“
Here’s a memory, which like most memories is imperfect and subjective—collected long ago like a beach pebble and slipped into the pocket of my mind.
”
”
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
So many pebbles on that beach—millions—all of them worn smooth by the sea’s relentless grinding, but not this one. This one had stayed sharp.
”
”
Pat Barker (The Silence of the Girls)
“
There isn't a pebble on the beach of my inner history that she has left unturned. She knows where to find everything in me and I know where all her stuff is too. She is, in short, my best friend.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love)
“
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet.
The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances.
They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds.
They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets.
The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby’s cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach.
On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.
”
”
Rabindranath Tagore (Gitanjali)
“
No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It's for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men. Archie was none of these. He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios:
Pebble : Beach
Raindrop : Ocean
Needle : Haystack
”
”
Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
“
Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars. Then the breeze died too and there was no noise save the drip and tickle of water that ran out of clefts and spilled down, leaf by leaf, to the brown earth of the island. The air was cool, moist, and clear; and presently even the sound of the water was still. The beast lay huddled on the pale beach and the stains spread, inch by inch.
The edge of the lagoon became a streak of phosphorescence which advanced minutely, as the great wave of the tide flowed. The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations. The line of phosphorescence bulged about the sand grains and little pebbles; it held them each in a dimple of tension, then suddenly accepted them with an inaudible syllable and moved on.
Along the shoreward edge of the shallows the advancing clearness was full of strange, moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes. Here and there a larger pebble clung to its own air and was covered with a coat of pearls. The tide swelled in over the rain-pitted sand and smoothed everything with a layer of silver. Now it touched the first of the stains that seeped from the broken body and the creatures made a moving patch of light as they gathered at the edge. The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured marble. The strange, attendant creatures, with their fiery eyes and trailing vapours busied themselves round his head. The body lifted a fraction of an inch from the sand and a bubble of air escaped from the mouth with a wet plop. Then it turned gently in the water.
Somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling; and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved further along the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out towards the open sea.
”
”
William Golding (Lord of the Flies)
“
When he did appear his eyes were as brown as I remembered, pupils flecked with gold like beach pebbles.
”
”
Amber Dawn (Sub Rosa)
“
To a person who expects every desert to be barren sand dunes, the Sonoran must come as a surprise. Not only are there no dunes, there's no sand. At least not the sort of sand you find at the beach. The ground does have a sandy color to it, or gray, but your feet won't sink in. It's hard, as if it's been tamped. And pebbly. And glinting with -- what else -- mica.
”
”
Jerry Spinelli (Stargirl (Stargirl, #1))
“
I am convinced that the greatest legacy we can leave our children are happy memories: those precious moments so much like pebbles on the beach that are plucked from the white sand and placed in tiny boxes that lay undisturbed on tall shelves until one day they spill out and time repeats itself, with joy and sweet sadness, in the child now an adult.
”
”
Og Mandino
“
I used to imagine that if I got up early enough in the morning and went to Pebbly Beach, I'd find my special someone walking along the shore front, waiting. But she was never there.
”
”
Andrew Matthews (A Winter Night's Dream)
“
Survival was its own quest: we needed to choose to survive over and over again. We had to wash up on shore, and we had to choose to keep washing up every single day. We had to let the survival accrue, pebble after pebble, building a beach from a million tiny moments until suddenly we stopped, looked around, and thought, on a Saturday in Maine, I'm glad we're here.
”
”
Julia Drake (The Last True Poets of the Sea)
“
Nothing like love to put blood
back in the language,
the difference between the beach and its
discrete rocks and shards, a hard
cuneiform, and the tender cursive
of waves; bone and liquid fishegg, desert
and saltmarsh, a green push
out of death. The vowels plump
again like lips or soaked fingers, and the fingers
themselves move around these
softening pebbles as around skin. The sky's
not vacant and over there but close
against your eyes, molten, so near
you can taste it. It tastes of
salt. What touches you is what you touch.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Selected Poems 2: 1976 - 1986)
“
A little way away, where the riverbank became a sort of pebble beach, her brother, Wentworth, was messing around with a stick, and almost certainly making himself sticky. Anything could make Wentworth sticky. Washed and dried and left in the middle of a clean floor for five minutes, Wentworth would be sticky. It didn’t seem to come from anywhere. He just got sticky. But he was an easy child to mind, provided you stopped him from eating frogs.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (The Wee Free Men (Discworld, #30))
“
and when we spoke /
we spoke /
the sounds of our voices fell /
into the air single and /
solid and rounded and really /
there /
and then dulled, and then like sounds /
gone, a fistful of gathered /
pebbles there was no point /
in taking home, dropped on a beachful /
of other coloured pebbles
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Circle Game)
“
She used to sit long hours upon the beach, gazing intently on the waves as they chafed with perpetual motion against the pebbly shore,—or she looked out upon the more distant heave, and sparkle against the sky, and heard, without being conscious of hearing, the eternal psalm, which went up continually.
”
”
Elizabeth Gaskell (North and South)
“
I imagined him rising from the sea like Neptune, half draped in bladderwrack, his neck studded with barnacles, a crab hanging from his hair; he'd remove the creature and fling it aside as he shrugged off the waves. He'd make his way noiselessly up the beach towards me, despite the pebbles, and would take me in his arms and carry me back to wherever it was he'd come from.
”
”
Bethan Roberts (My Policeman)
“
A pebble tossed from a beach can become a tsunami on the other side of the world. You are that pebble and I’m standing on a beach on the other side of time, waiting for the tidal wave to crash.
”
”
Edouard Kagame Continuum
“
Translate into words for me the sighings of the wind through the forest and the withdrawal of the sea down the pebbly beach and the string of sunlight playing on the hyacinth-strewn grass. You cannot! Then you know why the apostle described his experiences in Paradise as unspeakable.
”
”
F.B. Meyer
“
Where does a wise man hide a pebble?" And the tall man answered in a low voice: "On the beach." The small man nodded, and after a short silence said: "Where does a wise man hide a leaf?" And the other answered: "In the forest.
”
”
G.K. Chesterton (The Innocence of Father Brown)
“
The Prophets, too, among us come to teach,
Are one with those who from the pulpit preach;
They pray, and slay, and pass away,
and yet Our ills are as the pebbles on the beach.
Mohammed or Messiah! Hear thou me,
The truth entire nor here nor there can be;
How should our God who made the sun and the moon
Give all his light to One, I cannot see.
”
”
Abu Al-Maari
“
There is no such thing as a perfect match. There are only somewhat good and somewhat bad matches. A couple are like two pebbles that are next to each other on a beach. They will have rough edges and rub each other the wrong way initially. But as they spend time together and the waves pound them, the edges rub off and they will seem made for each other.
”
”
Farahad Zama (The Many Conditions of Love)
“
I thought I could avoid continually crashing, but as it turns out, it's unavoidable. Even on the calmest day, the ocean still rolls into the beach and pulls pebbles out to sea.
”
”
Rebekah Crane (The Upside of Falling Down)
“
At the Concours d’Elegance, the annual auto show and zillionaire fest at Pebble Beach, I introduce myself to a woman in her early fifties whom I’ll call Sally.
”
”
Michael Mechanic (Jackpot: How the Super-Rich Really Live—and How Their Wealth Harms Us All)
“
When I was a boy, playing at the beach, I remember a game I loved, which was an omen of my future life. I would dig a channel with high sides in the sand for the sea to fill. But when the water flooded the path I created for it with such violence that it destroyed everything in its way: my castles made of pebbles, my dikes of sand. It swept away everything, destroying it all, then disappeared, leaving me with a heavy heart, yet not daring to ask for pity, since the sea had only responded to my call. It's the same with love. You call out for it, you plan its course. The wave crashes into your heart, but it's so different from how you imagined it, so bitter and icy.
