Foam At The Mouth Quotes

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what terrifies me most is how we foam at the mouth with envy when others succeed but sigh in relief when they are failing our struggle to celebrate each other is what's proven most difficult in being human
Rupi Kaur (milk and honey)
I am a person who is unhappy with things as they stand. We cannot accept the world as it is. Each day we should wake up foaming at the mouth because of the injustice of things.
Hugo Claus
I want to lay down, but these countries are like uncles who touch you when you're young and asleep. Look at all these borders foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate...I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck; I did not come out the same. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body.
Warsan Shire (Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth)
No matter how often I think I can't stand it anymore, I always do. There is no alternative. I don't fall, I don't foam at the mouth, faint, collapse or die. It's the same for all of us. You can't get out of the inside of your own head. Something keeps you going. Something always does.
Janice Galloway (The Trick Is to Keep Breathing)
I had to lull Mom and Hank into believing I was in the right frame of mind to be taken into public. If I exited my bedroom foaming at the mouth and dressed in black LOVE SUCKS tee, my plan would never get off the ground.
Becca Fitzpatrick (Silence (Hush, Hush, #3))
There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever they hear the words 'I devise and bequeath.
Dorothy L. Sayers (Strong Poison (Lord Peter Wimsey, #5))
Hip," I murmur, remembering last night, how I lost it completely in a stall at Nell's---my mouth foaming, all I could think about were insects, lots of insects, and running at pigeons, foaming at the mouth and running at pigeons.
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho)
Lea stood upon a fallen log ahead of us, staring ahead. Mouse walked up to her. Gggrrrr rawf arrrgggrrrrarrrr," I said. Mouse gave me an impatient glance, and somehow--I don't know if it was something in his body language or what--I became aware that he was telling me to sit down and shut up or he'd come over and make me. I sat down. Something in me really didn't like that idea, but when I looked around, I saw that everyone else had done it too, and that made me feel better. Mouse said, again in what sounded like perfectly clear English, "Funny. Now restore them." Lea turned to look at the big dog and said, "Do you dare to give me commands, hound?" Not your hound," Mouse said. I didn't know how he was doing it. His mouth wasn't moving or anything. "Restore them before I rip your ass off. Literally rip it off." The Leanansidhe tilted her head back and let out a low laugh. "You are far from your sources of power here, my dear demon." I live with a wizard. I cheat." He took a step toward her and his lips peeled up from his fangs in unmistakable hostility. "You want to restore them? Or do I kill you and get them back that way?" Lea narrowed her eyes. Then she said, "You're bluffing." One of the big dog's huge, clawed paws dug at the ground, as if bracing him for a leap, and his growl seemed to . . . I looked down and checked. It didn't seem to shake the ground. The ground was actually shaking for several feet in every direction of the dog. Motes of blue light began to fall from his jaws, thickly enough that it looked quite a bit like he was foaming at the mouth. "Try me." The Leanansidhe shook her head slowly. Then she said, "How did Dresden ever win you?" He didn't," Mouse said. "I won him.
Jim Butcher (Changes (The Dresden Files, #12))
They ask me how did you get here? Can’t you see it on my body? The Libyan desert red with immigrant bodies, the Gulf of Aden bloated, the city of Rome with no jacket. I hope the journey meant more than miles because all of my children are in the water. I thought the sea was safer than the land. I want to make love, but my hair smells of war and running and running. I want to lay down, but these countries are like uncles who touch you when you’re young and asleep. Look at all these borders, foaming at the mouth with bodies broken and desperate. I’m the colour of hot sun on the face, my mother’s remains were never buried. I spent days and nights in the stomach of the truck; I did not come out the same. Sometimes it feels like someone else is wearing my body.
Warsan Shire (Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth)
You're mad," the fallen angel said. "Get me some Alka Seltzer and I'll foam at the mouth, too.
Jim Butcher (Proven Guilty (The Dresden Files, #8))
When a horse falls, foam comes out of its mouth. When it falls, the legs of the horse thrash and the horse is no good... So somebody shoots it. The horse turns into glue. A machine puts the glue into bottles and children squeeze the bottles to get the glue out and stick bits of paper onto cards. Glue gets on the children's hands and the children eat the glue. And the children become the horse.
Maureen Medved (The Tracey Fragments)
The sea stood up before him, foaming, torn by lightning bolts, opening terrifying mouths that gobbled up the dense, hard black rains unleashed by the sky like hate.
Jean-François Beauchemin
The fact that he had foamed at the mouth immediately upon dying, indicated that he had a great back jam of wishes and desires and truths that were never spoken...out bubbled all the words he had swallowed when he was alive.
Kaye Gibbons (Charms for the Easy Life)
The rinsed foam swirled into one drain that always clogged come October when the maples dropped Canadian propaganda over everything.
Daniel Handler (Watch Your Mouth)
Hetty turned her attention back to her subject’s face and was quite surprised to see a meek little submissive, almost ashamed of the orgasm she was about to have, panting and heaving for breath whilst nearly foaming at the mouth. Indeed she looked quite tortured in the throes of passion and any Master would be extremely pleased with that particular look during training.
C.P. Mandara (The Riding School (Pony Tales, #1))
Dad staggered in, eyes eerily lit. The corners of his mouth foaming spit. His demons planned an overnight stay. Mom motioned to take the girls away. hide them in their rooms, safe in their beds. We closed the doors, covered our heads, as if the blankets could mute the sounds of his blows or we could silence her screams behind out pillows. I hugged the littlest ones close to my chest, till the beat of my heart lulled them to rest. Only then did I let myself cry. Only then did I let myself wonder why Mom didn't fight back, didn't defend, didn't confess to family or friend. Had Dad's demons claimed her soul? Or was this, as well, a woman's role?
Ellen Hopkins (Burned (Burned, #1))
It's rude to stare," said the troll. Its mouth opened with a little crest of foam, and shut again in exactly the same way that water closes over a stone. "Is it? Why?" asked Rincewind. How does he hold himself together, his mind screamed at him. Why doesn't he spill?
Terry Pratchett
Foaming is a huge reward,” said Sinclair, the brand manager. “Shampoo doesn’t have to foam, but we add foaming chemicals because people expect it each time they wash their hair. Same thing with laundry detergent. And toothpaste—now every company adds sodium laureth sulfate to make toothpaste foam more. There’s no cleaning benefit, but people feel better when there’s a bunch of suds around their mouth. Once the customer starts expecting that foam, the habit starts growing.
Charles Duhigg (The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business)
Agaue was foaming at the mouth; her rolling eyes Were wild; she was not in her right mind, but possessed
Euripides (The Bacchae and Other Plays)
I might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should feel appeased.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)
Picture this: possible boyfriend X takes normal girl versus freak girl, namely me, home to meet his mother. After a handshake, normal girl comments, Oh, what a pretty manicure, Mrs. X. My comment? After I wipe away the foam at my mouth, and I'm finally done convulsing, Mrs, X, you'll die in a car crash two weeks from today. You may as well take care of the arrangements because I'm never wrong. And we live happily ever after? Fat chance.
Ramona Wray (Hex: A Witch and Angel Tale)
If woman has always functioned "within" the discourse of man, a signifier that has always referred back to the opposite signifier which annihilates its specific energy and diminishes or stifles its very different sounds, it is time for her to dislocate this "within," to explode it, turn it around, and seize it; to make it hers, containing it, taking it in her own mouth, biting that tongue with her very own teeth to invent for herself a language to get inside of. And you'll see with what ease she will spring forth from that "within" - the "within" where once she so drowsily crouched - to overflow at the lips she will cover the foam.
Hélène Cixous (The Laugh of the Medusa)
When we are young we think our troubles a mighty business – that the world is spread out expressly as a stage for the particular drama of our lives and that we have a right to rant and foam at the mouth if we are crossed. I have done enough of that in my time.
George Eliot
But it grieves my heart, love, To see you tryin' to be a part of A world that just don't exist. It's all just a dream, babe, A vacuum, a scheme, babe, That sucks you into feelin' like this. I can see that your head Has been twisted and fed By worthless foam from the mouth. I can tell you are torn Between stayin' and returnin' On back to the South. From "To Ramona
Bob Dylan
They had to evacuate the grade school on Tuesday. Kids were getting headaches and eye irritations, tasting metal in their mouths. A teacher rolled on the floor and spoke foreign languages. No one knew what was wrong. Investigators said it could be the ventilating system, the paint or varnish, the foam insulation, the electrical insulation, the cafeteria food, the rays emitted by microcomputers, the asbestos fireproofing, the adhesive on shipping containers, the fumes from the chlorinated pool, or perhaps something deeper, finer-grained, more closely woven into the basic state of things.
Don DeLillo (White Noise)
Frightened, he runs off to the silent fields and howls aloud, attempting speech in vain; foam gathers at the corners of his mouth; he turns his lust for slaughter on the flocks, and mangles them, rejoicing still in blood. His garments now become a shaggy pelt; his arms turn into legs, and he, to wolf while still retaining traces of the man: greyness the same, the same cruel visage, the same cold eyes and bestial appearance. ~ The story of King Lycaon from Ovid's Metamorphosis, Book I, ll. 321-331 tr. Charles Martin
Ovid (Metamorphoses)
I don’t need that fluff on my coffee. Looks like shaving cream. One swallow and you’re foaming at the mouth.
Margaret Atwood (The Blind Assassin)
When Dr. James Young Simpson sought to apply anesthesia to a woman in childbirth, the clergymen of his day foamed at the mouth and spat upon him with vituperation and abuse, for attempting to violate God's direct command that 'in pain thou shalt bring forth children,' as based upon the idiotic text of the Bible. But Dr. Simpson persisted despite the ravings of the religious lunatics of his day. The importance of Dr. Simpson's application of anesthesia to the relief of pain in childbirth, and his open defiance of the religionists, are beyond the measure of words to evaluate.
