's not going to go there.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Lady Luck (Colorado Mountain, #3))
“
It is a great pity to read a book too soon in life. The first impression is the one that counts; and if it is a slight one, it may be all that can be hoped for. A later and second perusal may recoil from a surface already hardened by premature contact. Young people should be careful in their reading, as old people in eating their food. They should not eat too much. They should chew it well.
”
”
Winston Churchill (Thoughts and Adventures)
“
I have to admit that most of the time I read in the same way that I smoke and chew gum and jiggle my leg a lot. I read a lot, but at the same time I’m not a particularly good or diligent or discriminating reader. I go through maybe close to a thousand or more books a year, but a lot of times I’ll only read bits and pieces of any one individual text. There are even certain works that are very important to me (Like Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, for example) that I probably haven’t ever read all the way through from beginning to end, just certain passages over and over. I tend to read at stuff, rather that through it, if that makes any sense, and maybe there’s something a little bit rodent-like about it, like a gerbil gnawing on woodchips in those, tiny, rapid obsessive bites.
”
”
Dan Chaon
“
In childhood, having a sister, especially if she was older, meant sharing a wall with—it’s possible—some likeness of your near-future self. Movies, books, the March sisters, all of it, devised a rubric that engrossed me because sisterhood amounted to what I envied: not having to learn how to join.
”
”
Durga Chew-Bose (Too Much and Not the Mood: Essays)
“
I took a big bite out of the slime ball. The texture was very soft and chewy-like, but as I chewed it in my mouth, it exploded with a flavor of unspeakable nastiness. “YUCK! OH! GAH! GAG! It tasted like rotten eggs combined with some arm pit sweat.” Bob busted out laughing. “Ewww! That’s so gross,
”
”
Steve the Noob (Diary of Steve the Noob 6 (An Unofficial Minecraft Book))
“
Some books are like chewing gum. They have just enough flavour to sate you for an hour or so. Others are like gourmet meals. Meticulously crafted with complex flavours that - while exciting during consumption - leave only a vague memory behind. The best books are like old recipes, passed down through generations. They stick with you long after the last bite. You want to return to them again and again, because they become a part of who you are. I want to write those.
”
”
Xio Axelrod
“
What benefits new books bring us! I would like a basket full of books telling the youth of images which fall from heaven for me every day. This desire is natural. This prodigy is easy. For, up there, in heaven, isn't paradise an immense library?
But it is not sufficient to receive; one must welcome. One must, say the pedagogue and the dietician in the same voice, ‘assimilate.’ In order to do that, we are advised not to read too fast and to be careful not to swallow too large a bite. We are told to divide each difficulty into as many parts as possible, the better to solve them. Yes, chew well, drink a little at a time, savor poems line by line. All these precepts are well and good. But one precept orders them. One first needs a good desire to eat, drink and read. One must want to read a lot, read more, always read.
Thus, in the morning, before the books piled high on my table, to the god of reading, I say my prayer of the devouring reader: ‘Give us this day our daily hunger . . .’” - Gaston Bachelard, ”Introduction”, The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos, Pages 25-26
”
”
Gaston Bachelard (The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos)
“
What makes the Arctic VarChar so unusual and popular is that each bite has a different taste. As you carve your way into the ersatz fillet, you might find yourself chewing on smoked salmon, tender tuna, marinated mackerel, seared snapper, raw roe, baked barracuda, grilled goldfish, or even pickled perch, to alliterate just a few.
”
”
Sorin Suciu (The Scriptlings)
“
Because you know when a cow chews grass? And he or she chews and chews and chews? Well, green tea tastes like French-kissing that cow after it’s done chewing all that grass.
”
”
Rachel Cohn (Dash & Lily's Book of Dares (Dash & Lily, #1))
“
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested
”
”
Siva Prakash (Coffee and Couture: The Love Symphony: A Billionaire Romance Novel of Love's Enduring Embrace)
“
My granny used to say that folks who held on to anger like a mule chewing a mouthful of bumblebees were folks who needed grace most.
”
”
Ellery Adams (The Little Lost Library (Secret, Book, & Scone Society, #7))
“
remember, some books are meant to be tasted, some books are meant to be chewed and, finally, some books are meant to be swallowed whole. Which
”
”
Robin Sharma (The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams & Reaching Your Destiny)
“
give Miss Lilly Belle a chew toy now and again.” He shoots me a knowing smirk,
”
”
Paige North (The Billionaire And The Nanny (Book One))
“
Who would chew up a bunch of books?
”
”
Dean Koontz (Darkfall)
“
If only I would’ve known that Virginia was going to chew me up and spit me out onto the rocks of Pennsylvania, I might not have been so excited.
”
”
Kyle Rohrig (Lost on the Appalachian Trail (Triple Crown Trilogy (AT, PCT, CDT) Book 1))
“
His last name was Chew, and I didn’t care if he was Asian, I still screamed, “Not with your mouth open!
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
Some books should be tasted some devoured, but only a f e w should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
”
”
Anonymous
“
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested
”
”
Francis Bacon
“
Sir Francis Bacon wrote, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested:
”
”
A.W. Tozer (The Crucified Life: How To Live Out A Deeper Christian Experience)
“
My first and last name is like a candy bar in your mouth that you can chew on as you say it.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This is the best book I've ever written, and it still sucks (This isn't really my best book))
“
Never chew off the hand you write with, you might survive and have to sign autographs.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
I am the riddle in the mouth of the Sphinx. I am the slaver that chews the living chain. I am the farmer of dead seeds, the filler of holes. Who am I?” Senlin answered at a whisper: “Death.
”
”
Josiah Bancroft (Senlin Ascends (The Books of Babel, #1))
“
Occasionally, in the stillness of a taxi or an airplane, she would catalog the pleasures she had lost. Cigarettes. Chewing gum. Strong mint toothpaste. Any food with hard edges or sharp corners that could pierce or abrade the inside of her mouth: potato chips, croutons, crunchy peanut butter. Any food that was more than infinitesimally, protozoically, spicy or tangy or salty or acidic: pesto or Worcestershire sauce, wasabi or anchovies, tomato juice or movie-theater popcorn. Certain pamphlets and magazines whose paper carried a caustic wafting chemical scent she could taste as she turned the pages. Perfume. Incense. Library books. Long hours of easy conversation. The ability to lick an envelope without worrying that the glue had irritated her mouth. The knowledge that if she heard a song she liked, she could sing along to it in all her dreadful jubilant tunelessness. The faith that if she bit her tongue, she would soon feel better rather than worse.
”
”
Kevin Brockmeier (The Illumination)
“
More seriously-and this is probably why there has been a lot of garbage talked about a lost generation-it was easy to see, all over the landscape of contemporary fiction, the devastating effect of the Thatcher years. So many of these writers wrote without hope. They had lost all ambition, all desire to to wrestle with the world. Their books dealt with tiny patches of the world, tiny pieces of human experience-a council estate, a mother, a father, a lost job. Very few writers had the courage or even the energy to bite off a big chunk of the universe and chew it over. Very few showed any linguistic or formal innovation. Many were dulled and therefore dull. (And then, even worse, there were the Hooray Henries and Sloanes who evidently thought that the day of the yuppie novel, and the Bellini-drinking, okay-yah fiction had dawned. Dukedoms and country-house bulimics abounded. It was plain that too may books were being published; that too many writers had found their way into print without any justification for it at all; that too many publishers had adopted a kind of random, scattergun policy of publishing for turnover and just hoping that something would strike a cord.
When the general picture is so disheartening, it is easy to miss the good stuff. I agreed to be a judge for "Best of Young British Novelists II" because I wanted to find out for myself if the good stuff really was there. In my view, it is...One of my old schoolmasters was fond of devising English versions of the epigrams of Martial. I remember only one, his version of Martial's message to a particularly backward-looking critic:
"You only praise the good old days
We young 'uns get no mention.
I don't see why I have to die
To gain your kind attention.
”
”
Salman Rushdie (Step Across This Line: Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002)
“
The heavy infantry stood. The heavy infantry held the trench. Even as they died, they backed not a single step. The Nah’ruk clawed for purchase on the blood-soaked mud of the berm. Iron chewed into them. Halberds slammed down, rebounded from shields. Reptilian bodies reeled back, blocking the advance of rear ranks. Arrows and quarrels poured into the foe from positions behind the trench.
And from above, Locqui Wyval descended by the score, in a frenzy, to tear and rend the helmed heads of the lizard warriors. Others quickly closed to do battle with their kin, and the sky rained blood.
”
”
Steven Erikson (Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #9))
“
NOOOOO!” he collapsed to his knees crying out. A glob of pie fell from his head into his mouth and he stopped screaming and chewing it. “Mmmm, still good.” He scraped the pie off himself and kept eating.
”
”
Pixel Ate (The Accidental Minecraft Family: Book 6)
“
I sure hope Wrigley doesn't start making socks, because then I wouldn't be able to refuse if someone offered me some socks. I sure do love chewing on socks. They add lots of flavor while I'm biting my toenails.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This Book is Not for Sale)
“
Cedar
The cedar tree smells like the first crisp bite of spearmint chewing gum,
refreshing, yet almost like medicine in its bitter.
This tree is surely as ancient as Ecclesiastes--
that's a book in the Old Testament that I haven't read much of,
but it sounds like cedar smells.
The scent of cedar holds a perpetual hush,
whispering, "Hush-hush-still-stay."
And then the cedar says, "Rush-rush-be-on-your-way, for I have seen children of earth come and go and soldiers live and die, and I hold them softly in my green-black shade."
And so I will leave the cedar to return to its refrain and to remain the green a-men of the forest.
”
”
Kimberly Greene Angle (Hummingbird)
“
Never agree to take a puppy for a week, Elinor knew that now. A week was all the time it took to be won over completely, despite the messes on the carpets and the shedding, the chewed slippers and shredded books.
”
”
Alice Hoffman (The Probable Future)
“
It was the same book, every day. The pages of said book were rounded and soft where Young Sam had chewed them, but to one person in this nursery this was the book of books, the greatest story ever told. Vimes didn't need to read it any more. He knew it by heart.
It was called Where's My Cow?
The unidentified complainant had lost their cow. That was the story, really.
Page one started promisingly:
Where's my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes, "Baa!"
It is a sheep! That's not my cow!
Then the author began to get to grips with their material:
Where's my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes, "Neigh!"
It is a horse! That's not my cow!
At this point the author had reached an agony of creation and was writing from the racked depths of their soul.
Where's my cow?
Is that my cow?
It goes, "Hruuugh!"
It is a hippopotamus! That's not my cow!
This was a good evening. Young Sam was already grinning widely and crowing along with the plot.
Eventually, the cow would be found. It was that much of a pageturner. Of course, some suspense was lent by the fact that all other animals were presented in some way that could have confused a kitten, who perhaps had been raised in a darkened room. The horse was standing in front of a hatstand, as they so often did, and the hippo was eating at a trough against which was an upturned pitchfork. Seen from the wrong direction, the tableau might look for just one second like a cow ...
Young Sam loved it, anyway. It must have been the most cuddled book in the world.
Nevertheless, it bothered Vimes, even though he'd got really good at the noises and would go up against any man in his rendition of the "Hruuugh!" But was this a book for a city kid? When would he ever hear these noises? In the city the only sound those animals would make was "sizzle" But the nursery was full of the conspiracy, with baa-lambs and teddy bears and fluffy ducklings everywhere he looked.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Thud! (Discworld, #34; City Watch, #7))
“
I have conducted experiments using techniques that used to be fairly effective—knocking over the French press, unraveling their shoddy knitting, chewing the covers of every book in the library, shitting on pillows, shredding the couch, eating all the Ethernet snakes, and pissing all over bed blanket—but they seem to no longer be concerned. Admittedly, I’m impressed. I respect the negligible number of shits currently being given. Case in point: one of my Mediocre Servants left her arm in the living room, which I believe speaks to their general ineptitude. I played with it momentarily, but found its pungency off-putting and resumed licking my anus.
”
”
Kira Jane Buxton (Hollow Kingdom (Hollow Kingdom, #1))
“
I found a bench to myself and began chewing savagely at my lunch. It did me good; it had been a long time since I’d had such a well-balanced meal and I gradually became aware of the same feeling of tired peace which one feels after a long cry. My courage had now returned; it was not enough any longer to write an essay on something so elementary and simple-minded as “Crimes of the Future,” which any ass could arrive at, let alone read in history books.
”
”
Knut Hamsun (Hunger)
“
And then there is the black cat. Who has no other name than the Black Cat and who turned up almost a month ago. We did not realize he was going to be living here at first: he looked too well fed to be a stray, too old and jaunty to have been abandoned. He looked like a small panther, and he moved like a patch of night.
