Terracotta Quotes

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

It isn't that it's too soon, you're on the back of my bike, it ain't too soon. You can buy sheets. You cannot install blinds." "um..." I mumbled. "Can you explain the difference?" "Sheets are chick territory," he said without delay. "You gotta use tools, that's dick territory." "Oh," I whispered. "Don't tread on dick territory," he advised. "So, um... is a paintbrush a tool?" I asked cautiously. "If you're paintin' the side of the house, yeah. If you're painting mud colored paint in a room, no." "It's terracotta," I said softly. "Whatever," he muttered, his mouth twitching. "Or, the paint chip called it Mexican horizon. The blue is dawn sky." "Definitely chick territory," Tate replied, losing the fight with his grin. "What about...pictures for the walls?" I asked. "Chick," he answered instantly. "Um...could I ask that, instead of you getting angry and being a jerk, maybe you give me a head's up when I'm doing something stupid?
Kristen Ashley (Sweet Dreams (Colorado Mountain, #2))
If I’d known I was about to meet the man who’d shatter me like bone china on terra-cotta, I would have slept in. Instead,
Martha Hall Kelly (Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1))
The memory of the aged becomes clearer and clearer with time. It has no pity.
Andrea Camilleri (The Terra-Cotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano, #2))
Goodbye," said Siew Tsin. "See you next time," said Lady Meng, more accurately. "Will you remember me when I come again?" "Of course," said Lady Meng. "I miss you every time.
Zen Cho (The Terracotta Bride)
We’ve talked about this,” said Jamie mildly. “Murder can’t be your first choice every time you don’t like something.” “You’ve talked about it,” Terracotta replied. “I still think it’s a good first choice.
Sangu Mandanna (The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches)
Stories never told, disappeared in the dawn mist and sunset blaze. Like a movie kiss, not real, but still overwhelms and entices lustfulness, turns me into pleasure and a connoisseur of love. Flying to the heavens above followed by the yearning hope that you will always be close to me, that you will not disperse when we revel in​ one another. Secrets to be kept in one of these terracotta walls that fade away through the dusk, feeling the scented candles of musk, just you and I, two rebels of love, that challenge the logic, the meaning, ​and sense.
Tatjana Ostojic (Baghdad Nights)
Only two hours earlier she was telling me how great I was because I could cook eggs. Now my egg-making means I'm a homicidal maniac. Now I might wipe out random people at a mall because I don't smile enough. Why are the adults in my life so determined to bring me down when I'm feeling good? I find myself thinking that it would be nice to be able to fix my life the way I'm fixing the patio. I wonder, is there enough terracotta-colored cement to fill the hole where my father should be? Or where my mother's spine should be? Or where my guts should be?
A.S. King (Everybody Sees the Ants)
I find myself thinking that it would be nice to be able to fix my life the way I’m fixing the patio. I wonder, is there enough terracotta-colored cement to fill the hole where my father should be? Or where my mother’s spine should be? Or where my guts should be?
A.S. King (Everybody Sees the Ants)
Until humans came and made anthills out of these mountains, Diwan Sahib was saying, looking up at the langurs, the land had belonged to these monkeys, and to barking deer, nilgai, tiger, barasingha, leopards, jackals, the great horned owl, and even to cheetahs and lions. The archaeology of the wilderness consisted of these lost animals, not of ruined walls, terracotta amulets, and potsherds.
Anuradha Roy (The Folded Earth)
Resignation to unhappiness didn't come naturally—she had to learn it.
Zen Cho (The Terracotta Bride)
Hell was hot and full of unkind people in a hurry; there was far too much red tape; and the bureaucrats were all shockingly corrupt.
Zen Cho (The Terracotta Bride)
And in our dark days, with so many threatening clouds on the horizon, he concluded, we puff up a story like this to drug people, to distract their attention from the serious problems and divert them with a Romeo-and-Juliet story, one scripted, however, by a soap opera writer.
Andrea Camilleri (The Terra-Cotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano, #2))
Archaeologists do something impressive, reflecting disciplinary humility. When archaeologists excavate a site, they recognize that future archaeologists will be horrified at their primitive techniques, at the destructiveness of their excavating. Thus they often leave most of a site untouched to await their more skillful disciplinary descendants. For example, astonishingly, more than forty years after excavations began, less than 1 percent of the famed Qin dynasty terra-cotta army in China has been uncovered.
Robert M. Sapolsky (Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst)
A man can be beautiful, I see that now. It's not just a woman's term, not a word reserved for romantic, virtuous, elegant things. I don't think beauty is neat any more. It's unordered. It's unbrushed hair and a torn back pocket. It's bright and strange and lovely, and if I were to paint him, I'd use all the warm colours - ochre, gold, plum, terracotta, scarlet, burnt orange.
Susan Fletcher (Eve Green)
Rebirth entailed a true death, the severing of one's memory and the loss of one's self.
Zen Cho (The Terracotta Bride)
This time, let us hope you will get to be old," she said. "It is a great suffering to know youth only.
Zen Cho (The Terracotta Bride)
Siew Tsin had not given much thought to what happened in the afterlife until the afterlife happened to her.
Zen Cho (The Terracotta Bride)
She had still had the loved child's belief that it would not be allowed for anything too bad to happen to her.