Joseph Lewis (An Atheist Manifesto)
Why, from the very windows, even in the dusk, you see a swelling run through the street, an aspiration, as with arms outstretched, eyes desiring, mouths agape. And then we peaceably subside. For if the exaltation lasted we should be blown like foam into the air. The stars would shine through us. We should go down the gale in salt drops- as sometimes happens. For the impetuous spirits will have none of this cradling. Never any swaying or aimlessly lolling for them. Never any making believe, or lying cosily, or genially supposing that one is much like another, fire warm, wine pleasant, extravagance a sin.
Virginia Woolf (Jacob's Room)
Down to the closest friend every man is a potential murderer. Often it wasn't necessary to bring out the gun or the lasso or the branding iron-- they had found subtler and more devilish ways of torturing and killing their own. For me the most excruciating agony was to have the word annihilated before it even left my mouth. I learned, by bitter experience, to hold my tongue; I learned to sit in silence, and even smile, when actually I was foaming at the mouth. I learned to shake hands and say how do you do to all this innocent-looking fiends who were only waiting for me to sit down in order to suck my blood.
Henry Miller (Henry Miller on Writing)
He floated by them, and slowly his boat departed, waning to a dark spot against the golden light; and then suddenly it vanished. Rauros roared on unchanging. The River had taken Boromir son of Denethor, and he was not seen again in Minas Tirith, standing as he used to stand upon the White Tower in the morning. But in Gondor in after-days it long was said that the elven-boat rode the falls and the foaming pool, and bore him down through Osgiliath, and past the many mouths of Anduin, out into the Great Sea at night under the stars.
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2))
And you don't even know my family. We're like rabies, we fester, make you go crazy, and most of the time, my mother is foaming at the mouth. So please tell me your family is like a heart attack.a nice, quick death instead of long term torture.
Inda Herwood (Jump Start My Heart (Separate Ways, #1))
In the days after my heart attack & before I began to write again, all I could think about was dying. I'd been spared again, and only after the danger had passed did I allow my thoughts to unravel to their inevitable end. I imagined all the ways I could go. Blood clot to the brain. Infarction. Thrombosis. Pneumonia. Grand mal obstruction to the vena cava. I saw myself foaming at the mouth, writhing on the floor. I'd wake up in the night, gripping my throat. And yet. No matter how often I imagined the possible failure of my organs, I found the consequence inconceivable. That it could happen to me. I forced myself to picture the last moments. The penultimate breath. A final sigh. And yet. It was always followed by another.
Nicole Krauss (The History of Love)
Be courteous, kind, and forgiving. Be gentle and peaceful each day. Be warm and human and grateful, And have a good thing to say. Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike, Be witty and happy and wise. Be honest and love all your neighbors, Be obsequious, purple, and clairvoyant. Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus. Be dull and boring and omnipresent. Criticize things you don’t know about. Be oblong and have your knees removed. Be sure to stop at stop signs, And drive fifty-five miles an hour. Pick up hitchhikers foaming at the mouth, And when you get home get a master’s degree in geology. Be tasteless, rude, and offensive. Live in a swamp and be three-dimensional. Put a live chicken in your underwear. Go into a closet and suck eggs.
Steve Martin
While dragging herself up she had to hang onto the rail. Her twisted progress was that of a cripple. Once on the open deck she felt the solid impact of the black night, and the mobility of the accidental home she was about to leave. Although Lucette had never died before—no, dived before, Violet—from such a height, in such a disorder of shadows and snaking reflections, she went with hardly a splash through the wave that humped to welcome her. That perfect end was spoiled by her instinctively surfacing in an immediate sweep — instead of surrendering under water to her drugged lassitude as she had planned to do on her last night ashore if it ever did come to this. The silly girl had not rehearsed the technique of suicide as, say, free-fall parachutists do every day in the element of another chapter. Owing to the tumultuous swell and her not being sure which way to peer through the spray and the darkness and her own tentaclinging hair—t,a,c,l—she could not make out the lights of the liner, an easily imagined many-eyed bulk mightily receding in heartless triumph. Now I’ve lost my next note. Got it. The sky was also heartless and dark, and her body, her head,and particularly those damned thirsty trousers, felt clogged with Oceanus Nox, n,o,x. At every slap and splash of cold wild salt, she heaved with anise-flavored nausea and there was an increasing number, okay, or numbness, in her neck and arms. As she began losing track of herself, she thought it proper to inform a series of receding Lucettes—telling them to pass it on and on in a trick-crystal regression—that what death amounted to was only a more complete assortment of the infinite fractions of solitude. She did not see her whole life flash before her as we all were afraid she might have done; the red rubber of a favorite doll remained safely decomposed among the myosotes of an un-analyzable brook; but she did see a few odds and ends as she swam like a dilettante Tobakoff in a circle of brief panic and merciful torpor. She saw a pair of new vairfurred bedroom slippers, which Brigitte had forgotten to pack; she saw Van wiping his mouth before answering, and then, still withholding the answer, throwing his napkin on the table as they both got up; and she saw a girl with long black hair quickly bend in passing to clap her hands over a dackel in a half-tom wreath. A brilliantly illumined motorboat was launched from the not-too-distant ship with Van and the swimming coach and the oilskin-hooded Toby among the would-be saviors; but by that time a lot of sea had rolled by and Lucette was too tired to wait. Then the night was filled with the rattle of an old but still strong helicopter. Its diligent beam could spot only the dark head of Van, who, having been propelled out of the boat when it shied from its own sudden shadow, kept bobbing and bawling the drowned girl’s name in the black, foam-veined, complicated waters.
Vladimir Nabokov (Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle)
But on that night, Dad staggered in, eyes eerily lit. The corners of his mouth foaming spit. His demons planned an overnight stay. Mom motioned to take the girls away, hide them in their rooms, safe in their beds. We closed the doors, covered our heads, as if blankets could mute the sounds of his blows or we could silence her screams beneath her pillows. I hugged the littlest ones close to my chest, till the beat of my heart lulled them to rest. Only then did I let myself cry. Only then did I let myself wonder why Mom didn't fight back, didn't defend, didn't confess to family or friend. Had Dad's demons claimed her soul? Or was this, as well, another woman's role?
Ellen Hopkins (Burned (Burned, #1))
We should remember that even Nature's inadvertence has its own charm, its own attractiveness. The way loaves of bread split open on top in the oven; the ridges are just by-products of the baking, and yet pleasing, somehow: they rouse our appetite without our knowing why. Or how ripe figs begin to burst. And olives on the point of falling: the shadow of decay gives them a peculiar beauty. Stalks of wheat bending under their own weight. The furrowed brow of the lion. Flecks of foam on the boar's mouth. And other things. If you look at them in isolation there's nothing beautiful about them, and yet by supplementing nature they enrich it and draw us in. And anyone with a feeling for nature—a deeper sensitivity—will find it all gives pleasure. Even what seems inadvertent. He'll find the jaws of live animals as beautiful as painted ones or sculptures. He'll look calmly at the distinct beauty of old age in men, women, and at the loveliness of children. And other things like that will call out to him constantly—things unnoticed by others. Things seen only by those at home with Nature and its works.
Marcus Aurelius
His hair, at first glance, appears merely dark, but upon closer inspection is actually many strands of chestnut brown, gold, and black. He wears it long, for a guy, not because doing so is “in,” but because he’s too busy with his many interests to remember to get it cut regularly. His eyes seem dark at first glance, as well, but are actually a kaleidoscope of russets and mahoganies, flecked here and there with ruby and gold, like twin lakes during an Indian summer, into which you feel as if you could dive and swim forever. Nose: aquiline. Mouth: imminently kissable. Neck: aromatic—an intoxicating blend of Tide from his shirt collar, Gillette shaving foam, and Ivory soap, which together spell: my boyfriend. B– Better. I would have liked more description on what exactly about his mouth you find so imminently kissable. —C. Martinez
Meg Cabot (Princess on the Brink (The Princess Diaries, #8))
It was almost a mystical experience. I do not know how else to put it. My mind outran time as he neared, and it was as though I had an eternity to ponder the approach of this man who was my brother. His garments were filthy, his face blackened, the stump of his right arm raised, gesturing anywhere. The great beast that he rode was striped, black and red, with a wild red mane and tail. But it really was a horse, and its eyes rolled and there was foam at its mouth and its breathing was painful to hear. I saw then that he wore his blade slung across his back, for its haft protruded high above his right shoulder. Still slowing, eyes fixed upon me, he departed the road, bearing slightly toward my left, jerked the reins once and released them, keeping control of the horse with his knees. His left hand went up in a salute-like movement that passed above his head and seized the hilt of his weapon. It came free without a sound, describing a beautiful arc above him and coming to rest in a lethal position out from his left shoulder and slanting back, like a single wing of dull steel with a minuscule line of edge that gleamed like a filament of mirror. The picture he presented was burned into my mind with a kind of magnificence, a certain splendor that was strangely moving. The blade was a long, scythe like affair that I had seen him use before. Only then we had stood as allies against a mutual foe I had begun to believe unbeatable. Benedict had proved otherwise that night. Now that I saw it raised against me I was overwhelmed with a sense of my own mortality, which I had never experienced before in this fashion. It was as though a layer had been stripped from the world and I had a sudden, full understanding of death itself.
Roger Zelazny (The Guns of Avalon (The Chronicles of Amber, #2))
baking bread splits in places and those cracks, while not intended in the baker’s art, catch our eye and serve to stir our appetite,” or the “charm and allure” of nature’s process, the “stalks of ripe grain bending low, the frowning brow of the lion, the foam dripping from the boar’s mouth.