”
”
Irène Némirovsky
“
Among rocks,
I am the loose one,
among arrows,
I am the heart,
among daughters,
I am the recluse,
among sons,
the one who dies young.
Among answers,
I am the question,
between lovers,
I am the sword,
among scars,
I am the fresh wound,
among confetti,
the black flag.
Among shoes,
I am the one with the pebble,
among days,
the one that never comes,
among the bones you find on the beach the one that sings was mine
”
”
Liesl Mueller
“
Notwithstanding all that has been discovered since Newton’s time, his saying that we are little children picking up pretty pebbles on the beach while the whole ocean lies before us unexplored remains substantially as true as ever, and will do so though we shovel up the pebbles by steam shovels and carry them off in carloads.
”
”
Charles Sanders Peirce (Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Volumes V and VI, Pragmatism and Pragmaticism and Scientific Metaphysics)
“
Beautiful girls in fairy stories are as common as pebbles on the beach. Magnolia-skinned milkmaids rub shoulders with starry-eyed princesses and, in fact, counting two eyes in each bright-eyed damsel would result in a whole galaxy of twinkling stars.
”
”
Eloisa James (When Beauty Tamed the Beast (Fairy Tales, #2))
“
On one side, across the channel, stretched the silvery sand shore of the bar; on the other extended a long, curving beach of red cliffs, rising steeply from the pebbled coves. It was a shore that knew the magic and mystery of storm and star. There is a great solitude about such a shore. The woods are never solitary-they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life. But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into itself for all eternity. We can never pierce its infinite mystery-We may only wander, awed and spell-bound, on the outer fringe of it. The woods call to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one only-a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its majestic music. The woods are human, but the sea is in the company of the archangels.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne's House of Dreams (Anne of Green Gables, #5))
“
For a second, I thought about the lifetime of that sand. I envisioned it from its rocky beginnings as a boulder somewhere far away and long ago, to its breakdown in cobbles, to its further breakdown into pebbles, then to its further breakdown into coarse sand, then to its further break
”
”
Sean Norris (Heaven and Hurricanes)
“
I walked along the pebbly beach. Plastic buoys. A sea coconut, shaped like a woman’s loins. Junk, washed up with the driftwood. Cans, bottles, rubber gloves, detergent containers. I heard grunts and squeals from under a peeling boat, never to float again. In the distance a shadow lit a fire.
”
”
David Mitchell (Ghostwritten)
“
Reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face. Hurray for the Goddamned idiot! Hray! No-one saw: tell no-one. Books you were going to write with letters for titles. Have you read his F? O yes, but I prefer Q. Yes, but W is wonderful. O yes, W. Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply deep, copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria? Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara. Pico della Mirandola like. Ay, very like a whale. When one reads these strange pages of one long gone one feels that one is at one with one who once ...
The grainy sand had gone from under his feet. His boots trod again a damp crackling mast, razorshells, squeaking pebbles, that on the unnumbered pebbles beats, wood sieved by the shipworm, lost Armada. Unwholesome sandflats waited to suck his treading soles, breathing upward sewage breath, a pocket of seaweed smouldered in seafire under a midden of man's ashes. He coasted them, walking warily. A porterbottle stood up, stogged to its waist, in the cakey sand dough. A sentinel: isle of dreadful thirst. Broken hoops on the shore; at the land a maze of dark cunning nets; farther away chalkscrawled backdoors and on the higher beach a dryingline with two crucified shirts. Ringsend: wigwams of brown steersmen and master mariners. Human shells.
He halted. I have passed the way to aunt Sara's. Am I not going there? Seems not.
”
”
James Joyce
“
The sand squeaked underfoot as she toed it. She looked more closely: dark grains of basalt, mixed with minute seashell fragments, and a variety of colorful pebbles, some of them no doubt brecciated fragments of the Hellas impact itself. She lifted her eyes to the hills west of the sea, black under the sun. The bones of things stuck out everywhere. Waves broke in swift lines on the beach, and she walked over the sand toward her friends, in the wind, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars.
”
”
Kim Stanley Robinson (Blue Mars (Mars Trilogy, #3))
“
The islands looked all the same to me--high cliffs bleached white, pebbled beaches that scratched the underside of our ships with their chalky fingernails.
”
”
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
“
a memory, which like most memories is imperfect and subjective—collected long ago like a beach pebble and slipped into the pocket of my mind.
”
”
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
Maybe I could have done fifty things to avoid the accident. Left the car in the garage that day. Hurried through a yellow light that I'd stopped at. Gone to the beach instead of mini-golf. Been alone, not talking to friends. But I did all those things, and Celine hadn't done the many things she could have to avoid the accident, either. All the things get done and you regret them and then you accept them because there's nothing else to do. Regret doesn't budge things; it seems crazy that the force of all that human want can't amend a moment, can't even stir a pebble.
”
”
Darin Strauss (Half a Life)
“
And even as this old guide-book boasts of the, to us, insignificant Liverpool of fifty years ago, the New York guidebooks are now vaunting of the magnitude of a town, whose future inhabitants, multitudinous as the pebbles on the beach, and girdled in with high walls and towers, flanking endless avenues of opulence and taste, will regard all our Broadways and Bowerys as but the paltry nucleus to their Nineveh. From far up the Hudson, beyond Harlem River where the young saplings are now growing, that will overarch their lordly mansions with broad boughs, centuries old; they may send forth explorers to penetrate into the then obscure and smoky alleys of the Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street; and going still farther south, may exhume the present Doric Custom-house, and quote it as a proof that their high and mighty metropolis enjoyed a Hellenic antiquity.
”
”
Herman Melville (Redburn)
“
But that evening, I didn’t hear anything, just the lady typing, which sounded like raindrops or starlings or pebbles being washed up on the beach by the waves. It was a nice sound, soothing, and pretty soon I just dozed off.
”
”
Ruth Ozeki (The Book of Form and Emptiness)
“
Talking was difficult. Instead
we gathered coloured pebbles
from the places on the beach
where they occurred.
They were sea-smoothed, sea-completed.
They enclosed what they intended
to mean in shapes
as random and necessary
as the shapes of words
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Circle Game)
“
Let’s walk to the beach
Let’s cast the net in the water
And catch freshness from water
Let’s pick up a pebble from the ground
Feel the weight of existence
Let’s not abuse moonshine if we suffer from fever
(Occasionally I have observed the moon descending during fever
And reaching the hand of the roof of heaven
I have noticed the goldfinch singing better
Sometimes the wound beneath my foot
Has taught the ups and downs of earth
Sometimes in my sickbed the dimension of the rose has multiplied
And the diameter of orange has increased, the radius of lantern too)
”
”
Sohrab Sepehri
“
It’s not about over-the-top gestures to me,” he finally says almost shyly.
“It’s all the tiny moments that go to make a real love story. The funny things that go wrong like when one of you forgets your anniversary or does something silly. They all become part of your story. And you add to it with every argument or slammed door that you have. Every birthday or Christmas that you mould into a thing that only the two of you recognise. It’s taking care of each other when you’re throwing up or have a cold, it’s huddling under the duvet together laughing so hard your ribs hurt. It’s holding the other one when they’re frightened, knowing you will do anything to make them feel better again. It’s like being two pebbles on a beach. You start off individual shapes and then the weather and proximity means you rub the rough spots off so in the end you’re smooth with a patina that only echoes one other person.