One day, in the summer, he was lurking about our ramshackle porch: eight or nine years old, at a guess, male, greenish-yellow of eye, very friendly, quite unperturbable. I assumed he belonged to a neighboring farmer or household.
I went away for a few weeks, to finish writing a book, and when I came home he was still on our porch, living in an old cat ben one of the children had found for him. He was, however, almost unrecognizable. Patches of fur had gone, and there were deep scratches on his gray skin. The tip of one ear was chewed away. There was a gash beneath one eye, s lice gone from one lip. He looked tired and thin.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (M Is for Magic)
“
Noah held his hand out. She accepted it - it was bone-cold, as always - and together they turned to face the huge room. Noah took a deep breath as if they were preparing to explore the jungle instead of stepping deeper into Monmouth Manufacturing.
It seemed bigger with just the two of them there. The cobwebbed ceiling soared, dust motes making mobiles overhead. They turned their heads sideways and read the titles of the books aloud. Blue peered at Henrietta through the telescope. Noah daringly reattached one of the broken miniature roofs on Gansey's scale town. They went through the fridge tucked in the bathroom. Blue selected a soda. Noah took a plastic spoon. He chewed on it as Blue fed Chainsaw a leftover hamburger. They closed Ronan's door - if Gansey still managed to inhabit the rest of the apartment, Ronan's presence was still decidedly pervasive in his room. Noah showed Blue his room. They jumped on his perfectly made bed and then they played a bad game of pool. Noah lounged on the new sofa while Blue persuaded the old record player to play an LP too clever to interest either of them. They opened all the drawers on the desk in the main room. One of Gansey's EpiPens bounced against the interior of the topmost drawer as Blue withdrew a fancy pen. She copied Gansey's blocky handwriting onto a Nino's receipt as Noah put on a preppy sweater he'd found balled under the desk. She ate a mint leaf and breathed on Noah's face.
Crouching, they crab-walked along the aerial printout Gansey had spread the length of the room. He'd jotted enigmatic notes to himself all along the margin of it. Some of them were coordinates. Some of them were explanations of topography. Some of them were Beatles lyrics.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, #2))
“
Books are amazing,” Suzy said. “Words on a page that transport us. We can switch off from everything, never notice the time passing, and experience smells, sounds, sights, and emotions from all over time and place. It’s like chewing gum for the eyes.
”
”
Steve Berry (The Atlas Maneuver (Cotton Malone #18))
“
R. D. Laing wrote somewhere that there are three things human beings are afraid of: death, other people and their own minds. Terrified of my mind, I had always dreaded spending a moment alone with it. There always had to be a book in my pocket as an emergency kit in case I was ever trapped waiting anywhere, even for one minute, be it a bank lineup or supermarket checkout counter. I was forever throwing my mind scraps to feed on, as if to a ferocious and malevolent beast that would devour me the moment it was not chewing on something else. All my life I had known no other way to be.
”
”
Gabor Maté (Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates and What You Can Do About It)
“
Her hands felt their way blindly along the ridges and canyons and defiles of the spine, the firm root-spread hillocks of the withers. She rolled her bony knuckles all along the fallen tree of scar tissue at the crest of the back, prying up its branches, loosening its teeth. And it must be having some effect: when she walked Pelter these days he wasn't the sour fellow he used to be, he was sportive, even funny. She had walked him this morning until the rising sun snagged in the hackberry thicket. As they swung around the barn, she took a carrot from her pocket and gave him the butt and noisily toothed the good half herself. He curvetted like a colt, squealed, and cow-kicked alarmingly near her groin. Okay, okay, she said, and handed it over. She was glad there was no man around just then to tell her to show that horse who was boss. When they were back in the stall and she turned to leave, she found he had taken he whole raincoat in his mouth and was chewing it--the one she was wearing. She twisted around with difficulty and pried it out of his mouth. He eyed her ironically. Just between us, is this the sort of horse act I really ought to discipline? she asked him, smoothing out her coat. I simply incline to your company, he replied.
”
”
Jaimy Gordon (Lord of Misrule (National Book Award))
“
Life is like a book that you are writing and reading at the same time. You might have a plan for how it turns out. But for it to be a great book, it needs to be savoured and chewed and digested along the way, like a book you read that changes your life. And you have to prepare for a plot twist and maybe two or three.
”
”
Russell "Russ" Roberts (Wild Problems: A Guide to the Decisions That Define Us)
“
The sawdust flew. A slightly sweet fragrance floated in the immediate area. It was a sweet but subtle aroma, neither the scent of pine nor willow, but one from the past that had been forgotten, only to reappear now after all these years, fresher than ever. The workmen occasionally scooped up a handful of sawdust, which they put into their mouths and swallowed. Before that they had chewed on pieces of green bark that they had stripped from the cut wood. It had the same fragrance and it freshened their mouths, so at first that was what they had used. Now even though they were no longer chewing the bark with which they felt such a bond, the stack of corded wood was a very appealing sight. From time to time they gave the logs a friendly slap or kick. Each time they sawed off a section, which rolled to the ground from the sawhorse, they would say:
'Off with you - go over there and lie down where you belong.'
What they were thinking was that big pieces of lumber like this should be used to make tables or chairs or to repair a house or make window frames; wood like this was hard to find.
But now they were cutting it into kindling to be burned in stoves, a sad ending for good wood like this. They could see a comparison with their own lives, and this was a saddening thought. ("North China")
”
”
Xiao Hong (Selected Stories of Xiao Hong (Panda Books))
“
Kestrel climbed down and studied the garden in the lamplight thrown from her sunroom. She chewed the inside of her cheek, and was wondering whether books stacked on the chair on top of the table would make a difference when she heard something.
The grate of a heel against pebbles. It came from beyond the door, and the other side of the wall.
Someone had been listening.
Was listening still.
As quietly as she could, Kestrel took the chair down from the table and went inside.
Before Arin left for the mountain pass, during the coldest hours of the night, he found time to order that every piece of furniture light enough for Kestrel to move be taken from her suite.
”
”
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1))
“
In one such shop I saw lots of books in the window. I was reminded that humans have to read books. They actually need to sit down and look at each word consecutively. And that takes time. Lots of time. A human can’t just swallow every book going, can’t chew different tomes simultaneously, or gulp down near-infinite knowledge in a matter of seconds. They can’t just pop a word-capsule in their mouth like we can. Imagine! Being not only mortal but also forced to take some of that precious and limited time and read. No wonder they were a species of primitives. By the time they had read enough books to actually reach a state of knowledge where they can do anything with it they are dead.
”
”
Matt Haig
“
Kids in the real world think monsters come from the closet or under the bed. Which I suppose is true. Mostly. But the fact is, monsters can come from anywhere with a flat surface. We just need a door, and if it’s a flat plane, it can be a door. Chew on that the next time you’re reading a book about demonic possession. Pages are flat planes, too.
”
”
A.R. Kahler (Pale Queen Rising (Pale Queen, #1))
“
In books “we converse with the wise, as in action with fools.” That is, if we know how to select our books. “Some books are to be tasted,” reads a famous passage, “others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested”; all these groups forming, no doubt, an infinitesimal portion of the oceans and cataracts of ink in which the world is daily bathed and poisoned and drowned.
”
”
Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy)
“
Romance is fiction.” He punctuated this statement by taking a bite of steak, and then chewing. “But it’s—it’s—” Interesting? Well researched? Engaging? Well written? All of the above. “Not what you expected?” he supplied, smirking around his bite. “What did you expect?” Shrugging, I lifted a small rectangle of lasagna on my fork and blew at the steam. “I guess something brainless.” I didn’t add that I followed The New York Times Book Review and they’d had more than their fair share of articles calling the romance genre “fluffy.” If you couldn’t trust The New York Times Book Review, who could you trust? “Why? Because it’s about love and has a happy ending? And only stories of unhappiness with tragic endings are important? Because a struggle that leads to something good isn’t worthwhile?
”
”
Penny Reid (Motion (Laws of Physics, #1; Hypothesis, #2.1))
“
Our northern brethren buried their dead, were skilled toolmakers, kept fires going, and took care of the infirm just like early humans. The fossil record shows survival into adulthood of individuals afflicted with dwarfism, paralysis of the limbs, or the inability to chew. Going by exotic names such as Shanidar I, Romito 2, the Windover Boy, and the Old Man of La Chapelle-aux-Saints, our ancestors supported individuals who contributed little to society. Survival of the weak, the handicapped, the mentally retarded, and others who posed a burden is seen by paleontologists as a milestone in the evolution of compassion. This communitarian heritage is crucial in relation to this book’s theme, since it suggests that morality predates current civilizations and religions by at least a hundred millennia.
”
”
Frans de Waal (The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates)
“
Book X
... Satan arrives at Pandemonium; in full assembly relates, with boasting, his success against Man; instead of applause is entertained with a general hiss by all his audience, transformed, with himself also, suddenly into serpents, according to his doom given in paradise; then, deluded with a show of the forbidden tree springing up before them, they, greedily reaching to take of the fruit, chew dust and bitter ashes...
”
”
John Milton (Paradise Lost)
“
Well, it’s not swollen,” he stated, rewrapping the bandage, “or bleeding or leaking, so I think it’s okay.”
“I know. I’m training to be a nurse,” I replied. “Thanks though.”
“Explains the curiosity and attitude.”
“What?” I snapped.
“I’m a trainee paramedic.”
“Oh.” I looked away, chewing my lower lip. “Right.”
“There’s a sense of rivalry between Emergency Medical Technicians, paramedics, and nurses—I don’t know the reason behind it.”
“I know.
”
”
Shaye Evans (Rescued (The Salvaged Series Book 1))
“
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know, that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend.
----
Alcuni libri devono essere gustati, altri masticati e digeriti, vale a dire che alcuni libri vanno letti solo in parte, altri senza curiosità, e altri per intero, con diligenza ed attenzione. Alcuni libri possono essere letti da altri e se ne possono fare degli estratti, ma ciò riguarderebbe solo argomenti di scarsa importanza o di libri secondari perché altrimenti i libri sintetizzati sono come l’acqua distillata, evanescente. La lettura completa la formazione di un uomo; il parlare lo fa abile, e la scrittura lo trasforma in un uomo preciso. E, pertanto, se un uomo scrive poco, deve avere una grande memoria, se parla poco ha bisogno di uno spirito arguto; se legge poco deve avere bisogno di molta astuzia in modo da far sembrare di sapere quello che non sa. Le storie fanno gli uomini saggi; i poeti arguti; la matematica sottile; la filosofia naturale profondi; la logica e la retorica abili nella discussione.
”
”
Francis Bacon
“
When the wind stops, the trees still move, the way my heart creaks long after it bends. Iam always surprised at the aftereffect of being moved deeply by something. I can be hurt or disappointed or feel the warmth of being loved or the gentle sway of being temporarily left, and then I'm ready to chew on something else, seldom allowing for the feelings to digest completely. In fact, I've come to see that much of my confusion in life comes from giving my attention to the next thing too soon, and then wrapping new experience in the remnants of feeling that are not finished with me. For example, the other day I felt sad because an old friend is ill. I addressed my sadness directly and thought I'd been with this mood enough, so I continued on my way. The next day I found myself in the usual frustration of traffic and shopping, and the indifferent reactions of waitresses and clerks were suddenly making me sad. Or so I thought. Though it seems obvious here in the telling, it wasn't in the happening, and I spent a good deal of misguided energy wondering if it was time to change my lifestyle. But really I was feeling ripples of sadness about my friend's illness. The deeper lesson involves nature's sway: its approach, its impact, and, especially, its echo. Everything living encounters it, especially us in the unseeable ripples of what we think and feel. Being alive takes time.
”
”
Mark Nepo (The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have)
“
Later, as the sisters grew, Esther hyperfocused on their differences, but as a little kid she'd been far more hypnotised by their sameness. They both loved chewing lemon peels and watermelon rinds, loved pictures of goats but not actual goats, loved putting sand in their hair so they could scratch it out later, loved watching their parents slow-dance in the living room to Motown records. They loved the sound of the wind, the sound of breaking ice, the sound of coyotes calling on the mountain.
They disliked zippers, ham, the word 'milk', flute music, the gurgling sound of the refrigerator, Cecily's long weekends away, Abe's insistence on regular chess matches, and days with no clouds. They disliked the boxes of books that came to their door daily or were lugged home by their father, disliked their dusty lonesome smell and how they consumed Abe's attention. They disliked when their parents closed the bedroom door and fought in whispers. They hated the phrase 'half sister.' There had been no half about it.