Ryan Holiday (Stillness is the Key)
I've been living like this for a long time - about twenty years. I'm forty now. I used to be in the civil service; I no longer am. I was a wicked official. I was rude, and took pleasure in it. After all, I didn't accept bribes, so I had to reward myself at least with that. (A bad witticism, but I won't cross it out. I wrote it thinking it would come out very witty; but now, seeing for myself that I simply had a vile wish to swagger - I purposely won't cross it out!) When petitioners would come for information to the desk where I sat - I'd gnash my teeth at them, and felt an inexhaustible delight when I managed to upset someone. I almost always managed. They were timid people for the most part: petitioners, you know. But among the fops there was one officer I especially could not stand. He simply refused to submit and kept rattling his sabre disgustingly. I was at war with him over that sabre for a year and a half. In the end, I prevailed. He stopped rattling. However, that was still in my youth. But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it. I’m foaming at the mouth, but bring me some little doll, give me some tea with a bit of suger, and maybe I’ll calm down. I’ll even wax tenderhearted, though afterwards I’ll certainly gnash my teeth at myself and suffer from insomnia for a few months out of shame. Such is my custom. And I lied about myself just now when I said I was a wicked official. I lied out of wickedness. I was simply playing around both with the petitioners and with the officer, but as a matter of fact I was never able to become wicked.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)
Public convenience or dignity means nothing; police prerogatives assume the status of divine law. Submissiveness is demanded. If a police officer kills a civilian, it is a regrettable circumstance: the officer was possibly over-zealous. If a civilian kills a police officer all hell breaks loose. The police foam at the mouth. All other business comes to a standstill until the perpetrator of this most dastardly act is found out. Inevitably, when apprehended, he is beaten or otherwise tortured for his intolerable presumption … The police complain that they cannot function efficiently, that criminals escape them. Better a hundred unchecked criminals than the despotism of one unbridled police force.
Jack Vance (Demon Princes (Demon Princes #1-5))
Later, at the sink in our van, Mama rinsed the blue stain and the odd spiders, caterpillars, and stems from the bucket. "Not what we usually start with, but we can go again tomorrow. And this will set up nicely in about six, eight jars." The berries were beginning to simmer in the big pot on the back burner. Mama pushed her dark wooden spoon into the foaming berries and cicrcled the wall of the pot slowly. I leaned my hot arms on the table and said, "Iphy better not go tomorrow. She got tired today." I was smelling the berries and Mamaa's sweat, and watching the flex of the blue veins behind her knees. "Does them good. The twins always loved picking berries, even more than eating them. Though Elly likes her jam." "Elly doesn't like anything anymore." The knees stiffened and I looked up. The spoon was motionless. Mama stared at the pot. "Mama, Elly isn't there anymore. Iphy's changed. Everything's changed. This whole berry business, cooking big meals that nobody comes for, birthday cakes for Arty. It's dumb, Mama. Stop pretending. There isn't any family anymore, Mama." Then she cracked me with the big spoon. It smacked wet and hard across my ear, and the purple-black juice spayed across the table. She started at me, terrified, her mouth and eyes gaping with fear. I stared gaping at her. I broke and ran. I went to the generator truck and climbed up to sit by Grandpa. That's the only time Mama ever hit me and I knew I deserved it. I also knew that Mama was too far gone to understand why I deserved it. She'd swung that spoon in a tigerish reflex at blasphemy. But I believed that Arty had turned his back on us, that the twins were broken, that the Chick was lost, that Papa was weak and scared, that Mama was spinning fog, and that I was an adolescent crone sitting in the ruins, watching the beams crumble, and warming myself in the smoke from the funeral pyre. That was how I felt, and I wanted company. I hated Mama for refusing to see enough to be miserable with me. Maybe, too, enough of my child heart was still with me to think that if she would only open her eyes she could fix it all back up like a busted toy.
Katherine Dunn (Geek Love)
Mickey had turned into Daisy, and Goofy had turned into Einstein—we were talking about a transmutation that would even have had Paracelsus foaming at the mouth.
Novala Takemoto (Kamikaze Girls)
Connell takes a mouthful of wine, which foams cold in his mouth and then disappears like air.
Sally Rooney (Normal People)
you don’t get mad ’cause a rabid dog foams at the mouth. You get the hell away from the dog.
Cate C. Wells (The Heir Apparent's Rejected Mate (Five Packs, #2))
Poetry is not an opinion expressed. It is a song that rises from a bleeding wound or a smiling mouth.
Kahlil Gibran (Sand and Foam)
Technology isn't rational; with luck, it's a runaway horse, foaming at the mouth, ready to throw itself off a cliff in desperation. Our problem is that culture's tied to that horse.
Martín Felipe Castagnet (Los cuerpos del verano)
I'll ring for Mrs. Mullet," Feely said, reaching for a velvet pull that hung near the mantelpiece, and which probably hadn't been used since George the Third was foaming at the mouth.
Alan Bradley (A Red Herring Without Mustard (Flavia de Luce, #3))
Before Parting A MONTH or twain to live on honeycomb Is pleasant; but one tires of scented time, Cold sweet recurrence of accepted rhyme, And that strong purple under juice and foam Where the wine’s heart has burst; Nor feel the latter kisses like the first. Once yet, this poor one time; I will not pray Even to change the bitterness of it, The bitter taste ensuing on the sweet, To make your tears fall where your soft hair lay All blurred and heavy in some perfumed wise Over my face and eyes. And yet who knows what end the scythèd wheat Makes of its foolish poppies’ mouths of red? These were not sown, these are not harvested, They grow a month and are cast under feet And none has care thereof, As none has care of a divided love. I know each shadow of your lips by rote, Each change of love in eyelids and eyebrows; The fashion of fair temples tremulous With tender blood, and colour of your throat; I know not how love is gone out of this, Seeing that all was his. Love’s likeness there endures upon all these: But out of these one shall not gather love. Day hath not strength nor the night shade enough To make love whole and fill his lips with ease, As some bee-builded cell Feels at filled lips the heavy honey swell. I know not how this last month leaves your hair Less full of purple colour and hid spice, And that luxurious trouble of closed eyes Is mixed with meaner shadow and waste care; And love, kissed out by pleasure, seems not yet Worth patience to regret.
Algernon Charles Swinburne
We’ve been called worse our whole lives. I don’t like it—it doesn’t feel good—but like Abertha says, you don’t get mad ’cause a rabid dog foams at the mouth. You get the hell away from the dog.
Cate C. Wells (The Heir Apparent's Rejected Mate (Five Packs, #2))
And I almost forgot, my father wants this added to the dessert course. He said to use the pits, too. For all her jokes about pills and pigs, there was nothing pharmaceutical in the wrinkled, thumb-sized dates Aida gave me. I bit into one. As I didn't collapse, or foam at the mouth, I blitzed both fruit and pit into a powder that I folded through batter, the surface glossing rusty, red.
C Pam Zhang (Land of Milk and Honey)
Well, that’s simple, Nezra. I ran away from him and swore to him that I’d never do anything he says. You should try it sometime. It’s called ‘I hate you, leave me alone.’ It gets all the psychos foaming at the mouth for more. Add a little ‘I’ll never love you,’ and bam! Instant crazy.” Bartol, Amy A. (2015-03-31). Sea of Stars (The Kricket Series Book 2) (p. 208). 47North. Kindle Edition.
Amy A. Bartol (Sea of Stars (Kricket, #2))
Like a priest carrying home their first computer after hearing about child pornography on the internet, I was practically foaming at the mouth in anticipation during the drive to the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.
David Thorne (The Internet is a Playground)
I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even an embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should be appeased. I might even be genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards and lie awake at night with shame for months after. That was my way.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)
Every year several million people are killed quite pointlessly by epidemics and other natural catastrophes. And we should shrink from sacrificing a few hundred thousand for the most promising experiment in history? Not to mention the legions of those who die of under-nourishment and tuberculosis in coal and quicksilver mines, rice-fields and cotton plantations. No one takes any notice of them; nobody asks why or what for; but if here we shoot a few thousand objectively harmful people, the humanitarians all over the world foam at the mouth. Yes, we liquidated the parasitic part of the peasantry and let it die of starvation. It was a surgical operation which had to be done once and for all; but in the good old days before the Revolution just as many died in any dry year—only senselessly and pointlessly. The victims of the Yellow River floods in China amount sometimes to hundreds of thousands. Nature is generous in her senseless experiments on mankind. Why should mankind not have the right to experiment on itself?
Arthur Koestler (Darkness at Noon)
Out there in the middle of the maelstrom the Eater awaits, heaving and gulping, its mouth like a giant clam’s . . . its mind a frenzy of beige-colored rapid foam. A horrifying uproar, all things considered. Imagine floating through that nonsense in a life jacket. —EDWARD ABBEY
Kevin Fedarko (The Emerald Mile: The Epic Story of the Fastest Ride in History Through the Heart of the Grand Canyon)
It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, than to die daily in the sick-room. By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week. It is not only in finished undertakings that we ought to honour useful labour. A spirit goes out of the man who means execution, which outlives the most untimely ending. All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas? When the Greeks made their fine saying that those whom the gods love die young, I cannot help believing they had this sort of death also in their eye. For surely, at whatever age it overtake the man, this is to die young. Death has not been suffered to take so much as an illusion from his heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side. The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land.
