Clamshell Quotes

And then the rains came. They came down from the hills and up from the sound. And it rained a sickness. And it rained a fear. And it rained an odor. And it rained a murder. And it rained dangers and pale eggs of the beast. Rain poured for days, unceasing. Flooding occurred. The wells filled with reptiles. The basements filled with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics roamed the dripping peninsulas. Moisture gleamed on the beak of the raven. Ancient Shaman's rained from their homes in dead tree trunks, clacked their clamshell teeth in the drowned doorways of forests. Rain hissed on the freeway. It hissed at the prows of fishing boats. It ate the old warpaths, spilled the huckleberries, ran into the ditches. Soaking. Spreading. Penetrating. And it rained an omen. And it rained a poison. And it rained a pigment. And it rained a seizure.

Shiroyama’s heart stops. The earth’s pulse beats against his ear. An inch away is a go clamshell stone, perfect and smooth … … a black butterfly lands on the white stone, and unfolds its wings.

This was what I needed— multiple men at all times. Then I wouldn’t need any of them. Put me naked in a clamshell. Let them all fawn around me.

Great meals rarely start at points that all look like beginnings. They usually pick up where something else leaves off. This is how most of the best things are made - imagine if the world had to begin from scratch each dawn: a tree would never grow, nor would we ever get to see the etchings of gentle rings on a clamshell... Meals' ingredients must be allowed to topple into one another like dominos. Broccoli stems, their florets perfectly boiled in salty water, must be simmered with olive oil and eaten with shaved Parmesan on toast; their leftover cooking liquid kept for the base for soup, studded with other vegetables, drizzled with good olive oil, with the rind of the Parmesan added for heartiness. This continuity is the heart and soul of cooking.

Are you trying to set me up with her? Because I saw her true colors. Nothing could drag me from your side, Rosie Clamshell.

Maybe the moment is all there is. Maybe I should just gather my clamshells and be quiet. The exquisite experience of joy—when I am completely consumed by a pleasurable activity such as conversation with good friends or good food or laughing with my children—is certainly one of the moment. But for some reason, I and many of my fellow travelers are not satisfied with the moment. The Now isn’t enough. We want to go beyond the moment. We want to build systems and patterns and memories that connect moment to moment to eternity. We long to be part of the Infinite.

At present, however, with his aching head and queasy stomach, Sebastian was feeling exceedingly resistible. Or if not that, then resistant. Aphrodite herself could descend from the ceiling, floating on a bloody clamshell, naked but for a few well-placed flowers, and he‘d likely puke at her feet. No, no, she ought to be completely naked. If he was going to prove the existence of a goddess, right here in this room, she was damned well going to be naked. He‘d still puke on her feet, though.

Some people don’t even want to drink, aren’t tempted by the pools of liquor all around them. This seems a selfishness. God loves the hungry more than the full. Faith is a story about people totally unlike you building concrete walls around their beds. Behind each of their faces: a slowly dying animal. Do you feel summoned? Do you feel heaven closing itself to you like a clamshell snapping shut?

There had been moments when she’d sensed his presence nearby, like when the crows left her gifts, for example. Her trinket bowl was chockablock full of screws, paper clips, buttons, broken clamshells, bits of tinfoil, beads and stray earrings.

Shit! Halvorsen thought furiously, and for a moment one hand clawed under his sport-coat where there was a .38 in a clamshell holster. Then sanity reasserted itself. This was no drug bust or armed robbery; this was a crippled black lady in a wheelchair. She was rolling it like it was some punk’s drag-racer, but a crippled black lady was all she was just the same. What was he going to do, shoot her? That would be great, wouldn’t it? And where was she going to go? There was nothing at the end of the aisle but two dressing rooms.

Sailors tended to collect things on their travels. His bosun kept a small box stuffed with plant seeds from foreign ports, a whole future garden in potentia; his carpenter kept a bag of heathen votives and shrunken heads. Curiosities, both natural and artificial, were difficult for wandering seamen to resist. One of the hands on Sparhawk’s first snow had found a giant clamshell on Fiji and brought it aboard. When his shipmates quizzed him on what he planned to do with it, he said he hadn’t the slightest idea—but he knew that he should regret leaving it behind.