”
”
Emma Törzs (Ink Blood Sister Scribe)
“
That’s the one,” said Aunt Bea. “He used to chew licorice and spit on the grass to make the principal think he was chewing tobacco like a professional baseball player, which was what he wanted to be.” “Where’s this cute licorice-chewing uncle coming from, and how did he get so rich?” asked Ramona’s father, beginning to be interested. “Playing baseball?” “He’s coming from—” Ramona frowned. “I can’t remember the name, but it sounds like a fairy tale and has camels.” Narnia? Never-never-land? No, those names weren’t right. “Saudi Arabia,” said Beezus, who also went to the Kemps’ after school. Being in junior high school, she could take her time getting there. “Yes, that’s it!” Ramona wished she had remembered first. “Howie says he’s bringing the whole family presents.” She imagined bags of gold like those in The Arabian Nights, which Beezus had read to her. Of course, nobody carried around bags of gold today, but she enjoyed imagining them. “What’s Howie’s uncle doing in Saudi Arabia?” asked Mr. Quimby. “Besides spitting licorice in the sand?
”
”
Beverly Cleary (The Complete 8-Book Ramona Collection: A Collection of Award-Winning Stories About School and Family for Kids (Ages 8-12))
“
Books? Yes, I read a lot, I’ve always read a lot. No, I’m not sure we do understand each other. I like to read best on the floor, or in bed, almost everything lying down, no, it has less to do with the books, above all it has to do with the reading, with black on white, with the letters, syllables, lines, the signs, the setting down, this inhuman fixing, this insanity, which flows from people and is frozen into expression. Believe me, expression is insanity, it arises out of our insanity. It also has to do with turning pages, with hunting from one page to the other, with flight, with complicity in an absurd, solidified effusion, with a vile overflow of verse, with insuring life in a single sentence, and, in turn, with the sentences seeking insurance in life. Reading is a vice which can replace all other vices or temporarily take their place in more intensely helping people live, it is a debauchery, a consuming addiction. No, I don’t take any drugs, I take books, of course I have certain preferences, many books don’t suit me at all, some I take only in the morning, others at night, there are books I don’t ever let go, I drag them around with me in the apartment, carrying them from the living room into the kitchen, I read them in the hall standing up, I don’t use bookmarks, I don’t move my lips while reading, early on I learned to read very well, I don’t remember the method, but you ought to look into it, they must have used an excellent method in our provincial elementary schools, at least back then when I learned to read. Yes I also realized, but not until later, that there are countries where people don’t know how to read, at least not quickly, but speed is important, not only concentration, can you please tell me who can keep chewing on a simple or even a complex sentence without feeling disgust, either with the eyes or the mouth, just keep on grinding away, over and over, a sentence which only consists of subject and predicate must be consumed rapidly, a sentence with many appositions must for that very reason be taken at tremendous speed, with the eyeballs performing an imperceptible slalom, since a sentence doesn’t convey anything to itself, it has to “convey” something to the reader. I couldn’t “work my way through” a book, that would almost be an occupation. There are people, I tell you, you come across the strangest surprises in this field of reading . . . I do profess a certain weakness for illiterates, I even know someone here who doesn’t read and doesn’t want to, a person who has succumbed to the vice of reading more easily understands such a state of innocence, really unless people are truly capable of reading they ought not to read at all.
”
”
Ingeborg Bachmann (Malina)
“
? Reviews are for readers AND authors. It’s a good way of learning from what people think about the work. Being it good or bad. A book might as well be hurt by a bad, poorly written review. That’s such a pity. Some people don’t know how to express themselves, and maybe that’s why they are just readers and not writers, others read a book like chewing a cupcake. That’s too bad. If that was not your cup of tea, leave it there, untouched. Don’t go bash the author for that. But if you really hate the book, why bother telling others. It’s your problem after all. You can give constructive opinions but don’t blame the author for your different tastes and views. Also authors shouldn’t comment on reviews, it sounds unprofessional, even silly. Some busy writers don’t even have time to read what other people say about their work. If someone enjoyed your book, or not, that is irrelevant. If you will continue or not to write something else it doesn´t add to the plate.. Besides, why bother commenting on a review, just read it and shut up. Being it good or bad. So my opinions about authors commenting on reviews is just my opinions after all!
”
”
Ana Claudia Antunes
“
What about her?” Oliver asks. In the corner, a girl in her twenties is sitting alone, holding a book open with one hand and deftly maneuvering a glass of wine toward her mouth without looking. Setting the wine down, she turns a page, then eats a single piece of sushi, chewing it slowly, resting her chopsticks on her plate. After a moment she takes another sip of wine, smiling at something she just read. Nicky refills her cup. “When she goes to bed tonight, she’s not going to lie there wondering if she said the right thing. And at the end of the day, there’s not a lot of people who can say that.
”
”
Cristina Moracho (Althea & Oliver)
“
When I was in high school I had to write an essay duplicating the manner and subject of Bacon’s ‘On Reading,’ and I remember including all the comfortable clichés. I said nothing about how books made me masturbate. I said nothing about nightmares, about daydreaming, about aching, cock-stiffening loneliness. I said something about wonder and curiosity, the improvement of character, quickening of sensibility, enlargement of mind, but nothing about the disappearance of the self in a terrible quake of earth. I did not say that reading drove a knife into the body. I did not say that as the man at breakfast calmly spoons his oatmeal into his mouth while words pass woundlessly through his eyes, he divides more noisily than chewing, becomes a gulf, a Red Sea none shall pass over, dry-shod across. There is no miracle more menacing than that one. I did not write about the slow return from a story like the ebb of a fever, the unique quality it conferred which set you apart from others as though touched by the gods. I did not write about the despair of not willing to be oneself or the contrary despair of total entelechy. I did not write about reading as a refuge, a toy drug, a pitiless judgement.
”
”
William H. Gass (The Tunnel)
“
So there are stories with gods in them. What are you trying to say? That these guys had hallucinations?”
“No,” said Shadow. “That's not it.”
She chewed a hangnail. “I read some book about brains,” she said. “My roommate had it and she kept waving it around. It was like, how five thousand years ago the lobes of the brain fused and before that people thought when the right lobe of the brain said anything it was the voice of some god telling them what to do. It's just brains.”
“I like my theory better,” said Shadow.
“What's your theory?”
“That back then people used to run into the gods from time to time.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (American Gods: Tenth Anniversary (American Gods, #1))
“
We are part of a holy community that for three thousand years and more has been formed inside and out by these words of God, words that have been heard, tasted, chewed, seen, walked. Reading Holy Scripture is totally physical. Our bodies are the means of providing our souls access to God in his revelation: eat this book. A friend reports to me that one of the early rabbis selected a different part of our bodies to make the same point; he insisted that the primary body part for taking in the Word of God is not the ears but the feet. You learn God, he said, not through your ears but through your feet: follow the Rabbi.
”
”
Eugene H. Peterson (Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Spiritual Theology #2))
“
But in the essay “Of Truth” he writes: “The inquiry of truth, which is the lovemaking or wooing of it; the knowledge of truth, which is the praise of it; and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human natures.” In books “we converse with the wise, as in action with fools.” That is, if we know how to select our books. “Some books are to be tasted,” reads a famous passage, “others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested”; all these groups forming, no doubt, an infinitesimal portion of the oceans and cataracts of ink in which the world is daily bathed and poisoned and drowned.
”
”
Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy)
“
yoga on the mountainside and then fall asleep in the meadow. Read a newspaper on the porch, and feel the cold pump water wash away the ink on your grubby hands afterward. Listen to one of Andy’s old records while you eat lunch and notice how you start chewing in rhythm. Go to town and ask for a map of the local stores and restaurants. Read a book even if it’s not what you would prefer, just to see what another genre is like. Take off your shoes and get your feet muddy down by where the frogs live. Wander around the neighborhood looking for someone to talk to. Write things down, with a nice pen, on scrap paper, and stuff the bits of ideas in your pockets so you’ll meet them again at the end of the day.
”
”
Kelly Harms (The Bright Side of Going Dark)
“
Jesus sits at the right hand of God,” she said, “so who sits at God’s left hand?”
“Maybe God doesn’t have a left hand,” I said, to tease her. “Left hands are supposed to be bad, so maybe he wouldn’t have one. Or maybe he got his left hand cut off in a war.”
“We’re made in God’s image,” Laura said, “and we have left hands, so God must have one as well.” She consulted her diagram, chewing on the end of her pencil. “I know!” she said. “The table must be circular! So everyone sits at everyone else’s right hand, all the way round.”
“And vice versa,” I said.
Laura was my left hand, and I was hers. We wrote the book together. It’s a left-handed book. That’s why one of us is always out of sight, whichever way you look at it.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin)
“
To help me learn how to practice lectio divina, I’ve enlisted two expert sources. Eugene Peterson opens his book on spiritual reading with an analogy of us reading Scripture like a dog might gnaw a bone. His dog is joyful to have the bone; for a time he plays with it and enjoys having others interact with it. Then he settles in to chew it in a more private area, turning it over for a long time, then burying it only to retrieve it again later and pick up where he left off. Peterson says that in Hebrew, the word we tamely translate as “meditate” on the Scriptures actually means “growl,” like an animal growls over its prey. God wants us to growl in triumph over the Bible before settling in to wrestle with it and worry it like a bone. It’s a marvelous image.
”
”
Jana Riess (Flunking Sainthood: A Year of Breaking the Sabbath, Forgetting to Pray and Still Loving My Neighbor)
“
Look here, this is a book he had when he was a boy. It just shows you.” He opened it at the back cover and turned it around for me to see. On the last flyleaf was printed the word schedule, and the date September 12, 1906. And underneath: Rise from bed 6:00 a.m. Dumbell exercise and wall-scaling 6:15–6:30 “ Study electricity, etc. 7:15–8:15 “ Work 8:30–4:30 p.m. Baseball and sports 4:30–5:00 “ Practise elocution, poise and how to attain it 5:00–6:00 “ Study needed inventions 7:00–9:00 “ General Resolves No wasting time at Shafters or [a name, indecipherable] No more smokeing or chewing. Bath every other day Read one improving book or magazine per week Save $5.00 [crossed out] $3.00 per week Be better to parents “I came across this book by accident,” said the old man. “It just shows you, don’t it?
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
“
Do you not see — talking up this plea of Sattva, the country has been slowly and slowly drowned in the ocean of Tamas or dark ignorance? Where the most dull want to hide their stupidity by covering it with a false desire for the highest knowledge which is beyond all activities, either physical or mental; where one, born and bred in lifelong laziness, wants to throw the veil of renunciation over his own unfitness for work; where the most diabolical try to make their cruelty appear, under the cloak of austerity, as a part of religion; where no one has an eye upon his own incapacity, but everyone is ready to lay the whole blame on others; where knowledge consists only in getting some books by heart, genius consists in chewing the cud of others' thoughts, and the highest glory consists in taking the name of ancestors: do we require any other proof to show that that country is being day by day drowned in utter Tamas?
”
”
Vivekananda (Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda)
“
Circular thinking is related to obsession, but with more steps involved. Instead of chewing over a single notion like “the house isn’t clean enough” or “I have to be perfect,” the person is imprisoned in false logic. An example would be someone who feels unlovable. No matter how much people express love for them, the circular thinkers do not feel lovable because inside their minds they are saying, “I want to get love, and this person is saying he loves me, but I can’t feel it, which must mean I am unlovable, and the only way I can fix that is to get love.” Circular logic afflicts those who never become successful enough, never feel safe enough, never feel wanted enough. The initial premise that drives them to act (“I’m a failure,” “I’m in danger,” “I’m in need”) doesn’t change because every result from the outside, whether good or bad, reinforces the original idea. These examples bring us to the “paradox of now”: The faster you run in place, the further you are from the present moment.
”
”
Deepak Chopra (The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life)
“
You wash dishes so you can use them again; you do your laundry to wear it again; you eat your groceries to go to the store again; you go to the dentist so you can chew food again; you study the Bible so you can sin again; you sleep so you can wake up again; you shave and cut your hair to look handsome again; you break your heart so you can love again; you shower so you can have sex again; you watch TV and hope no one you know is on the news again; you pay your bills so you can exist on this planet again; you read a book so you can know what it's like to live a different life again; you get a pet to learn how to be dependable again; you have a kid to teach them how to live your life again; you start a family to have someone mourn you when you don't exist again.
We are bound to mimic each other's lives and to find passions that align with someone else's constitutions. For as long as there are humans on Earth, that will remain unchanging. And you can be content or you can take antidepressants.