Robert Louis Stevenson (Æs Triplex and Other Essays)
Left to herself, the serpent now began To change; her elfin blood in madness ran, Her mouth foam’d, and the grass, therewith besprent, Wither’d at dew so sweet and virulent; Her eyes in torture fix’d, and anguish drear, 150 Hot, glaz’d, and wide, with lid-lashes all sear, Flash’d phosphor and sharp sparks,
John Keats (Complete Works of John Keats)
But do you know, gentlemen, what was the chief point about my spite? Why, the whole point, the real sting of it lay in the fact that continually, even in the moment of the acutest spleen, I was inwardly conscious with shame that I was not only not a spiteful but not even embittered man, that I was simply scaring sparrows at random and amusing myself by it. I might foam at the mouth, but bring me a doll to play with, give me a cup of tea with sugar in it, and maybe I should be appeased. I might even be genuinely touched, though probably I should grind my teeth at myself afterwards and lie awake at night with shame for months.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)
And the dog episode?" He tried for innocence, but his laughter was echoing in her mind. "What do you mean?" "You know very well what I mean," she insisted. "When Dragon walked me home." "Ah,yes,I seem to recall now. The big bad wolf decked out in chains and spikes, afraid of a little dog." "Little? A hundred-and-twenty-pound Rottweiler mix? Foaming at the mouth. Roaring.Charging him!" "He ran like a rabbit." Gregori's soft, caressing voice echoed his satisfaction. He had taken great pleasure in running that particular jackass off.How dare the man try to lay a hand on Savannah? "No wonder I couldn't touch the dog's mind and call him off. You rotten scoundrel." "After Dragon left you,I chased him for two blocks, and he went up a tree. I kept him there for several hours, just to make a point.He looked like a rooster with his orange comb." She laughed in spite of her desire not to. "He never came near me again." "Of course not.It was unacceptable," he said complacently,with complete satisfaction, the warmth of his breath heating her blood. His mouth touched, skimmed, moved across her nipple, branding her with his heat, with flame, before finding the underside of her breast. Savannah closed her eyes against a need so intense that she shook with it. How could she want something that hurt so terribly? No pain,ma petite,only pleasure. His tongue created an aching void in her. I swear it on my life. His mouth was hot velvet closing over her breast. Fire danced over her skin, invading her body, melted her insides so that she was liquid heat, pulsing with need for him, only for him.
Christine Feehan (Dark Magic (Dark, #4))
There had been no possibility that he had survived. His body had not tumbled into a foaming sea or into a clouded abyss from which he might later make an unexpected return through the good offices of kindly dolphins or giant eagles. Cabal had himself checked that all life was extinguished by searching for a pulse, looking for clouding on a mirror held to the corpse’s mouth, and by kicking repeatedly.
Jonathan L. Howard (The Brothers Cabal (Johannes Cabal, #4))
Be courteous, kind, and forgiving. Be gentle and peaceful each day. Be warm and human and grateful. Be thoughtful and trustful and childlike, Be witty and happy and wise. Be honest and love all your neighbors. Be obsequious, purple, and clairvoyant. Be pompous, obese, and eat cactus. Be dull and boring and omnipresent. Criticize things that you don't know about. Be oblong and have your knees removed. Be sure to stop at stop signs, And drive fifty-five miles an hour. Pick up a hitchhiker foaming at the mouth. And when you get home get a master's degree in geology. Be tasteless , rude, and offensive. Live in a swamp and be three- dimensional. Put a live chicken in your underwear. Go into a closet and suck eggs. "Now, everyone," repeat Added- Ladies only: Never make love to bigfoot! Men only: Hello, my name is bigfoot.
Steve Martin
A wave formed, swelling around Ariel's body. It lifted her up higher and higher- or maybe she herself was growing: it was hard to tell. She held the trident aloft. Storm clouds raced to her from all directions like a lost school of cichlid babies flicking to their father's mouth for protection. Lightning coursed through the sky and danced between the trident's tines. Ariel sang a song of rage. Notes rose and fell discordantly, her voice screeching at times like a banshee from the far north. She sang, and the wind sang with her. It whipped her hair out of its braids and pulled tresses into tentacles that billowed around her head. She sang of the unfairness of Eric's fate and her own, of her father's torture as a polyp, even of Scuttle's mortal life, slowly but visibly slipping away. Mostly she sang about Ursula. She sang about everyone whose lives had been touched and destroyed by evil like coral being killed and bleached, like dead spots in the ocean from algae blooms, like scale rot. She sang about what she would do to anyone who threatened those she loved and protected. And then, with her final note, she made a quick thrust as if to throw the trident toward the boats in the bay, pulling it back at the last moment. A clap louder than thunder echoed across the ocean. A wave even larger than the one she rode roared up from the depths of the open sea. It smashed through and around her, leaving her hair and body white with foam. She grinned fiercely at the power of the moment. The tsunami continued on, making straight for Tirulia. But... despite her rage... underneath it all the queen was still Ariel. Her momentary urge to destroy everything came and went like a single flash of summer lightning.
Liz Braswell (Part of Your World)
There were some hours to spare before his ship sailed, and having deposited his luggage, including a locked leather despatch-case, on board, he lunched at the Cafe Tewfik near the quay. There was a garden in front of it with palm trees and trellises gaily clad in bougainvillias: a low wooden rail separated it from the street, and Morris had a table close to this. As he ate he watched the polychromatic pageant of Eastern life passing by: there were Egyptian officials in broad-cloth frock coats and red fezzes; barefooted splay-toed fellahin in blue gabardines; veiled women in white making stealthy eyes at passers-by; half-naked gutter-snipe, one with a sprig of scarlet hibiscus behind his ear; travellers from India with solar tepees and an air of aloof British Superiority; dishevelled sons of the Prophet in green turbans, a stately sheik in a white burnous; French painted ladies of a professional class with lace-rimmed parasols and provocative glances; a wild-eyed dervish in an accordion-pleated skirt, chewing betel-nut and slightly foaming at the mouth. A Greek boot-black with box adorned with brass plaques tapped his brushes on it to encourage customers, an Egyptian girl squatted in the gutter beside a gramophone, steamers passing into the Canal hooted on their syrens. ("Monkeys")
E.F. Benson (The Mummy Walks Among Us)
It had been along time since I breached the surface of the world above. My parents wouldn’t allow it. So as far as I knew, the survivors that remained were savages. I’d seen a few things before our colony was built and most of the inhabitants left ran wildly through the bare, desert terrain, filth covering them from head to toe, bones protruding their leathery skin, and foam dripping from their mouths in search of one thing… Nourishment.
Lauren Hammond
The Sinsar Dubh popped up on my radar, and it was moving straight toward us. At an extremely high rate of speed. I whipped the Viper around, tires smoking on the pavement. There was nothing else I could do. Barrons looked at me sharply. “What? Do you sense it?” Oh, how ironic, he thought I’d turned us toward it. “No,” I lied, “I just realized I forgot my spear tonight. I left it back at the bookstore. Can you believe it? I never forget my spear. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t. I was talking to my dad while I was getting dressed and I totally spaced it.” I worked the pedals, ripping through the gears. He didn’t even try to pat me down. He just said, “Liar.” I sped up, pasting a blushing, uncomfortable look on my face. “All right, Barrons. You got me. But I do need to go back to the bookstore. It’s . . . well . . . it’s personal.” The bloody, stupid Sinsar Dubh was gaining on me. I was being chased by the thing I was supposed to be chasing. There was something very wrong with that. “It’s . . . a woman thing . . . you know.” “No, I don’t know, Ms. Lane. Why don’t you enlighten me?” A stream of pubs whizzed by. I was grateful it was too cold for much pedestrian traffic. If I had to slow down, the Book would gain on me, and I already had a headache the size of Texas that was threatening to absorb New Mexico and Oklahoma. “It’s that time. You know. Of the month.” I swallowed a moan of pain. “That time?” he echoed softly. “You mean time to stop at one of the multiple convenience stores we just whizzed past so you can buy tampons? Is that what you’re telling me?” I was going to throw up. It was too close. Saliva was pooling in my mouth. How far behind me was it? Two blocks? Less? “Yes,” I cried. “That’s it! But I use a special kind and they don’t carry it.” “I can smell you, Ms. Lane,” he said, even more softly. “The only blood on you is from your veins, not your womb.” My head whipped to the left and I stared at him. Okay, that was one of the more disturbing things he’d ever said to me. “Ahhh!” I cried, letting go of both the wheel and the gearshift to clutch my head. The Viper ran up on the sidewalk and took out two newspaper stands and a streetlamp before crashing to a stop against a fire hydrant. And the blasted, idiotic Book was still coming. I began foaming at the mouth, wondering what would happen if it passed within a few feet of me. Would I die? Would my head really explode?
Karen Marie Moning (Faefever (Fever, #3))
A moment out of time .lights whirling and spinning in a cotton candy universe .down a bottomless funnel roundly sectioned like a goat' s horn .a cornucopia that rose up cuculiform smooth and slick as a worm belly .endless nights that pealed ebony funeral bells .out of fog .out of weightlessness .suddenly total cellular knowledge .memory running backward .gibbering spastic blindness .a soundless owl of frenzy trapped in a cave of prisms .sand endlessly draining down .billows of forever .edges of the world as they splintered .foam rising drowning from inside .the smell of rust .rough green corners that burn .memory the gibbering spastic blind memory .seven rushing vacuums of nothing .yellow .pinpoints cast in amber straining and elongating running like live wax .chill fevers .overhead the odour of stop .this is the stopover before hell or heaven .this is limbo .trapped and doomed alone in a mist-eaten nowhere .a soundless screaming a soundless whirring a soundless spinning spinning spinning .spinning .spinning .spinning .spinning
Harlan Ellison (I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream)
Ode to My Desire I have always been hungry; fingers dipped in sugar, salt across my lips. Four children have passed through my body and still here I am, asking for your hands on my hips, voice in my ear. For melon and honey cream. For you to not make love to me. Take me— but wait until I plead. There is nothing like the impatient thrum of wanting. All legs and foaming mouth. In hallways I play a game called 'kissing,' imagining every woman as a lover, every man with his mouth on mine. How different they must look when they are in heat.