”
”
Lily Morton (Best Man (Close Proximity, #1))
“
...our individual freedoms, our rights to the very thoughts in our own heads, for pity's sake, they are being taken from us one by one, as the pebbles can be taken from a beach. In this way the loss at first goes unnoticed, until it is too late, and all that remains is the shifting sand beneath what once was.
”
”
Paula Brackston (The Little Shop of Found Things (Found Things, #1))
“
From his beach bag the man took an old penknife with a red handle and began to etch the signs of the letters onto nice flat pebbles. At the same time, he spoke to Mondo about everything there was in the letters, about everything you could see in them when you looked and when you listened. He spoke about A, which is like a big fly with its wings pulled back; about B, which is funny, with its two tummies; or C and D, which are like the moon, a crescent moon or a half-full moon; and then there was O, which was the full moon in the black sky. H is high, a ladder to climb up trees or to reach the roofs of houses; E and F look like a rake and a shovel; and G is like a fat man sitting in an armchair. I dances on tiptoes, with a little head popping up each time it bounces, whereas J likes to swing. K is broken like an old man, R takes big strides like a soldier, and Y stands tall, its arms up in the air, and it shouts: help! L is a tree on the river's edge, M is a mountain, N is for names, and people waving their hands, P is asleep on one paw, and Q is sitting on its tail; S is always a snake, Z is always a bolt of lightning, T is beautiful, like the mast on a ship, U is like a vase, V and W are birds, birds in flight; and X is a cross to help you remember.
”
”
J.M.G. Le Clézio (Mondo et autres histoires)
“
I walked home with a lighter step, for that night had knocked something loose in me, something long overdue to be knocked. At long last, I saw that group for what they were, with a few exceptions - a queer assortment of layabouts and late risers, most overdrawn at the bank or at least cutting into principal, only interested in who's going in the drawer at the Maidstone Club or their wedge on the fifteenth hole at Pebble Beach or dressing down the staff about a bit of shell in the lobster while shoveling canapés in. Jinx had done me a favor, freed me of any lingering allegiances to New York Society, snipped my fear of being on their bad side.
”
”
Martha Hall Kelly (Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1))
“
For a moment I felt a vicious hatred for him and his quiet ways, his mundane stroll through the summer, his ordinariness, the banality of everything he had become. He should have been a hero or a seer. He should have told me some incredible story that I could carry with me forever. After all, he had been the one who had run along the beach parallel to a porpoise, who filled his pockets full of pebbles, who could lift the stray orange cat in his fingers.
”
”
Colum McCann (Fishing the Sloe-Black River)
“
PRAXIS DUVEEN, AT THE age of five, sitting on the beach at Brighton, made a pretty picture for the photographer. Round angel face, yellow curls, puffed sleeves, white socks and little white shoes—one on, one off, while she tried to take a pebble from between her tiny pink toes—delightful! The photographer had hoped to include her elder sister Hypatia in the picture, but that sullen, sallow little girl had refused to appear on the same piece of card as her ill-shod sister.
”
”
Fay Weldon (Praxis: A Novel)
“
And just as he had tried, on the southern beach, to find again that unique rounded black pebble with the regular little white belt, which she had happened to show him on the eve of their last ramble, so now he did his best to look up all the roadside items that retained her exclamation mark: the special profile of a cliff, a hut roofed with a layer of silvery-gray scales, a black fir tree and a footbridge over a white torrent, and something which one might be inclined to regard as a kind of fatidic prefiguration: the radial span of a spider’s web between two telegraph wires that were beaded with droplets of mist. She accompanied him: her little boots stepped rapidly, and her hands never stopped moving, moving—to pluck a leaf from a bush or stroke a rock wall in passing—light, laughing hands that knew no repose. He saw her small face with its dense dark freckles, and her wide eyes, whose pale greenish hue was that of the shards of glass licked smooth by the sea waves.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov)
“
Hanging from every corner, above every window, standing on every shelf and tabletop, were dozens of handmade birdcages. Nomi had crafted them all, mostly out of old fishing twine, scraps of nets, and chicken wire. Woven in between the bars of the cages were bits of seashells, crab shells, pebbles, and driftwood she had scavenged along the beach. In a pinch she had made a few out of old clothes hangers she had scissored apart and woven together with strips of a negligee or shirt. Each one was personal, each one was unique, each one was a story
”
”
Brooke Warra (Sanitarium #42)
“
I stared at the little white agates in my hand, delicate as moon drops. The mystery of God's love as I understand it is that God loves the man who was being mean to his dog just as much as he loves babies; God loves Susan Smith, who drowned her two sons, as much as he loves Desmond Tutu. And he loved her just as much when she was releasing the handbrake of her car that sent her boys into the river as he did when she first nursed them. So of course, he loves old ordinary me, even or especially at my most scared and petty and mean and obsessive. Loves me; chooses me.
Remembering this helped, but here is what in fact saved me: Sam came over to see what I held in my palm, glared contemptuously at my small white pebbles, and then without missing a beat slapped the bottom of my hand so that the agates scattered. He ran off down the beach, laughing with glee. It surprised me so, this small meanness, that it made me catch my breath. Boy, I thought, is he going to be hard to place.
When I was young I would have felt, What’s the point of trying to be good if the people who aren’t even trying get to be equally loved? Now I just picked up my pace and tried to catch up with that rotten Sam, because I don’t know much of anything for sure. Only that I am loved – as is
”
”
Anne Lamott (Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith)
“
I shall continue to reshuffle, as well as reject and replace tomes from my own library as my memories of reading reconstitute themselves and settle down into the rhythms of constant re-classification which my life prescribes – like pebbles on a beach being shaped by the surge and pull of the tide. As time permeates and accrues through all the thoughts and feelings which I’ve derived from (or invested in) all those many pages which have so quietly accumulated in my left hand, so too my library is both the mirror of me and the world I have travelled. Indeed, this is why – for me at least – a life without books would be no life at all.
”
”
Tim Chamberlain, Waymarks
“
The Four Winds light was built on a spur of red sand-stone cliff jutting out into the gulf. On one side, across the channel, stretched the silvery sand shore of the bar; on the other, extended a long, curving beach of red cliffs, rising steeply from the pebbled coves. It was a shore that knew the magic and mystery of storm and star. There is a great solitude about such a shore. The woods are never solitary—they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life. But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into itself for all eternity. We can never pierce its infinite mystery—we may only wander, awed and spellbound, on the outer fringe of it. The woods call to us with a hundred voices, but the sea has one only—a mighty voice that drowns our souls in its majestic music. The woods are human, but the sea is of the company of the archangels.
”
”
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables Collection: 11 Books)
“
(Romance is) not about over-the-top gestures to me,” he finally says almost shyly. “It’s all the tiny moments that go to make a real love story. The funny things that go wrong like when one of you forgets your anniversary or does something silly. They all become part of your story. And you add to it with every argument or slammed door that you have. Every birthday or Christmas that you mould into a thing that only the two of you recognise. It’s taking care of each other when you’re throwing up or have a cold, it’s huddling under the duvet together laughing so hard your ribs hurt. It’s holding the other one when they’re frightened, knowing you will do anything to make them feel better again. It’s like being two pebbles on a beach. You start off individual shapes and then the weather and proximity means you rub the rough spots off so in the end you’re smooth with a patina that only echoes one other person.
”
”
Lily Morton
“
Though I could guess which doorknob was for Wendell's kingdom, I could not resist trying the loveliest first: the tiny turquoise sea. Hardly daring to breathe, I turned the doorknob, and the door swung open with a gentle sigh.
Salt wind spilled into the faerie's house. Before me stretched a dry, rocky coastline punctuated by groves of yellowish trees. The turquoise sea was endless and far too bright, broken only by an ellipsis of rugged islands. Just beyond the door was a spindly olive tree and a cairn of white pebbles. Largely to see if I could, I reached through and took one--- the sun beat down upon my arm, a most curious sensation, while the rest of me felt only the cozier warmth of the faerie's alpine home.