Zen Cho (The Terracotta Bride)
I’d known I was about to meet the man who’d shatter me like bone china on terra-cotta, I would have slept in. Instead,
Martha Hall Kelly (Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1))
…a waitress came out and plonked in front of each of us a small standard terra-cotta flowerpot in which had been baked a little loaf of bread. "What's this?" I asked. "It's bread," she replied. "But it's in a flowerpot?" She gave me a look that I was beginning to think of as the Darwin stare. It was a look that said, "Yeah? So?" "Well, isn't that kind of unusual?" She considered for a moment. "Is a bit, I suppose." "And will we be following a horticultural theme throughout the meal?" Her expression contorted in a deeply pained look, as if she were trying to suck her face into the back of her head. "What?" "Will the main course arrive in a wheelbarrow?" I elaborated helpfully. "Will you be serving the salad with a pitchfork?" "Oh, no. It's just the bread that's special." "I'm so pleased to hear it.
Bill Bryson (In a Sunburned Country)
had been keeping Diddy, his pet tarantula, in an empty terra-cotta pot Helmut used to grow tulips. Hanna’s parents nervously stood up and walked over to the doctor. “Your daughter is still unconscious,” Dr. Geist said quietly. “Not much has changed.
Sara Shepard (Unbelievable (Pretty Little Liars, #4))
He thinks, if you were born in Putney, you saw the river every day, and imagined it widening out to the sea. Even if you had never seen the ocean you had a picture of it in your head from what you had been told by foreign people who sometimes came upriver. You knew that one day you would go out into a world of marble pavements and peacocks, of hillsides buzzing with heat, the fragrance of crushed herbs rising around you as you walked. You planned for what your journeys would bring you: the touch of warm terra-cotta, the night sky of another climate, alien flowers, the stone-eyed gaze of other people’s saints. But if you were born in Aslockton, in flat fields under a wide sky, you might just be able to imagine Cambridge: no farther.
Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall (Thomas Cromwell, #1))
It was not a world Siew Tsin would have chosen to live in. But she did not want to be reborn, either, anymore than Junsheng did, anymore than all the other spirits showering gold and favours on hell officials so that they could stay where they were. Rebirth entailed a true death, the severing of one's memory and the loss of one's self.
Zen Cho (The Terracotta Bride)
My geography savors a delicious paradox: Home - a grounding - found in unearthly beauty. The predominant colors are blue, emerald, and terra-cotta. Every day, every season, I taste these colors and the intricate flavors of their unaccountable tones and hues. I have yet to earn this land. Perhaps I never will. Home is a religion. Sensibly you understand the need for it, yet not even sensible people can explain it. - from the Chapter "Finding Home
Ellen Meloy (The Last Cheater's Waltz: Beauty and Violence in the Desert Southwest)
Whatever you do, do not allow an army of white wine bottles to amass under your kitchen sink, like those terra-cotta soldiers, except made of shame.
Kelly Williams Brown (Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps)
The wall was a symbol of protests, inch upon inch covered with graffiti, in red, blue, yellow, purple, indigo, magenta, terracotta, a tableau of screaming indignations.
Edna O'Brien (The Little Red Chairs)
You’re eating without conviction, Inspector.’ ‘It’s true. The fact is, I’ve got something on my mind.’ ‘The mind should be forgotten when the Lord in His grace puts such perches in front of you,
Andrea Camilleri (The Terracotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano, #2))
A Thunderstorm In Town" She wore a 'terra-cotta' dress, And we stayed, because of the pelting storm, Within the hansom's dry recess, Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless We sat on, snug and warm. Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain, And the glass that had screened our forms before Flew up, and out she sprang to her door: I should have kissed her if the rain Had lasted a minute more.
Thomas Hardy
To judge from the entrance the dawn was making, it promised to be a very iffy day -- that is, blasts of angry sunlight one minute, fits of freezing rain the next, all of it seasoned with sudden gusts of wind -- one of those days when someone who is sensitive to abrupt shifts in weather and suffers them in his blood and brain is likely to change opinion and direction continuously, like those sheets of tin, cut in the shape of banners and roosters, that spin every which way on rooftops with each new puff of wind.
Andrea Camilleri (The Terra-Cotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano, #2))
Unwell? I was fine, as good as one might feel in such circumstances. No, my friend, I merely pretended to faint. I'm a good actress. Actually, a thought had come into my mind: if a terrorist, I said to myself, were to blow up this church with all of us inside, at least one-tenth of all the hypocrisy in the world would disappear with us. So I had myself escorted out.
Andrea Camilleri (The Terra-Cotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano, #2))
La maggior parte dei mammiferi escono dal grembo come la terracotta smaltata esce dal forno – ogni tentativo di rimodellarla manderebbe tutto in frantumi. Gli umani escono dal grembo come la pasta di vetro dalla fornace. Possono essere rigirati, stirati e modellati con un sorprendente grado di libertà.
Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind)
I closed my eyes and took more of those deep breaths Dad was so fond of, thinking that it was no wonder Prodigium were always getting their asses handed to them by humans. I mean, every time I had to do an intense spell, there was all this focusing, and relaxing, and picturing, and breathing...It wasn't exactly the most effective battle strategy against something like The Eye. I should've known better than to think about The Eye,though. As soon as the name popped into my head, my control shattered. And so did the terra-cotta pot. Black soil rained down on my feet, and the purple flower drooped even further. I could have sworn it actually bobbed accusingly at me. "Ugh," I groaned, as Cal quickly scooped the jagged pot out of my hands. "Sorry,but I warned you I was destructo-girl.