Kate Baer (What Kind of Woman: Poems)
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk: 'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,— That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. O for a beaker full of the warm South, Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene, With beaded bubbles winking at the brim, And purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim: Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies; Where but to think is to be full of sorrow And leaden-eyed despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards: Already with thee! tender is the night, And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays; But here there is no light, Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs, But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet Wherewith the seasonable month endows The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild; White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine; Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves; And mid-May's eldest child, The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves. Darkling I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death, Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath; Now more than ever seems it rich to die, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown: Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home, She stood in tears amid the alien corn; The same that oft-times hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was it a vision, or a waking dream? Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep? - Ode to a Nightingale
John Keats (The Complete Poems)
What rending pains were close at hand! Death! and what a death! worse than any other that is to be named! Water, be it cold or warm, that which buoys up blue icefields, or which bathes tropical coasts with currents of balmy bliss, is yet a gentle conqueror, kisses as it kills, and draws you down gently through darkening fathoms to its heart. Death at the sword is the festival of trumpet and bugle and banner, with glory ringing out around you and distant hearts thrilling through yours. No gnawing disease can bring such hideous end as this; for that is a fiend bred of your own flesh, and this — is it a fiend, this living lump of appetites? What dread comes with the thought of perishing in flames! but fire, let it leap and hiss never so hotly, is something too remote, too alien, to inspire us with such loathly horror as a wild beast; if it have a life, that life is too utterly beyond our comprehension. Fire is not half ourselves; as it devours, arouses neither hatred nor disgust; is not to be known by the strength of our lower natures let loose; does not drip our blood into our faces with foaming chaps, nor mouth nor slaver above us with vitality. Let us be ended by fire, and we are ashes, for the winds to bear, the leaves to cover; let us be ended by wild beasts, and the base, cursed thing howls with us forever through the forest.
Harriet Prescott Spofford
CLEANSING CONFLICT What is a saint? One whose wine has turned to vinegar. If you're still wine-drunkenly brave, don't step forward. When your sheep becomes a lion, then come. It is said of hypocrites, "They have considerable valor among themselves!" But they scatter when a real enemy appears. Muhammad told his young soldiers, "There is no courage before an engagement." A drunk foams at the mouth talking about what he will do when he gets his sword drawn, but the chance arrives, and he remains sheathed as an onion. Premeditating, he's eager for wounds. Then his bag gets touched by a needle, and he deflates. What sort of person says that he or she wants to be polished and pure, then complains about being handled roughly? Love is a lawsuit where harsh evidence must be brought in. To settle the case, the judge must see evidence. You've heard that every buried treasure has a snake guarding it. Kiss the snake to discover the treasure! The severe treatment is not toward you, but the qualities that block your growth. A rug beater doesn't beat the rug, but rather the dirt. A horse trainer switches not the horse, but the going wrong. Imprison your mash in a dark vat, so it can become wine. Someone asks, "Don't you worry about God's wrath when you spank a child?" "I'm not spanking my child, but the demon in him." When a mother screams, "Get out of here!" she means the mean part of the child. Don't run from those who scold, and don't turn away from cleansing conflict, or you will remain weak. Also, don't listen to bragging. If you go along with self-importance, the work collapses. Better a small modest team. Sift almonds. Discard the bitter. Sour and sweet sound alike when you pour them out on the rattling tray, but inside they're very different.
Rumi (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad ar-Rumi) (The Soul of Rumi: A New Collection of Ecstatic Poems)
Can I make you a cup of tea?” He says that would be wonderful, and she smiles handsomely; then her face darkens in terrible sorrow. “And I am so sorry, Mr. Arthur,” she says, as if imparting the death of a loved one. “You are too early to see the cherry blossoms.” After the tea (which she makes by hand, whisking it into a bitter green foam—“Please eat the sugar cookie before the tea”) he is shown to his room and told it was, in fact, the novelist Kawabata Yasunari’s favorite. A low lacquered table is set on the tatami floor, and the woman slides back paper walls to reveal a moonlit corner garden dripping from a recent rain; Kawabata wrote of this garden in the rain that it was the heart of Kyoto. “Not any garden,” she says pointedly, “but this very garden.” She informs him that the tub in the bathroom is already warm and that an attendant will keep it warm, always, for whenever he needs it. Always. There is a yukata in the closet for him to wear. Would he like dinner in the room? She will bring it personally for him: the first of the four kaiseki meals he will be writing about. The kaiseki meal, he has learned, is an ancient formal meal drawn from both monasteries and the royal court. It is typically seven courses, each course composed of a particular type of food (grilled, simmered, raw) and seasonal ingredients. Tonight, it is butter bean, mugwort, and sea bream. Less is humbled both by the exquisite food and by the graciousness with which she presents it. “I most sincerely apologize I cannot be here tomorrow to see you; I must go to Tokyo.” She says this as if she were missing the most extraordinary of wonders: another day with Arthur Less. He sees, in the lines around her mouth, the shadow of the smile all widows wear in private. She bows and exits, returning with a sake sampler. He tries all three, and when asked which is his favorite, he says the Tonni, though he cannot tell the difference. He asks which is her favorite. She blinks and says: “The Tonni.” If only he could learn to lie so compassionately.
Andrew Sean Greer (Less (Arthur Less, #1))
Today I've prepared a dish I'm calling 'Sea Bass of Three.' The first is a citrus ceviche with yellow chilies and a hint of preserved lemon, to be eaten with plantain crisps on the left of your plate." Even from her vantage, Penelope could see Elijah had molded the ceviche into a vague fish shape that pointed to the center of the plate. "Next, in the center, is a pan-sautéed fillet of sea bass coated in chili de árbol, and paprika potatoes sliced and arranged to resemble fish scales," Elijah continued. Penelope's mouth watered at the sight of the fillet, which looked perfectly crisp and very much resembled a small fish. It again seemed to point to the third and final part of the dish, thanks to the way he'd arranged it all. "And for the final phase, you have a sea-bass-and-cod fritter with fresh coriander leaves, serrano chilies, and a pineapple, chili, and lime foam." The queen and the princess nodded and started to eat the ceviche. "Will you explain what you've done with the samphire?" Lady Rutland asked, pointing to the green seaweed that resembled very thin asparagus spears. "The samphire is meant to symbolize the sea, just as the pineapple foam is meant to suggest sea foam. I sautéed the samphire in a spiced butter," Elijah replied. Penelope grinned from her seat behind the Minstrels' Gallery's open door. He'd almost made it look like the fish (especially the potato-scaled fillet in the center) was still swimming in the sea. From what she could see, he'd dotted the foam in strategic places on the plate, including near the ceviche, so one could take a bite with a plantain crisp and the foam, or try it plain.
Jennieke Cohen (My Fine Fellow)
Trump’s shortcomings stood out particularly during emergencies. I remember briefing the president in the Oval Office on the projected storm track of an Atlantic hurricane. At first, he seemed to grasp the devastating magnitude of the Category 4 superstorm, until he opened his mouth. “Is that the direction they always spin?” the president asked me. “I’m sorry sir,” I responded, “I don’t understand.” “Hurricanes. Do they always spin like that?” He made a swirl in the air with his finger. “Counterclockwise?” I asked. He nodded. “Yes, Mr. President. It’s called the Coriolis effect. It’s the same reason toilet water spins the other direction in the Southern Hemisphere.” “Incredible,” Trump replied, squinting his eyes to look at the foam board presentation. We needed him to urge residents to evacuate from the Carolinas, where it looked like the storm would make landfall, but the president mused about another potential response. “You know, I was watching TV, and they interviewed a guy in a parking lot,” Trump leaned back and recounted. “He was wearing a red hat, a MAGA hat, and he said he was going to ‘ride it out.’ Isn’t that something? That’s what Trump supporters do. They’re tough. They ride it out. I think that’s what I’ll tell them to do.” Sometimes his irreverence could be funny, even charming. That day it wasn’t. Worried looks filled the room. A clever communications aide piped up. “Mr. President, I wouldn’t take that chance. This is going to be a pretty bad storm, and you don’t want to lose supporters in the Carolinas before the 2020 election.” The president thought about it for a moment. “That’s such a good point. We should urge the evacuations.” You couldn’t write such a stupid scene in a movie, but it always got a little worse.
