Pencil And Eraser Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Pencil And Eraser. Here they are! All 100 of them:

History written in pencil is easily erased, but crayon is forever.
Emilie Autumn (The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls)
Sometimes I wish life was written pencil so we could erase it and write it all over again.
Thisuri Wanniarachchi (COLOMBO STREETS)
I don't want to be pencilled in anywhere, pencil can be erased.
Jodi Ellen Malpas (This Man (This Man, #1))
I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.
Vladimir Nabokov (Speak, Memory)
No one is perfect... that's why pencils have erasers.
Wolfgang Riebe (100 Quotes to Make You Think!)
We all make mistakes. That's why my pencil has an eraser.
Chris Grabenstein (Tilt-a-Whirl (John Ceepak Mystery, #1))
It seemed cruelly unfair to me, even then, how fast your life can change before you have an opportunity to rethink your choices. We should get second chances on the big stuff. We should come equipped with erasers attached to the tops of our heads. Like pencils. We should be able to flip over and scribble away mistakes, at least once or twice during the duration of our existence, especially in matters of life and death.
Tiffanie DeBartolo (God-Shaped Hole)
When I erase a word with a pencil, where does it go?
Steven Wright
The tale of your life is written second by second, as shifting as the flip of a pencil to an eraser.
Mitch Albom (The Next Person You Meet in Heaven)
Mistakes? That's why they put erasers on pencils.
Rick Barnett
Unlike ink, graphite is erasable. People make mistakes, Mr. Roth. Pencil allows one to clear the mistake and move on. Scientists expect mistakes and, because of it, we embrace failure.
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
The average pencil is seven inches long, with just a half-inch eraser―in case you thought optimism was dead.
Robert Brault
....and on occasion I like to write in pencil, because I need to know that I can erase the words, even if I never do.
Bruce Black
At this point I felt a weird lack of self-recognition, and I realised that I couldn't visualise my own face and body at all. It was like someone had lifted the end of an invisible pencil and just gently erased my entire appearance
Sally Rooney (Conversations with Friends)
A boy was watching his grandmother write a letter. At one point he asked: ‘Are you writing a story about what we’ve done? Is it a story about me?’ His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said to her grandson: I am writing about you, actually, but more important than the words is the pencil I’m using. I hope you will be like this pencil when you grow up.’ Intrigued, the boy looked at the pencil. It didn’t seem very special. ‘But it’s just like any other pencil I’ve ever seen!’ ‘That depends on how you look at things. It has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world.’ ‘First quality: you are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps. We call that hand God, and He always guides us according to His will.’ ‘Second quality: now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpner. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, he’s much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person. ‘Third quality: the pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice.’ ‘Fourth quality: what really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you.’ ‘Finally, the pencil’s fifth quality: it always leaves a mark. in just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action
Paulo Coelho (Like the Flowing River)
The pen feels unnatural in my hand. It’s so much weightier than pencil. Permanent. There are no erasers, in life.
Cynthia Hand (The Last Time We Say Goodbye)
The truth is: I did want to be my dad's poem. I wanted to be his drawing, his novella, his most refined work of art. I wanted him to shape me with his love and intelligence. I wanted him to edit out my mistakes and many indulgences, with a sharp red pencil or a clean eraser.
Alysia Abbott (Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father)
In a way, the whiskey bottle was sort of like a pencil with eraser - with one end used for saying things, and the other for taking them back.
Amor Towles (The Lincoln Highway)
I am a writer and comparing things is part of my occupation. Over the years I've learned to compare almost anything to almost anything else. I can compare the pencil I am using to write these words (and these words, and these and these) to my own life, because it is sometimes sharp and sometimes dull, and because it is getting shorter and shorter the more I use it, and because when I try to erase things you can still see the marks they left behind.
Lemony Snicket (Poison for Breakfast)
marked Never write with pencil, m’ija. It is for those who would erase. Make your mark proud and open, Brave, beauty folded into its imperfection, Like a piece of turquoise marked. Never write with pencil, m’ija. Write with ink or mud, or berries grown in gardens never owned, or, sometimes, if necessary, blood.
Carmen Tafolla
No one is perfect . . . that’s why pencils have erasers.    —author unknown
Barbara Claypole White (The Perfect Son)
It’s like being a pencil, when everyone else is a pen,” she finally said. “You worry you can be erased anytime.
Kelly Yang (Three Keys (Front Desk #2))
I recall the rasp of charcoal on newsprint, the chewing-gum stretch of a kneaded eraser, the precarious bite of a razor blade in a new pencil. The vibrancy of fresh watercolors squeezed from a tube. A new sketchbook, cracked open to flawless white. The way the smell of turpentine made me feel simultaneously sick and excited.
Kirsten Hubbard (Wanderlove)
Arthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is, at least, how he feels at times like these. Here, in this tub, he should be twenty-five or thirty, a beautiful young man naked in a bathtub. Enjoying the pleasures of life. How dreadful if someone came upon naked Less today: pink to his middle, gray to his scalp, like those old double erasers for pencil and ink. He has never seen another gay man age past fifty, none except Robert. He met them all at forty or so but never saw them make it much beyond; they died of AIDS, that generation. Less’s generation often feels like the first to explore the land beyond fifty. How are they meant to do it? Do you stay a boy forever, and dye your hair and diet to stay lean and wear tight shirts and jeans and go out dancing until you drop dead at eighty? Or do you do the opposite—do you forswear all that, and let your hair go gray, and wear elegant sweaters that cover your belly, and smile on past pleasures that will never come again? Do you marry and adopt a child? In a couple, do you each take a lover, like matching nightstands by the bed, so that sex will not vanish entirely? Or do you let sex vanish entirely, as heterosexuals do? Do you experience the relief of letting go of all that vanity, anxiety, desire, and pain?