Rachel Hawkins (Demonglass (Hex Hall, #2))
A man can be beautiful, I see that now. It’s not just a woman’s term, not a word reserved for romantic, virtuous, elegant things. I don’t think beauty is neat anymore. It’s unordered. It’s unbrushed hair and a torn back pocket. It’s bright and strange and lovely, and if I were to paint him, I’d use all the warm colours - ochre, gold, plum, terracotta, scarlet, burnt orange. I want him to see me as I saw him then, I want him to find me alone at the end of the day with the sun in my hair. I want his heart to buckle, too. I want him to stop someone out in the square and say, who’s that? Do you know her? Where is she from?” — - from Eve Green’s mother’s account. “It is written on a piece of thin, yellow paper, and is folded in half. I like this account. I like it because it’s true, she’s right. We all want out lovers to see us that way - unaware, natural, serene. We want to change their world with one glance, to stop their breath at the sight of us.
Susan Fletcher (Eve Green)
They handed over spider plants in terra-cotta, six-packs, books, bottles of wine. Yuppies in embryo, miming their parents’ manners.
Lauren Groff (Fates and Furies)
THE FUZZY GREEN light gradually resolved itself into trees, and a narrow street of damp terra-cotta bricks stretched lazily into the distance.
Fuminori Nakamura (Evil and the Mask)
While she was gone I would vomit—just to do it—into the rustic terra-cotta jars that lined the patio in front or I would drive into town with the scary masseur and collect razor blades.
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho (Vintage Contemporaries))
The spirit and its chosen one bind their ankles together with red thread. They may take each other's hands and smile at each other. When they walk down the bridge into the world of the living, they know it won't be the last time they see one another. The red thread is better than a promise —it's a guarantee. It means they'll meet again in the next life. It means they'll love each other there, too.
Zen Cho (The Terracotta Bride)
Most of what we got was crockery: from exotic crystal bowls to ceramic anomalies. Then, a cross-section of rugs- from a beautiful Kashmiri original to a memorable one with printed dragons and utterly incomprehensible hieroglyphics. Dibyendu (typically) gave us a scrabble set and Runai Maashi: that rocking chair. Yuppie work friends, trying to be unique and aesthetically offbeat, went for wind-chimes but there were really far too many of them by the end. We also got a fantastic number of white and off-white kurtas, jamdani sarees with complementary blouses, no less than nine suitcases, suit pieces, imported condoms, bed-sheets, bed-covers, coffee makers, coffee tables, coffee-table books, poetry books, used gifts (paintings of sunsets and other disasters), three nights and four days in Darjeeling, along with several variations of Durga, Ganesh and all the usual suspects in ivory, china, terracotta, papier-mâché, and what have you. Someone gave us a calendar that looking back, I think, was laudably sardonic. Others gave us money, in various denominations: from eleven to five hundred and one. And in one envelope, came a letter for her that she read in tears in the bathroom.’ ('Left from Dhakeshwari')
Kunal Sen
The moon garden of the mansion was famous, having been designed with night-blooming flowers lining the pathways and hillocks of the landscape. They stepped through open doors, went down the wide stone steps, and were greeted by the heady perfume of late-blooming autumn flowers. The pale blossoms were lit from below, setting a mood of mystery. A fountain of natural stone rose up out of a pond surrounded by terra-cotta sculptures.
Susan Wiggs (The Lost and Found Bookshop (Bella Vista Chronicles, #3))
Giulio was against our meeting. He didn't want me getting mixed up in things that, in his opinion, were no concern of mine. For decades the respectable people here did nothing but repeat that the Mafia was no concern of theirs but only involved the people involved in it. But I used to teach my pupils that the see-nothing, know-nothing attitude is the most mortal of sins. So now that its my turn to tell what I saw, I'm supposed to take a step back?
Andrea Camilleri (The Terra-Cotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano, #2))
Medusa prays upon this much-worshipped prismic effect: of ineluctable identity, yet plurality of self. Originally apotropaic, her image has come to symbolize everything from Nietzschean nihilism to feminist rage, and adorn objects from Archaic terracotta vases to the logo of the fashion house Versace, the section label neatly summarized. She has, perhaps, become the ultimate symbol of metamorphosis itself: a symbol able to metamorphose into whatever you want her to symbolize.
A. Natasha Joukovsky (The Portrait of a Mirror)
It is an amazement of riches, glacé fruits and marzipan flowers and mountains of loose chocolates of all shapes and colors, and rabbits, ducks, hens, chicks, lambs, gazing out at me with merry-grave chocolate eyes like the terra-cotta armies of ancient China, and above it all a statue of a woman, graceful brown arms holding a sheaf of chocolate wheat, hair rippling. The detail is beautifully rendered, the hair added in a darker grade of chocolate, the eyes brushed on in white. The smell of chocolate is overwhelming, the rich fleshly scent of it drags down the throat in an exquisite trail of sweetness.