Miles Taylor (Blowback A Warning to Save Democracy from the Next Trump)
Quote from "The Dish Keepers of Honest House" ....TO TWIST THE COLD is easy when its only water you want. Tapping of the toothbrush echoes into Ella's mind like footsteps clacking a cobbled street on a bitter, dry, cold morning. Her mind pushes through sleep her body craves. It catches her head falling into a warm, soft pillow. "Go back to bed," she tells herself. "You're still asleep," Ella mumbles, pushes the blanket off, and sits up. The urgency to move persuades her to keep routines. Water from the faucet runs through paste foam like a miniature waterfall. Ella rubs sleep-deprieved eyes, then the bridge of her nose and glances into the sink. Ella's eyes astutely fixate for one, brief millisecond. Water becomes the burgundy of soldiers exiting the drain. Her mouth drops in shock. The flow turns green. It is like the bubbling fungus of flockless, fishless, stagnating ponds. Within the iridescent glimmer of her thinking -- like a brain losing blood flow, Ella's focus is the flickering flashing of gray, white dust, coal-black shadows and crows lifting from the ground. A half minute or two trails off before her mind returns to reality. Ella grasps a toothbrush between thumb and index finger. She rests the outer palm against the sink's edge, breathes in and then exhales. Tension in the brow subsides, and her chest and shoulders drop; she sighs. Ella stares at pasty foam. It exits the drain as if in a race to clear the sink of negativity -- of all germs, slimy spit, the burgundy of imagined soldiers and oppressive plaque. GRASPING THE SILKY STRAND between her fingers, Ella tucks, pulls and slides the floss gently through her teeth. Her breath is an inch or so of the mirror. Inspections leave her demeanor more alert. Clouding steam of the image tugs her conscience. She gazes into silver glass. Bits of hair loosen from the bun piled at her head's posterior. What transforms is what she imagines. The mirror becomes a window. The window possesses her Soul and Spirit. These two become concerned -- much like they did when dishonest housekeepers disrupted Ella's world in another story. Before her is a glorious bird -- shining-dark-as-coal, shimmering in hues of purple-black and black-greens. It is likened unto The Raven in Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem of 1845. Instead of interrupting a cold December night with tapping on a chamber door, it rests its claws in the decorative, carved handle of a backrest on a stiff dining chair. It projects an air of humor and concern. It moves its head to and fro while seeking a clearer understanding. Ella studies the bird. It is surrounded in lofty bends and stretches of leafless, acorn-less, nearly lifeless, oak trees. Like fingers and arms these branches reach below. [Perhaps they are reaching for us? Rest assured; if they had designs on us, I would be someplace else, writing about something more pleasant and less frightening. Of course, you would be asleep.] Balanced in the branches is a chair. It is from Ella's childhood home. The chair sways. Ella imagines modern-day pilgrims of a distant shore. Each step is as if Mother Nature will position them upright like dolls, blown from the stability of their plastic, flat, toe-less feet. These pilgrims take fate by the hand. LIFTING A TOWEL and patting her mouth and hands, Ella pulls the towel through the rack. She walks to the bedroom, sits and picks up the newspaper. Thumbing through pages that leave fingertips black, she reads headlines: "Former Dentist Guilty of Health Care Fraud." She flips the page, pinches the tip of her nose and brushes the edge of her chin -- smearing both with ink. In the middle fold directly affront her eyes is another headline: "Dentist Punished for Misconduct." She turns the page. There is yet another: "Dentist guilty of urinating in surgery sink and using contaminated dental instruments on patients." This world contains those who are simply insane! Every profession has those who stray from goals....
Helene Andorre Hinson Staley
.'Nothing has changed. I still need vengeance.' Silence. She glanced sideways, and she saw Ninefingers frowning down at the pale foam on the dark water, as if her answer had not been the one he had been hoping for. It would have been easy to change it. 'I'll go where you go,' she could have said, and who would have been worse off? No one. Certainly not her. But Ferro did not have it in her to put herself in his power like that. Now it came to the test there was an invisible wall between them. One that there was no crossing. There always had been. All she could say was, 'You?' He seemed to think about it a while, angry-looking, chewing at his lip. 'I should go back to the North.' He said it unhappily, without even looking at her. 'There's work there I should never have left. Dark work, that needs doing. That's where I'll go, I reckon. Back to the North, and settle me some scores.' She frowned. Scores? Who was it told her you had to have more than vengeance. Now scores was all he wanted? Lying bastard. 'Scores,' she hissed. 'Good.' And the word was sour as sand on her tongue. He looked her in the eye for a long moment. He opened his mouth, as if he was about to speak, and he stayed there, his lips formed into a word, one hand part-way lifted towards her. Then he seemed suddenly to slump, and he set his jaw, and he turned his shoulder to her and leaned back on the rail. 'Good.' And that easily it was all done between them. Ferro scowled as she turned away. She curled up her fists and felt her nails digging into her palms, furious hard. She cursed to herself, and bitterly. Why could she not have said different words? Some breath, and a shape of the mouth, and everything is changed. It would have been easy. Except that Ferro did not have it in her, and she knew she never would have. The Gurkish had killed that part of her, far away, and long ago, and left her dead inside. She had been a fool to hope, and in her bones she had known it all along. Hope is for the weak.
Joe Abercrombie (Before They Are Hanged (The First Law, #2))
Well then, first would be the abalone and sea urchin- the bounty of the sea! Ah, I see! This foam on top is kombu seaweed broth that's been whipped into a mousse!" "Mm! I can taste the delicate umami flavors seeping into my tongue!" "The fish meat was aged for a day wrapped in kombu. The seaweed pulls just enough of the moisture out of the meat, allowing it to keep longer, a perfect technique for a bento that needs to last. Hm! Next looks to be bonito. ...!" What rich, powerful umami!" Aha! This is the result of several umami components melding together. The glutamic acid in the kombu from the previous piece is mixing together in my mouth with the inosinic acid in the bonito! "And, like, I cold aged this bonito across two days. Aging fish and meats boosts their umami components, y'know. In other words, the true effect of this bento comes together in your mouth... as you eat it in order from one end to the other." "Next is a row... that looks to be made entirely from vegetables. But none of them use a single scrap of seaweed. The wrappers around each one are different vegetables sliced paper-thin!" "Right! This bento totally doesn't go for any heavy foods." "Next comes the sushi row that practically cries out that it's a main dish... raw cold-aged beef sushi!" Th-there it is again! The powerful punch of umami flavor as two components mix together in my mouth! "Hm? Wait a minute. I understand the inosinic acid comes from the beef... but where is the glutamic acid?" "From the tomatoes." "Tomatoes? But I don't see any..." "They're in there. See, I first put them in a centrifuge. That broke them down into their component parts- the coloring, the fiber, and the jus. I then filtered the jus to purify it even further. Then I put just a few drops on each piece of veggie sushi." "WHAT THE HECK?!" "She took an ingredient and broke it down so far it wasn't even recognizable anymore? Can she even do that?" Appliances like the centrifuge and cryogenic grinder are tools that were first developed to be used in medicine, not cooking. Even among pro chefs, only a handful are skilled enough to make regular use of such complex machines! Who would have thought a high school student was capable of mastering them to this degree! "And last but not least we have this one. It's sea bream with some sort of pink jelly... ... resting on top of a Chinese spoon." That pink jelly was a pearl of condensed soup stock! Once it popped inside my mouth... ... it mixed together with the sea bream sushi until it tasted like- "Sea bream chazuke!
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 8 [Shokugeki no Souma 8] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #8))
Jenks and I stood there like statues watching him twitch, his eyes rolling up in his head. He clutched at his clothes pulling the wooden pole they hung from down on top of him. Slowly his right hand came scrambling out away from his body to clutch at my left leg. Without thinking I shoved my crucifix at him and he pulled his hand back with a hiss, shielding his face again. As quickly as I could, I dug my tubes of Holy Water out of my coat pocket and emptied them on his head. He shrieked again and clawed at his face. Jenks followed suit, pouring his two vials on Skorzeny's body and legs. Skorzeny started to foam and bubble before our eyes. I was paralyzed. I couldn't quite believe what was happening. Those books hadn't described any of this. I was feeling dizzy and sick. The shrieks turned to groans and a gurgling deep in his throat. He pulled his hands away from his face and it looked like the disintegrating Portrait of Dorian Gray. I looked over to Jenks who had an odd expression on his face. I looked over to Jenks who had on odd expression on his face. He motioned to me and reached for my left hand which, I noticed, was still clutching the airline hag with the stake and hammer in it. I dropped it and he grabbed it off the floor, moving over to the smoking form still squirming in the closet which smelled even more foul than before, and oozing a greenish yellow pus from the crumpled clothing on his scarecrow frame. Jenks looked back at me and handed me the stake and hammer. 'Go ahead. This was your idea. Finish it.' I declined, turning away. Jenks spun me around violently and thrust the stake into my left hand. He pushed me toward what was left of Skorzeny and forced me to my knees. He forced my hand toward Skorzeny, positioning the stake over the man's chest. Then he stuck the hammer in my right hand. 'Do it, you gutless sonofabitch. Finish it... now!' And he stepped away. I looked at him and back at Skorzeny. Then I gave one vicious swing and hit the stake dead center. The thing made a gurgling grunt, like a pig snuffling for food, and started to regurgitate a blackish fluid from its mouth. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath and hit the stake three more times. Then I fell back and threw up. When I looked back, Skorzeny's hands, or what was left of them, clutched at the stake trying to pull it out. Suddenly, he emitted a kind of moaning, sucking sound, gagged and more bile-colored liquid flecked with black and red came coiling up in a viscous rope like some evil worm from his mouth. And he stopped moving, his hands still clutching the stake. Then a sort of gaseous mist started to rise from his body and it was so much worse than the original smell that I pushed Jenks aside and ran from the house. I ran all the way to a patrol car where I slumped against the left front wheel as Jenks slowly strolled toward me. He walked past me, ignoring me, and opened his trunk, taking out a couple of small gas cans, and headed back to the house. I wasn't paying much attention until he left the house again and I saw it was aflame.