I closed the door. "Greece," I murmured. "I think. It looks to be situated either in the mortal world or a place of overlap, like Poe's door. I had no idea the nexus led there--- they have no stories of tree fauns in Greece. Perhaps they do not use it much?
”
”
Heather Fawcett (Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (Emily Wilde, #2))
“
He opened her door, grabbed a quilt from the back of the truck, and pulled her toward the beach. When he found a spot covered with thick sand, he stopped and spread out the blanket. “It’s a little early for sunbathing,” she said. “I don’t remember you being so grumpy in the morning,” he teased. “I didn’t have time for coffee.” He lowered himself to the blanket and pulled her down in front of him. She settled against his chest, his warmth driving away the chill in the air. “Madam . . .” He handed her a thermos she hadn’t noticed before. “Oh, bless you.” She poured the hot brew into the lid, took a sip, and shared with him. Much better. The smell of the brew mingled with the tangy scent of sea air. The cool breeze fanned her skin, pushing her hair from her face, and the water lapped the pebbled shore. The clouds on the horizon were beginning to brighten, the black fading to dark hues of blue. A couple months ago she’d mentioned that she’d never watched a sunrise. He seemed intent on being there for all her firsts. The first time she rented a house. The first time she opened her own bank account. The first time she swam in the ocean. She embraced her freedom, and Beau was there, supporting her however he could.
”
”
Denise Hunter (Falling Like Snowflakes (Summer Harbor, #1))
“
And I thought, I am riding through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as it says in the Psalm; and I attempted to fear no evil, but it was very hard, for there was evil in the wagon with me, like a sort of mist. So I tried to think about something else. And I looked up at the sky, which did not have a cloud in it, and was filled with stars; and it seemed so close I could touch it, and so delicate I could put my hand right through it, like a spiderweb spangled with dewdrops. But then as I looked, a part of it began to wrinkle up, like the skin on scalding milk; but harder and more brittle, and pebbled, like a dark beach, or like black silk crêpe; and then the sky was only a thin surface, like paper, and it was being singed away. And behind it was a cold blackness; and it was not Heaven or even Hell that I was looking at, but only emptiness. This was more frightening than anything I could think of, and I prayed silently to God to forgive my sins; but what if there was no God to forgive me? And then I reflected that perhaps it was the outer darkness, with the wailing and the gnashing of teeth, where God was not. And as soon as I had this thought, the sky closed over again, like water after you have thrown a stone; and was again smooth and unbroken, and filled with stars.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Alias Grace)
“
The morning after / my death”
The morning after
my death
we will sit in cafés
but I will not
be there
I will not be
*
There was the great death of birds
the moon was consumed with
fire
the stars were visible
until noon.
Green was the forest drenched
with shadows
the roads were serpentine
A redwood tree stood
alone
with its lean and lit body
unable to follow the
cars that went by with
frenzy
a tree is always an immutable
traveller.
The moon darkened at dawn
the mountain quivered
with anticipation
and the ocean was double-shaded:
the blue of its surface with the
blue of flowers
mingled in horizontal water trails
there was a breeze to
witness the hour
*
The sun darkened at the
fifth hour of the
day
the beach was covered with
conversations
pebbles started to pour into holes
and waves came in like
horses.
*
The moon darkened on Christmas eve
angels ate lemons
in illuminated churches
there was a blue rug
planted with stars
above our heads
lemonade and war news
competed for our attention
our breath was warmer than
the hills.
*
There was a great slaughter of
rocks of spring leaves
of creeks
the stars showed fully
the last king of the Mountain
gave battle
and got killed.
We lay on the grass
covered dried blood with our
bodies
green blades swayed between
our teeth.
*
We went out to sea
a bank of whales was heading
South
a young man among us a hero
tried to straddle one of the
sea creatures
his body emerged as a muddy pool
as mud
we waved goodbye to his remnants
happy not to have to bury
him in the early hours of the day
We got drunk in a barroom
the small town of Fairfax
had just gone to bed
cherry trees were bending under the
weight of their flowers:
they were involved in a ceremonial
dance to which no one
had ever been invited.
*
I know flowers to be funeral companions
they make poisons and venoms
and eat abandoned stone walls
I know flowers shine stronger
than the sun
their eclipse means the end of
times
but I love flowers for their treachery
their fragile bodies
grace my imagination’s avenues
without their presence
my mind would be an unmarked
grave.
*
We met a great storm at sea
looked back at the
rocking cliffs
the sand was going under
black birds were
leaving
the storm ate friends and foes
alike
water turned into salt for
my wounds.
*
Flowers end in frozen patterns
artificial gardens cover
the floors
we get up close to midnight
search with powerful lights
the tiniest shrubs on the
meadows
A stream desperately is running to
the ocean
The Spring Flowers Own & The Manifestations of the Voyage (The Post-Apollo Press, 1990)
”
”
Elinor Wylie
“
In the second week, more people appeared. Esme met a missionary couple returning to a place called Wells-next-the-Sea. ‘It’s next to the sea,’ the lady said, and Esme smiled and thought she must remember that, to tell Kitty later. She saw them both glance at the black band round her arm, then look away. They told her about the huge beach that stretched out below the town and how Norfolk was full of houses made of pebbles. They had never been to Scotland, they said, but they had heard it was very beautiful. They bought her some lemonade and sat with her on deck-chairs while she drank it. ‘My baby brother,’ Esme found herself saying, as she swirled the ice in the bottom of the glass, ‘died of typhoid.’ The lady put her hand to her throat, then rested it on Esme’s arm. She said she was very sorry. Esme didn’t mention that her ayah had also died, or that they had buried Hugo in the churchyard in the village and that this bothered her, that he was being left behind in India while they all went to Scotland, or that her mother hadn’t spoken to her or looked at her since. ‘I didn’t die,’ Esme said, because this still puzzled her, still kept her awake in her narrow bunk. ‘Even though I was there.’ The man cleared his throat. He gazed out to the lumped, greenish line of what he’d told Esme was the coast of Africa. ‘You will have been spared,’ he said, ‘for a purpose. A special purpose.’ Esme looked up from her empty glass and studied his face in wonder. A purpose. She had a special purpose ahead of her. His dog-collar was startling white against the brown of his neck, his mouth set in a serious downturn. He said he would pray for her.
”
”
Maggie O'Farrell (The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox)
“
I don’t know what it was about menopause, specifically, that caused me all of a sudden to become a gatherer of “found objects.” But now, wherever I went in this bleakly untamed and often inhospitable landscape in the wild western extremes of Ireland, I seemed to hear things calling out to me. I was rooting for something — I didn’t know what. For fragments of myself, perhaps; my life, my loves. For fragments which reflected something of myself back at me — whatever I might be becoming now, at this turbulent, shapeshifting time of my life. And all the fragments I seemed to need came from this new place, from the ancient, uncompromising earth around me: that land which I walked compulsively, day after day after day. I would come home from the woods reverently carrying strangely shaped sticks, from the lough with pebbles and water-bird feathers, from the beach with seashells and mermaid’s purses — as if I were reassembling myself from elements of the land itself. After the deep dissolutions of menopause, I was refashioning myself from those calcinated ashes; I was growing new bones. It’s something we all have to do at this time in our lives; somehow, with whatever tools are available to us, we have to begin to curate the vision of the elder we will become. It’s an act of bricolage. And so now I had become like the bright-eyed, cackling magpies which regularly ransacked our garden: a collector — though not of trinkets, but of clues. I was gathering them together in the safety of my new nest. The clues were there in the pieces; those clues are threaded through this book. Scattered in shadowy corners and brightly lit windows, these objects I’ve selected are so much more than random gatherings of whatever it was that I happened to come across in my wanderings. They’re so much more than mere clutter. They are active choices, carefully selected objects that mirror my sense of myself as a shapeshifting, storied creature. Because the clues to our re-memberings are in the stories, and the stories are always born from the land.