Andrew Sean Greer (Less)
Each time you love—be it a man or a child, a cat or a horse—you add color to this world. When you fail to love, you erase color.” She smiles. “Love, in any of its forms, is what takes this journey from a bleak black-and-white pencil sketch to a magnificent oil painting.” She touches my cheek. “It’s the sweet fruit that paints the field and wakes our senses. I’m not saying you must be on a constant quest for it, but please, if love comes to you, if you find it within your grasp, promise me you’ll pluck it from the vine and give it a good looking-over, won’t you?
Lori Nelson Spielman (The Star-Crossed Sisters of Tuscany)
The autopilot is a hands-free piece of electronic wizardry. It's not some brutal application of electricity like one of the Pubyok's car batteries...Think of its probing as a conversation with the mind, imagine it in a dance with identity. Yes, picture a pencil and eraser engaged in a beautiful dance across the page. The pencil's tip bursts with expression - squiggles, figures, words - filling the page, as the eraser measures, takes note, follows in the pencil's footsteps, leaving only blankness in its wake. The pencil's next seizure of scribbles is perhaps more intense and desperate, but shorter lived, and the eraser follows again. They continue in lockstep this way, the self and the state, coming closer to one another until finally the pencil and the eraser are almost one, moving in sympathy, the line disappearing even as it's laid down, the words unwritten before the letters are formed, and finally there is only white.
Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master's Son)
I don’t know what to say. That’s the problem with words. In my head, words are magic. My thoughts are eloquent and fierce. On the page, words are music. In the clicks of my keyboard, in the scratches of pencil meeting paper. In the beauty of the eraser, of the backspace key. On the page, the words in my head sing and dance with the precision of diction and the intricacies of rhythm. Out loud? Words are the worst.
Marisa Kanter (What I Like About You)
They put an eraser on a pencil for a reason.
Judy Sheindlin
I had a dream about you. It happened during the day. You used a pencil to erase the ink I wrote over the chalkboard since the professor told me 7 + 4 didn't equal 10. You were really cool about it; in fact, you handed me a bucket of ice. Apparently I needed to chill out.
Melody Sohayegh (Dreaming is for lovers)
Slowly what she composed with the new day was her own focus, to bring together body and mind. This was made with an effort, as if all the dissolutions and dispersions of her self the night before were difficult to reassemble. She was like an actress who must compose a face, an attitude to meet the day. The eyebrow pencil was no mere charcoal emphasis on blond eyebrows, but a design necessary to balance a chaotic asymmetry. Make up and powder were not simply applied to heighten a porcelain texture, to efface the uneven swellings caused by sleep, but to smooth out the sharp furrows designed by nightmares, to reform the contours and blurred surfaces of the cheeks, to erase the contradictions and conflicts which strained the clarity of the face’s lines, disturbing the purity of its forms. She must redesign the face, smooth the anxious brows, separate the crushed eyelashes, wash off the traces of secret interior tears, accentuate the mouth as upon a canvas, so it will hold its luxuriant smile. Inner chaos, like those secret volcanoes which suddenly lift the neat furrows of a peacefully ploughed field, awaited behind all disorders of face, hair, and costume, for a fissure through which to explode. What she saw in the mirror now was a flushed, clear-eyed face, smiling, smooth, beautiful. The multiple acts of composure and artifice had merely dissolved her anxieties; now that she felt prepared to meet the day, her true beauty emerged which had been frayed and marred by anxiety.
Anaïs Nin (A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior, #4))
I can compare the pencil I am using to write these words (and these words, and these and these) to my own life, because it is sometimes sharp and sometimes dull, because it is getting shorter and shorter the more I use it, and because even when I try to erase things you can still see the marks they left behind.
Lemony Snicket (Poison for Breakfast)
A poetess is not as selfish as you assume. After months of agonising over her marriage of words—the bride— and spaces—the groom, she knows that as soon as she has penned the poem, it’s yours to consume. So, without giving it a think, she blows on the ink and the letters fly away like dandelions on a windy day, landing on hands and lips, on hearts and hips. But more often than not, you can easily spot them trodden and forgotten, becoming sodden and rotten. Yet, she will continue to make what’s others to take because selfishness is not the mark of a poetess.
Kamand Kojouri
Well, that's what everyone wants, isn't it? Even these people who go out and have their noses shaved down to pencil erasers, and who get implants, and fillers, and who Botox their faces into immobility, they're all in search of the miracle that's going to make them feel like..." She searched for the word. "Like themselves.
Beth Harbison (Hope in a Jar)
he lived in London indeed but invisibly, his existence like an erased pencil sketch
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Americanah)
No one is perfect . . . that’s why pencils have erasers.
Barbara Claypole White (The Perfect Son)
I can eraser you out just as easily as I can pencil you in.
Brenda Lee Compton
Your life is being written by the pencil of “Time” on the paper of “Space”. When you get the Eraser of Supreme Knowledge, you neither get bothered by what has been written in the past, nor worry about what is going to be written in the future.
Shunya
As proof of her faith, my mother used to carry a samll leatherette Bible when she went to the First Chinese Baptist Church every Sunday. But later, after my mother lost her faith in God, that leatherette Bible would up wedged under a too-short table leg, a way for her to correct the imbalances of life. It's been there for over twenty years. My mother pretends that Bible isn't there. Whenever anyone asks her what it's doing there, she says, a little too loudly, "Oh, this? I forgot." But I know she sees it. My mother is not the best housekeeper in the world, and after all these years that Bigle is still clean white... My mother, she stills pay attention to it. That Bible under the table, I know she sees it. I remember seeing her write in it before she wedged it under. I lift the table and slide the Bible out. I put the Bible on the table, flipping quickly through the pages, because I know it's there. On the page before the New Testament begins, there's a section called "Deaths," and that's where she wrote "Bing Hsu" lightly, in erasable pencil.