Jeff Rice (The Night Stalker)
In the pass the muttering sickness leaped into our throats, coughing and spitting in the silver morning, frost on our bones. Most of the ape forms died there on the treeless slopes, dumb animal eyes on "me" brought the sickness from white time caves frozen in my throat to hatch in the warm steamlands spitting song of scarlet bursts in egg flesh, beyond the pass, limestone slopes down into a high green savanna and the grass-wind on our genitals, came to a swamp fed by hot springs and mountain ice. and fell in flesh heaps, sick apes spitting blood laugh, sound bubbling in throats torn with the talk sickness, faces and bodies covered with pus foam, animal hair thru the purple sex- flesh, sick sound twisted thru body, underwater music bubbling in blood beds, human faces tentative flicker in and out of focus. We waded into the warm mud-water, hair and ape flesh off in screaming strips, stood naked human bodies covered with phosphorescent green jelly, soft tentative flesh cut with ape wounds, peeling other genitals, fingers and tongues rubbing off the jelly-cover, body melting pleasure-sounds in the warm mud. till the sun went and a blue wind of silence touched human faces and hair. When we came out of the mud we had names. In the pass muttering arctic flowers, gusts of frost wind, bones and most of the ape still felt, invisible slopes, spitting the bloodbends human bones out of focus, and ape-flesh naked human body. Caves frozen in my throat, green jelly genitals. Limestone slopes cover our bodies melting in savanna and grass mud. shit and sperm fed hot till the sun went. The mountain touched human bubbling throats. Torn we crawled out of the mud. faces and bodies covered the purple sex-flesh, and the sickness leaped into our body underwater music bubble in the silver morning frost, faces tentative flicker in ape forms, into the warm mud and water slopes, cold screaming sickness from white time, covered with phosphorescent shed in the warm lands, spitting ape wounds, feeling egg flesh, green pleasure-sounds warm our genitals, blue wind of silence. Apes spitting sound faces thru pus foam, the talking sickness had names. The sound stood naked in the grass, music bubbling in the blood, quivering frog eggs and sound thru our throats and swap we had names for each other, tentative flicker-laugh and laughing washed the hairs off. down to his genitals. Human our bodies melted into when we crawled out. And the other did not want to touch me because of the white worm-thing inside but no one could refuse if I wanted and ate the fear-softness in other men. The cold was around us in our bones. And I could see the time before the thing when there was green around and the green taste in my mouth and the green plant-shit on my legs, before the cold. . . And some did not eat flesh and died because they could not live with the thing inside. . . Once we caught one of the hairy men with our vine nets and tied him over a slow fire and left him there until he died and the thing sucked his screams moving in my face like smoke and no one could eat the flesh-fear of the hairy man and there was a smell in the cave bent us over
William S. Burroughs (The Soft Machine (The Nova Trilogy #1))
When he lifted his head, Savannah nearly pulled him back to her. He watched her face, her eyes cloudy with desire, her lips so beautiful, bereft of his. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are, Savannah? There is such beauty in your soul, I can see it shining in your eyes.” She touched his face, her palm molding his strong jaw. Why couldn’t she resist his hungry eyes? “I think you’re casting a spell over me. I can’t remember what we were talking about.” Gregori smiled. “Kissing.” His teeth nibbled gently at her chin. “Specifically, your wanting to kiss that orange-bearded imbecile.” “I wanted to kiss every one of them,” she lied indignantly. “No, you did not. You were hoping that silly fop would wipe my taste from your mouth for all eternity.” His hand stroked back the fall of hair around her face. He feathered kisses along the delicate line of her jaw. “It would not have worked, you know. As I recall, he seemed to have a problem getting close to you.” Her eyes smoldered dangerously. “Did you have anything to do with his allergies?” She had wanted someone, anyone, to wipe Gregori’s taste from her mouth, her soul. He raised his voice an octave. “Oh, Savannah, I just have to taste your lips,” he mimicked. Then he went into a sneezing fit. “You haven’t ridden until you’ve ridden on a Harley, baby.” He sneezed, coughed, and gagged in perfect imitation. Savannah punched his arm, forgetting for a moment her bruised fist. When it hurt, she yelped and glared accusingly at him. “It was you doing all that to him! The poor man— you damaged his ego for life. Each time he touched me, he had a sneezing fit.” Gregori raised an eyebrow, completely unrepentant. “Technically, he did not lay a hand on you. He sneezed before he could get that close.” She laid her head back on the pillow, her ebony hair curling around his arm, then her arm, weaving them together. His lips found her throat, then moved lower and found the spot over her breast that burned with need, with invitation. Savannah caught his head firmly in her hands and lifted him determinedly away from her before her treacherous body succumbed completely to his magic. “And the dog episode?” He tried for innocence, but his laughter was echoing in her mind. “What do you mean?” “You know very well what I mean,” she insisted. “When Dragon walked me home.” “Ah, yes, I seem to recall now. The big bad wolf decked out in chains and spikes, afraid of a little dog.” “Little? A hundred-and-twenty-pound Rottweiler mix? Foaming at the mouth. Roaring. Charging him!” “He ran like a rabbit.” Gregori’s soft, caressing voice echoed his satisfaction. He had taken great pleasure in running that particular jackass off. How dare the man try to lay a hand on Savannah? “No wonder I couldn’t touch the dog’s mind and call him off. You rotten scoundrel.” “After Dragon left you, I chased him for two blocks, and he went up a tree. I kept him there for several hours, just to make a point. He looked like a rooster with his orange comb.” She laughed in spite of her desire not to. “He never came near me again.” “Of course not. It was unacceptable,” he said complacently, with complete satisfaction, the warmth of his breath heating her blood.
Christine Feehan (Dark Magic (Dark, #4))
ARE MY CHILDREN still alive?" Sara Prague asked the question in a quiet, steady voice that he heard very clearly despite the noise around her. Cops coming and going, keyboards clicking, phones ringing. She looked haggard. Hard. She hadn't always, Vince figured. The worry lines bracketing her eyes, her mouth, the dry skin, the chapped lips, the sense that she really didn't give a damn what she looked like—those things had been strangers to her that first day. The day her kids hadn't come home from school. Now those lines, that hardness, had made themselves at home. It looked as if they planned to stay awhile. This shouldn't have happened to Sara Prague, a PTA mom whose world revolved around her kids. It shouldn't have happened to her husband. Mike, full-time plumber and part-time Little League coach. It shouldn't happen to anyone. Ever. Vince walked around his desk and eased Sara Prague into a cracked vinyl chair, ignoring the chaos around them. He poured her some stale coffee from the pot on the nearby stand, just as he had every day for the past three weeks. She came in here like clockwork—something the Center for Missing and Exploited Children had probably told her to do. He thought she would keep doing it, too. For years, if necessary. It wouldn't be necessary, though. She took the foam cup and sipped automatically. It was all part of their daily
Maggie Shayne (Gingerbread Man: The Ivy Newman Story (A Brown and de Luca Novel Book 8))
Perhaps his most triumphant recipe, sandwiched between “surprise bananas” and “Tyrrhenian seaweed foam (with coral garnish),” was “Tactile vegetable garden.” Here the salad is eaten “by burying the face in the plate, without the help of the hands, so as to inspire a true tasting with direct contact between the flavors and the textures of the green leaves on the skin of the cheeks and the lips.” As the eater brings the head up from the plate, a waiter sprays his face with cologne. And then before taking another mouthful, “the guests must let their fingertips feast uninterruptedly on their neighbor’s pajamas.” Because, of course, they’re wearing pajamas.
William Sitwell (A History of Food in 100 Recipes)
Turning, he saw the bloody, bared teeth of Mr. Foster’s enormous white wolfhound foaming at the mouth with ravenous, hungry eyes. “Nice doggie,” Billy whimpered, just before the rabid hound tore out his throat.
Billy Wells (Don't Look Behind You)
these are ten manifestations of demon possession in the New Testament. 1. superhuman physical strength (Mark 5:3; Acts 19:16) 2. fits of rage and ferocious behavior (Mark 5:4) 3. high pain tolerance (Mark 5:5) 4. self-mutilation (Mark 5:5) 5. foaming at the mouth (Luke 9:39) 6. seizures or convulsions (Luke 9:42) 7. divided personality (Mark 5:6-7) (The demoniac ran to Jesus yet at the same time cried out in fear.) 8. resistance to spiritual things, especially the name of Jesus (Mark 5:7) 9. clairvoyance or supernatural knowledge (Mark 5:7; Acts 16:16) 10. change in voice (Mark 5:9)
Mark Hitchcock (101 Answers to Questions About Satan, Demons, and Spiritual Warfare)
So I asked your disciples to cast out the evil spirit, but they couldn’t do it.” 19 Jesus said to them,[*] “You faithless people! How long must I be with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.” 20 So they brought the boy. But when the evil spirit saw Jesus, it threw the child into a violent convulsion, and he fell to the ground, writhing and foaming at the mouth. 21 “How long has this been happening?” Jesus asked the boy’s father. He replied, “Since he was a little boy. 22 The spirit often throws him into the fire or into water, trying to kill him. Have mercy on us and help us, if you can.” 23 “What do you mean, ‘If I can’?” Jesus asked. “Anything is possible if a person believes.” 24 The father instantly cried out, “I do believe, but help me overcome my unbelief!” 25 When
Anonymous
Foaming is a huge reward,” said Sinclair, the brand manager. “Shampoo doesn’t have to foam, but we add foaming chemicals because people expect it each time they wash their hair. Same thing with laundry detergent. And toothpaste—now every company adds sodium laureth sulfate to make toothpaste foam more. There’s no cleaning benefit, but people feel better when there’s a bunch of suds around their mouth. Once the customer starts expecting that foam, the habit starts growing.” Cravings are what drive habits. And figuring out how to spark a craving makes creating a new habit easier. It’s as true now as it was almost a century ago. Every night, millions of people scrub their teeth in order to get a tingling feeling; every morning, millions put on their jogging shoes to capture an endorphin rush they’ve learned to crave.
Charles Duhigg (The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do In Life And Business)
New psychological research suggests that air rage, road rage and other seemingly irrational outbursts of wild-eyed, foaming- at-the-mouth fury could be extreme reactions to the violation of a set of rules that choreographs our every waking moment: the unwritten, unconscious system of personal body space. Mounting evidence shows that we all need this space to stay sane. "We walk around in a sort of invisible bubble," says Phil Leather, head of Nottingham University's social and environmental research group. "It's egg-shaped, because we allow people to come closer from in front than behind - an entire language is expressed via the amount of distance we choose to keep between each other.
David B. Givens (The NONVERBAL DICTIONARY of gestures, signs and body language cues)
Rail attendants dismiss excited train hobbyists as “foamers” (foaming at the mouth as they board their choo-choos).