”
”
Michael Utahs (Verbose)
“
OK, there’s a guy in a suit standing at the window. This is the fourth time I’ve seen him in three days. And I will promise you one thing. If you look now, he won’t be there.” I turned around. A man in a suit disappeared down the sidewalk. “What did I say?” she said. “Are you telling me you’re being followed?” “It’s unclear.” Fishing vests, sleeping in public, antipsychotic medication, and now men following her? When Bee was two, she developed a strange attachment to a novelty book Bernadette and I had bought years ago from a street vendor in Rome. ROME Past and Present A Guide To the Monumental Centre of Ancient Rome With Reconstructions of the Monuments It has photographs of present-day ruins, with overlays of how they looked in their heyday. Bee would sit in her hospital bed, hooked up to her monitors, and flip back and forth among the images. The book had a puffy red plastic cover that she’d chew on. I realized I was now looking at Bernadette Past and Present. There was a terrifying chasm between the woman I fell in love with and the ungovernable one sitting across from me.
”
”
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
“
There had to be something new, some fresh angle. As the rain pattered down around him, Kapenda thought. What was the weirdest thing he'd seen since this all started? He'd been in the tiny town of Chew Stoke a few weeks earlier, filming the remains of a vehicle that had been washed into a culvert and whose driver had died. In Grovehill, no one had died yet but there were abandoned cars strewn along the streets and surrounding tracks, hulking shapes that the water broke around and flowed over in fractured, churning flurries.
That was old. Every television station had those shots.
He'd been there the year before when the police had excavated a mud-filled railway tunnel and uncovered the remains of two people who had been crushed in a landslide. What they needed was something like that here, something that showed how weak man's civilized veneer was when set against nature's uncaring ferocity. He needed something that contrasted human frailty and natural strength, something that Dali might have painted - a boat on a roof, or a shark swimming up the main street. He needed that bloody house to collapse.
("Into The Water")
”
”
Simon Kurt Unsworth (Best New Horror: Volume 25 (Mammoth Book of Best New Horror))
“
At the end of The Story of Little Babaji they make pancakes out of the tigers that have transformed into butter, and eat them. I think they mix the tiger-butter into the batter. Or put it on top. Maybe they even melt it in the frying pan.'
But Rika's words got lost amid the sound of the pancake mix being poured into the pan. She heard the noise of the pancake being flipped and sticking again to the pan. After a while, Makoto came over with a plate in his hand. The perfectly round, golden brown pancake was steaming, the maple syrup shining, and the knob of butter on top beginning to melt. She brought her hands together, and said, 'Itadakimasu.'
With a fork, Rika broke off a small piece of the pancake, revealing its bright yellow insides. The way that the batter with its structure of fine air bubbles and countless little pillars supported the surface layer, burnished to a deep brown, was proof that it had been well mixed. The butter slid around sluggishly. Rika put a tiny sliver into her mouth. She instructed her teeth to bite, and with some effort, succeeded in moving her mouth, chewing the soft, warm pancake into which the salted butter and syrup had been absorbed.
”
”
Asako Yuzuki (Butter)
“
Separated from everyone, in the fifteenth dungeon, was a small man with fiery brown eyes and wet towels wrapped around his head. For several days his legs had been black, and his gums were bleeding. Fifty-nine years old and exhausted beyond measure, he paced silently up and down, always the same five steps, back and forth. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . an interminable shuffle between the wall and door of his cell. He had no work, no books, nothing to write on. And so he walked. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . His dungeon was next door to La Fortaleza, the governor’s mansion in Old San Juan, less than two hundred feet away. The governor had been his friend and had even voted for him for the Puerto Rican legislature in 1932. This didn’t help much now. The governor had ordered his arrest. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Life had turned him into a pendulum; it had all been mathematically worked out. This shuttle back and forth in his cell comprised his entire universe. He had no other choice. His transformation into a living corpse suited his captors perfectly. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Fourteen hours of walking: to master this art of endless movement, he’d learned to keep his head down, hands behind his back, stepping neither too fast nor too slow, every stride the same length. He’d also learned to chew tobacco and smear the nicotined saliva on his face and neck to keep the mosquitoes away. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . The heat was so stifling, he needed to take off his clothes, but he couldn’t. He wrapped even more towels around his head and looked up as the guard’s shadow hit the wall. He felt like an animal in a pit, watched by the hunter who had just ensnared him. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . Far away, he could hear the ocean breaking on the rocks of San Juan’s harbor and the screams of demented inmates as they cried and howled in the quarantine gallery. A tropical rain splashed the iron roof nearly every day. The dungeons dripped with a stifling humidity that saturated everything, and mosquitoes invaded during every rainfall. Green mold crept along the cracks of his cell, and scarab beetles marched single file, along the mold lines, and into his bathroom bucket. The murderer started screaming. The lunatic in dungeon seven had flung his own feces over the ceiling rail. It landed in dungeon five and frightened the Puerto Rico Upland gecko. The murderer, of course, was threatening to kill the lunatic. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . The man started walking again. It was his only world. The grass had grown thick over the grave of his youth. He was no longer a human being, no longer a man. Prison had entered him, and he had become the prison. He fought this feeling every day. One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . He was a lawyer, journalist, chemical engineer, and president of the Nationalist Party. He was the first Puerto Rican to graduate from Harvard College and Harvard Law School and spoke six languages. He had served as a first lieutenant in World War I and led a company of two hundred men. He had served as president of the Cosmopolitan Club at Harvard and helped Éamon de Valera draft the constitution of the Free State of Ireland.5 One, two, three, four, five, and turn . . . He would spend twenty-five years in prison—many of them in this dungeon, in the belly of La Princesa. He walked back and forth for decades, with wet towels wrapped around his head. The guards all laughed, declared him insane, and called him El Rey de las Toallas. The King of the Towels. His name was Pedro Albizu Campos.
”
”
Nelson A. Denis (War Against All Puerto Ricans: Revolution and Terror in America's Colony)
“
Gulls wheel through spokes of sunlight over gracious roofs and dowdy thatch, snatching entrails at the marketplace and escaping over cloistered gardens, spike-topped walls and treble-bolted doors. Gulls alight on whitewashed gables, creaking pagodas and dung-ripe stables; circle over towers and cavernous bells and over hidden squares where urns of urine sit by covered wells, watched by mule-drivers, mules and wolf-snouted dogs, ignored by hunchbacked makers of clogs; gather speed up the stoned-in Nakashima River and fly beneath the arches of its bridges, glimpsed from kitchen doors, watched by farmers walking high, stony ridges. Gulls fly through clouds of steam from laundries’ vats; over kites unthreading corpses of cats; over scholars glimpsing truth in fragile patterns; over bath-house adulterers; heartbroken slatterns; fishwives dismembering lobsters and crabs; their husbands gutting mackerel on slabs; woodcutters’ sons sharpening axes; candle-makers, rolling waxes; flint-eyed officials milking taxes; etoliated lacquerers; mottled-skinned dyers; imprecise soothsayers; unblinking liars; weavers of mats; cutters of rushes; ink-lipped calligraphers dipping brushes; booksellers ruined by unsold books; ladies-in-waiting; tasters; dressers; filching page-boys; runny-nosed cooks; sunless attic nooks where seamstresses prick calloused fingers; limping malingerers; swineherds; swindlers; lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men’s wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; statues of Jizo anointed with posies; syphilitics sneezing through rotted-off noses; potters; barbers; hawkers of oil; tanners; cutlers; carters of night-soil; gate-keepers; bee-keepers; blacksmiths and drapers; torturers; wet-nurses; perjurers; cut-purses; the newborn; the growing; the strong-willed and pliant; the ailing; the dying; the weak and defiant; over the roof of a painter withdrawn first from the world, then his family, and down into a masterpiece that has, in the end, withdrawn from its creator; and around again, where their flight began, over the balcony of the Room of the Last Chrysanthemum, where a puddle from last night’s rain is evaporating; a puddle in which Magistrate Shiroyama observes the blurred reflections of gulls wheeling through spokes of sunlight. This world, he thinks, contains just one masterpiece, and that is itself.
”
”
David Mitchell (The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet)
“
Outlawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing sex in order to win the war against AIDS. We recognize that people will continue to have sex for nonreproductive reasons despite the laws and mores. Therefore, we try to make sexual practices as safe as possible in order to minimize the spread of the AIDS viruses. In a similar way, we continually try to make our drinking water, foods, and even our pharmaceutical medicines safer. The ubiquity of chemical intoxicants in our lives is undeniable evidence of the continuing universal need for safer medicines with such applications. While use may not always be for an approved medical purpose, or prudent, or even legal, it is fulfilling the relentless drive we all have to change the way we feel, to alter our behavior and consciousness, and, yes, to intoxicate ourselves. We must recognize that intoxicants are medicines, treatments for the human condition. Then we must make them as safe and risk free and as healthy as possible. Dream with me for a moment. What would be wrong if we had perfectly safe intoxicants? I mean drugs that delivered the same effects as our most popular ones but never caused dependency, disease, dysfunction, or death. Imagine an alcohol-type substance that never caused addiction, liver disease, hangovers, impaired driving, or workplace problems. Would you care to inhale a perfumed mist that is as enjoyable as marijuana or tobacco but as harmless as clean air? How would you like a pain-killer as effective as morphine but safer than aspirin, a mood enhancer that dissolves on your tongue and is more appealing than cocaine and less harmful than caffeine, a tranquilizer less addicting than Valium and more relaxing than a martini, or a safe sleeping pill that allows you to choose to dream or not? Perhaps you would like to munch on a user friendly hallucinogen that is as brief and benign as a good movie? This is not science fiction. As described in the following pages, there are such intoxicants available right now that are far safer than the ones we currently use. If smokers can switch from tobacco cigarettes to nicotine gum, why can’t crack users chew a cocaine gum that has already been tested on animals and found to be relatively safe? Even safer substances may be just around the corner. But we must begin by recognizing that there is a legitimate place in our society for intoxication. Then we must join together in building new, perfectly safe intoxicants for a world that will be ready to discard the old ones like the junk they really are. This book is your guide to that future. It is a field guide to that silent spring of intoxicants and all the animals and peoples who have sipped its waters. We can no more stop the flow than we can prevent ourselves from drinking. But, by cleaning up the waters we can leave the morass that has been the endless war on drugs and step onto the shores of a healthy tomorrow. Use this book to find the way.
”
”
Ronald K. Siegel (Intoxication: The Universal Drive for Mind-Altering Substances)
“
I found Lord Emsworth, Lady Constance, and told him the car was in readiness.’ ‘Oh, thank you, Miss Briggs. Where was he?’ ‘Down at the sty. Would there be anything furthah?’ ‘No thank you, Miss Briggs.’ As the door closed, the Duke exploded with a loud report. ‘Down at the sty!’ he cried. ‘Wouldn’t you have known it! Whenever you want him, he’s down at the sty, gazing at that pig of his, absorbed, like somebody watching a strip-tease act. It’s not wholesome for a man to worship a pig the way he does. Isn’t there something in the Bible about the Israelites worshipping a pig? No, it was a golden calf, but the principle’s the same. I tell you …’ He broke off. The door had opened again. Lord Emsworth stood on the threshold, his mild face agitated. ‘Connie, I can’t find my umbrella.’ ‘Oh, Clarence!’ said Lady Constance with the exasperation the head of the family so often aroused in her, and hustled him out towards the cupboard in the hall where, as he should have known perfectly well, his umbrella had its home. Left alone, the Duke prowled about the room for some moments, chewing his moustache and examining his surroundings with popping eyes. He opened drawers, looked at books, stared at pictures, fiddled with pens and paper-knives. He picked up a photograph of Mr Schoonmaker and thought how right he had been in comparing his head to a pumpkin. He read the letter Lady Constance had been writing. Then, having exhausted all the entertainment the room had to offer, he sat down at the desk and gave himself up to thoughts of Lord Emsworth and the Empress. Every
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse (Service with a Smile)
“
My editor insists that I clarify that there isn’t actually a $25 bill hidden in this book, which is sort of ridiculous to have to explain, because there’s no such thing as a $25 bill. If you bought this book thinking you were going to find a $25 bill inside then I think you really just paid for a worthwhile lesson, and that lesson is, don’t sell your cow for magic beans. There was another book that explained this same concept many years ago, but I think my cribbed example is much more exciting. It’s like the Fifty Shades of Grey version of “Jack and the Beanstalk.” But with fewer anal beads, or beanstalks. 2. “Concoctulary” is a word that I just made up for words that you have to invent because they didn’t yet exist. It’s a portmanteau of “concocted” and “vocabulary.” I was going to call it an “imaginary” (as a portmanteau of “imagined” and “dictionary”) but turns out that the word “imaginary” was already concoctularied, which is actually fine because “concoctulary” sounds sort of unintentionally dirty and is also great fun to say. Try it for yourself. Con-COC-chew-lary. It sings. 3. My mental illness is not your mental illness. Even if we have the exact same diagnosis we will likely experience it in profoundly different ways. This book is my unique perspective on my personal path so far. It is not a textbook. If it were it would probably cost a lot more money and have significantly less profanity or stories about strangers sending you unexpected vaginas in the mail. As it is with all stories, fast cars, wild bears, mental illness, and even life, only one truth remains: your mileage may vary.