”
”
Sharon Blackie (Hagitude: Reimagining the Second Half of Life)
“
Land and Sea
The brilliant colors are the first thing that strike a visitor to the Greek Isles. From the stunning azure waters and blindingly white houses to the deep green-black of cypresses and the sky-blue domes of a thousand churches, saturated hues dominate the landscape. A strong, constant sun brings out all of nature’s colors with great intensity.
Basking in sunshine, the Greek Isles enjoy a year-round temperate climate. Lemons grow to the size of grapefruits and grapes hang in heavy clusters from the vines of arbors that shade tables outside the tavernas. The silver leaves of olive trees shiver in the least sea breezes.
The Greek Isles boast some of the most spectacular and diverse geography on Earth. From natural hot springs to arcs of soft-sand beaches and secret valleys, the scenery is characterized by dramatic beauty. Volcanic formations send craggy cliffsides plummeting to the sea, cause lone rock formations to emerge from blue waters, and carve beaches of black pebbles. In the Valley of the Butterflies on Rhodes, thousands of radiant winged creatures blanket the sky in summer. Crete’s Samaria Gorge is the longest in Europe, a magnificent natural wonder rife with local flora and fauna. Corfu bursts with lush greenery and wildflowers, nurtured by heavy rainfall and a sultry sun. The mountain ranges, gorges, and riverbeds on Andros recall the mainland more than the islands. Both golden beaches and rocky countrysides make Mykonos distinctive. Around Mount Olympus, in central Cyprus, timeless villages emerge from the morning mist of craggy peaks and scrub vegetation. On Evia and Ikaria, natural hot springs draw those seeking the therapeutic power of healing waters.
Caves abound in the Greek Isles; there are some three thousand on Crete alone. The Minoans gathered to worship their gods in the shallow caves that pepper the remotest hilltops and mountain ranges. A cave near the town of Amnissos, a shrine to Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth, once revealed a treasure trove of small idols dedicated to her. Some caves were later transformed into monasteries. On the islands of Halki and Cyprus, wall paintings on the interiors of such natural monasteries survive from the Middle Ages.
Above ground, trees and other flora abound on the islands in a stunning variety. ON Crete, a veritable forest of palm trees shades the beaches at Vai and Preveli, while the high, desolate plateaus of the interior gleam in the sunlight. Forest meets sea on the island of Poros, and on Thasos, many species of pine coexist. Cedars, cypress, oak, and chestnut trees blanket the mountainous interiors of Crete, Cyprus, and other large islands. Rhodes overflows with wildflowers during the summer months.
Even a single island can be home to disparate natural wonders. Amorgos’ steep, rocky coastline gives way to tranquil bays. The scenery of Crete--the largest of the Greek Isles--ranges from majestic mountains and barren plateaus to expansive coves, fertile valleys, and wooded thickets.
”
”
Laura Brooks (Greek Isles (Timeless Places))
“
under oath he revealed the course was designed by taking holes from the courses he found on a PlayStation-era Tiger Woods video game. This resulted in Loudoun County being sued by Pebble Beach, Cog Hill and St. Andrews, not only for stealing from their courses, but for doing it so poorly that it damaged the original courses’ reputations.
”
”
John Scalzi (Judge Sn Goes Golfing)
“
They picked up shells and sea glass, pebbles smooth and white. The wind blew and the surf hissed warm over their toes, sucked the sand from under their soles. The rhythm, the pulse of the sea soothed and electrified.
”
”
Terri-Lynne DeFino (The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers (And Their Muses))
“
The shimmering tarmac of the deserted basketball court, a line of industrial-sized garbage cans, and beyond the electrified perimeter fence a vista that twangs a country and western chord of self-pity in me. For a brief moment, when I first arrived, I thought of putting a photo of Alex - Laughing Alpha Male at Roulette Wheel - next to my computer, alongside my family collection: Late Mother Squinting Into Sun on Pebbled Beach, Brother Pierre with Postpartum Wife and Male Twins, and Compos Mentis Father Fighting Daily Telegraph Crossword. But I stopped myself. Why give myself a daily reminder of what I have in every other way laid to rest? Besides, there would be curiosity from colleagues, and my responses to their questions would seem either morbid or tasteless or brutal depending on the pitch and role of my mood. Memories of my past existence, and the future that came with it, can start as benign, Vaselined nostalgia vignettes. But they’ll quickly ghost train into Malevolent noir shorts backlit by that great worst enemy of all victims of circumstance, hindsight. So for the sake of my own sanity, I apologize silently to Alex before burying him in the desk alongside my emergency bottle of Lauphroaig and a little homemade flower press given to me by a former patient who hanged himself with a clothesline.
The happy drawer.
”
”
Liz Jensen (The Rapture)
“
into his jeans and button-down shirt. He dropped off the RAF overalls in the trunk of the car, and then looked around him. The car park was empty. He walked to the side of the parking lot. The fence was low there and he vaulted across it to the low ground that led to the pebble beach. He cut straight across, heading to the port, walking quickly across the shrub and grassland. A line of low trees near the port fence gave him cover. He studied the wire fence. It was about ten feet tall, with regularly spaced posts, and he couldn’t see any signs of electricity. There wasn’t any barbed wire at the top, which made his life a lot easier. He grabbed the wire mesh and shook it. It was firm and would take his weight. He wrapped his legs around a post and pulled himself up with both hands, using it like a fast rope. He crouched over the top and jumped down. The brick wall of a building lay in front of him. He could hear an engine wheezing and what sounded like train railway
”
”
Mick Bose (Hidden Agenda (Dan Roy #1))
“
In a famous passage of his book The Sciences of the Artificial, AI pioneer and Nobel laureate Herbert Simon asked us to consider an ant laboriously making its way home across a beach. The ant’s path is complex, not because the ant itself is complex but because the environment is full of dunelets to climb and pebbles to get around. If we tried to model the ant by programming in every possible path, we’d be doomed. Similarly, in machine learning the complexity is in the data; all the Master Algorithm has to do is assimilate it, so we shouldn’t be surprised if it turns out to be simple. The human hand is simple—four fingers, one opposable thumb—and yet it can make and use an infinite variety of tools. The Master Algorithm is to algorithms what the hand is to pens, swords, screwdrivers, and forks.
”
”
Pedro Domingos (The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World)
“
When a penguin falls in love with another penguin, he searches the entire beach to find the most perfect pebble. It has to be just right, like the perfect engagement ring.
”
”
Lacey London (Clara in the Caribbean (Clara Andrews, #6))
“
We are not the tree but one of its leaves; not the beach but one of its pebbles, not the sea but one of its waves. “It is no longer I that lives but life that lives in me.
”
”
John Lane (Timeless Simplicity: Creating Living in a Consumer Society)
“
The crystal blue water sparkled invitingly, a million diamonds strewn on its surface, the horizon a blurred navy line in the shimmer of the noonday heat. The Cornish coastline was renowned for its treachery, with shipwrecks a common occurrence, but Elizabeth knew this tiny inlet well. Ladylove Cove, better known as Lady Luck Cove.
She had spent much of her childhood scrambling over its rocks, pausing only to marvel at the tiny, tenacious plants that clung to its cliffside. The way down to the pebbled beach was steep, but stairs had been cut into the rocks--- by long-dead contraband merchants, so the legend had it--- and, happily, the going was dry.