Amy Tan (The Joy Luck Club)
Creative work needs solitude. It needs concentration, without interruptions. It needs the whole sky to fly in, and no eye watching until it comes to that certainty which it aspires to, but does not necessarily have at once. Privacy, then. A place apart—to pace, to chew pencils, to scribble and erase and scribble again.
Mary Oliver (Upstream: Selected Essays)
Paper: Some inexpensive plain bond paper A pad of Strathmore Drawing Paper, 80 lb., 11" × 14" Pencils: A #2 ordinary yellow writing pencil with an eraser at the top A #4 drawing pencil—Faber-Castell, Prismacolor Turquoise, or other brand Marking pens: Sharpie (or other brand) fine point non-permanent black A second marker, fine point permanent black Graphite stick: #4 General’s is a good brand, or other brand Pencil sharpener: A small handheld sharpener is fine Erasers: A Pink Pearl eraser A Staedtler Mars white plastic eraser A kneaded eraser—Lyra, Design, or other brand Masking tape: 3M Scotch Low Tack Artist Tape Clips: Two 1-inch-wide black clips Drawing board: A firm surface large enough to hold your 11" × 14" drawing paper—about 15" × 18" is a good size. This can be improvised from a kitchen cutting board, a piece of foam board, a piece of Masonite, or thick cardboard. Picture plane: This too can be improvised using an 8" × 10" piece of glass (you will need to tape the edges), or an 8" × 10" piece of clear plastic, about 1⁄16" thick. Viewfinders: You will make these from black paper—“construction” paper is a good thickness, or you could use thin black cardboard. You will find instructions for making the viewfinders here A small mirror: About 5" × 7" that can be taped to a wall, or any available wall mirror.
Betty Edwards (Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: The Definitive Edition)
picture a pencil and eraser engaged in a beautiful dance across the page. The pencil's tip bursts with expression - squiggles, figures, words - filling the page, as the eraser measures, takes note, follows in the pencil's footsteps, leaving only blankness in its wake. The pencil's next seizure of scribbles is perhaps more intense and desperate, but shorter lived, and the eraser follows again. They continue in lockstep this way, the self and the state, coming closer to one another until finally the pencil and the eraser are almost one, moving in sympathy, the line disappearing even as it's laid down, the words unwritten before the letters are formed, and finally there is only white.
Adam Johnson (The Orphan Master's Son)
Can I ask about that pencil in your hair?” Roth tried again. “Of course,” she said. “It’s a number-two pencil. ‘Two’ signifies the lead hardness, although pencils don’t actually contain lead. They contain graphite, which is a carbon allotrope.” “No, I meant why a—” “A pencil instead of a pen? Because unlike ink, graphite is erasable. People make mistakes, Mr. Roth. A pencil allows one to clear the mistake and move on. Scientists expect mistakes, and because of it, we embrace failure.” Then she eyed his pen disapprovingly.
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
Everybody makes mistakes, that’s why pencils have erasers
Lenny Leonard
I don't want to be penciled in anywhere, pencil can be erased.
Jodi Ellen Malpas (This Man (This Man, #1))
All the lessons of invention come down to this: The best design tool is a long eraser with a pencil at one end.
Marty Neumeier (Metaskills: Five Talents for the Robotic Age)
When trauma's ghosts threaten to erase desires you penciled in, And heartache makes a home in the marrow of your bones, Sit with me, so we might hold a seance to resurrect your joy.
Frederick Joseph (We Alive, Beloved: Poems)
Arthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is, at least, how he feels at times like these. Here, in this tub, he should be twenty-five or thirty, a beautiful young man naked in a bathtub. Enjoying the pleasures of life. How dreadful if someone came upon naked Less today: pink to his middle, gray to his scalp, like those old double erasers for pencil and ink.
Andrew Sean Greer (Less (Arthur Less, #1))
Tom grabbed his arm and pointed gasping, at the dime-store window. They stood there, unable to move because of the things from another world displayed so neatly, so innocently, so frighteningly, there. ‘Pencils, Doug, ten thousand pencils!‘ ‘Oh, my gosh!‘ ‘Nickel tablets, dime tablets, notebooks, erasers, water colors, rulers, compasses, a hundred thousand of them!‘ ‘Don‘t look. Maybe it‘s just a mirage.
Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine)
And then, quite suddenly, summer was over. He knew it first when walking downtown. Tom grabbed his arm and pointed gasping, at the dimestore window. They stood there unable to move because of the things from another world displayed so neatly, so innocently, so frighteningly, there. "Pencils, Doug, ten thousand pencils!" "Oh, my gosh!" "Nickel tablets, dime tablets, notebooks, erasers, water colors, rulers, compasses, a hundred thousand of them!" "Don't look. Maybe it's just a mirage." "No," moaned Tom in despair. "School. School straight on ahead! Why, why do dime stores show things like that in windows before summer's even over! Ruin half the vacation!
Ray Bradbury (Dandelion Wine)
A pencil instead of a pen? Because unlike ink, graphite is erasable. People make mistakes, Mr. Roth. A pencil allows one to clear the mistake and move on. Scientists expect mistakes, and because of it, we embrace failure.
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
A pencil instead of a pen? Because unlike ink, graphite is erasable. People make mistakes, Mr. Roth. A pencil allows one to clear the mistake and move on. Scientists expect mistakes, and because of it, we embrace failure.” Then she eyed his pen disapprovingly.