Joanne Harris (Chocolat (Chocolat, #1))
Beyond her, along the edge of the patio, a rainbow of color danced in the evening breeze. Olive's backyard efforts had gone well beyond the leafy herb garden. Arranged in sweet clusters, with a backdrop of desert sage and tall grasses, sat well-tended terracotta pots brimming with yellow snapdragons, deep-violet lobelia, and powder-blue pansies. Even in the dimming evening light, Julia noticed a couple of butterflies flitting near the bright arrangement of petals. It was such a charming sight, and her niece had been responsible for the entire thing. There was no doubt this girl had a serious green thumb.
Nicole Meier (The Second Chance Supper Club)
Instead, as the crystal splinters entered Hornwrack's brain, he experienced two curious dreams of the Low City, coming so quickly one after the other that they seemed simultaneous. In the first, long shadows moved across the ceiling frescoes of the Bistro Californium, beneath which Lord Mooncarrot's clique awaited his return to make a fourth at dice. Footsteps sounded on the threshold. The women hooded their eyes and smiled, or else stifled a yawn, raising dove-grey gloves to their blue, phthisic lips. Viriconium, with all her narcissistic intimacies and equivocal invitations welcomed him again. He had hated that city, yet now it was his past and it was he had to regret...The second of these visions was of the Rue Sepile. It was dawn, in summer. Horse-chestnut flowers bobbed like white wax candles above the deserted pavements. An oblique light struck into the street - so that its long and normally profitless perspective seemed to lead straight into the heart of a younger, more ingenuous city - and fell across the fronts of the houses where he had once lived, warming up the rotten brick and imparting to it a not unpleasant pinkish colour. Up at the second-floor casement window a boy was busy with the bright red geraniums arranged along the outer still in lumpen terra-cotta pots. He looked down at Hornwrack and smiled. Before Hornwrack could speak he drew down the lower casement and turned away. The glass which no separated them reflected the morning sunlight in a silent explosion; and Hornwrack, dazzled mistaking the light for the smile, suddenly imagined an incandescence which would melt all those old streets! Rue Sepile; the Avenue of Children; Margery Fry Court: all melted down! All the shabby dependencies of the Plaza of Unrealized Time! All slumped, sank into themselves, eroded away until nothing was left in his field of vision but an unbearable white sky above and the bright clustered points of the chestnut leaves below - and then only a depthless opacity, behind which he could detect the beat of his own blood, the vitreous humour of the eye. He imagined the old encrusted brick flowing, the glass cracking and melting from its frames even as they shrivelled awake, the sheds of paints flaring green and gold, the geraniums toppling in flames to nothing, not even white ash, under this weight of light! All had winked away like reflections in a jar of water glass, and only the medium remained, bright, viscid, vacant. He had a sense of the intolerable briefness of matter, its desperate signalling and touching, its fall; and simultaneously one of its unendurable durability He thought, Something lies behind all the realities of the universe and is replacing them here, something less solid and more permanent. Then the world stopped haunting him forever.
M. John Harrison (Viriconium (Viriconium, #1-4))
The small pergola that Michael had built was covered in loops of jasmine, and Lara's flower beds were blazing with color. Blowsy white peonies, dusky purple irises with golden stripes, pale orange poppies with sooty centers. The first tea roses of the year were budding. Elinas, pink petals tipped with crimson, and the ivory Jeanne Moreaus that smelled faintly of lemons. Lara wanted to pick one and put it on the breakfast tray, but Michael hated cut flowers. She went back inside and began to set the tray. Her mother's blue Venetian glass dish filled with raspberries. Orange juice in a white jug. A honey pot with a wooden dipper. Sunshine streamed in through the window, warming the terra-cotta tiles beneath her bare feet. She could not have cut flowers in the house so she had pictures of them instead. Two huge framed Georgia O'Keefe poppy prints. An apron with a pattern of climbing roses. A wooden clock that Phil had given her with a pendulum in the shape of a red rose.
Ella Griffin (The Flower Arrangement)
My favorite Etruscans, a man and a woman, recline in the form of a terra-cotta sarcophagus from the sixth century BC in the Villa Giulia, the National Etruscan Museum in Rome. With almond eyes, a narrow face, neatly trimmed beard, long braided locks, and powerful shoulders, he lies casually, naked to the waist, his arm around her shoulder. She, dressed in a flowing gown, with tiny feet tucked into soft slippers with pointed toes, pours perfume—a ritual act—into his hands. I recognize the languorous look on their faces: utter postcoital contentment.
Dianne Hales (La Passione: How Italy Seduced the World)
After history, which I occasionally enjoy, and French, which I tres don't, I have double art. The art studio hasn't been changed in, like, a hundred years. The floors are battered and creaky and covered with so many layers of dried paint that if looks like Jackson Pollock Was Here, minus the cigarette butts. Apparently, past generations of Willing Art Girls had tossed their cigarettes onto the tiled window well outside rather than onto the floor. "They were more ladylike," Cat Vernon told me once, pointing out the window beside her easle. The butts are gone, but there are burn marks, scattered like leopard spots,over the terra-cotta surface.
