Short Seashell Quotes

Anning would spend the next thirty-five years gathering fossils, which she sold to visitors. (She is commonly held to be the source for the famous tongue twister “She sells seashells on the seashore.”)

It was the start of a remarkable career. Anning would spend the next thirty-five years gathering fossils, which she sold to visitors. (She is commonly held to be the source for the famous tongue twister “She sells seashells on the seashore.”) She would also find the first plesiosaurus, another marine monster, and one of the first and best pterodactyls.

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

When, during the course of an interview for The New Yorker, I told the interviewer (Mark Singer) that I believed stories are found things, like fossils in the ground, he said that he didn't believe me. I replied that that was fine, as long as he believed that I believe it. And I do. Stories aren't souvenir tee-shirts or GameBoys. Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible. Sometimes the fossil you uncover is small; a seashell. Sometimes it's enormous, a Tyrannosaurus Rex with all those gigantic ribs and grinning teeth. Either way, short story or thousand-page whopper of a novel, the techniques of excavation remain basically the same.

When I was young, for a treat, Mummy would pop a pimento-stuffed olive into my mouth, or, occasionally, an oily anchovy from a coffin-shaped yellow-and-red tin. She always stressed to me that sophisticated palates erred toward savory flavors, that cheap, sugary treats were the ruin of the poor (and their teeth). Mummy always had very sharp, very white teeth. The only acceptable sweet treats, she said, were proper Belgian truffles (Neuhaus, nom de dieu; only tourists bought those nasty chocolate seashells) or plump Medjool dates from the souks of Tunis, both of which were rather difficult to source in our local Spar. There was a time, shortly before . . . the incident . . . when she shopped only at Fortnum’s, and I recall that in that same period she was in regular correspondence with Fauchon over perceived imperfections in their confiture de cerises.

It was a flowering that stemmed from a rocky origin: her first panic attack. Shortly after her Boston arrest, Emma waited at the Pleasant Street Station on the MBTA Green Line and felt the earth shudder a seismic tremor under her feet. A Titan’s hand gripped her rib cage. Her breakfast swirled and flipped in her tiny guts. Stars blinked in her eyes; invisible seashells clapped her ears, submerging her in a white roar. Emma fell to her knees, ripping her fishnets and her dignity.

The shrew's estimate was correct; it was but a short time until the two waded back around the cove, Clecky chatting animatedly. "That vermin was cheatin', y'know, saw him m'self. He tipped a seashell wrong side up with his footpaw. What a rotter! I'd hate to have that'n sittin' alongside me at supper, he'd swipe all the salad whilst I had me back turned!" Martin washed his swordblade in the water and wiped it dry on his sleeve before sheathing it. "Hah! When did you ever turn your back on a salad bowl? Any creature trying to steal food from you would starve to death.

Lame.” Jayid Kafir yawned, not even looking up from a map of glowing stars. He was stocky, with ears that stood out from his head like large seashells. Jayid was the one who geeked out over everything in the night sky. He always wore tee shirts with a different planet on the front. Today it was Mars.