Flame And Sparrow Quotes

sometimes you’ve got to kill 4 or 5 thousand men before you somehow get to believe that the sparrow is immortal, money is piss and that you have been wasting your time.

I Name you Echthroi. I Name you Meg. I Name you Calvin. I Name you Mr. Jenkins. I Name you Proginoskes. I fill you with Naming. Be! Be, butterfly and behemoth, be galaxy and grasshopper, star and sparrow, you matter, you are, be! Be caterpillar and comet, Be porcupine and planet, sea sand and solar system, sing with us, dance with us, rejoice with us, for the glory of creation, seagulls and seraphim angle worms and angel host, chrysanthemum and cherubim. (O cherubim.) Be! Sing for the glory of the living and the loving the flaming of creation sing with us dance with us be with us. Be!" - Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door

Sometimes we hold on to painful things, I think, because letting them go feels like letting go of the person who gave them to us.

[John] watched the flames for a while. "I would have to say that I find God in serving His children. 'When I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was a stanger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, sick and you cared for me, imprisoned and you came to me.'" The words lingered in the air as the fire popped and hissed softly. Sondoz had stopped pacing and stood motionless in a far corner of the room, his face in shadows, firelight glittering on the metallic exoskeleton of his hands. "Don't hope for more than that, John," he said. "God will break your heart.

Whats the Use of a Title?" They don’t make it the beautiful die in flame— suicide pills, rat poison, rope what— ever... they rip their arms off, throw themselves out of windows, they pull their eyes out of the sockets, reject love reject hate reject, reject. they don’t make it the beautiful can’t endure, they are butterflies they are doves they are sparrows, they don’t make it. one tall shot of flame while the old men play checkers in the park one flame, one good flame while the old men play checkers in the park in the sun. the beautiful are found in the edge of a room crumpled into spiders and needles and silence and we can never understand why they left, they were so beautiful. they don’t make it, the beautiful die young and leave the ugly to their ugly lives. lovely and brilliant: life and suicide and death as the old men play checkers in the sun in the park.

Then he said, “There isn’t an easy, direct translation into any other language…because it’s more like an idea. A feeling. We have a story in my old kingdom, that when the one you’re meant to be with enters the world, they steal a part of your soul with their first breath. “And you exist, missing that part, until they find you and breathe it back into you.

For everyone who’s ever been told they’re ‘too much’— Go ahead and burn as brightly as you want to.

I don’t know what you were thinking, but I never needed you to swoop in and save me. I don’t need you to burn the world down for me—if I wanted that done, I could do it myself.

I feel…” he replied, slowly, “as though someone should have taught you not to play with fire.

And now I feel like you and that dress should get out of my sight,” he said, “before we do something we’ll both end up regretting.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous" i Tell me it was for the hunger & nothing less. For hunger is to give the body what it knows it cannot keep. That this amber light whittled down by another war is all that pins my hand to your chest. i You, drowning                         between my arms — stay. You, pushing your body                          into the river only to be left                          with yourself — stay. i I’ll tell you how we’re wrong enough to be forgiven. How one night, after backhanding mother, then taking a chainsaw to the kitchen table, my father went to kneel in the bathroom until we heard his muffled cries through the walls. And so I learned that a man, in climax, was the closest thing to surrender. i Say surrender. Say alabaster. Switchblade.                    Honeysuckle. Goldenrod. Say autumn. Say autumn despite the green                    in your eyes. Beauty despite daylight. Say you’d kill for it. Unbreakable dawn                    mounting in your throat. My thrashing beneath you                    like a sparrow stunned with falling. i Dusk: a blade of honey between our shadows, draining. i I wanted to disappear — so I opened the door to a stranger’s car. He was divorced. He was still alive. He was sobbing into his hands (hands that tasted like rust). The pink breast cancer ribbon on his keychain swayed in the ignition. Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here? I was still here once. The moon, distant & flickering, trapped itself in beads of sweat on my neck. I let the fog spill through the cracked window & cover my fangs. When I left, the Buick kept sitting there, a dumb bull in pasture, its eyes searing my shadow onto the side of suburban houses. At home, I threw myself on the bed like a torch & watched the flames gnaw through my mother’s house until the sky appeared, bloodshot & massive. How I wanted to be that sky — to hold every flying & falling at once. i Say amen. Say amend. Say yes. Say yes anyway. i In the shower, sweating under cold water, I scrubbed & scrubbed. i In the life before this one, you could tell two people were in love because when they drove the pickup over the bridge, their wings would grow back just in time. Some days I am still inside the pickup. Some days I keep waiting. i It’s not too late. Our heads haloed             with gnats & summer too early to leave any marks.             Your hand under my shirt as static intensifies on the radio.             Your other hand pointing your daddy’s revolver             to the sky. Stars falling one by one in the cross hairs.             This means I won’t be afraid if we’re already             here. Already more than skin can hold. That a body             beside a body must ma