”
”
Kayte Nunn (The Botanist's Daughter)
“
We know the names of all our grandparents and our childhood toys and we know the exact words that, when put in a certain order, will makes each other laugh or cry or shout. There isn’t a pebble on the beach of my history that she has left unturned. She knows where to find everything in me and I know where all her stuff is too. She is, in short, my best friend.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Everything I Know About Love)
“
Whether it is a speck of sand on the beach, a pebble, a rock, or a boulder, each contributes equally to the beach, for they make up a part of the beach in their own way. Each participates in the world in its own way.
”
”
Douglas James Cottrell
“
The Altamont Correctional Facility had originally been built as a hospital for the criminally insane, a hundred and fifty years ago. The Altamont Lunatic Asylum, as it was then called, was a grand Victorian Gothic complex of spires and crenellated towers. Its forbidding red-brick walls were stained dark with soot from a century of internal-combustion engines. Some forty years ago the mental hospital was shut down and converted into a medium-security prison, but it still looked like the sort of place a homicidal maniac escapes from, then terrorizes the nearby summer camp. It also reminded me a little of the high school I’d gone to in Malden. They’d done some renovation since the days of straitjackets and lobotomies. There was a concrete perimeter wall thirty feet high, topped with coils of razor wire, watchtowers, and banks of high-mast lights. Inside the walls, the old Gothic prison complex was surrounded by a luxuriant green lawn that wouldn’t have been out of place at Pebble Beach.
”
”
Joseph Finder (Vanished (Nick Heller, #1))
“
Public "facts" are not like pebbles on the beach, lying in the sun and waiting to be seen. They must instead be picked, polished, shaped and packaged. Finally ready for display they the bear the marks of their shapers.
”
”
Peter Conrad (Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness)
“
From the Bridge” by Captain Hank Bracker
Pebbles, Rocks & Mountains
Rocks can be formed in many different ways and are found in just about every corner of our planet, the Moon, up in space and who knows where else. Now pebbles are the mini-me’s of rocks and generally are about one to three inches in size. Geologists will tell you that they are about 5 millimeters in diameter, but who’s counting? In fact there are two beaches that are made up entirely of pebbles such as the Shingle Beach in Somerset, England. Generally pebbles are found along rivers, streams and creeks whereas mountains are usually a part of a chain that was created along geothermal fault lines. The process of Mountain formation is associated with movements of the earth's crust, which is referred to as plate tectonics. See; now that I looked it up, I know these things!
What I’m about to say has absolutely nothing to do with geology and everything to do about human nature. In the course of events we never trip over mountains and seldom over rocks, but tripping over pebbles is another thing.
Marilyn French, a writer and feminist scholar is credited with saying, “Men (she should have included Women) stumble over pebbles, never over mountains.” She was the lady (I should have said woman) whose provocative 1977 novel, “The Women's Room” captured the frustration and fury of a generation of women fed up with society's traditional conceptions of their roles (and this is true). However, this has nothing to do with the feminist movement and is simply a metaphor. Of course we’re not going to trip over mountains, not unless we are bigger than the “Jolly Green Giant!” and so it’s usually the little things that trip us up and cause us problems.
What comes to mind is found on page 466 of The Exciting Story of Cuba. This is a book that won two awards by the “Florida Authors & Publishers Association” and yet there are small mistakes. They weren’t even caused by me or my team and yet there they are, getting bigger and bigger every time I look at them. Now I’m not about to tell you what they are, since that would take the fun out of it, but if you look hard enough in the book, you’ll succeed in discovering them!
I will however tell you that one of these mistakes was caused by a computer program called “Word.” It’s wonderful that this program has a spell check and can even correct my grammar, but it can’t read my mind. In its infernal wisdom, the program was so insistent that it was right and that I was wrong that it changed the spelling of, in this case, the name of a person in the middle of the night. It happened while I was sleeping! I would have seen it if it had been as big as a mountain, however being just a little pebble it escaped my review and even escaped the eagle eyes of Lucy who still remains the best proof reader and copy editor that I know. When you discover what I missed please refrain from emailing me, although, normally, I would really enjoy hearing from you! I unfortunately already know most of the errors in the book, for which I take full responsibility.
The truth of it is that my mistakes leave me feeling stupid and frustrated. Now, you may disagree with me however I don’t think that I am really all that stupid, but when you write hundreds of thousands of words, a few of them might just slip between the cracks. None of us are infallible and we all make mistakes. I sometimes like to say that “I once thought that I had made a mistake, but then found out that I was mistaken.” And so it is; if you think about it, it’s the pebbles that create most of our problems, not the rocks and certainly not the mountains.
I’ll let you know as soon as my other books, Suppressed I Rise – Revised Edition; Seawater One…. And Words of Wisdom, “From the Bridge” are available. It’s Seawater One that has the naughty bits in it… but that just spices it up. Now with that book you can really tell me what you think….
”
”
Hank Bracker
“
Pebble Beach. Jeff and
”
”
Danielle Steel (The House)
“
The handwriting in the letter was as even as waves along the beach, row on row of neat curls and dots, perfect pebbles and shells on an ordered shore.
”
”
Joy Kogawa
“
Shoals of light-tipped rocks are topped with crowding gulls and oystercatchers, watched over by a wary old heron. An island splits the wide river apart, one stream looping towards us and round in a ragged, frothy curve. The other part is hidden by the grassy island, its rocky end stuck with stunted trees. Further downstream, the bank on our side dips down to become a broad beach of pebbles, behind which the river curves back in a powerful sweep, to continue its journey into the sun.
”
”
Keith Farnish (Almost Gone (The Conorol Trilogy Book 1))
“
But in a free enterprise economy, increased production increases the number of jobs. It might be said that one job creates another, which is true as far as it goes, but open to misinterpretation; for only productive employment does that. If a man were paid to pick up pebbles on the beach and throw them into the ocean, it would be just the same as if he were in a "government job," or on the dole; the producers have to supply his subsistence with no return, thus preventing the normal increase of jobs.
”
”
Isabel Paterson (The God of the Machine)
“
If you knew there was a beach where you could pick up gold nuggets like pebble stones, would you not go there? Go there.
”
”
Anthony Esolen (Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture)
“
There are tektites: glassy pebbles created by meteorites or comets smashing into the earth’s surface, bits of which then fuse into shiny stones. There are fulgurites: gnarly, hollow tubes you sometimes find on a beach or dune after a lightning strike.
”
”
Ed Conway (Material World: The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization)
“
Inevitably you will come up against obstacles and setbacks in your life that often seem like the whole ocean front, but with Reiki you will have the strength to deal with them as though they are but pebbles on the beach. Even if you never use Reiki to heal anyone but yourself, you will find a new sense of balance and peace in your life.
”
”
Garry Malone (The Essence of Reiki)
“
Indeed, the door before us was nearly identical in shape and style--- it blended into the Greek countryside perfectly, its wooden boards painted with a scene of pale, pebbly stone and sun-dried vegetation. A little patch of rock roses to the left continued into the painting, and these two-dimensional blooms tossed their heads in the breeze in time with their tangible brethren. Even more impossible, to my mortal eyes, was the doorknob, a square of glass enclosing a splash of turquoise sea. This nexus is truly the most peculiar variety of faerie door I have encountered in my career.
”
”
Heather Fawcett (Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3))
“
I was on a beach before our greed-colored failures
Were all washed away by the ocean of time.
I just want to sleep a bit longer.
You were there, too, in the arms of the sun,
Stripped bare of green paper and metallic tongues.
No one could remember the anxiety of clinking coins.