Bonnie Garmus (Lessons in Chemistry)
Life is like a painting. Imagine it, hit and try drawing with the pencil of first steps, fill in the colors of happiness, correct the mistakes with eraser of love and forgiveness; thus, one dream project is accomplished. Create such masterpieces just like that.
Vikrmn: CA Vikram Verma (You By You)
I’m scared that the pencil sides might disappear, just as a drawing can be rubbed out by an eraser. Bengali will be taken away when my parents are no longer there. It’s a language that they personify, that they embody. When they die, it will no longer be fundamental to my life.
Jhumpa Lahiri (In Other Words: A Memoir (Italian Edition))
In the end, life is a simple equation. Each time you love- be it a man or a child, a cat or a horse- you add color to this world. When you fail to love, you erase color. Love, in any of its forms, is what takes this journey from a bleak black-and-white pencil sketch to a magnificent oil painting.
Lori Nelson Spielman (The Star Crossed Sisters of Tuscany (Audible book))
I am not generally a wearer of perfume, preferring to smell of plain soap and my natural musk, but, were it possible to purchase a bottle in which the scent of new pencil shavings and the petroleum reek of a freshly rubbed eraser were combined, I would happily douse myself with it on a daily basis.
Gail Honeyman (Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine)
It contained a long, narrow desk with a glass top, and on that…three ceramic beer mugs. They were stuffed with all sorts of things—pencils, rulers, drafting pens. On a tray were erasers, a paperweight, ink remover, old receipts, adhesive tape, paper clips of many colors…a pencil sharpener and postage stamps.
Haruki Murakami (Wind/Pinball: Two Novels)
Jack didn't try to speak to me the following day. Or the day after.Or the day after that. But he was in Mrs. Stone's classroom, in the seat next to mine, every day for an hour after school, the only sounds coming from our pencils scratching against our papers. And the days passed like this quickly. Too quickly. I stole glances at him.Sometimes he tucked his hair behind one ear, but mostly it hung loose around his face. Sometimes he had stubble,as if he were shaving every other day.Sometimes I was sure he could feel me staring.His lip would twitch,and I'd know he was about to turn toward me,so I would hurry and look at my paper. And sometimes I would read the same sentence in the textbook over and over, and at the end of the hour, the only thing I'd learned was that Jack liked to tap his eraser on his desk when he was stumped, and when he would stretch forward,his shirt lifted,exposing a tiny bit of skin on his back.
Brodi Ashton (Everneath (Everneath, #1))
Finn stood by the counter, having just finished making his thirteenth cup of coffee of the day. As always, the chicory fumes warmed me from the inside out and made me think of his father. I wished that the old man were here tonight. Fletcher would have known exactly what to do about the mess we were in—the mess I’d dragged us all into by declaring war on Mab in the first place. Finn stared at me with his green eyes. “Any chance of getting something sweet to go with my coffee?” he asked in a hopeful voice. I arched an eyebrow at him. “You mean all those pieces of strawberry pie that you ate for lunch weren’t enough?” “I’m a growing boy,” Finn said in a sincere tone. “I need my vitamins.” Bria snorted. “The only thing that’s growing on you, Lane, is your ego.” Finn sidled up to my sister and gave her a dazzling smile. “Well, other things of mine also tend to swell up in your presence, detective.” I rolled my eyes at Finn’s attempt at witty banter. Jo-Jo just chuckled, amused by his antics. Bria returned Finn’s smile with a syrupy sweet one of her own. “Oh, really? So it’s gone from what, pencil eraser to cocktail sausage by now?” Finn sputtered and almost spit out a mouthful of coffee. His face flushed, and he glared at Bria.
Jennifer Estep (Spider's Revenge (Elemental Assassin, #5))
I can compare the pencil I am using to write these words (and these words, and these and these) to my own life, because it is sometimes sharp and sometimes dull, and because it is getting shorter and shorter the more I use it, and because even when I try to erase things you can still see the marks they left behind.
Lemony Snicket (Poison for Breakfast)
In a city called Stonetown, near a port called Stonetown Harbor, a boy named Reynie Muldoon was preparing to take an important test. It was the second test of the day—the first had been in an office across town. After that one he was told to come here, to the Monk Building on Third Street, and to bring nothing but a single pencil and a single rubber eraser, and to arrive no later than one o’clock. If he happened to be late, or bring two pencils, or forget his eraser, or in any other way deviate from the instructions, he would not be allowed to take the test, and that would be that. Reynie, who very much wanted to take it, was careful to follow the instructions. Curiously enough, these were the only ones given.
Trenton Lee Stewart (The Mysterious Benedict Society (The Mysterious Benedict Society, #1))
But he knew I wouldn't do that. He knew I wouldn't ask Mom for anything I didn't really, really need. We both tried to be good for her and she tried to be patient with us. Sometimes I thought of the three of us as pencils with the erasers scrubbed down to the end, and the next swipe across the paper would tear through the page and make a scree sound across the desk.
Ally Condie (Summerlost)
Illumination Always there is something more to know what lingers at the edge of thought awaiting illumination as in this second-hand book full of annotations daring the margins in pencil a light stroke as if the writer of these small replies meant not to leave them forever meant to erase evidence of this private interaction Here a passage underlined there a single star on the page as in a night sky cloud-swept and hazy where only the brightest appears a tiny spark I follow its coded message try to read in it the direction of the solitary mind that thought to pencil in a jagged arrow It is a bolt of lightning where it strikes I read the line over and over as if I might discern the little fires set the flames of an idea licking the page how knowledge burns Beyond the exclamation point its thin agreement angle of surprise there are questions the word why So much is left untold Between the printed words and the self-conscious scrawl between what is said and not white space framing the story the way the past unwritten eludes us So much is implication the afterimage of measured syntax always there ghosting the margins that words their black-lined authority do not cross Even as they rise up to meet us the white page hovers beneath silent incendiary waiting
Natasha Trethewey (Thrall)
I am a writer and comparing things is part of my occupation. Over the years I've learned to compare almost anything to almost anything else. I can compare the pencil I am using to write these words (and these words, and these and these) to my own life, because it is sometimes sharp and sometimes dull, and because it is getting shorter and shorter the more I use it, and because when I try to erase things you can still see the marks they left behind.