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)
The residence of Mr. Peter Pett, the well-known financier, on Riverside Drive is one of the leading eyesores of that breezy and expensive boulevard. As you pass by in your limousine, or while enjoying ten cents worth of fresh air on top of a green omnibus, it jumps out and bites at you. Architects, confronted with it, reel and throw up their hands defensively, and even the lay observer has a sense of shock. The place resembles in almost equal proportions a cathedral, a suburban villa, a hotel and a Chinese pagoda. Many of its windows are of stained glass, and above the porch stand two terra-cotta lions, considerably more repulsive even than the complacent animals which guard New York's Public Library.
P.G. Wodehouse (Piccadilly Jim)
One early terracotta statuette from Catal Huyuk in Anatolia depicts an enthroned female in the act of giving birth, supported by two cat-like animals that form her seat (Plate 1). This figure has been identified as a 'birth goddess' and it is this type of early image that has led a number of feminist scholars to posit a 'reign of the goddess' in ancient Near Eastern prehistory. Maria Gimbutas, for whom such images are proof of a perfect matriarchal society in 'Old Europe' , presents an ideal vision in which a socially egalitarian matriarchal culture was overthrown by a destructive patriarchy (Gimbutas 1991). Gerda Lerner has argued for a similar situation in the ancient Near East; however, she does not discuss nude figurines at any length (Lerner 1986a: 147). More recently, critiques of the matriarchal model of prehistory have pointed out the flaws in this methodology (e.g. Conkey and Tringham 1995; Meskell 1995; Goodison and Morris 1998). In all these critiques the identification of such figures as goddesses is rejected as a modern myth. There is no archaeological evidence that these ancient communities were in fact matriarchal, nor is there any evidence that female deities were worshipped exclusively. Male gods may have worshipped simultaneously with the 'mother goddesses' if such images are indeed representations of deities. Nor do such female figures glorify or show admiration for the female body; rather they essentialise it, reducing it to nothing more nor less than a reproductive vessel. The reduction of the head and the diminution of the extremities seem to stress the female form as potentially reproductive, but to what extent this condition was seen as sexual, erotic or matriarchal is unclear. ....Despite the correct rejection of the 'Mother Goddess' and utopian matriarchy myths by recent scholarship, we should not loose track of the overwhelming evidence that the image of female nudity was indeed one of power in ancient Mesopotamia. The goddess Ishtar/Inanna was but one of several goddesses whose erotic allure was represented as a powerful attribute in the literature of the ancient Near East. In contact to the naked male body which was the focus of a variety of meanings in the visual arts, female nudity was always associated with sexuality, and in particular with powerful sexual attraction, Akkadian *kuzbu*. This sexuality was not limited to Ishtar and her cult. As a literary topos, sensuousness is a defining quality for both mortal women and goddesses. In representational art, the nude woman is portrayed in a provocative pose, as the essence of the feminine. For femininity, sexual allure, *kuzbu*, the ideal of the feminine, was thus expressed as nudity in both visual and verbal imagery. While several iconographic types of unclothed females appear in Mesopotamian representations of the historical period - nursing mothers, women in acts of sexual intercourse, entertainers such as dancers and musicians, and isolated frontally represented nudes with or without other attributes - and while these nude female images may have different iconographic functions, the ideal of femininity and female sexuality portrayed in them is similar. -Zainab Bahrani, Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia
Zainab Bahrani
That's my little piece of heaven. Go ahead." Ciro followed Remo through the open door to a small enclosed garden. Terra-cotta pots positioned along the top of the stone wall spilled over with red geraniums and orange impatiens. An elm tree with a wide trunk and deep roots filled the center of the garden. Its green leaves and thick branches reached past the roof of Remo's building, creating a canopy over the garden. There was a small white marble birdbath, gray with soot, flanked by two deep wicker armchairs. Remo fished a cigarette out of his pocket, offering another to Ciro as both men took a seat. "This is where I come to think." "Va bene," Ciro said as he looked up into the tree. He remembered the thousands of trees that blanketed the Alps; here on Mulberry Street, one tree with peeling gray bark and holes in its leaves was cause for celebration.
Adriana Trigiani (The Shoemaker's Wife)
The clean smell of her childhood’s only untouched days. The music of the trees, too, tuning the wind. She remembers. Her nose slips into one of those dark fissures between the flat terra-cotta plates. She falls into the smell, a devastating whiff of two hundred million years ago. She can’t imagine what such perfume was ever meant to do. But it does something to her now. Mind control. It’s neither vanilla nor turpentine, but replete with highlights of each. A shot of spiritual butterscotch. A sprig of pineapple incense. It smells like nothing but itself, pungent and sublime. She breathes in, eyes closed, the tree’s real name. She stands with her nose in the bark, perversely intimate. She doses herself for a long time, like a hospice patient self-administering the morphine. Chemicals rush down her windpipe, through the bloodstream to her body’s provinces, across the blood-brain barrier and into her thoughts. The smell grips her brain stem until she and the dead man are fishing side by side again, under the pine shade where the fish hide, in the soul’s innermost national park.