”
”
Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things)
“
His Sons, the fairest of her Daughters Eve. Under a tuft of shade that on a green Stood whispering soft, by a fresh Fountain side They sat them down, and after no more toil Of thir sweet Gardning labour then suffic’d To recommend coole Zephyr, and made ease More easie, wholsom thirst and appetite More grateful, to thir Supper Fruits they fell, Nectarine Fruits which the compliant boughes Yeilded them, side-long as they sat recline On the soft downie Bank damaskt with flours: The savourie pulp they chew, and in the rinde Still as they thirsted scoop the brimming stream; Nor gentle purpose, nor endearing smiles Wanted, nor youthful dalliance as beseems Fair couple, linkt in happie nuptial League, Alone as they. About them frisking playd All Beasts of th’ Earth, since wilde, and of all chase In Wood or Wilderness, Forrest or Den; Sporting the Lion rampd, and in his paw Dandl’d the Kid; Bears, Tygers, Ounces, Pards Gambold before them, th’ unwieldy Elephant To make them mirth us’d all his might, & wreathd His Lithe Proboscis; close the Serpent sly Insinuating, wove with Gordian twine His breaded train, and of his fatal guile Gave proof unheeded; others on the grass Coucht, and now fild with pasture gazing sat, Or Bedward ruminating: for the Sun Declin’d was hasting now with prone carreer To th’ Ocean Iles, and in th’ ascending Scale Of Heav’n the Starrs that usher Evening rose: When Satan still in gaze, as first he stood, Scarce thus at length faild speech recoverd sad. O Hell! what doe mine eyes with grief behold, Into our room of bliss thus high advanc’t Creatures of other mould, earth-born perhaps, Not
”
”
John Milton (Paradise Lost: An Annotated Bibliography (Paradise series Book 1))
“
Twenty, thirty, forty feet. The pressure wasn’t uncomfortable. I’d never tried to push it—to see if there was a limit to how deep I could dive. I knew most regular humans couldn’t go past two hundred feet without crumpling like an aluminum can. I should’ve been blind, too, this deep in the water at night, but I could see the heat from living forms, and the cold of the currents. It’s hard to describe. It wasn’t like regular seeing, but I could tell where everything was. As I got closer to the bottom, I saw three hippocampi—fish-tailed horses—swimming in a circle around an overturned boat. The hippocampi were beautiful to watch. Their fish tails shimmered in rainbow colors, glowing phosphorescent. Their manes were white, and they were galloping through the water the way nervous horses do in a thunderstorm. Something was upsetting them. I got closer and saw the problem. A dark shape—some kind of animal—was wedged halfway under the boat and tangled in a fishing net, one of those big nets they use on trawlers to catch everything at once. I hated those things. It was bad enough they drowned porpoises and dolphins, but they also occasionally caught mythological animals. When the nets got tangled, some lazy fishermen would just cut them loose and let the trapped animals die. Apparently this poor creature had been mucking around on the bottom of Long Island Sound and had somehow gotten itself tangled in the net of this sunken fishing boat. It had tried to get out and managed to get even more hopelessly stuck, shifting the boat in the process. Now the wreckage of the hull, which was resting against a big rock, was teetering and threatening to collapse on top of the tangled animal. The hippocampi were swimming around frantically, wanting to help but not sure how. One was trying to chew the net, but hippocampi teeth just aren’t meant for cutting rope. Hippocampi are really strong, but they don’t have hands, and they’re not (shhh) all that smart. Free
”
”
Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Books I-III)
“
What do you call an evil leader digging a hole? Darth Spader What do you call Obi Wan eating crunchy toast? Obi Crumb What do call a padawan who likes to play computer games? i'Pad' me What do you call a starship pilot who likes to drink cocoa? Han Coco What starship is always happy to have people aboard? The Millennium Welcome What did Yoda say to Luke while eating dinner? Use the fork Luke. What do you call a Sith who won't fight? A Sithy. Which Star Wars character uses meat for a weapon instead of a Lightsaber? Obi Wan Baloney. What do call a smelly droid? R2DPOO What do call a droid that has wet its pants? C3PEE0 What do you call a Jedi who loves pies? Luke PieWalker? What do call captain Rex when he emailing on a phone? Captain Text What evil leader doesn’t need help reaching? Ladder the Hutt What kind of evil lord will always say goodbye? Darth Later Which rebel will always win the limbo? Han LowLow What do you call R2D2 when he’s older? R2D3 What do you call R2D2 when he’s busting to go to the toilet? R2DLoo What do call Padme’s father? Dadme What’s do you call the Death Star when its wet? The Death Spa What do call R2D2 when he climbs a tree? R2Tree2 What do you say a Jedi adding ketchup to his dinner? Use the sauce Luke. What star wars baddy is most likely to go crazy? Count KooKoo What do call Count Dooku when he’s really sad? Count Boohoo Which Jedi is most likely to trick someone? Luke Liewalker Which evil lord is most likely to be a dad? Dadda the Hutt Which rebel likes to drink through straws? Chew Sucker Which space station can you eat from? The Death bar What do call a moody rebel? Luke Sighwalker What do you call an even older droid R2D4 What do call Darth Vader with lots of scrapes? Dearth Grazer What call an evil lord on eBay? Darth Trader What do call it when an evil lord pays his mum? Darth Paid-her What do call an evil insect Darth Cicada What sith always teases? General Teasers Who's the scariest sith? Count Spooko Which sith always uses his spoon to eat his lunch Count Spoonu What evil lord has lots of people living next door? Darth Neighbour What Jedi always looks well dressed? Luke TieWalker Which evil lord works in a restaurant? Darth waiter What do you call a smelly storm trooper? A storm pooper What do you call Darth Vader digging a hole? Darth Spader What do you C3PO wetting his pants? C3PEE0 What do you call Asoka’s pet frog? Acroaka What do you call a Jedi that loves pies? Luke Piewalker What rebel loves hot drinks? Han Coco What did Leia say to Luke at the dinner table? Use the fork Luke. What do call Obi Wan eating fruit? Obi plum What do you call Obi in a band? Obi Drum What doe Luke take out at night? A Night Sabre What is the favourite cooking pot on Endor? The e Wok
”
”
Reily Sievers (The Best Star Wars Joke Book)
“
What is the filling of the Spirit?' he asked. I answered him that it's the Person of God consuming his attitude and influencing his actions by the reading of God's Word, the sword of the Spirit. He's chewing on the idea of a Person living inside of him.
”
”
D.I. Telbat (DISTANT FRONT: A Christian Action Suspense (The COIL Legacy Book 2))
“
I would never tell you not to read as many books as you can. But remember, some books are meant to be tasted, some books are meant to be chewed and, finally, some books are meant to be swallowed whole.
”
”
Robin Sharma (The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Special 15th Anniversary Edition)
“
cornflake crunch MAKES ABOUT 360 G (4 CUPS) This recipe was originally created to accompany the Cereal Milk Panna Cotta. It was one of those first-swing, home-run hits. It is incredibly simple to make and equally as versatile in its uses. Put some in a plastic bag and take it on the go as the best snack ever, or use it as an ingredient in the recipes that follow. 170 g cornflakes
[½ (12-ounce) box (5 cups)] 40 g milk powder
[½ cup] 40 g sugar
[3 tablespoons] 4 g kosher salt
[1 teaspoon] 130 g butter, melted
[9 tablespoons] Elsewhere in this book: Cornflake crunch is also used in the Pumpkin Ganache dessert. 1. Heat the oven to 275°F. 2. Pour the cornflakes in a medium bowl and crush them with your hands to one-quarter of their original size. Add the milk powder, sugar, and salt and toss to mix. Add the butter and toss to coat. As you toss, the butter will act as glue, binding the dry ingredients to the cereal and creating small clusters. 3. Spread the clusters on a parchment- or Silpat-lined sheet pan and bake for 20 minutes, at which point they should look toasted, smell buttery, and crunch gently when cooled slightly and chewed. 4. Cool the cornflake crunch completely before storing or using in a recipe. Stored in an airtight container at room temperature, the crunch will keep
”
”
Christina Tosi (Momofuku Milk Bar: A Cookbook)
“
Scratch finally finished setting down the food. He walked past me and saw that my plate was empty. “Done already? I didn’t even deliver the sides yet.” I looked up at him with my mouth full of chewed up burger. Mrmph? “I’ll be right back.” After a minute, Scratch returned with another burger and this time, next to it was some long, thin, yellow things. “What are those?” I asked. “Fries, made of potatoes. Try them,” said Scratch. I picked up one fry and popped it in my mouth. “Hm? Hm… mmmm…” It tasted fantastic. It was such a simple thing, but somehow it managed to taste so good. I grabbed a handful and stuffed them into my mouth. Nom-nom-nom!
”
”
Steve the Noob (Diary of Steve the Noob 24 (An Unofficial Minecraft Book) (Diary of Steve the Noob Collection))
“
But I rather like it. This swift change of scene, this blending of motion and experience-it is much better than heavy, long-drawn-out kind of writing to which we are accustomed. It is closer to life. In life, too, changes and transitions flash by before our eyes, and emotions of the soul are like a hurricane. The cinema has divined the mystery of motion. And that is greatness. "When I was writing 'The Living Corpse,' I tore my hair and chewed my fingers because I could not give enough scenes, enough pictures, because I could not pass rapidly enough from one event to another. The accursed stage was like a halter choking the throat of the dramatist; and I had to cut the life and swing of the work according to the dimensions and requirements of the stage. I remember when I was told that some clever person had devised a scheme for a revolving stage, on which a number of scenes could be prepared in advance. I rejoiced like a child, and allowed myself to write ten scenes into my play. Even then I was afraid the play would be killed. "But the films! They are wonderful! Drr! and a scene is ready! Drr! and we have another! We have the sea, the coast, the city, the palace-and in the palace there is tragedy (there Is always tragedy in palaces, as we see in Shakespeare). "I am seriously thinking of writing a play for the screen. I have a subject for it. It is a terrible and bloody theme. I am not afraid of bloody themes. Take Homer or the Bible, for instance. How many bloodthirsty passages there are in them- murders, wars. And yet these are the sacred books, and they ennoble and uplift the people. It is not the subject itself that is so terrible. It is the propagation of bloodshed, and the justification for it, that is really terrible! Some friends of mine returned from Kursk recently and told me a shocking incident. It is a story for the films. You couldn't write it in fiction or for the stage. But on the screen it would be good. Listen-it may turn out to be a powerful thing!
”
”
Leo Tolstoy
“
If you wish to speed your mate’s healing, in addition to your blood, a pink-flowered weed sprouts by the river. Make him chew it.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses eBook Bundle (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1-5))
“
Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours Swedish Proverb
”
”
M. Prefontaine (501 Quotes About Love: Funny, Inspirational and Romantic Quotes (Quotes For Every Occasion Book 8))
“
Chewing gum is a tested and effective way to remove gum from hair and clothes.
”
”
Bill O'Neill (The Big Book of Random Facts Volume 7: 1000 Interesting Facts And Trivia (Interesting Trivia and Funny Facts))
“
Tonkee. Tonkee doesn’t react well at first. She’s mostly just confused when gifts of dead animals and books start appearing in the apartment, brought by with a too-casual, “In case that big brain of hers needs something to chew on,” and a wink. You’re the one who has to explain to Tonkee that Hjarka’s decided, through whatever convoluted set of values the big woman holds dear, that an ex-commless geomest with the social skills of a rock represents the pinnacle of desirability.
”
”
N.K. Jemisin (The Obelisk Gate (The Broken Earth, #2))
“
Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk-flavored chewing gum.