Lemony Snicket (Poison for Breakfast)
Winds blew,” she said. Tolbert left, never knowing another wind that had blown, one he had diverted, yanking Paulo to the side of the road on that rainy night, preventing a speeding car from striking him, a tragedy that a different version of the world had planned, a version that did not grant Annie and Paulo even one night of marriage, nor the child that would come from it. But there are so many times our lives are altered invisibly. The flip of a pencil, from written to erased.
Mitch Albom (The Next Person You Meet in Heaven)
Galen slides into his desk, unsettled by the way the sturdy blond boy talking to Emma casually rests his arm on the back of her seat. "Good morning," Galen says, leaning over to wrap his arms around her, nearly pulling her from the chair. He even rests his cheek against hers for good measure. "Good morning...er, Mark, isn't it?" he says, careful to keep his voice pleasant. Still, he glances meaningfully at the masculine arm still lining the back of Emma's seat, almost touching her. To his credit-and safety-Mark eases the offending limb back to his own desk, offering Emma a lazy smile full of strikingly white teeth. "You and Forza, huh? Did you clear that with his groupies?" She laughs and gently pries Galen's arms off her. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the eruption of pink spreading like spilled paint over her face. She's not used to dating him yet. Until about ten minutes ago, he wasn't used to it either. Now though, with the way Mark eyes her like a tasty shellfish, playing the role of Emma's boyfriend feels all too natural. The bell rings, saving Emma from a reply and saving Mark thousands of dollars in hospital bills. Emma shoots Galen a withering look, which he deflects with that he hopes is an enchanting grin. He measures his success by the way her blush deepens but stops short when he notices the dark circles under her eyes. She didn't sleep last night. Not that he thought she would. She'd been quiet on the flight home from Destin two nights ago. He didn't pressure her to talk about it with him, mostly because he didn't know what to say once the conversation got started. So many times, he's started to assure her that he doesn't see her as an abomination, but it seems wrong to say it out loud. Like he's willfully disagreeing with the law. But how could those delicious-looking lips and those huge violet eyes be considered an abomination? What's even crazier is that not only does he not consider her an abomination, the fact that she could be a Half-Breed ignited a hope in him he's got no right to feel: Grom would never mate with a half human. At least, Galen doesn't think he would. He glances at Emma, whose silky eyelids don't even flutter in her state of light sleep. When he clears his throat, she startles. "Thank you," she mouths to him as she picks her pencil back up, using the eraser to trace the lines in her textbook as she reads. He acknowledges with a nod. He doesn't want to leave her like this, anxious and tense and out of place in her own beautiful skin.
Anna Banks (Of Poseidon (The Syrena Legacy, #1))
I am a Painter. I write in Images. I play all day with Color and Materials and Brushes and Pencils. Sometimes I erase in frustration, or cover up with more layers of paint, or scream and redo, or sometimes it just works the first time I do it, but at the end of the day there is always a Story, and that Story becomes part of my Journey. I don't know anyplace in particular as Home, but my Spirit House is wherever I am. I live Wild right under its roof with Hopes and Dreams and Adventure and Risk. My Spirit House has no foundation and floats freely through Time and Space, traveling through all Dimensions without Obstacle. Sometimes it is Lonely to be that Traveler, but then I realize that it is the Story of the Paintings that is my connection to the Earth.
Riitta Klint
I saw the way my eyes looked then, saw them with the eyes I have now, and I heard my cry once more, the timbre of my voice, the extreme politeness of a girl of eight who shouts after a boy of eight to remind him not to forget his eraser and yet can’t call him by his name, James, or Crawford, the way we do in school, and opts, consciously or unconsciously, for the diminutive Jimmy, which indicates fondness, a verbal fondness, a personal fondness, since only she, in that world-encompassing instant, calls him that, a name that somehow casts in a new light the fondness or solicitude implicit in the gesture of warning him he’s forgotten something, don’t forget your eraser, or your pencil, though in the end it’s simply an expression, verbally poor or verbally rich, of happiness.
Roberto Bolaño (2666)
But when I closed my eyes and pictured the house in that moment, it wasn't empty. The pastel depths of my mother's swollen closet lured me back. I went inside and peeked out between her hanging silk blouses at the rough beige carpeting of her bedroom, the cream ceramic lamp on her nightstand. My mother. And then I traveled up the hall, through the French doors, into my father's study: a dried plum pit on a tea saucer, a stack of papers he'd marked in red, mechanical pencils, yellow legal pads that flared open like daffodils. Journals and magazine and newspapers and manila folders, gummy pink erasers that struck me suddenly as somehow genital. Squat glass bottles of Canada Dry a quarter full. A chipped crystal dish of oxidizing paper clips, loose change, a crumped lozenge wrapper, a button he had meant to sew back onto a shirt but never did. My father.