Sometimes admitting we’re lost is the first step to finding the way, isn’t it?” said the red-haired woman.

Sonnet On hearing the Dies Irae in the Sistine Chapel Nay, Lord, not thus! white lilies in the spring, Sad olive-groves, or silver-breasted dove, Teach me more clearly of Thy life and love Than terrors of red flame and thundering. The hillside vines dear memories of Thee bring: A bird at evening flying to its nest Tells me of One who had no place of rest: I think it is of Thee the sparrows sing. Come rather on some autumn afternoon, When red and brown are burnished on the leaves, And the fields echo to the gleaner's song, Come when the splendid fulness of the moon Looks down upon the rows of golden sheaves, And reap Thy harvest: we have waited long.

To see all sides of things is a rare gift.

You have no idea what he’s done for me, all the—” “What he’s done for you?” “Yes.” “Does he remind you of those things often?” I couldn’t deny this. His eyes narrowed. “So it sounds more like he did those things for him, in hopes of locking you into some sort of contract with unspecified terms.

I’d more or less come to the conclusion that anger was a strange well to draw from; the more you drank of it, the thirstier you became.

Wildfire, do you not understand? I love who you are. Not what. Who you are, and who you were, and who you’re becoming. Your fire, your ashes, your everything in-between…

But they spoke of the carnage in awed tones rather than fearful ones, so eager to see themselves in the divine that they willingly overlooked the beastly parts.

But another question will answer this one: How can the Lord Jesus in Heaven be happy? Surely He knows all things here. He looked into Hell and heard the cries of the rich man tormented in flame. And He, with God the Father, knows the fall of every sparrow and numbers every hair on every head. He looks at the heart of every unrepentant sinner and grieves at the mistakes and failures of every Christian. Can Jesus be happy in Heaven? The Scripture answers: "He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied" (Isa. 53:11). We know that Jesus on earth looked forward to the joy in Heaven, for we are told: "Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb. 12:2). Yes, Jesus, knowing all the wickedness of this world, is happy in Heaven. So are the saints in Heaven.

For anyone who’s ever had to pick themselves up, rearrange themselves, and try again.

It’s a phoenix,” Freddie said. “A firebird. When they die, they are reborn in their own flames, remade, stronger and more perfect than they already were.” “Just like you,” Vaughn added. “A firebrand who brought all that heat and color into our lives.” “You were born Ivy Hardigan, then became Emersyn Sharpe—but who you are is our girl, our Phoenix,” Liam caught the thread. “My Hellspawn.” “Swan.” “Sparrow.” “Starling.” “Dove.” “Little Bit.” Laughter edged those syllables, and there were tears in Mickey’s eyes. “Boo-Boo,” Freddie completed the nicknames as they were all laughing and so was I.

Sometimes he wished he experienced the world as simply as she did. It wasn't that Sparrow herself was simple, but rather, she lived and spoke and acted in the most uncomplicated of ways. She understood things about anger and grief and forgiveness that Elliot had not - at least, not until she'd helped him see it - but she didn't let the dark complexities of the world overwhelm or shake her convictions.

The angel was sitting by his bed when Simon Iddesleigh, sixth Viscount Iddesleigh, opened his eyes. He would've thought it a terrible dream, one of an endless succession that haunted him nightly -- or worse, that he'd not survived the beating and had made that final infinite plunge out of this world and into the flaming next. But he was almost certain hell did not smell of lavender and starch, did not feel like worn linen and down pillows, did not sound with the chirping of sparrows and the rustle of gauze curtains. And, of course, there were no angels in hell.