Imagine the world afloat on an unbottled sea,
Where rat races do not wear us threadbare,
Uncarved by need and the cost of being born.
The earth beneath our feet, not a prize to be seized,
But a friend to know. Unfettered, unburdened,
We were young again.
The lemons of capitalism lost their rinds,
Peeled away into nothingness. A world free.
In the absence of profit, houses stood
As homes, not investments. We looked up
As the sky stopped billing us for its blue,
And the stars for guiding us home.
Do you remember? We were children once,
Tossing pebbles in streams, bartering them
For amusement instead of survival.
”
”
Frederick Joseph
“
he was a man whose significance in the greater scheme of things could be figured along familiar ratios: pebble: beach raindrop: ocean needle: haystack
”
”
Zadie Smith
“
He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios:
Pebble: Beach.
Raindrop: Ocean.
Needle: Haystack.
”
”
Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
“
possibly even food, to drift onto the pebbly beach,
”
”
Laurence Bergreen (Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe)
“
like being two pebbles on a beach. You start off individual shapes and then the weather and proximity means you rub the rough spots off so in the end you’re smooth with a patina that only echoes one other person.
”
”
Lily Morton (Best Man (Close Proximity, #1))
“
But I was stuck for a long time by myself at Abraham Lincoln's portrait, standing in the middle of the huge hall as people moved all around me with mostly children. I felt as if time had stopped as I watched Lincoln, facing him, while watching the woman’s back as she was looking out the window. I felt wronged, so much like Truman from the movie, standing there in the middle of the museum alone. I was wondering what would Abraham Lincoln do if he realized he was the slave in his own cotton fields, being robbed by evil thieves, nazis.
I had taken numerous photos of Martina from behind, as well as silhouettes of her shadow. I remember standing there, watching as she stood in front of the window; it was almost as if she was admiring the view of the mountains from our new home, as I did take such pictures of her, with a very similar composition to that of the female depicted in the iconic Lincoln portrait looking outwards from the window. I hadn't realized how many photographs I snapped of Martina with her back turned towards me while we travelled to picturesque places. Fernanda and I walked side-by-side in utter silence, admiring painting after painting of Dali's, without exchanging a single word. Meanwhile, Luis and Martina had got lost somewhere in the museum. When I finally found her, she was taking pictures outside of the Rainy Cadillac. We both felt something was amiss without having to say it, as Fernanda knew things I didn't and vice versa. We couldn't bring ourselves to discuss it though, not because we lacked any legal authority between me and Martina, but because neither Fernanda or myself had much parental authority over the young lady. It felt like when our marriages and divorces had dissolved, it was almost as if our parenting didn't matter anymore. It was as if I were unwittingly part of a secret screenplay, like Jim Carrey's character in The Truman Show, living in a fabricated reality made solely for him. I was beginning to feel a strange nauseous feeling, as if someone was trying to force something surreal down my throat, as if I were living something not of this world, making me want to vomit onto the painted canvas of the personalised image crafted just for me. I couldn't help but wonder if Fernanda felt the same way, if she was aware of the magnitude of what was happening, or if, just like me, she was completely oblivious, occasionally getting flashes of truth or reality for a moment or two. I took some amazing photographs of her in Port Lligat in Dali's yard in the port, and in Cap Creus, but I'd rather not even try to describe them—they were almost like Dali's paintings which make all sense now. As if all the pieces are coming together. She was walking by the water and I was walking a bit further up on the same beach on pebbles, parallel to each other as we walked away from Dali's house in the port. I looked towards her and there were two boats flipped over on the two sides of my view.
I told her: “Run, Bunny! Run!
”
”
Tomas Adam Nyapi (BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA)
“
Based upon my detailed betting records and additional records provided by the sources, here is a snapshot of Phil’s gambling habit between 2010 and 2014: He bet $110,000 to win $100,000 a total of 1,115 times. On 858 occasions, he bet $220,000 to win $200,000. (The sum of those 1,973 gross wagers came to more than $311 million.) In 2011 alone, he made 3,154 bets—an average of nearly nine per day. On one day in 2011 (June 22), he made forty-three bets on major-league baseball games, resulting in $143,500 in losses. He made a staggering 7,065 wagers on football, basketball, and baseball. Phil didn’t let his playing in PGA tournaments get in the way of betting. Indeed, according to the 2010–2014 betting records, he made 1,734 wagers on games during twenty-nine events. This included seventy separate bets on baseball and preseason pro football during The Barclays tournament in August 2011 where he shot 8-under and tied for 43rd (he won $415,000 in bets that weekend). On February 11, 2012, a busy college basketball Saturday, Phil blew himself up by running his betting losses to nearly $4 million, according to the gambling sources familiar with Phil’s other bets. Even so, he displayed an incredible ability to compartmentalize. He shot 64 the following day to win the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach while playing with, and demolishing, Tiger Woods, by eleven strokes.
”
”
Billy Walters (Gambler: Secrets from a Life at Risk)
“
Silent morning
Quiet nature in dim light
It is almost peaceless of the chirping of birds
Waiting for the sunrise
Feeling satisfied with pure breath
Busy life- in pursuit of livelihood, running people
In the intensity of the wood-burning sun, astray finch
Sometimes the advent of north-wester
I’m scared
The calamitous heartache of the falling Caesalpinia pulcherrima!
Listen to get ears
Surprisingly I saw the unadulterated green weald
Vernal, yellow and crimson colors are the glorious beauty of the unique nature
An amazing reflection of Bengal
The housewife’s fringe of azure color sari fly in the gentle breeze
The cashew forest on the bank of flowing rivers white egret couple peep-bo
The kite crookedly flies get lost in the far unknown
The footstep of blustery childhood on the zigzag path
Standing on a head-high hill touches the fog
Beckoning with the hand of the magical horizon
The liveliness of a rainy-soaked juvenile
Momentary fascinated visibility of Ethnic group’s pineapple, tea, banana and jhum cultivation at the foot of the hill
Trailer- shrub, algae and pebble-stone come back to life in the cleanly stream of the fountain
Bumble bee is rudderless in the drunken smell of mountain wild flower
The heart of the most beloved is touched by pure love
In the distant sea water, pearl glow in the sunlight
Rarely, the howl of a hungry tiger float in the air from a deep forest
The needy fisherman’s hope and aspiration are mortgaged to the infinite sea
The waves come rushing on the beach delete the footprint to the beat of the dancing
The white cotton cloud is invisible in the bluey
The mew flies at impetuous speed to an unknown destination
A slice of happy smile at the bend of the wave
The western sky covered with the crimson glow of twilight
Irritated by the cricket’s endless acrid sound
The evening lamp is lit to flickering light of the firefly
The red crabs tittup wildly on the beach
Steadfast seeing
Sunset
A beautiful dream
Next sunrise.