Ottessa Moshfegh (My Year of Rest and Relaxation)
I did not actually use my mechanical pencils so much as line them up to admire them. My mechanical pencils, in pistachio, plum, and cotton candy pink, were wands of sublime femininity that had to be saved for later. The longer I saved them, the more unbearable became my need to use them. But still I denied myself, because the exquisite pleasure was the mounting longing for them rather than the gratification of that longing. One has an overwhelming desire to eat what is cute, writes Sianne Ngai, and therefore cuteness is ideal for mass commodification because of its consumability. Cute objects are feminine, defenseless, and diminutive things, provoking our maternal desires to hold and nuzzle them as I had with my mouthless Sanrio erasers. But they can also unlock our sadistic desires to master and violate them, which is why I probably held off using my stationery in order to ward off my darker instincts.
Cathy Park Hong (Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning)
This story is always yours for the telling. This has always been yours. You can expand to fill it all or take up the smallest corner. You can write in invisible ink. You can tell your story in red wine stains and spilled ink and bite marks. You can only write in pencil so it can always be erased. You can write in layers, and turn the page and write sideways. You can spin spiral and make your words dance. You can ink it on the surface of your skin or x-ray vision the story onto the blank canvas of your bones. You can write a novel and then let the whole thing dissolve in the waves. You can write the truth and bury it in the ground, throw it in the fire, fold it into paper airplanes and watch it fly, roll it into a note in a bottle and toss it in the ocean and let it find its own way home. Or, you share it with the whole fucking world. You can care and not care and care-not-care all at once. But you get to write. And you get to choose the story you tell. And there’s no freedom bigger or bolder or braver than that.
Jeanette LeBlanc
Tris,” he says. “What did they do to you? You’re acting like a lunatic.” “That’s not very nice of you to say,” I say. “They put me in a good mood, that’s all. And now I really want to kiss you, so if you could just relax--” “I’m not going to kiss you. I’m going to figure out what’s going on,” he says. I pout my lower lip for a second, but then I grin as the pieces come together in my mind. “That’s why you like me!” I exclaim. “Because you’re not very nice either! It makes so much more sense now.” “Come on,” he says. “We’re going to see Johanna.” “I like you, too.” “That’s encouraging,” he replies flatly. “Come on. Oh, for God’s sake. I’ll just carry you.” He swings me into his arms, one arm under my knees and the other around my back. I wrap my arms around his neck and plant a kiss on his cheek. Then I discover that the air feels nice on my feet when I kick them, so I move my feet up and down as he walks us toward the building where Johanna works. When we reach her office, she is sitting behind a desk with a stack of paper in front of her, chewing on a pencil eraser. She looks up at us, and her mouth drifts open slightly. A hunk of dark hair covers the left side of her face. “You really shouldn’t cover up your scar,” I say. “You look prettier with your hair out of your face.” Tobias sets me down too heavily. The impact is jarring and hurts my shoulder a little, but I like the sound my feet made when they hit the floor. I laugh, but neither Johanna nor Tobias laughs with me. Strange. “What did you do to her?” Tobias says, terse. “What in God’s name did you do?” “I…” Johanna frowns at me. “They must have given her too much. She’s very small; they probably didn’t take her height and weight into account.” “They must have given her too much of what?” he says. “You have a nice voice,” I say. “Tris,” he says, “please be quiet.” “The peace serum,” Johanna says. “In small doses, it has a mild, calming effect and improves the mood. The only side effect is some slight dizziness. We administer it to members of our community who have trouble keeping the peace.” Tobias snorts. “I’m not an idiot. Every member of your community has trouble keeping the peace, because they’re all human. You probably dump it into the water supply.” Johanna does not respond for a few seconds. She folds her hands in front of her. “Clearly you know that is not the case, or this conflict would not have occurred,” she says. “But whatever we agree to do here, we do together, as a faction. If I could give the serum to everyone in this city, I would. You would certainly not be in the situation you are in now if I had.” “Oh, definitely,” he says. “Drugging the entire population is the best solution to our problem. Great plan.” “Sarcasm is not kind, Four,” she says gently. “Now, I am sorry about the mistake in giving too much to Tris, I really am. But she violated the terms of our agreement, and I’m afraid that you might not be able to stay here much longer as a result. The conflict between her and the boy--Peter--is not something we can forget.” “Don’t worry,” says Tobias. “We intend to leave as soon as humanly possible.
Veronica Roth (Insurgent (Divergent, #2))
Here’s what strikes me when I think back to my childhood, particularly those first nine Internet-less years: I can’t account for everything that happened back then, because I have only my memory to rely on. The data just doesn’t exist. When I was a child, “the unforgettable experience” was not yet a threateningly literal technological description, but a passionate metaphorical prescription of significance: my first words, my first steps, my first lost tooth, my first time riding a bicycle. My generation was the last in America and perhaps even in world history for which this is true—the last undigitized generation, whose childhoods aren’t up on the cloud but are mostly trapped in analog formats like handwritten diaries and Polaroids and VHS cassettes, tangible and imperfect artifacts that degrade with age and can be lost irretrievably. My schoolwork was done on paper with pencils and erasers, not on networked tablets that logged my keystrokes. My growth spurts weren’t tracked by smart-home technologies, but notched with a knife into the wood of the door frame of the house in which I grew up.
Edward Snowden (Permanent Record)
I’ve experienced all kinds of discrimination,” Oshima says. “Only people who’ve been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I’m as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they’re doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don’t want to. Like that lovely pair we just met.” He sighs and twirls the long slender pencil in his hand. “Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas—none of them bother me. I don’t care what banner they raise. But what I can’t stand are hollow people. When I’m with them I just can’t bear it, and wind up saying things I shouldn’t. With those women—I should’ve just let it slide, or else called Miss Saeki and let her handle it. She would have given them a smile and smoothed things over. But I just can’t do that. I say things I shouldn’t, do things I shouldn’t do. I can’t control myself. That’s one of my weak points. Do you know why that’s a weak point of mine?” “’Cause if you take every single person who lacks much imagination seriously, there’s no end to it,” I say. “That’s it,” Oshima says. He taps his temple lightly with the eraser end of the pencil. “But there’s one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki’s childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They’re a lost cause, and I don’t want anyone like that coming in here.” Oshima points at the stacks with the tip of his pencil. What he means, of course, is the entire library. “I wish I could just laugh off people like that, but I can’t.