”
”
Ian Bogost (How to Talk about Videogames (Electronic Mediations Book 47) (Volume 47))
“
The indoor rules were simple: don’t touch anything that wasn’t in your book bag. Did you come home from school, grab a glass, pour yourself some juice, and camp out in front of the TV watching cartoons? Congratulations, Anne of Green Gables, your childhood was fucking rad. We weren’t allowed to touch the glasses anymore after I broke the Hamburglar tumbler from our set of McDonald’s fine china. We didn’t have juice boxes because we were on welfare, and I would rather have chewed tinfoil than recreationally drink powdered milk. We
”
”
Danielle Henderson (The Ugly Cry: How I Became a Person (Despite My Grandmother's Horrible Advice))
“
The indoor rules were simple: don’t touch anything that wasn’t in your book bag. Did you come home from school, grab a glass, pour yourself some juice, and camp out in front of the TV watching cartoons? Congratulations, Anne of Green Gables, your childhood was fucking rad. We weren’t allowed to touch the glasses anymore after I broke the Hamburglar tumbler from our set of McDonald’s fine china. We didn’t have juice boxes because we were on welfare, and I would rather have chewed tinfoil than recreationally drink powdered milk. We tried to watch TV once, turning it off as soon as we heard Mom’s footsteps on the landing, but technology in the eighties was intent on destroying our flimsy excuses. “Were you watching TV?” Cory and I would give each other the knowing glance of liars everywhere and say, “No.” Mom would then go over, touch the TV, and, feeling the warmth emanating from the screen, rip our story apart in three seconds flat. Disobeying her wasn’t the worst offense—we were wasting electricity, and no parent in the country could abide using electricity for the intended purpose if they were not the ones flipping the switch. When Mom was home, you could fire up every light in the house, leave an empty blender running full speed, and overload every outlet until the fuses popped like fireworks. But children alone were unworthy of electricity, so I guess the expectation was we could spend our time weaving brooms out of hay and banging out candle holders on a tin press. We had to make our own fun, so we invented Spiderweb City.
”
”
Danielle Henderson (The Ugly Cry: How I Became a Person (Despite My Grandmother's Horrible Advice))
“
I like coffee. Coffee is how I get through the day without arresting everyone I meet.” Not entirely an exaggeration. She’d tried to switch to alternating decaf and full-power once in her early days with the police, and had nearly punched her partner for chewing his gum too loudly. She worked best when caffeinated.
”
”
Kim M. Watt (The Beaufort Scales Cozy Mysteries (with Dragons) Collection: Tea, murder, & magic in the Yorkshire Dales (Books 1 - 4) (A Beaufort Scales Mystery))
“
When in tension, go straight to the library. Pick a book and chew it until tension tells you, excuse me, I find empty skulls, not the studious brains.
”
”
Abid Hussain
“
number one, no touching my books. number two, no chewing on my books.”
gifford snorted indignantly. “i would never chew on your books.”
“you ate my bridal bouquet.”
he looked surprised, as though he had forgotten. then he nodded. “so i did. continue.”
“number three, i will never find hay in my books.”
“do all your rules pertain to books?”
- jane & g
”
”
Cynthia Hand (My Lady Jane (The Lady Janies, #1))
“
When they were well out of her earshot, Taein swiveled back and glowered at Vince. “You’ve got to throw those away.”
Vince, bouncing awkwardly in the saddle as his draft kept time with Lorrin, looked aghast. “Taein, she gave us muffins.”
“She probably poisoned them, you imbecile,” Taein hissed.
“Why would she do that?” Vince asked, fumbling to keep a hold of his reins and manage a pair of blueberry-dotted muffins at the same time.
“Because she knows I’m the one that stole from her, years back!”
Vince paused before popping an entire muffin into his mouth. “You’re far too paranoid, Taein,” he said as he chewed. “These are blueberry muffins. Suit yourself, but I ain’t throwing these away even if they are poisoned.”
“Well, don’t go blaming me when you keel over. You were duly warned.”
“Me, paying recompense for your poorly-executed crimes? When has that ever happened?” Vince chuckled.
”
”
S. A. Matey (Prince of Glass: Remastered (Thorn & Ash Series Book 1))
“
Mike, who always took a long time to wake up in the morning, ignored this remark. Leaning back comfortably, he began to chew thoughtfully on a blade of grass. “You know,” he said, “I read a book once that said that all the great thinkers of the world like to sleep late. Brainy fellows like us,” he explained, “just seem to need more rest. Besides,” he reflected, “we do most of our heavy thinking at night.” “So that explains it,” his father remarked. “Explains what?” “That noise that comes out of your sleeping bag every night.” “You thought I was snoring?” Mike seemed surprised. “Yes,” Mr. Cook admitted. “I’m afraid I did.” Mike laughed disdainfully. “If you only knew the problems I have to solve! Night after night I turn them over in my mind, searching for the right answer....” He paused and looked at them seriously. “I tell you, those problems are heavy. When I turn them over they make a big racket. That must be what you keep hearing, Dad,
”
”
Roger Barlow (The Sandy Steele Mystery MEGAPACK®: 6 Young Adult Novels (Complete Series))
“
A man driving a wagonload of children in a cage doesn’t have to state his business. A farmer whose flesh lies sunken around his bones, and whose eyes are the colour of hunger, doesn’t have to explain himself if he walks up to such a man. Hunger lies beneath all of our ugliest transactions. Sometimes a farmer would make that long, slow crossing of his field, from right to wrong, and stand, lean in his overalls, chewing on a corn stalk, eyes a-glitter in the shadows of his face. On such occasions it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes before a string of dirty children were lined up beside him, graduated in height from those narrowing their eyes against the suspicion of what they’d been summoned for, down to those still clutching in one hand the stick they’d been playing with and in the other the rags about their middle, their eyes wide and without guile.
”
”
Mark Lawrence (Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor, #1))
Celia Kinsey (Something Borrowed, Something Chewed: A Little Tombstone Novelette (Little Tombstone Cozy Mysteries Book 4))
Celia Kinsey (Something Borrowed, Something Chewed: A Little Tombstone Novelette (Little Tombstone Cozy Mysteries Book 4))
“
I was reminded that humans have to read books. And that takes time. Lots of time. A human can’t just swallow every book going, can’t chew different tomes simultaneously, or gulp down near-infinite knowledge in a matter of seconds. They can’t just pop a word capsule in their mouth like we can. Imagine! Being not only mortal but also forced to take some of that precious and limited time and read. No wonder they were a species of primitives. By the time they have read enough books to actually reach a state of knowledge where they can do anything with it, they are dead. They need to sit down and look at each word consecutively.
”
”
Matt Haig (The Humans)
“
That first chapter, y’all,” Kitty said, chewing. “They stabbed Rosemary LaBianca forty-one times. What do you think that feels like? I mean, I think you feel every single one of them, don’t you?
”
”
Grady Hendrix (The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires)
“
The wolf chewed every key to splinters and that was how the song went.
”
”
Kelly Link (The Book of Love)
“
It was like eating a hard lump of garlic-flavoured rubber. She got two chews in, then an image of a snail popped into her mind, and she was done. She retched, jerking forward, the half-chewed whelk flying across the table towards Jason’s lap.
”
”
C.P. Ward (Summer at Blue Sands Cove (Glorious Summer Book 1))
“
Should I call you Autie?” I say her nickname out loud. It’s adorable. “Actually, you should call her Pumpkin,” Julie says, nudging Autumn in the side. She turns to me. “No. No, do not call me that.” I chuckle, gripping the warm cup. Her cheeks are bright red. “Have a good day, Pumpkin.” It comes out in a deep gruff and she chews on the corner of her lip. “You too,” she whispers as I turn and walk toward the door.
”
”
Lyra Parish (Fall I Want (Cozy Creek Collection Book 1))
“
I turned to Ethan and asked, “Where is your wife? I haven’t seen Naomi in ages.” Drake stopped mid-chew and stared at his brother. “She is away. She wished she could make it, but she has more important things to attend to,” Ethan said, breaking the standoff with Liam to look at me as I had intended. I nodded, curious about what could be more important than Kaden trying to end the world and Liam returning, but I left the subject alone. Liam and Ethan sat in brooding silence while Drake and I went back to eating.
”
”
Amber V. Nicole (The Book of Azrael (Gods & Monsters, #1))
“
Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.
”
”
Cornelia Funke (Inkheart (Inkworld, #1))
“
But all attractions are alike,' he said. 'They come from an emptiness inside.' He hammered on this chest with his index finger. 'Something's missing and you have to fill it. Books, paintings, people, they're all the same...'
'A lot of people do without books and paintings.'
'True,' he said, 'but that doesn't affect the argument.' Paris turned his head to one side and chewed on his lip. 'Of course, nothing ever does the trick. Nobody's really satisfied for long.
”
”
Siri Hustvedt (The Blindfold)
“
But now, after the news of Barthelme’s death, this simple fact of presence or absence, which I had begun to recognize in a small way already, now became the single most important supplemental piece of information I felt I could know about a writer: more important than his age when he wrote a particular work, or his nationality, his sex (forgive the pronoun), political leanings, even whether he did or did not have, in someone’s opinion, any talent. Is he alive or dead? — just tell me that. The intellectual surface we offer to the dead has undergone a subtle change of texture and chemistry; a thousand particulars of delight and fellow-feeling and forbearance begin reformulating themselves the moment they cross the bar. The living are always potentially thinking about and doing just what we are doing: being pulled through a touchless car wash, watching a pony chew a carrot, noticing that orange scaffolding has gone up around some prominent church. The conclusions they draw we know to be conclusions drawn from how things are now. Indeed, for me, as a beginning novelist, all other living writers form a control group for whom the world is a placebo. The dead can be helpful, needless to say, but we can only guess sloppily about how they would react to this emergent particle of time, which is all the time we have. And when we do guess, we are unfair to them. Even when, as with Barthelme, the dead have died unexpectedly and relatively young, we give them their moment of solemnity and then quickly begin patronizing them biographically, talking about how they “delighted in” x or “poked fun at” y — phrases that by their very singsong cuteness betray how alien and childlike the shades now are to us. Posthumously their motives become ludicrously simple, their delights primitive and unvarying: all their emotions wear stage makeup, and we almost never flip their books across the room out of impatience with something they’ve said. We can’t really understand them anymore. Readers of the living are always, whether they know it or not, to some degree seeing the work through the living writer’s own eyes; feeling for him when he flubs, folding into their reactions to his early work constant subauditional speculations as to whether the writer himself would at this moment wince or nod with approval at some passage in it. But the dead can’t suffer embarrassment by some admission or mistake they have made. We sense this imperviousness and adjust our sympathies accordingly.
Yet in other ways the dead gain by death. The level of autobiographical fidelity in their work is somehow less important, or, rather, extreme fidelity does not seem to harm, as it does with the living, our appreciation for the work. The living are “just” writing about their own lives; the dead are writing about their irretrievable lives, wow wow wow. Egotism, monomania, the delusional traits of Blake or Smart or that guy who painted the electrically schizophrenic cats are all engaging qualities in the dead.
”
”
Nicholson Baker (U and I)
“
Fear These incredible bodies called to them, but the Nivakle men dared not enter. They had seen the women eat: they swallowed the flesh of fish with the upper mouth, but chewed it first with the lower mouth. Between their legs they had teeth. So the men lit bonfires, called to the women, and sang and danced for them. The women sat around in a circle with their legs crossed. The men danced all through the night. They undulated, turned, and flew like smoke and birds. When dawn came they fell fainting to the ground. The women gently lifted them and gave them water to drink. Where they had been sitting, the ground was all littered with teeth. (192)
”
”
Eduardo Galeano (Genesis (Memory of Fire Book 1))
“
Entertaining Possibilities
"Why sometimes I've believed as many as
six impossible things before breakfast."
- The Queen of Hearts,
Alice in Wonderland
riding bareback
on a triceratops
through green galaxies
while you ride beside me
on your favorite mastodon
running a finger
over those I love
and like a highlighter pen
turning them neon
noting them forever
so I can return to them
easily
when I need them
thinking something good
can come
of "ethnic cleansing"
swimming in an ocean
deep and wet enough
to fill the eternity
of love
between these two
sheets
walking into the vowels
of a word like open
and becoming it
locking away
Pandora's box
putting evil back
in its place for good
and swallowing the key
lighting myself
with a single match
then watching me melt
warm and liquid
over your body
cooling gently
in the shape of you
sitting flat
in round anticipation
I will be page 233 in the book
that you have just opened
and I will chew on each delicious moment
of every turn
as you move
page by page
closer
to me
stowing away
in your pillowcase
and sailing your dreams
so that when you are sent to walk the plank
I can catch you
together we can be
the mutiny
on any bounty
letting my best ideas ripen
beside yours
on the vine
then stomping it all juicy
between toes
yours and mine
aging
then bottling it all
till the sun falls
and we uncork
our store
one by one
and drink
forever in the twilight
planting a memory
watering the spot
watching it grow
tall, tender, familiar,
then putting my ear
to its blossom
and hearing
my grandmother's voice
tell me
again
that I can be both the gift
and the giver
”
”
Nancy Boutilier (On the Eighth Day Adam Slept Alone: New Poems)
“
Francis Bacon once remarked that “some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Reading a book analytically is chewing and digesting it.