What had the Romans been thinking, with their Venus? Love ought to have been a man, tall and broad and glistening as he broke the surface, not to drift about on an insipid clamshell as the painters had it, but to stride under his own power out of the waves up onto land, the ocean’s bounty made manifest for every woman in a fifty-mile radius.

Luckily we don’t have far to go. Great meals rarely start at points that all look like beginnings. They usually pick up where something else leaves off. This is how most of the best things are made—imagine if the world had to begin from scratch each dawn: a tree would never grow, nor would we ever get to see the etchings of gentle rings on a clamshell.

Joel Kotkin, a professor of urban development, argued in the daily beast that the power of the single voter is destined to fade, since single people "Have no heirs," while their religious, conservative, counterparts will repopulate the nation with children who will replicate their parents politics, ensuring that "conservative, more familial-oriented values inevitably prevail." Kotkin's error, of course, is both in assuming that unmarried people do not reproduce -- in fact, they are doing so in ever greater numbers -- but also in failing to consider whence the gravitation away from married norms derived. A move toward independent life did not simply emerge from the clamshell: it was born of generations of dissatisfaction with the inequalities of religious, conservative, social practice.

...I spend ten entire minutes trying to open a plastic package of Weeble-wobbles...,my fingers raw, the three little Weebles obstinate in their PVC clamshells. I can't help but wonder, as I saw with a bread knife at the seam of the package, about technology and the sprint that is a modern life. Is progress really a curve that sweeps perpetually higher? Wasn't packaging (or toymaking or cobbling or winemaking or milk or cheese or cement, for that matter) often better three hundred or seven hundred or nineteen hundred years ago?

Sighing, he rose from his desk and walked to the windows to stare out at the Vatican through the rain. What a burden men like Sandoz carried into the field. Over four hundred of Ours to set the standard, he thought, and remembered his days as a novice, studying the lives of sainted, blessed and venerated Jesuits. What was that wonderful line? "Men astutely trained in letters and in fortitude." Enduring hardship, loneliness, exhaustion and sickness with courage and resourcefulness. Meeting torture and death with a joy that defies easy understanding, even by those who share their religion, if not their faith. So many Homeric stories. So many martyrs like Isaac Jogues. Trekking eight hundred miles into the interior of the New World—a land as alien to a European in 1637 as Rakhat is to us now, Giuliani suddenly realized. Feared as a witch, ridiculed, reviled for his mildness by the Indians he'd hoped to gain for Christ. Beaten regularly, his fingers cut off joint by joint with clamshell blades—no wonder Jogues had come to Emilio's mind. Rescued, after years of abuse and deprivation, by Dutch traders who arranged for his return to France, where he recovered, against all odds. Astonishing, really: Jogues went back. He must have known what would happen but he sailed back to work among the Mohawks, as soon as he was able. And in the end, they killed him. Horribly. How are we to understand men like that? Giuliani had once wondered. How could a sane man have returned to such a life, knowing such a fate was likely? Was he psychotic, driven by voices? A masochist who sought degradation and pain? The questions were inescapable for a modern historian, even a Jesuit historian. Jogues was only one of many. Were men like Jogues mad? No, Giuliani had decided at last. Not madness but the mathematics of eternity drove them. To save souls from perpetual torment and estrangement from God, to bring souls to imperishable joy and nearness to God, no burden was too heavy, no price too steep.

Day 1,309 of My Captivity YOU HUMANS LOVE COOKIES. I ASSUME YOU KNOW WHICH food I mean? Circular, about the size of a common clamshell. Some are flecked with dark bits, others are painted or dusted with powder. Cookies can be soft and quiet, moving soundlessly on their journey through human jaws. Cookies can be loud and messy, bits breaking off at the bite, crumbs tumbling down a chin, adding to the flotsam on the floor that the elderly female called Tova must sweep. I have observed many cookies during my captivity here. They are sold in the packaged food machine near the front entrance. Imagine my confusion, then, at the remark made by Dr. Santiago earlier this evening. “What can I say, Terry?” Dr. Santiago raised her shoulders and held her hands up. “I’ve seen a lot of octopuses, but you’ve got a smart cookie here.