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas — none of them bother me. I don’t care what banner they raise. But what I can’t stand are hollow people. When I’m with them I just can’t bear it, and wind up saying things I shouldn’t. With those women — I should’ve just let it slide, or else called Miss Saeki and let her handle it. She would have given them a smile and smoothed things over. But I just can’t do that. I say things I shouldn’t, do things I shouldn’t do. I can’t control myself. That’s one of my weak points. Do you know why that’s a weak point of mine?” “‘Cause if you take every single person who lacks much imagination seriously, there’s no end to it,” I say. “That’s it,” Oshima says. He taps his temple lightly with the eraser end of the pencil. “But there’s one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki’s childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They’re a lost cause, and I don’t want anyone like that coming in here.
Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore)
There you go with the breasts too big again. I rub my eraser over the sketchbook page and brush the crumbs away before reworking my lines over the ghosted image. With each stroke of the pencil my dream girl comes to life, her heart-shaped face graced with huge blue eyes and plump bow lips. Oh, how I want to kiss those lips
Ruth Clampett (Animate Me)
Nipples like pencil erasers, hard and corrective against wide shallow breasts whose broad curves I know like the Lake's own tired sweep.
David Foster Wallace (Girl with Curious Hair)
Pencil: The most durable and reusable pencil alternative is that of a refillable mechanical pencil in stainless steel, but the leads are sold in plastic cartridges. Until manufacturers sell leads in a recycled cardboard box, newspaper pencils (versus wood) are the most Zero Waste alternative. Make sure to pick an eraser-free model (purchase a natural rubber eraser separately) so you can compost it when it is too small to write with.
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
Highlighters: Not only can their felted tips lose their integrity and dry out, when highlighters no longer work, they are designed for the landfill. Colored pencils can serve the same purpose and last longer. As mentioned earlier, they also have the advantage of being erasable and their leftovers and shavings compostable.
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
Assign a file or paper tray to collect single-side printed paper for reuse. Boycott paper sourced from virgin forests and reams sold in plastic. Cancel magazine and newspaper subscriptions; view them online instead. Digitize important receipts and documents for safekeeping. Digital files are valid proofs for tax purposes. Download CutePDF Writer to save online files without having to print them. Email invitations or greeting cards instead of printing them (see “Holidays and Gifts” chapter). Forage the recycling can when paper scraps are needed, such as for bookmarks or pictures (for school collages, for example). Give extra paper to the local preschool. Hack the page margins of documents to maximize printing. Imagine a paperless world. Join the growing paperless community. Kill the fax machine; encourage electronic faxing through a service such as HelloFax. Limit yourself to print only on paper that has already been printed on one side. Make online billing and banking a common practice. Nag the kids’ teachers to send home only important papers. Opt out of paper newsletters. Print on both sides when using a new sheet of paper (duplex printing). Question the need for printing; print only when absolutely necessary. In most cases, it is not. Repurpose junk mail envelopes—make sure to cross out any barcode. Sign electronically using the Adobe Acrobat signing feature or SignNow.com. Turn down business cards; enter relevant info directly into a smartphone. Use shredded paper as a packing material, single-printed paper fastened with a metal clip for a quick notepad (grocery lists, errands lists), and double-printed paper to wrap presents or pick up your dog’s feces. Visit the local library to read business magazines and books. Write on paper using a pencil, which you can then erase to reuse paper, or better yet, use your computer, cell phone, or erasable board instead of paper. XYZ: eXamine Your Zipper; i.e., your leaks: attack any incoming source of paper.
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
Activity pouch on airplanes Buttons and pins Crayons and coloring place mats from restaurants Disposable sample cup from the grocery store Erasers and pencils with eraser tops Fireman hat from a visit to the fire station Goodie bags from county fairs and festivals Hair comb from picture day at school Infant goods from the maternity ward Junior ranger badge from the ranger station and Smokey the Bear Kids’ meal toys Lollipops and candy from various locations, such as the bank Medals and trophies for simply participating in (versus winning) a sporting activity Noisemakers to celebrate New Year’s Eve OTC samples from the doctor’s office Party favors and balloons from birthday parties Queen’s Jubilee freebies (for overseas travelers) Reusable plastic “souvenir” cup and straw from a diner Stickers from the doctor’s office Toothbrushes and floss from the dentist’s office United States flags on national holidays Viewing glasses for a 3-D movie (why not keep one pair and reuse them instead?) Water bottles at sporting events XYZ, etc.: The big foam hand at a football or baseball game or Band-Aids after a vaccination or various newspapers, prospectuses, and booklets from school, museums, national parks . . .
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
But everything else appealed too, all the paraphernalia that went with making marks on paper: fresh exercise books full of lined pages just waiting to be filled, botany books with one page lined and one page blank, project books with blank pages throughout, sketchbooks for drawing, rulers, paste, scissors, fountain pens, nibs, ink, lead pencils, erasers. They were best when new, of course, when everything lay ahead of them, and before any mistakes and erasures had occurred. Which is no doubt why I loved them, because they were promise made manifest.
Cory Taylor (Dying: A Memoir)
We all make mistakes. That's why your pencil has an eraser. - John Ceepak
Chris Grabenstein (Whack A Mole (John Ceepak Mystery, #3))
There was nothing like a teenage boy cleaning his ears with the eraser of his pencil to squelch sexual desire.
