Folding Bicycle Quotes

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Along with the greening of May came the rain. Then the clouds disappeared and a soft pale lightness fell over the city, as if Kyoto had broken free of its tethers and lifted up toward the sun. The mornings were as dewy and verdant as a glass of iced green tea. The nights folded into pencil-gray darkness fragrant with white flowers. And everyone's mood seemed buoyant, happy, and carefree. When I wasn't teaching or studying tea kaiseki, I would ride my secondhand pistachio-green bicycle to favorite places to capture the fleeting lushness of Kyoto in a sketchbook. With a small box of Niji oil pastels, I would draw things that Zen pots had long ago described in words and I did not want to forget: a pond of yellow iris near a small Buddhist temple; a granite urn in a forest of bamboo; and a blue creek reflecting the beauty of heaven, carrying away a summer snowfall of pink blossoms. Sometimes, I would sit under the shade of a willow tree at the bottom of my street, doing nothing but listening to the call of cuckoos, while reading and munching on carrots and boiled egg halves smeared with mayonnaise and wrapped in crisp sheets of nori. Never before had such simple indulgences brought such immense pleasure.
Victoria Abbott Riccardi (Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto)
Up rose the scent of green-apple shampoo. Of river stones once the flood has gone. The taste of winter sky laced with sulfur fumes. A kiss beneath a white-hearted tree. A hot still day holding its breath. We removed the contents one by one. There were two blue plastic hair combs. A tough girl's black rubber-band bracelet. A newspaper advertisement for a secretarial school folded in half. A blond braid wrapped in gladwrap. A silver necklace with a half-a-broken-heart pendant. An address, written in a leftward-slanting hand, on a scrap of paper. Ballet shoes wrapped in laces. From the box came the sound of bicycle tires humming on hot pavement. Of bare feet running through crackling grass. Of frantic fingers unstitching an embroidered flower. Of paper wings rising on a sudden wind. Of the lake breathing against the shore. I didn't say anything. I kept very still.
Karen Foxlee (The Anatomy of Wings)
They came in to look. I watched them. Most people go through museums like they do Macy's: eyes sweeping the display, stopping only if something really grabs their attention. These two looked at everything. They both clearly liked the bicycle picture. Yup, Dutch, I decided. He was a few steps ahead when he got to my favorite painting there. Diana and the Moon. It was-surprise surprise-of Diana, framed by a big open window, the moon dominating the sky outside. She was perched on the windowsill, dressed in a gauzy wrap that could have been nightclothes or a nod to her goddess namesake. She looked beautiful, of course, and happy, but if you looked for more than a second, you could see that her smile had a teasing curve to it and one of her hands was actually wrapped around the outside frame. I thought she looked like she might swing her legs over the sill and jump, turning into a moth or owl or breath of wind even before she was completely out of the room. I thought she looked, too, like she was daring the viewer to come along. Or at least to try. The Dutch guy didn't say anything. He just reached out a hand. His girlfriend stepped in, folding herself into the circle of his outsretched arm. They stood like that, in front of the painting, for a full minute. Then he sneezed. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a tissue.He took in and, without letting go of her, did a surprisingly graceful one-handed blow. Then he crumpled the tissue and looked around for a trash can. There wasn't one in sight. She held out her free hand; he passed over the tissue, and she stuck it right back into her pocket. I wanted to be grossed out. Instead, I had the surprising thought that I really really wanted someone who would do that: put my used Kleenex in his pocket. It seemed like a declaration of something pretty big. Finally,they finished their examination of Diana and moved on.There wasn't much else, just the arrogant Willings and the overblown sunrise. They came over to examine the bronzes. She saw my book. "Excuse me. You know this artist?" Intimately just didn't seem as true anymore. "Pretty well," I answered. "He is famous here?" "Not very." "I like him." she said thoughtfully. "He has...oh, the word...personism?" "Personality?" I offered. "Yes!" she said, delighted. "Personality." She reached behind her without looking. Her boyfriend immediately twined his fingers with hers. They left, unfolding the map again as they went, she chattering cheerfully. I think she was telling him he had personality. They might as well have had exhibit information plaques on their backs: "COUPLE." CONTEMPORARY DUTCH. COURTESY OF THE ESTATE OF LOVE, FOR THE VIEWING PLEASURE (OR NOT) OF ANYONE AND EVERYONE.