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
And in a few steps, she’s outside. The smell is on her before she reaches the trees—the scent of resin and wide western places. The clean smell of her childhood’s only untouched days. The music of the trees, too, tuning the wind. She remembers. Her nose slips into one of those dark fissures between the flat terra-cotta plates. She falls into the smell, a devastating whiff of two hundred million years ago. She can’t imagine what such perfume was ever meant to do. But it does something to her now. Mind control. It’s neither vanilla nor turpentine, but replete with highlights of each. A shot of spiritual butterscotch. A sprig of pineapple incense. It smells like nothing but itself, pungent and sublime. She breathes in, eyes closed, the tree’s real name. She stands with her nose in the bark, perversely intimate. She doses herself for a long time, like a hospice patient self-administering the morphine. Chemicals rush down her windpipe, through the bloodstream to her body’s provinces, across the blood-brain barrier and into her thoughts. The smell grips her brain stem until she and the dead man are fishing side by side again, under the pine shade where the fish hide, in the soul’s innermost national park.
Richard Powers (The Overstory)
After your email about the Late Bronze Age collapse, I became very intrigued by the idea that writing systems could be ‘lost’. In fact I wasn’t really sure what that even meant, so I had to look it up, and I ended up reading a lot about something called Linear B. Do you know all about this already? Basically, around the year 1900, a team of British excavators in Crete found a cache of ancient clay tablets in a terracotta bathtub. The tablets were inscribed with a syllabic script of unknown language and appeared to date from around 1400 BCE. Throughout the early part of the twentieth century, classical scholars and linguists tried to decipher the markings, known as Linear B, with no success. Although the script was organised like writing, no one could work out what language it transcribed. Most academics hypothesised it was a lost language of the Minoan culture on Crete, with no remaining descendants in the modern world. In 1936, at the age of eighty-five, the archaeologist Arthur Evans gave a lecture in London about the tablets, and in attendance at the lecture was a fourteen-year-old schoolboy named Michael Ventris. Before the Second World War broke out, a new cache of tablets was found and photographed – this time on the Greek mainland. Still, no attempts to translate the script or identify its language were successful. Michael Ventris had grown up in the meantime and trained as an architect, and during the war he was conscripted to serve in the RAF. He hadn’t received any formal qualifications in linguistics or classical languages, but he’d never forgotten Arthur Evans’s lecture that day about Linear B. After the war, Ventris returned to England and started to compare the photographs of the newly discovered tablets from the Greek mainland with the inscriptions on the old Cretan tablets. He noticed that certain symbols on the tablets from Crete were not replicated on any of the samples from Pylos. He guessed that those particular symbols might represent place names on the island. Working from there, he figured out how to decipher the script – revealing that Linear B was in fact an early written form of ancient Greek. Ventris’s work not only demonstrated that Greek was the language of the Mycenaean culture, but also provided evidence of written Greek which predated the earliest-known examples by hundreds of years. After the discovery, Ventris and the classical scholar and linguist John Chadwick wrote a book together on the translation of the script, entitled ‘Documents in Mycenaean Greek’. Weeks before the publication of the book in 1956, Ventris crashed his car into a parked truck and died. He was thirty-four
Sally Rooney (Beautiful World, Where Are You)
And what of all these spices? They're worth a pretty fortune." She waves a juddering arm across the table, at the tins and glass jars and earthenware pots. All at once a shaft of thin northern light swoops over them, jolting them into luminous life: bubbled glass jars of briny green peppercorns, salted capers, gleaming vanilla pods, rusted cinnamon sticks, all leaping and glinting. The sudden startling beauty of it, the palette of hues--ocher, terra-cotta, shades of earth and sand and grass---the pale trembling light. All thoughts of running a boardinghouse vanish. I reach for a jar, lift its cork lid. The scent of bark, earth, roots, sky. And for a second I am somewhere else. "The mysterious scent of a secret kingdom," I murmur. The jar contains little pellets, brown, spherical, unexotic. How marvelous that something so plain can have such an enthralling perfume, I think. "Oh, Miss Eliza. Always the poetess! It's only allspice." Cook gives a wan smile and gestures at the ceiling, where long bunches of herbs hang from a rack. Rosemary, tansy, sage, nettles, woodruff. "And what of these? All summer I was collecting these and they still ain't properly dry." "May I lower it?" Not waiting for an answer I wind down the rack until the drying herbs are directly in front of me---a farmyard sweetness, a woody sappy scent, the smell of bruised apples and ripe earth and crushed ferns.
Annabel Abbs (Miss Eliza's English Kitchen)
Pots hung from the ceiling beams, between the festoons of braided garlic, the hams, the salsicce, bunches of mountain herbs for medicine, strings of dried porcini, necklaces of dried apple rings in winter, chains of dried figs. The smell of onions, of hot lard and smoldering oak wood, of cinnamon and pepper, always seemed to hang in the air. The larder was full of meat at all times, needless to say: not small pieces, but huge joints and sides of beef and lamb, which Mamma and Carenza could never hope to use just for our household, and which were quietly passed on to the monks of Santa Croce so that they could feed the poor. Carenza made salami with fennel seeds and garlic, prosciutto, pancetta. Sometimes the air in the larder was so salty that it stung your nostrils, and sometimes it reeked of spoiled blood from the garlands of hares, rabbits, quail, thrushes and countless other creatures that would arrive, bloody and limp, from Papa's personal game dealer. Next to the larder, a door led out to our courtyard, which Mamma had kept filled with herbs. An ancient rosemary bush took up most of one side, and the air in summer was always full of bees. Sage, thyme, various kinds of mint, oregano, rocket, hyssop, lovage and basil grew in Mamma's collection of old terra-cotta pots. A fig tree was slowly pulling down the wall, and a tenacious, knotted olive tree had been struggling for years in the sunniest corner.