Mark Leibovich (This Town)
Like a priest carrying home his first computer after hearing about child pornography on the Internet, I was practically foaming at the mouth in anticipation during the drive to the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum. I
David Thorne (The Internet is a Playground: Irreverent Correspondences of an Evil Online Genius)
But by this stage, in her midthirties, she was less frantic about herself: “When we are young we think our troubles a mighty business—that the world is spread out expressly as a stage for the particular drama of our lives and that we have a right to rant and foam at the mouth if we are crossed. I have done enough of that in my time. But we begin at last to understand that these things are important only to one’s own consciousness, which is but as a globule of dew on a rose-leaf that at midday there will be no trace of. This is no high flown sentimentality, but a simple reflection which I find useful to me every day.”13
David Brooks (The Road to Character)
Words didn’t come. I couldn’t formulate a thought. I was too startled. These three figures lying in the sand in front of me weren’t surfers at all. They weren’t even people. From their facial features and upper torsos, they looked kind of like women, but all three of them had silver-colored skin. They were bald, with strange ridges marking their skulls. None of them seemed to have ears, only holes in the sides of their heads. No nose was visible, not even a bone or nostrils filled that space between their eyes and mouths. Although their mouths seemed to be moving, they were actually breathing through what looked like gills in their necks. And if that wasn’t weird enough, instead of legs, their upper torsos stretched out into long, scale-covered, silver fishtails. If I had to say what these things stranded in front of me, splattered with oil, appeared to be, I’d say mermaids. And no, they didn’t look like they’d start singing songs or granting me wishes. They looked a little bit scary—but fragile too. Most of all, they looked like they were going to die, and no handsome prince was there to kiss them and keep them from turning into sea foam.
D.G. Driver (Cry of the Sea (Juniper Sawfeather, #1))
Lucie rushed to Rotenberg, who was wheezing through a hole in his throat. She pressed her two palms over the wound. Her fingers instantly turned purple. “Hang on, Philip!” The man gripped Lucie’s wrists tightly. His eyes seemed to be preparing for death. Thick black smoke was pouring under the door. “On my neck…The key…Pull…” Lucie hesitated a split second, then did as told. She yanked on the thin chain at the end of which hung a small bit of metal. Blood had begun to foam from Rotenberg’s mouth. “What is this a key to?” The lawyer murmured something inaudible. A teardrop, then no more.
Franck Thilliez (Syndrome E)
Look at her,” he ordered. “She’s foaming at the mouth. That’s bad, right? Don’t they shoot you when you do that?” “She’s blowing bubbles,” Grace explained. “At three months, we say it’s cute. We frown on it when a child turns six. At thirteen, a stem reprimand is in order. It’s only bubble-blowing adults we shoot.
Day Leclaire (Who’s Holding the Baby? (Salvatore Brothers, #1))
Most of those people won't meet my eyes, now, but I'm not one of them. Every morning I get up, and while brushing my teeth, look at my showered self, calmly foaming at the mouth.
Daniel Handler (The Basic Eight)
Subjectivity is truly no one. It is truly the desert. What is constitutive of the subject is to be integrally with the things, with the world, to have no positively assignable interior, to be generality. Subjectivity is this foam at the mouth of the world, that the world never dissipates. This is where we find the truth of what Sartre says about nothingness. But what we thus say about subjectivity as nothingness must be immediately translated: therefore there is nothing to say about that, that is not, this nothingness is not, and the negation of this nothingness, the negintuition of this nothingness is not a beginning in one part of philosophy, to which we could then add a counterpart or a complement of facticity. The desert of subjectivity, this notion is one with that of object-Being. And the two notions are both thrown back precisely through the acknowledgment of nothingness as nichtiges Nichts. That of which it is suitable to speak, that which is, is the vertical, non-projective world, and it is the seeing, speaking subject—thinking only on the basis of these operations.This subject is not consciousness, nor Ichheit, not even as 'pure' negativities, it is Speech and Experience, and correlatively, Being is not a distance that I extend, but a distance of transgression, of encroachment and overcoming, and this being surrounds me, and at the limit all my thoughts participate in it. The true nothingness, the nothingness that is true, is Being as distant and as non-hidden (that is, also hidden).
Maurice Merleau-Ponty (The Merleau-Ponty Reader (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy))
Drew winced. “My back hurts. What did you do to me in your front yard? One minute I was standing, then I was flat on my back in the grass.” “I swept the leg,” she said matter-of-factly. “But why?” “Why not? It’s the fastest way to get someone to the ground.” “But we were standing on your lawn.” “Exactly. We were on nice, soft grass. I would have wrestled you sooner, but it’s not safe on the pavement.” “Do you always wrestle with guys?” “Just the ones I like.” She tapped him on the nose. “Boop.” He tapped her right back. “Boop.” She asked, “Now that I’ve taught you to watch out for the leg sweep, what else can I do for you? Breakfast in bed? Pack you a bagged lunch for work today?” He checked the time on her alarm clock. “It’s Saturday, which is a light day, but I do have a few patients after lunch.” “What do you mean it’s a light day? You’re not fully booked? You must not be a very good dentist. Maybe I should get a second opinion on that cap you glued into my mouth all willy-nilly.” He dropped his jaw in mock outrage. “Not a very good dentist? Those are fighting words, you bad girl.” She raised her eyebrows. “Want to take this back out to the front lawn?” “I think we gave your neighbors enough of a show last night.” “True,” she said. “Plus, we already got grass stains all over one change of clothes.” He wrinkled his nose. “Grass stains.” He groaned. He leaned back, resting his head on Megan’s second pillow, where Muffins normally slept. The sea-foam-green linens were a perfect complement to his skin tone. His brown eyes were a rich chocolate with bright flecks and an inner ring that was nearly green. The sheets had been purchased to complement Muffins, with his orange fur and entirely green eyes, but they looked even better around Dr. Drew Morgan. Drew asked, “What are you thinking about?” He reached up to run his fingers through her tangled morning hair. She normally hated that, but it felt good when Drew did it. “I’m thinking that you look really good in my sheets. You look good in sea-foam green.” “Thanks.” He grinned. “I can’t wait to see how you look in my bed.” “You think you’re going to get me into your bed?” “Sure. I know how it’s done. You just sweep the leg.” “I shouldn’t have told you all my secrets.” Muffins returned and situated himself between them for a bath. Drew propped himself up on one elbow and petted the cat. “So what do I have to do to get you to my place in the first place?” “Reverse psychology works well on me. You could tell me to never come over. You could ban me from your house.” He chuckled. “Whatever you do, don’t show up naked under a trench coat.” “What makes you think I’d show up naked in a trench coat?” “You’re a wild girl. Exactly what I need right now.” “You need me? Are we talking about, like, a medical type of emergency?” “You tell me.” He scooped up Muffins, placed him on the chair next to the bed, and pulled Megan close to him.
Angie Pepper (Romancing the Complicated Girl (Baker Street Romance #2))
Migration Crows assemble in the bare elm above our house. Restless, staring: like souls who want back in life. —And who wouldn’t want again the hot bath after hard work, with soft canyons of splitting foam; or the glass of spring water cold at the mouth? To be startled by beauty—drops of bright blood on the snow. To be radiant. All morning the crows watch me in the garden putting in the early onions. Their bodies look oiled. Back in, back in, they shake the wooden rattles.
Jenny George
But not everyone was taken in by Hitler’s act. In Germany, too, there were warning voices. To many people’s surprise, on 17 October, Nobel Prize-winning author Thomas Mann issued an impassioned “Appeal to Reason” in Berlin’s Beethoven-Saal auditorium. The call was combined with a complex analysis of the intellectual and social preconditions for National Socialism. The Hitler movement would never have reached such a level of “mass emotional conviction,” Mann asserted, if it had not been preceded by “the sense of the beginning of a new epoch and…a new spiritual situation for humanity.” People had turned away from the fundamental principles of a civil society—“liberty, equality, education, optimism and belief in progress”—and faith in reason to embrace “the forces of the unconscious, of unthinking dynamism and of pernicious creativity,” which rejected everything intellectual. Fed by those tendencies and carried by a “gigantic wave of eccentric barbarism and primitive, populist fairground barking,” National Socialism pursued “a politics of the grotesque…replete with Salvation Army allures, reflexive mass paroxysms, amusement-park chiming, cries of hallelujah and mantra-like repetition of monotonous slogans until everyone foamed at the mouth.
Volker Ullrich (Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939)
The language, in fact, was Danish. After a moment, Nilsson recognized the lyrics, Jacobsen’s Songs of Gurre, and Schönberg’s melodies for them. The call of King Valdemar’s men, raised from their coffins to follow him on the spectral ride that he was condemned to lead, snarled forth. “Be greeted, King, here by Gurre Lake! Across the island our hunt we take, From stringless bow let the arrow fly That we have aimed with a sightless eye. We chase and strike at the shadow hart, And dew like blood from the wound will start. Night raven swinging And darkly winging, And leafage foaming where hoofs are ringing, So shall we hunt ev’ry night, they say, Until that hunt on the Judgment Day. Holla, horse, and holla, hound, Stop awhile upon this ground! Here’s the castle which erstwhile was. Feed your horses on thistledown; Man may eat of his own renown.” She started to go on with the next stanza, Valdemar’s cry to his lost darling; but she faltered and went directly to his men’s words as dawn breaks over them. “The cock lifts up his head to crow, Has the day within him, And morning dew is running red With rust, from off our swords. Past is the moment! Graves are calling with open mouths, And earth sucks down ev’ry light-shy horror. Sink ye, sink ye! Strong and radiant, life comes forth With deeds and hammering pulses. And we are death folk, Sorrow and death folk, Anguish and death folk. To graves! To graves! To dream-bewildered sleep— Oh, could we but rest peaceful!
Poul Anderson (Tau Zero)