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)
In her sweetness where she folds my wounds there is a flower that bees cannot afford. It is too rich for them and would change their wings into operas and all their honey into the lonesome maps of a nonexistent California county. When she has finished folding all my wounds she puts them away in a dresser where the drawers smell like the ghost of a bicycle. Afterwards I rage at her: demanding that her affections always be constant to my questions. — Richard Brautigan, “In Her Sweetness Where She Folds My Wounds,” Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt. (Delacorte Pr January 1979)
Richard Brautigan (Rommel Drives on Deep Into Egypt)
A prediction about safety is not, of course, merely statistical or demographic. If it were, a woman crossing a park alone one late afternoon could calculate risk like this: there are 200 people in the park; 100 are children, so they cause no concern. Of the remaining 100, all but 20 are part of couples; 5 of those 20 are women, meaning concern would appropriately attach to about 15 people she might encounter (men alone). But rather than acting just on these demographics, the woman’s intuition will focus on the behavior of the 15 (and on the context of that behavior). Any man alone may get her attention for an instant, but among those, only the ones doing certain things will be moved closer to the center of the predictive circle. Men who look at her, show special interest in her, follow her, appear furtive, or approach her will be far closer to the center than those who walk by without apparent interest, or those playing with a dog, or those on a bicycle, or those asleep on the grass. Speaking of crossing a park alone, I often see women violating some of nature’s basic safety rules. The woman who jogs along enjoying music through Walkman headphones has disabled the survival sense most likely to warn her about dangerous approaches: her hearing. To make matters worse, those wires leading up to her ears display her vulnerability for everyone to see. Another example is that while women wouldn’t walk around blind-folded, of course, many do not use the full resources of their vision; they are reluctant to look squarely at strangers who concern them. Believing she is being followed, a woman might take just a tentative look, hoping to see if someone is visible in her peripheral vision. It is better to turn completely, take in everything, and look squarely at someone who concerns you. This not only gives you information, but it communicates to him that you are not a tentative, frightened victim-in-waiting. You are an animal of nature, fully endowed with hearing, sight, intellect, and dangerous defenses. You are not easy prey, so don’t act like you are.
Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
What the f—!” A shadow fell over me, halting the expletives as I stared in horror at my bicycle. “I had to take measures.” Zak, ears tucked away again, folded his arms. “But my wheels!” I gawked. “Wasn’t one enough? You removed both!” “As I said, measures were taken.” He looked at his pocket watch. “Were you meant to be somewhere?
E.V. Drake (Elves of Fate: Denial)
How you doin’, Detective Oliver?” he greeted. “Have a seat.” “You know I haven’t been a cop for nearly fifteen years,” I said as I settled. “Once a cop…” he insinuated on an airy smile. Then: “What you got in the satchel?” It was a slender blue briefcase I’d found in the blue bedroom. I laid the case on Moroccan tile, then opened it to reveal 250 shiny silver disks. “Oh my God,” Lamont said, his eyes alight with the promise of treasure. “You got the cards?” I asked him. “Blackjack?” “Just what I had in mind.” “Loretta,” the luckster called out. “Yeah, baby?” “Bring me out a hundred ones.” “Okay.” “There’s more than twice that here,” I said. “I see,” he assured me. From somewhere in the folds of the housecoat, my friend brought out a blue deck of Bicycle Standard playing cards. Mr. Charles’s face glistened with the fever of gambling. Somehow he managed to shuffle the deck using the good hand and the infirm one. Blackjack. It was the first word of an ancient incantation that sometimes allowed a poor man or woman to dream about deliverance. Lamont grinned at those cards.
Walter Mosley (Every Man a King: A King Oliver Novel)
I’ve just been told that over 3,000 of our American boys died in the first eleven days of the invasion of France. Who died? I’ll tell you who died. Not so many years ago, there was a little boy sleeping in his crib. In the night, it thundered and lightninged. He woke and cried out in fear. His mother came and fixed his blankets better and said, “Don’t cry. Nothing will ever hurt you.” He died . . . There was another kid with a new bicycle. When he came past your house he rode no-hands while he folded the evening paper in a block and threw it against your door. You used to jump when you heard the bang. You said, “Some day, I’m going to give that kid a good talking-to.” He died. Then there were two kids. One said to the other, “I’ll do all the talking. I just want you to come along to give me nerve.” They came to your door. The one who had promised to do all the talking said, “Would you like your lawn mowed, Mister?” They died together. They gave each other nerve . . . They all died. And I don’t know how any one of us here at home can sleep peacefully tonight unless we are sure in our hearts that we have done our part all the way along the line. —BETTY SMITH, “WHO DIED?” JULY 9, 1944
Molly Guptill Manning (When Books Went to War: The Stories That Helped Us Win World War II)
The two boys did quite a lot of cycling, playing cycle polo in a field not far from Cooldrinagh, just as their father had done earlier in a team run by a man called Wisdom Healy.110 The scene in Beckett’s novel Dream of Fair to Middling Women, where the two brothers go off on their bicycles to the sea, recalls a poignant memory of his childhood: That was in the blue-eyed days when they rode down to the sea on bicycles, Father in the van, his handsome head standing up out of the great ruff of the family towel, John in the centre, lean and gracefully seated, Bel behind, his feet speeding round in the smallest gear ever constructed. They were the Great Bear, the Big Bear and the Little Bear; aliter sic, the Big, Little and Small Bears … Many was the priest coming back safe from his bathe that they passed, his towel folded suavely, like a waiter’s serviette, across his arm. The superlative Bear would then discharge the celebrated broadside: B-P! B-P! B-P! and twist round with his handsome face wreathed in smiles in the saddle to make sure that the sally had not been in vain. It had never been known to be in vain.111
James Knowlson (Damned to Fame: the Life of Samuel Beckett)