”
”
Ashraful
“
«DEMOSTRACIÓN INTERPOLATIVA DEL HECHO DE QUE NO EXISTE UN LENGUAJE PRIVADO
A veces resulta tentador imaginar que puede existir un lenguaje privado. Muchos de nosotros tenemos
tendencia a filosofar, sin ser expertos en la materia, sobre la extraña privacidad de nuestros estados mentales, por ejemplo. Y a partir del hecho que cuando me duele la rodilla yo soy el único que lo siente es tentador sacar la conclusión de que para mí la palabra «dolor» tiene un significado interno subjetivo que solamente puedo entender yo. Esta línea de pensamiento se parece al terror que siente el fumador adolescente de marihuana a que su experiencia interior sea al mismo tiempo privada y no verificable, un síndrome que se conoce técnicamente como Solipsismo Cannábico. Mientras come galletas Chips Ahoy! y sigue con mucha atención un campeonato de golf por la tele, al fumador adolescente de marihuana se le ocurre la posibilidad aterradora de que, p. ej., lo que él percibe como el color verde y lo que el resto de la gente llama «color verde» puedan de hecho no ser la misma experiencia de color en absoluto: el hecho de que tanto él como otra persona digan que son verdes los carriles del campo de golf de Pebble Beach y la luz verde de un semáforo parece garantizar únicamente que existe una consistencia semejante en sus experiencias de los colores de los carriles de los campos de golf y de las luces verdes de los semáforos, no que la cualidad subjetiva real de esas experiencias de color sea la misma. Podría ser que lo que el fumador de marihuana experimenta como verde lo experimenten todos los demás como azul, y que lo que «queremos decir» con la palabra «azul» a lo que «quiere decir» él cuando dice «verde», etcétera, etcétera, hasta que da la línea de pensamiento se vuelve tan controvertida y agotadora que termina repantingado bajo un manto de migas de galleta y paralizado en su sillón.
Lo que quiero decir con esto es que la idea de un lenguaje privado, igual que la idea de los colores privados y todas las demás presunciones solipsistas que este mismo reseñista ha sufrido en varias ocasiones, es al mismo tiempo producto de una ilusión y demostrablemente falsa.»
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Consider the Lobster and Other Essays)
“
Masa gave him a tour of his mansion, which had a $3 million driving range that could simulate a Pacific Ocean fog rolling over Pebble Beach as a light drizzle fell from the ceiling.
”
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Reeves Wiedeman (Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork)
“
They had spent the morning picking up pebbles on the beach and placed it on Izzy’s grave. She loved the ocean.
”
”
Urcelia Teixeira (The Rhapta Key: An Alex Hunt Adventure Thriller)
“
The Answer
by Maisie Aletha Smikle
What's the question
They ain’t got none
What's the answer
There is but one
The answer is quick
The answer is fast
The answer is the remedy
The answer is the solution for the unask question
What's the answer
Tax it
What's the answer
Tax it
There goes a ghost
Is it walking?
Yes
Tax it
There is a stone
Formed from limestone
Cost it and ahh... ahh..
Tax it
Cost all rocks, stones and pebbles
From North to South
From East to West
Not a grain of pebble must be left
Rain snow or hail
Any buyers
Yes
Tax it
We want more
We must store
We must take
Even the dirt
Ocean front
Ocean back
Ocean side
All sides
Lake front
Lake back
Lake side
Every side
Beach side
Beach back
Beach front
Beach rear we don't care
Water back
Water front
Water side
River side Gully side Any side
Cost it
We must tax it
Oh look. .the desert
The forest
What's the cost
For us it's nil
For them it's a mil
Tax on nil is a nil
But a mil
We shan't be still
Ours is nil
Theirs' is a mil
It's a thrill
Tax the ant on the mill
So we can get our mil
For we shan't get rich taxing nil
The cost of land must never fall
It must grow tree tall
Or else
We shan't be able to have a Ball
Rocky smooth soggy or muddy
If only we could tax the sea and ocean too
Ahh...ahh.. .who owns it
For us it's nil for them it's a mil
We shall tax the animals and fishes too
All that are kept in the zoo
When the zoo is full
Our pockets are full
Enact a fee just to look at the zoo
The circus cinema or fair
To hunt or fish
Whether you caught or miss
Add a fee for every flush
Number one or number two
For every act you do
We must make a buck or two
Anyone who protests
And put our pockets to the test
We shall arrest
For unlawful unrest
We go to the moon but .
What we really want is heaven
To cost it
And tax it
Then we'd go
Sailing on cloud nine
Skiing on cloud ten
Golfing on cloud eleven
Foreclose on cloud twelve
For the owner we can't find Aha
Parachute off cloud thirteen
Practice Yoga and Ballet on cloud fourteen
On cloud fifteen we’d parade Impromptu Balls
We’ll call a piece of land a Park
So we can tax the trees and tax the plants
We’ll tax all creation visible and invisible and call it a Tax Revolution
”
”
Maisie Aletha Smikle
“
It started about ten years ago, and now it’s a real middle-class retreat. Shit pubs. Shit atmosphere. They think that if they go there they’ll all live in harmony away from the moths. It’s such a Victorian idea. You can’t hide like that. It’s the Guardian’s version of The Prisoner. They’re so middle class they put pebbles on the beach so they don’t get any sand between their toes. No wonder nothing comes out of it. It’s not a patch on Blackpool. That’s the real seaside town.
”
”
Mark E. Smith (Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E. Smith)
“
After they departed the river, the beach, and the raised lip of land, it all readjusted under the towering awareness of the trees. The pebbles lost the stain of human warmth. The water shook off its taste of sweat and the flattened grasses slowly clicked back into their vertical semblance of the rest of the forest. The breeze cleared the air and the birds changed their tune of alarm and disgust into a softer conversation about being here, there, and now. The ants and the clustering insects stopped waiting for the bodies to be still and foraged elsewhere, and the omnipresent mosquitoes reassessed their menu. In one hour all traces of the intrusion were lost and decent time settled back, oblivious to the rubbed-out moment of blight.
”
”
B. Catling
“
I am the father whose feet you danced on, I am a million broken stars at your fingertips, I am the night sky's discarded brother, I am a blanket made of rain. I am the conscience searching for your footsteps; I am the Harmattan wind whispering secrets that will fall into the foamy hem of the sea and wash up on the beaches of other countries as rough pebbles and hollow seashells.
I am beating.
I am
I-
”
”
Irenosen Okojie (Butterfly Fish)
“
Get over yourself - You're not the only pebble on the beach.'
'Understand that life itself (and emotions) are impermanent.
”
”
Joan Silber
“
What’s Your Foreign Policy? Investing in foreign stocks may not be mandatory for the intelligent investor, but it is definitely advisable. Why? Let’s try a little thought experiment. It’s the end of 1989, and you’re Japanese. Here are the facts: Over the past 10 years, your stock market has gained an annual average of 21.2%, well ahead of the 17.5% annual gains in the United States. Japanese companies are buying up everything in the United States from the Pebble Beach golf course to Rockefeller Center; meanwhile, American firms like Drexel Burnham Lambert, Financial Corp. of America, and Texaco are going bankrupt. The U.S. high-tech industry is dying. Japan’s is booming. In 1989, in the land of the rising sun, you can only conclude that investing outside of Japan is the dumbest idea since sushi vending machines. Naturally, you put all your money in Japanese stocks. The result? Over the next decade, you lose roughly two-thirds of your money. The lesson? It’s not that you should never invest in foreign markets like Japan; it’s that the Japanese should never have kept all their money at home. And neither should you. If you live in the United States, work in the United States, and get paid in U.S. dollars, you are already making a multilayered bet on the U.S. economy. To be prudent, you should put some of your investment portfolio elsewhere—simply because no one, anywhere, can ever know what the future will bring at home or abroad. Putting up to a third of your stock money in mutual funds that hold foreign stocks (including those in emerging markets) helps insure against the risk that our own backyard may not always be the best place in the world to invest.
”
”
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
“
Darren spreads out the beach mats and drops his backpack on top of one. As soon as he crosses his arms and grips the hem of his shirt with both hands, I know what’s going to happen. I should look away but I can’t. Abs reveal themselves. One. At. A time. His chest isn’t exactly lacking for hair, but given the amount on his face and head, I expected that. Not that I actively thought of what his chest might look like.
Not often, anyway.
As he wads up his shirt to stow under his backpack, he glances at me, but I cast my gaze down, suddenly finding the sand-to-pebble ratio of the beach fascinating.
”
”
Kristin Rae (Wish You Were Italian (If Only . . . #2))