”
”
Mortimer J. Adler (How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading)
“
If this is what the future’s like, I can’t say I’m keen on it. These metal locomotives with cannons on top must chew soldiers up. It is butchery. And as for those flying machines, I can’t imagine what angry wasps they must make and the stings they must inflict.” “Honestly, it’s not all bad. Child mortality is low.” “It would need to be to provide all the bodies for this military meat-grinding machine.” “Um. We don’t have capital punishment.” “What? How monstrous!” “No. I said we don’t have capital punishment.” “Yes. How utterly monstrous. What do you do? Let murderers live out their natural lives in jail?” “No. Most of them are released aft–” She shot him a look. “Oh, forget it.” They
”
”
Mark Speed (Doctor How and the Alien Invasion: Book 3)
“
In his book Satisfy Your Soul, Bruce Demarest writes, A quieted heart is our best preparation for all this work of God. . . . Meditation refocuses us from ourselves and from the world so that we reflect on God’s Word, His nature, His abilities, and His works. . . . So we prayerfully ponder, muse, and “chew” the words of Scripture. . . . The goal is simply to permit the Holy Spirit to activate the life-giving Word of God.[15]
”
”
Michael Frost (Surprise the World: The Five Habits of Highly Missional People)
“
Preventing Separation Anxiety We wish our dogs could be with us all day, every day, but it’s not possible, and puppies do need to learn to spend time alone. A dog who can never be left home alone without destroying the house may be suffering from separation anxiety. Teach your Lab to feel safe and comfortable at home alone while she’s still a puppy, even if you’re home all day. Your life or job situation may change someday, and you’re heading off future trauma by teaching this lesson now, when she is young. Your puppy’s not yet mature enough to have the run of an entire house or yard, so confine her in her crate or pen when you’re gone. What you might think is separation anxiety might really be simple puppy mischief. When you’re not there to supervise, she’s free to indulge her curiosity and entertain herself in doggie ways. She knows she can’t dump the trash and eat the kitty litter in front of you, but when you’re gone, she makes her own rules. Teach your puppy not to rely on your constant attention every minute you’re at home. Set up her crate, pen, or wherever she can stay when you’re gone, and practice leaving her in it for short rests during the day. She’ll learn to feel safe there, chewing on her toy and listening to household noises. She’ll also realize that being in her pen doesn’t always mean she’s going to be left for long periods. Deafening quiet could unnerve your puppy, so when you leave, turn on the radio or television so the house still has signs of activities she’d hear when you’re home. Background noise also blocks out scary sounds from outdoors, so she won’t react to unknown terrors. HAPPY PUPPY Exercise your puppy before you leave her alone at home. Take her for a walk, practice obedience, or play a game. Then give her a chance to settle down and relax so she won’t still be excited when you put her in her pen. She’ll quickly learn that the rustle of keys followed by you picking up your briefcase or purse, getting your jacket out of the closet, or picking up your books all mean one awful thing: you’re going, and she’s staying. While you’re teaching her to spend time alone, occasionally go through your leaving routine without actually leaving. Pick everything up, fiddle with it so she can see you’re doing so, put it all back down, and go back to what you were doing. Don’t make a fuss over your puppy when you come and go. Put her in her pen and do something else for a few minutes before you leave. Then just leave. Big good-byes and lots of farewell petting just rev her up and upset her. When you come home, ignore her while you put down your things and get settled. Then greet her calmly and take her outside for a break.
”
”
Terry Albert (Your Labrador Retriever Puppy Month by Month: Everything You Need to Know at Each Stage to Ensure Your Cute and Playful Puppy Grows into a Happy, Healthy Companion)
“
Enjoy food as slowly as possible. One thing that you have to adapt eventually is the slow eating habit, which is excellent in many ways. First, we get to fully chew and digest what we eat, not to mention that we fully savor the flavors. We also don’t need to hurry as we are going to eat only one meal a day. Therefore, we can sit down, relax and enjoy. I mean you have to enjoy that one meal you get to eat in a day. You will wait and anticipate, meaning your body will be better prepared for a d
”
”
Ben Frank (One Meal a Day: A Breakthrough Diet with Health, Energy, and Focus: Seven Simple Steps to a Fast Bulletproof Diet (Life Success Series Book 2))
“
Enjoy food as slowly as possible. One thing that you have to adapt eventually is the slow eating habit, which is excellent in many ways. First, we get to fully chew and digest what we eat, not to mention that we fully savor the flavors. We also don’t need to hurry as we are going to eat only one meal a day. Therefore, we can sit down, relax and enjoy. I mean you have to enjoy that one meal you get to eat in a day. You will wait and anticipate, meaning your body will be better prepared for a delightful meal and its full digestion.
”
”
Ben Frank (One Meal a Day: A Breakthrough Diet with Health, Energy, and Focus: Seven Simple Steps to a Fast Bulletproof Diet (Life Success Series Book 2))
“
What in the—? My begonias!” he heard someone say behind him. Nick looked over his shoulder. A small but muscular woman in sweaty workout clothes was stepping out of a big shiny car in the neighbor’s driveway. She was gaping in horror at the chewed-up flowerbed and the smoking lawn mower. Scowling, she turned toward Uncle Newt’s house. And the scowl didn’t go away when she noticed Nick looking back at her. In fact, it got scowlier. Nick smiled weakly, waved, and hurried into the house. He closed the door behind him. “Whoa,” he said when his eyes adjusted to the gloom inside. Cluttering the long hall in front of him were dozens of old computers, a telescope, a metal detector connected to a pair of bulky earphones, an old-fashioned diving suit complete with brass helmet, a stuffed polar bear (the real, dead kind), a chainsaw, something that looked like a flamethrower (but couldn’t be … right?), a box marked KEEP REFRIGERATED, another marked THIS END UP (upside down), and a fully lit Christmas tree decorated with ornaments made from broken beakers and test tubes (it was June). Exposed wires and power cables poked out of the plaster and veered off around every corner, and there were so many diplomas and science prizes and patents hanging (all of them earned by Newton Galileo Holt, a.k.a. Uncle Newt) that barely an inch of wall was left uncovered. Off to the left was a living room lined with enough books to put some libraries to shame, a semitransparent couch made of inflated plastic bags, and a wide-screen TV connected by frayed cords to a small trampoline.
”
”
Bob Pflugfelder (Nick and Tesla and the High-Voltage Danger Lab: A Mystery with Gadgets You Can Build Yourself ourself)
“
As to the beef, it's shameful. It's NOT beef. Regular beef isn't veins. You can chew regular beef. Besides which, there's gravy to regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours.
”
”
Charles Dickens (The Schoolboy's Story (Golden Deer Classics' Christmas Shelf Book 14))
“
Asa looked up, drawing a deep breath, and saw that his harpy wasn't amused by his laughter.
"I don't think why you find the thought of me helping with your books so funny," she said in a stiff little voice. "Or, for that matter, letting me paint you." Her mouth- the only soft part of her, as far as he could tell- trembled a bit.
Well, he hadn't meant to hurt her feelings.
"Don't worry about it, luv," he said, tearing off a bite of the bread with his teeth. "You'll find out soon enough when you see my books. As for the other-" he set down the piece of bread and shrugged off his coat- "do you want to start now?"
That got him a wide-eyed look, and he couldn't help but grin at her, mouth obnoxiously full, as he began unbuttoning his waistcoat. Had the lady bitten off more than she could chew?
"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice high and a bit panicked. He opened his eyes in mock innocence as he yanked his shirt from his breeches. "Stop that at once."
"Why?" he asked curiously, his fingers still on his lifted shirt. Her gaze darted to his bared navel and then away again like that of a sweet canary frightened by an ugly alley cat. "You said you wanted me to 'model' for you.
”
”
Elizabeth Hoyt (Sweetest Scoundrel (Maiden Lane, #9))
“
You made them rally! They were thinking of surrendering.” “I’ll never forgive you for this! You no good stinkin’ murderers!” Alex rolled her eyes and stuffed a piece of coal into Red’s mouth. “Let’s see you chew through that.
”
”
Steve the Noob (Diary of Steve the Noob 24 (An Unofficial Minecraft Book) (Diary of Steve the Noob Collection))
“
She got into bed with the lights on, holding a book. Books are okay to chew on, though they are fairly tasteless and it always makes people unhappy when a dog does so. They are one of those toys that dogs aren’t supposed to play with.
”
”
W. Bruce Cameron (A Dog's Purpose Boxed Set (A Dog's Purpose #1-2))
“
Some books are to be tasted,” reads a famous passage, “others to be swallowed, and some to be chewed and digested”;
”
”
Will Durant (The Story of Philosophy)
“
She slammed the book closed, ran to her bed, gathered her stuffed animals up in her arms, started chewing on her blanket, and cried for a while, considering the question of trolls.
”
”
Neal Stephenson
“
partially satisfied by grazing on the first few pages of several books, and as a consequence, there are half-chewed novels lying all over the place. At least, I’m presuming they’re lying all over the place; I seem to have temporarily lost most of them. When the World Cup is over, and we clear away the piles of betting slips and wall charts, some of them will, presumably, reappear. I wrote in this column recently about Muriel Spark’s novels, their genius and their attractive brevity, but there is an obvious disadvantage to her concision: her books tend to get buried under things. I can put my hands on Dennis Lehane’s historical novel The Given Day whenever I want, simply because it is seven hundred pages long.
”
”
Nick Hornby (More Baths Less Talking)
“
Grammar perfect books are for Ivy Leaguers in Ivory Towers. My book is a sandcastle built on the beach of usefullness.
”
”
Jonathan Heatt (Teaching Snapping Turtles How To Chew Bubblegum)
“
You poor fool,” I murmured to Snow White, closing the book. “Should have just chewed a little better.
”
”
Ken Brosky (The Complete Grimm Chronicles)
“
As if the whimsy of chugging through a gargantuan slice of watermelon wasn't enough, you can actually smell the mouthwatering scent of watermelon as you breeze through it. The box of animal crackers that you travel through smells of vanilla cookies-- always a soothing scent--and a giant gnawed apple exudes an apple fragrance as you pass.
”
”
Leslie Le Mon (The Disneyland Book of Secrets 2014 - DCA: One Local's Unauthorized, Rapturous and Indispensable Guide to the Happiest Place on Earth)
“
Cow’s blood will do, but we prefer human. You know because it’s stronger. Cows are just dumb beasts, chewing their cud and making milk, but humans, especially virgins, have so much more in their blood. All their thoughts and desires spice it. Virgins are the best because they have all that pent up frustration and need added in.” Mary narrowed her eyes. “Yes, virgins have the best blood. Are you a virgin?” The guy’s eyes about popped out of his head. He stammered a no and fled. His friends called out after him, but he kept going. A small wicked smile crossed her face as she hoisted her book bag and began shoving her way through the hall to her fifth period class.
”
”
S.A. Hunter (Scary Mary (Scary Mary, #1))
“
There was something growing in me. Something far more than the festering hate that had begun too many years ago. This girl that sits obediently in the bath, awaiting her master's return was just an image, a picture in a book with no accompanying explanation. She sits in silence, she answers his questions and she succumbs his touches without complaint. But in the dark recesses of her mind something continues to thrive. Like a switch flipped it had changed her from the pathetic, frightened girl into a soulless demon playing a sickening game. Dragging him in with her acquiesce until she could chew him up and spit him out.
”
”
Roxanne Lee (The Devil Inside (Wolf Guard #1))
“
There was something growing in me. Something far more than the festering hate that had begun too many years ago. This girl that sits obediently in the bath, awaiting her master's return was just an image, a picture in a book with no accompanying explanation. She sits in silence, she answers his questions and she succumbs his touches without complaint. But in the dark recesses of her mind something continues to thrive. Like a switch flipped it had changed her from the pathetic, frightened girl into a soulless demon playing a sickening game. Dragging him in with her acquiesce until she could chew him up and spit him out.
My mouth twitched involuntarily.
A low panic started, my heart rate accelerating instantly, that pounding of rushing blood echoing in my ears. I sat still, concentrating on my mask. Isolating every single individual facial muscle I could find and shouting them down one by one. I had not had a slip up like this in a year. Wearing a mask so long it had changed from uncomfortable to normal.