They're kidding themselves, of course. Our sky can go from lapis to tin in the blink of an eye. Blink again and your latte's diluted. And that's just fine with me. I thrive here on the certainty that no matter how parched my glands, how anhydrous the creek beds, how withered the weeds in the lawn, it's only a matter of time before the rains come home. The rains will steal down from the Sasquatch slopes. They will rise with the geese from the marshes and sloughs. Rain will fall in sweeps, it will fall in drones, it will fall in cascades of cheap Zen jewelry. And it will rain a fever. And it will rain a sacrifice. And it will rain sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem. Rain will primitivize the cities, slowing every wheel, animating every gutter, diffusing commercial neon into smeary blooms of esoteric calligraphy. Rain will dramatize the countryside, sewing pearls into every web, winding silk around every stump, redrawing the horizon line with a badly frayed brush dipped in tea and quicksilver. And it will rain an omen. And it will rain a trance. And it will rain a seizure. And it will rain dangers and pale eggs of the beast. Rain will pour for days unceasing. Flooding will occur. Wells will fill with drowned ants, basements with fossils. Mossy-haired lunatics will roam the dripping peninsulas. Moisture will gleam on the beak of the Raven. Ancient shamans, rained from their rest in dead tree trunks, will clack their clamshell teeth in the submerged doorways of video parlors. Rivers will swell, sloughs will ferment. Vapors will billow from the troll-infested ditches, challenging windshield wipers, disgusing intentions and golden arches. Water will stream off eaves and umbrellas. It will take on the colors of beer signs and headlamps. It will glisten on the claws of nighttime animals. And it will rain a screaming. And it will rain a rawness. And it will rain a disorder, and hair-raising hisses from the oldest snake in the world. Rain will hiss on the freeways. It will hiss around the prows of fishing boats. It will hiss in the electrical substations, on the tips of lit cigarettes, and in the trash fires of the dispossessed. Legends will wash from desecrated burial grounds, graffiti will run down alley walls. Rain will eat the old warpaths, spill the huckleberries, cause toadstools to rise like loaves. It will make poets drunk and winos sober, and polish the horns of the slugs. And it will rain a miracle. And it will rain a comfort. And it will rain a sense of salvation from the philistinic graspings of the world. Yes, I am here for the weather. And when I am lowered at last into a pit of marvelous mud, a pillow of fern and skunk cabbage beneath my skull, I want my epitaph to read, IT RAINED ON HIS PARADE, AND HE WAS GLAD!

There is no magic bullet, secret formula, or quick fix to success. You don’t make $200,000 a year by spending two hours a day on the internet, lose thirty pounds in a week with a “Hollywood diet,” rub twenty years off your face with a cream, fix your love life with a pill, or find lasting success with a get-rich-quick scheme. It would be great if you could buy your success, fame, self-esteem, good relationships, health, and well-being in a nicely clam-shelled package at the local Walmart, but that’s not how it works.

If you pick up a rock when you’re out and about and you bring that rock home and put it on your bookshelf without polishing, painting, or otherwise decorating it, you’ve created a manuport. If you find a piece of quartz, or a clamshell, or a small fossil in your backyard and you send it to a friend as a gift, you’ve created a manuport

I think over the past twenty-four hours he fractured my clamshell.

she’d have been throwing out clamshells, most likely.

Kurtz grabbed the front of the thug’s shirt and jerked him out of his seat. He dragged the wounded prisoner down the center of the helicopter, between the girls. Reaching the back of the chopper he punched the button that activated the clamshell doors. They swung open with a hiss and the wind whipped into the aircraft. No one could hear what Kurtz said to the prisoner; he held him by the front of his shirt, their faces inches apart. The Yakuza thug glanced over his shoulder at the ground racing by underneath. He turned back and said something in a panic, his face a mask of terror. Then he disappeared, dropped from the back of the helicopter. Kurtz hit the button for the doors and they closed with a snap, returning the cabin to a more tolerable level of noise. Then he walked between the two lines of stunned teenagers and sat back down next to Bishop. They stared at him in shock. “Mori-Kai,” Kurtz said flatly. “Does that mean anything to you?