Robin Alexander (Next Time)
dogged perseverance toward a top-level goal requires, paradoxically perhaps, some flexibility at lower levels in the goal hierarchy. It’s as if the highest-level goal gets written in ink, once you’ve done enough living and reflecting to know what that goal is, and the lower-level goals get written in pencil, so you can revise them and sometimes erase them altogether, and then figure out new ones to take their place.
Angela Duckworth (Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance)
But love isn’t a pencil mark. It can’t be erased so easily.
Kandi Steiner (Palm South University: Season 3 Box Set)
XXVI Potential Energy Its swimming in my cream and coffee and exploding with that first  soft bite of the pencil – filling me as i taste yellow paint and pink eraser in my mouth O Leap out from my heart like lightning! Oh my love! O lets Catch the sun and press it to the page! Flail at the leaves of paper as they pirouette and spring into space. I throw myself atop the pile   hoping to prevent their explosion from killing you with my joy. They slowly melt beneath my weight and flow back into me.
Michael Bee (Leaves on the Wind (Poetry By Michael T. Bee Book 1))
began removing things from the bucket. First came a Swiss Army knife, a flashlight, a penlight, and a bottle of extra-strength glue, which Kate examined to be sure its lid was tightly closed. Then she produced a bag of marbles, a slingshot, a spool of clear fishing twine, one pencil and one eraser, a kaleidoscope, and a horseshoe magnet, which she yanked with some effort from the metal bucket. “I’ve been through
Trenton Lee Stewart (The Mysterious Benedict Society)
Dear Moldenke, Whether or not you have feelings for me, or feelings at all, I do have feelings about you. They increased when you compared my nipples to pencil erasers. No one has been so gentle to me. The clouds are promising rain. Love, Cock Roberta.
David Ohle (Motorman)
Tolkien worked like a painter who first pencils in a rough sketch, erases, then draws again, then fills in a more detailed drawing, then adds layers of color, working from background to foreground to final details.
Diana Pavlac Glyer (Bandersnatch: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings)
Wipe the slate clean. Erase all our beliefs, hopes, and dreams. Remove all our possessions. Nothing should remain. Then let’s give the pencil to God and ask Him to redesign our lives by that which is fully spiritually authentic.
Richard A. Swenson (A Minute of Margin: Restoring Balance to Busy Lives - 180 Daily Reflections (Pilgrimage Growth Guide))
At the moment a lot of days don’t make sense. I run out of postage stamps, or I run out of pencil erasers, or I find myself running out of feelings. This will pass, yes, but I suspect this time will be felt, like a leftover bruise, for longer than we might imagine.
Ella Frances Sanders (Close Again)
One day when I was studying with Schoenberg, he pointed out the eraser on his pencil and said, "This end is more important than the other.
John Cage, Silence
Mistakes are forgiven, but only in pencil.
Anthony T. Hincks
I want what everybody else want. I want a job. I wanna drink from that fountain down at the courthouse. I want Andy to be a sheriff if that’s what he wanna be. I’m tired of being on the back end of things like I just don’t count. I wanna be able to move my mama outta this house, move her to East Grove or Meadow Hill. I wanna see Chadlow brought down, and I wanna feel like a man in this town. I want a whole lotta things, Junior.And if I can’t get ’em, I wanna take one of them pencils of yours and erase this town off the face of the earth.
Delores Phillips (The Darkest Child)
Don’t be afraid to guess. Like it or not, there’s a certain amount of trial and error inherent in the process of interest discovery. Unlike the answers to crossword puzzles, there isn’t just one thing you can do that might develop into a passion. There are many. You don’t have to find the “right” one, or even the “best” one—just a direction that feels good. It can also be difficult to know if something will be a good fit until you try it for a while. Don’t be afraid to erase an answer that isn’t working out. At some point, you may choose to write your top-level goal in indelible ink, but until you know for sure, work in pencil.
Angela Duckworth (Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance)
That life, my previous existence, reminded me of a picture drawn with a pencil; no matter how well you erased it, there would always be a soft outline left behind. I was living in that soft outline; most of the time it had become hardly perceptible, but there were moments when I could make out the picture in its entirety.
Tess Bentley (The Brontë Sisters: A Room of Their Own: Short Stories, Poetry, and Non-Fiction Inspired by the Brontës)
To err is human, but when the eraser wears out ahead of the pencil, you're overdoing it. — Josh Jenkins
Anonymous (Keep It Simple: Daily Meditations for Twelve Step Beginnings and Renewal (Hazelden Meditations))
Learn to write your hurts with pencil so as you can erase it off with Eraser of Forgiveness and write your benefits with Pen so as it remain safe with you forever.
Praveen Agarawal (8 Course Meal For The Soul)
That's it," Oshima says. He taps his temple lightly with the eraser end of the pencil. "But there's one thing I want you to remember, Kafka. Those are exactly the kind of people who murdered Miss Saeki's childhood sweetheart. Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it's important to know what's right and what's wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They're a lost cause, and I don't want anyone like that coming in here.
Anonymous
The good news was that merchandise had done extremely well the previous year, with Kenner making around $100 million. Of course, Black Falcon collected its percentage from the toymaker and other myriad licensees. There was a cuddly Chewbacca; a remote-controlled R2-D2; Darth Vader piggy banks and pencil sharpeners; do-it-yourself construction kits, molding kits, painting kits, play kits, poster kits, and jigsaw puzzles; a projector for showing slides from the movie; rulers, pens, digital watches, erasers, jewelry, and more.
J.W. Rinzler (The Making of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Enhanced Edition))