”
”
Roxanne Lee (The Devil Inside (Wolf Guard #1))
“
So three days before the millennium, Bianca called. “D’ya wanna go to the White House with Trisha and me?” By Trisha, she meant country singer Trisha Yearwood, whose record label, MCA, she’d recently been hired to work at. “When would that be, exactly?” I asked. “For that Millennium Concert at the Lincoln Memorial. There’s a party at the White House after and all.” She always talked like she was chewing gum between words. “They’re flying us there in a private jet. Ya don’t need to write about it. Just come as Trisha’s guest. It’ll be fun.” “Shit, I’m supposed to go ice-skating with some guys who think the world’s going to end. Give me a day to figure things out and I’ll get right back to you.
”
”
Neil Strauss (Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life)
“
Sastra Vasana is of three types; obsession with study, preoccupation with many subjects and marked squeamishness with regard to observances specified in the scripture. The Taittiriya Brahmana contains a narrative that can serve to illustrate the first kind of Sastra Vasana. Bharadvaja, the Veda says, seriously applied himself to the study of the Vedas for three successive births. In his fourth life too, he wished to strive unremittingly. Taking pity on him, Indra explained the impossibility of learning all the Vedas and then taught Bharadvaja about Brahman with attributes. While Bharadvaja’s study of the Vedas was not wrong, it was his obsession with mastering all the Vedas that was the problem. To get rid of this type of Sastra Vasana, the aspirant should impress upon himself that it is impossible to know a subject in its totality. Addiction to the study of many subjects is also bad. The story of Durvasa encountered in the Kavaseya Gita is pertinent. Durvasa, it is said, once came to the assembly of Lord Mahadeva to pay his respects. He arrived with a cart- load of books. Narada made fun of him by comparing him to an ass burdened with a great load on its back. Irritated and cured of his obsession, Durvasa dumped his books into the sea. Thereafter, Mahadeva initiated him into the knowledge of the Atma. One should realize that the Supreme cannot be known by being preoccupied with books on a variety of topics. Thus, the Katha Upanisad declares, “This Atma is not attained through much study, through the power of grasping the meaning of the texts or through much mere hearing”. Likewise, in the Chandogya Upanisad, we read that in spite of mastering a wide variety of subjects, Narada was not free from grief as he had not realized the Atma. To attain that sorrow-eradicating knowledge, he approached Sanatkumara as a disciple. It has been said, “What is the point in vainly chewing the filthy rag of talk about sacred treatises? Wise men should, by all means, seek the light of consciousness within”. Sincere practice of scripturally ordained rituals is essential for a person who has not progressed to the stage when he can dispense with rituals. However, undue fastidiousness with respect to religious observances, which characterizes the third type of Sastra Vasana, is an impediment. In the Yoga Vasista, we encounter the story of Dasura which is relevent here. Dasura, on account of his intense fastidiousness was unable to locate a single spot in the whole world adequately pure for him to perform his religious rites. Sri Vidyaranya who has elaborately dealt with the destruction of Vasanas in his Jeevanmukti Viveka, points out that Sastra Vasana leads to pride of learning. This is a reason, in addition to the impossibility of consummating the needs of Sastra Vasana, for the Sastra Vasana being labelled as impure.
”
”
A. Disciple (Enlightening Expositions: Philosophical Expositions of Sringeri Jagadguru Sri Abhinava Vidyatheertha Mahaswamigal)
“
Jack explained. “Daisy, you were meant for me. Dane destroyed that. You’re lucky I don’t set you on fire right this minute. It’s either you or him. Pick.” Jack chewed on a toothpick, took it out of his mouth and pointed it at her and then Dane. “Pick, pick, pick,” he said, pointing back and forth.
”
”
Nancy Glynn (Black 21 (Golden Hills Legacy Series, #1))
“
Jack explained. “Daisy, you were meant for me. Dane destroyed that. You’re lucky I don’t set you on fire right this minute. It’s either you or him. Pick.” Jack chewed on a tooth pick, took it out of his mouth and pointed it at her and then Dane. “Pick, pick, pick,” he said, pointing back and forth.
”
”
Nancy Glynn (Black 21 (Golden Hills Legacy Series, #1))
“
Does killing become easier, as natural as a reflex?" she pressed. "Not to me, I've set out to intentionally take only one man's life." He flattened his back against the cool stones, bending his knee and placing the bottom of his boot on the post near his other knee. He remained impassive as he chewed on a blade of sweetgrass. "Who? Why?" she asked when he didn't expound. "Perhaps I'll tell you one day, if you hang around." He glanced at her, a half-grin curling up one side of his inviting mouth.
-Calinda & Lynx
”
”
Janelle Taylor (First Love, Wild Love (Western Wind, Book 1))
“
If you come across a crocodile, you are as good as dead. The crocodile has the most powerful bite in the animal kingdom. I have seen a video of a crocodile chewing through a car like butter. But because its muscles are so strong at clamping down, the muscles that open its mouth are extremely weak. If a two-year old toddler put his or her fingers around a crocodile’s mouth, a crocodile wouldn’t be able to open it. A crocodile can be defeated with an elastic band wrapped around its snout.
”
”
James Egan (The Mega Misconception Book (Things People Believe That Aren't True 5))
“
On the steps leading to a door
was a scrub brush that was blue.
I snatched it quick and ran for home
because it was just the thing to chew.
”
”
Melinda K. Trotter (Buster the Treasure Hunter Dog)
“
Wow,” she said. “That’s sure generous, that you’d do all that for me…” “For us, Marcie. I’ll get a bath after you. And tomorrow I’ll stop at the coin laundry and wash up the dirty clothes. I’ll take any of yours you’d like me to. Just because you haven’t been feeling too good…” She shifted from foot to foot, chewing on her lower lip. “What’s the matter? You don’t want a bath?” “I’d die for a bath,” she said. “It’s just that…I couldn’t help but notice, there doesn’t seem to be a separate room with a door that closes… And I also noticed that doesn’t seem to bother you too much.” The corners of his lips lifted. “I’ll load the truck with tomorrow’s wood while you have your bath,” he finally said. She thought about this for a second. “And I could sit in my car during your bath?” she suggested. “I don’t think so—your car is almost an igloo now. Just a little white mound. Not to mention mountain lions.” “Well, what am I supposed to do?” “Well, you can take a nap, read a little of my book, or close your eyes. Or you could stare—get the thrill of your life.” She put her hands on her hips. “You really wouldn’t care, would you?” “Not really. A bath is a serious business when it’s that much trouble. And it’s pretty quick in winter.” He started to chuckle. “What’s so funny?” she asked, a little irritated. “I was just thinking. It’s cold enough in here, you might not see that much.” Her cheeks went hot, so she pretended not to understand. “But in summer, you can lay in the tub all afternoon?” “In summer, I wash in the creek.” He grinned at her. “Why don’t you comb the snarls out of your hair? You look like a wild banshee.” She stared at him a minute, then said, “Don’t flirt with me. It won’t do you any good.” Then she coughed for him, a long string of deep croaks that reminded them both she had had a good, solid flu. Also, it covered what happened to be amused laughter from him. While
”
”
Robyn Carr (A Virgin River Christmas (Virgin River #4))
“
Shura, I did quit. I want you to quit, too.” He sat and considered her. His brow was furled. “You’re working too hard,” she said. “Since when?” “Look at you. All day in the dank basement, working in cellars... what for?” “I don’t understand the question. I have to work somewhere. We have to eat.” Chewing her lip, Tatiana shook her head. “We still have money— some of it left over from your mother, some of it from nursing, and in Coconut Grove you made us thousands carousing with your boat women.” “Mommy, what’s carousing?” said Anthony, looking up from his coloring. “Yes, Mommy, what’s carousing?” said Alexander, smiling. “My point is,” Tatiana went on, poker-faced, “that we don’t need you to break your back as if you’re in a Soviet labor camp.” “Yes, and what about your dream of a winery in the valley? You don’t think that’s back-breaking work?” “Yes . . .” she trailed off. What to say? It was just last week in Carmel that they’d had that wistful conversation. “Perhaps it’s too soon for that dream.” She looked deeply down into her plate. “I thought you wanted to settle here?” Alexander said in confusion. “As it turns out, less than I thought.” She coughed, stretching out her hand. He took it. “You’re away from us for twelve hours a day and when you come back you’re exhausted. I want you to play with Anthony.” “I do play with him.” She lowered her voice. “I want you to play with me, too.” “Babe, if I play with you any more, my sword will fall off.” “What sword, Dad?” “Anthony, shh. Alexander, shh. Look, I don’t want you to fall asleep at nine in the evening. I want you to smoke and drink. I want you to read all the books and magazines you haven’t read, and listen to the radio, and play baseball and basketball and football. I want you to teach Anthony how to fish as you tell him your war stories.” “Won’t be telling those any time soon.” “I’ll cook for you. I’ll play dominoes with you.” “Definitely no dominoes.” “I’ll let you figure out how I always win.” A Sarah Bernhardt-worthy performance. Shaking his head, he said slowly, “Maybe poker.” “Absolutely. Cheating poker then.” Rueful Russian Lazarevo smiles passed their faces. “I’ll take care of you,” she whispered, the hand he wasn’t holding shaking under the table. “For God’s sake, Tania... I’m a man. I can’t not work.” “You’ve never stopped your whole life. Come on. Stop running with me.” The irony in that made her tremble and she hoped he wouldn’t notice. “Let me take care of you,” Tatiana said hoarsely, “like you know I ache to. Let me do for you. Like I’m your nurse at the Morozovo critical care ward. Please.” Tears came to her eyes. She said quickly, “When there’s no more money, you can work again. But for now... let’s leave here. I know just the place.” Her smile was so pathetic. “Out of my stony griefs, Bethel I’ll raise,” she whispered. Alexander was silently contemplating her, puzzled again, troubled again. “I honestly don’t understand,” he said. “I thought you liked it here.” “I like you more.
”
”
Paullina Simons (The Summer Garden (The Bronze Horseman, #3))
“
She took another bite, closing her eyes as she chewed and hhmmmd out her enjoyment of it. “God yes,” she said. “Well I have to say this is my first.” “First?” He grinned with naughty mischief. “Foodgasm.” She
”
”
Mason Sabre (Cuts Like An Angel Book 1 (Cuts Like an Angel, #1))
“
Eat Chew Live' is not like other diet or weight loss books. There are no programs to follow, menus to cook, or products to buy, this book is about respecting how your body works.
”
”
John M. Poothullil MD (Eat, Chew, Live: 4 Revolutionary Ideas to Prevent Diabetes, Lose Weight and Enjoy Food)
“
Eat Chew Live is not like other diet or weight loss books. There are no programs to follow, menus to cook, or products to buy, this book is about respecting how your body works.
”
”
John M. Poothullil MD (Eat, Chew, Live: 4 Revolutionary Ideas to Prevent Diabetes, Lose Weight and Enjoy Food)
“
Toward the end of the story the Boy has turned into a very old man and has gone completely bald with age and worry. “The raccoons are having baby raccoons again; I need more hair,” says the Tree. The Boy shakes his head apologetically. “I am sorry, but I have no more hair to give you, being just a bald old man.” “Stick your arm in the hollow, then, and the raccoons will chew it. An old man’s arm is good for chewing anyway,” suggests the Tree. “Yes,” agrees the Boy. “Let us just stand together then, and I will lean upon you and let them chew awhile.” As the book closes, its action is resolved into a poignant tableau of sacrifice.
”
”
Hope Jahren (Lab Girl)
“
They found Caddo in the lounge of Oridin's house chewing on a book of logarithms. His mind was gone. He could only babble figures. His fingers twitched with cramps from writing with a pencil and punching the keys of the calculating machine.
”
”
Frank Belknap Long (The Science Fiction Bundle)
“
The hostess hands us each a menu that’s about . . . oh, forty pages too long, and we slide onto pleather-topped stools, setting our purses on the sticky bar and scanning our surroundings in a silence driven by either shock or awe. This place looks like a Cracker Barrel had a baby with a honky-tonk, and now that baby is a teenager who doesn’t shower enough and chews on his sweatshirt sleeves.
”
”
Emily Henry (Book Lovers)
“
And indeed, if the truth is to be told, what I eat in my corner without form or fuss has much more relish for me, even though it be bread and onions, than the turkeys of those other tables where I am forced to chew slowly, drink little, wipe my mouth every minute, and cannot sneeze or cough if I want or do other things that are the privileges of liberty and solitude.
”
”
Book House (100 Books You Must Read Before You Die - volume 1 [newly updated] [Pride and Prejudice; Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; Tarzan of the Apes; The Count of ... (The Greatest Writers of All Time))