Today’s pubic hair removal may indicate something similar: we have opened our most intimate parts to unprecedented scrutiny, evaluation, commodification. Largely as a result of the Brazilian trend, cosmetic labiaplasty, the clipping of the folds of skin surrounding the vulva, has skyrocketed: while still well behind nose and boob jobs, according to the American Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons (ASAPS), there was a 44 percent rise in the procedure between 2012 and 2013—and a 64 percent jump the previous year. Labiaplasty is almost never related to sexual function or pleasure; it can actually impede both. Never mind: Dr. Michael Edwards, the ASAPS president in 2013, hailed the uptick as part of “an ever-evolving concept of beauty and self-confidence.” The most sought-after look, incidentally, is called—are you ready?—the Barbie: a “‘ clamshell’-type effect in which the outer labia appear fused, with no labia minora protruding.” I trust I don’t need to remind the reader that Barbie is (a) made of plastic and (b) has no vagina.

What was her name? Bambi? Summer? Fantasia? I have it on good authority that sand is not genitalia-friendly. So hopefully you didn’t drag your elephant trunk through the sand before slipping it into her delicate clamshell.

He circles the shrines, scanning each of them. There's one made in exclusively soft shades of pink, with a bouquet of blush roses at the center. It's surrounded by oysters, each one nestling a pearl. Smooth, heart-shaped rose quartz surrounds the perimeter in a perfect circle. Sliced guava reveals its rosy flesh, next to clamshells full of cherry blossoms. Another is built from a large shell in the center, filled with water that reflects the moon. White magnolias float on the surface, along with golden glitter that sparkles like starlight. Oranges with long stems and blossoms surround the shell, paired with sliced mango drizzled with honey. I swear I know who some of these belong to. The one with green grapes and pears decorated with golden butterfly appliqué must be Genevieve's. Beside it is one crafted from fuchsia carnations and obnoxiously large peonies, with different berries in porcelain dishes painted with bright pink flowers. So obviously Amelia's.

Only words cede, those spoken and delivered by hand, and friendships, and cells, and shoes with leopard spots and Sunday lunches of long ago, and passions in adolescence and in adulthood, and stores that sell knives and small appliances, parental worries, children's voices, clamshells on the edge of your plate. A few regrets endure. I still wait to be forgiven by my husband, and to say, when I'm seventeen, to a tortured and fearless boy, that I love him too.

How many guns did you have Neil bring?” said Tyth, glancing at the clamshell cases. “When you’ve been in a situation that involved shooting, did you ever think to yourself ‘gosh, I’ve gone and brought too much ammunition?’” “No.” “There you go.

We were given a suite of connecting rooms, all centered on a large, lavish lounge that was open to the sea and city below. My bedroom was appointed in seafoam and softest blue with pops of gold—like the gilded clamshell atop my pale wood dresser. I had just set it down when the white door behind me clicked open and Rhys slid in.

It yearns, as I do, for the sound of water, for the sound of the sea. -A Clamshell

We’ll sacrifice most anything for speed and convenience. When researchers noticed that cereal sales were going down, they did a study to figure out why. It turns out millennials don’t eat as much cereal because it’s too much trouble to wash the bowl. They grab protein bars or yogurt cups and scarf them on the way to work. Cooking shows are more popular than ever—you can find Bobby Flay putting meat on a fire twenty-four hours a day—but it seems like people are watching instead of cooking, in the same way people watch Fixer Upper a lot more than they fix anything up. The proof is on the shelves. The stuff you used to find in the 7-Eleven is now in the grocery store: Lunchables, protein packs, quickie meals packed in plastic clamshells. Life, to go.

the Skeleton King’s massive ribcage split apart up the center and opened up like a sideways chest—like a great clam-shell trap—and my body crumpled inside of it! The ribcage trap slammed shut on me, crushing me inside the abomination’s body. Pain...

Everyone who tells a secret hopes the listener will keep it. But sadly, no one’s mouth is a clamshell, and rumors leak everywhere.