Philip Kazan (Appetite)
There, at the top of the stairs, was the world: acres and miles of open land, an arc of the planet, curving off and lighted in the distance under the morning sky. The building we had just passed through was, it turned out, only the entrance to an open dig, where Chinese archaeologists were in the years-long process of excavating a buried army of life-sized clay soldiers. I saw what looked like human bodies coming out of the earth. Straight trenches cut the bare soil into deep corridors or long pits. From the trench walls emerged an elbow here, a leg and foot there, a head and neck. Everything was the same color, the terra-cotta earth and the people: the color of plant pots. Seeing the broad earth under the open sky, and a patch of it sliced into deep corridors from which bodies emerge, surprises many people to tears. Who would not weep from shock? I seemed to see our lives from the aspect of eternity. I seemed long dead and looking down. For it is in our lifetimes alone that people can witness the unearthing of the deep-dwelling army of Emperor Qin—the seven thousand or the ten thousand soldiers, their real crossbows and swords, their horses and chariots, bared to the light for the first time in 2,200 years. “In the pictures of the old masters,” Max Picard wrote in The World of Silence, “people seem as though they had just come out of the opening in a wall; as if they had wriggled their way out with difficulty. They seem unsafe and hesitant because they have come out too far and still belong more to silence than themselves.
Annie Dillard (For the Time Being: Essays (PEN Literary Award Winner))
That night, Marjan dreamt of Mehregan. The original day of thanksgiving, the holiday is celebrated during the autumn equinox in Iran. A fabulous excuse for a dinner party, something that Persians the world over have a penchant for, Mehregan is also a challenge to the forces of darkness, which if left unheeded will encroach even on the brightest of flames. Bonfires and sparklers glitter in the evening skies on this night, and in homes across the country, everyone is reminded of their blessings by the smell of roasting 'ajil', a mixture of dried fruit, salty pumpkin seeds, and roasted nuts. Handfuls are showered on the poor and needy on Mehregan, with a prayer that the coming year will find them fed and showered with the love of friends and family. In Iran, it was Marjan's favorite holiday. She even preferred it to the bigger and brasher New Year's celebrations in March, anticipating the festivities months in advance. The preparations would begin as early as July, when she and the family gardener, Baba Pirooz, gathered fruit from the plum, apricot, and pear trees behind their house. Along with the green pomegranate bush, the fruit trees ran the length of the half-acre garden. Four trees deep and rustling with green and burgundy canopies, the fattened orchard always reminded Marjan of the bejeweled bushes in the story of Aladdin, the boy with the magic lamp. It was sometimes hard to believe that their home was in the middle of a teeming city and not closer to the Alborz mountains, which looked down on Tehran from loftier heights. After the fruit had been plucked and washed, it would be laid out to dry in the sun. Over the years, Marjan had paid close attention to her mother's drying technique, noting how the fruit was sliced in perfect halves and dipped in a light sugar water to help speed up the wrinkling. Once dried, it would be stored in terra-cotta canisters so vast that they could easily have hidden both both young Marjan and Bahar. And indeed, when empty the canisters had served this purpose during their hide-and-seek games.
Marsha Mehran (Rosewater and Soda Bread (Babylon Café #2))
Ze kunnen het huis niet binnengaan voor Fowl dood is. Het is een soort extreme allergische reactie. Dat betekent, geloof het of niet, dat betekent...' 'Dat ze het hebben gered,' maakte Holly zijn zin af. 'Hij leeft. Artemis Fowl leeft.' 'D'Arvit,' kreunde Root, en hij kwakte nog een portie kots op de terracotta tegels.
Eoin Colfer (Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl, #1))
If I’d known I was about to meet the man who’d shatter me like bone china on terra-cotta, I would have slept in.
Martha Hall Kelly (Lilac Girls (Lilac Girls, #1))
Merriem carries the enormous saucepan, a cloud of steam rising from it, into the dining room. "Spring risotto," she calls it. It's got snipped garlic scapes, tons of parsley, and just-wilted pea greens piled on top. Summer carries a big glazed terra-cotta saucer full of tiny new potatoes with butter and freshly torn mint, and I bring the asparagus, which Merriem calls "speary-grass," served with simple seasoning.
Hannah Tunnicliffe (Season of Salt and Honey)
There is only one race, Toby, the human race." -Mr. Chun, Toby Glass and the Terracotta Army
W.M. Aslam (Toby Glass and the Terracotta Army)
Le affinità elettive erano un gioco rozzo a paro degli insondabili giri del sangue, capace di dare peso, corpo, respiro alla memoria. Taliò il ralogio e sobbalzò. L'ora era ampiamente passata. Trasì nella càmmara di letto. Il vecchio si stava godendo un sonno sereno, il respiro lèggio, l'ariata distesa, calma. Viaggiava nel paese del sonno senza più ingombro di bagaglio. Poteva dormire a lungo, tanto sul comodino c'erano il portafoglio coi soldi e un bicchiere d'acqua. Si ricordò del cane di peluche che aveva comprato a Livia a Pantelleria. Lo trovò sopra il comò, nascosto dietro una scatola. Lo pigliò, lo mise a terra, ai piedi del letto. Poi chiuse adascio adascio la porta alle sue spalle.
Andrea Camilleri (The Terra-Cotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano, #2))
difference?” “Sheets are chick territory,” he said without delay. “You gotta use tools, that’s dick territory.” “Oh,” I whispered. “Don’t tread on dick territory,” he advised. “So, um… is a paintbrush a tool?” I asked cautiously. “If you’re paintin’ the side of the house, yeah. If you’re painting mud-colored paint in a room, no.” “It’s terra-cotta,” I said softly. “Whatever,” he muttered, his mouth twitching. “Or, the paint chip called it Mexican Horizon. The blue is Dawn Sky.” “Definitely chick territory,” Tate replied, losing the fight with his grin. “What about… pictures for the walls?” I asked. “Chick,” he answered instantly.
Kristen Ashley (Sweet Dreams (Colorado Mountain, #2))
In Santa Fe her whole yard had been crowded with different-sized terra-cotta pots, out of which she grew everything from rosemary and lavender to ornamental pear and plum trees and even peppers, although they were not particularly popular with the bees. In Colorado she'd created a fertile oasis out of old gas cans and cut-off oil drums. Her neighbors had been skeptical to begin with but once her creepers grew up and her flowers draped down and her shrubs fluffed out, the junkyard ugly duckling was transformed into the proverbial backyard swan.
Sarah-Kate Lynch (The Wedding Bees)
It is no wonder that historians trace the birth of Western civilization to these jewels of the Aegean, Ionian, and Mediterranean seas. The Greek Isles are home to wide-ranging and far-reaching cultural traditions and mythic tales, not to mention the colorful history and unforgettable vistas that still draw thousands of tourists to the region every year. Minoan ruins stand alongside Byzantine churches and Crusader fortresses. Terra-cotta pots spilling over with hibiscus flowers adorn blinding-white stucco houses that reflect the sun’s dazzling light. Fishing villages perched upon craggy cliffs overlook clusters of colorful boats in island harbors. Centuries-old citrus and olive groves dot the hillsides. Lush vegetation and rocky shores meet isolated stretches of sand and an azure sea. Masts bob left and right on sailboats moored in secluded inlets. Each island is a world unto itself. Although outsiders and neighbors have inhabited, visited, and invaded these islands throughout the centuries, the islands’ rugged geography and small size have also ensured a certain isolation. In this environment, traditional ways of life thrive. The arts--pottery, glass blowing, gem carving, sculpture, and painting, among others--flourish here today, as contemporary craft artists keep alive techniques begun in antiquity. In the remote hilltop villages of Kárpathos, for example, artisans practice crafts that date back eons, and inhabitants speak a dialect close to ancient Greek. Today, to walk along the pebbled pathways of a traditional Greek mountain village or the marbled streets of an ancient acropolis is to step back in time. To meander at a leisurely pace through these island chains by boat is to be captivated by the same dramatic landscapes and enchanted islets that make the myths of ancient Greece so compelling. To witness the Mediterranean sun setting on the turquoise sea is to receive one of life’s greatest blessings.
Laura Brooks (Greek Isles (Timeless Places))
disappearing around a bend into the dusk. She’ll walk to Marbella, the humour she’s in, Valerie thought glumly, making her way back up the garden to the terracotta terrace. She would have liked to pour herself a big glass of fruity red wine and get smashed but she wouldn’t drink knowing that her granddaughter was asleep inside, and Briony was scorching along the beach in a temper, having given Valerie no indication as to what time she’d be back. That damn letter. She’d forgotten all about it. Tessa had given it to Valerie’s mother, Carmel, some time after
Patricia Scanlan (With All My Love: Warmth, wisdom and love on every page - if you treasured Maeve Binchy, read Patricia Scanlan)
We cross a bridge, and all of us girls gasp in unison and crane our necks to the right-hand window of the car, pushing each other to get a sight of Florence by night--the dark velvety river lit up with glittering lights; narrow bridges farther down, the famous one with all the houses on it clustered tight together; a cathedral dome, terra-cotta and white, rising above the marble buildings, illuminated with soft spotlights, exactly like-- “Oh, it’s like a movie!” Paige exclaims in delight. “A Room with a View,” Kendra agrees. “I love that movie.” I do too; I think the bit where Julian Sands goes up to Helena Bonham Carter in the cornfield and kisses her is one of the most romantic scenes I’ve ever seen. I’m just about to agree, when Luca says, “Oh, yes. Italy is very romantic,” so dryly that the words die on my lips. His accent’s light, his English seems very good. “Lots of corruption, lots of bribes. Very romantic.” “Well, he’s a load of fun, isn’t he?” Paige says in my ear.
Lauren Henderson (Flirting in Italian (Flirting in Italian #1))
But not your average mall—Paseo Nuevo has terra-cotta roofs and cobbled streets and sidewalk cafés. And Aveda and Nordstrom and all the other regulars,
Lee Nichols (Hand-Me-Down)
Insomnia can grip us for many reasons: stress, guilt, fear, and rage are among them. An uneasy mind is difficult to quiet. CHAPTER FOUR MARISSA MARISSA WINCES AS THE empty glass shatters against the terra-cotta tiles of the kitchen floor.
Greer Hendricks (The Golden Couple)
Leggera, la cena, ma tutto cucinato con quel tocco che il Signore rarissimamente concede agli Eletti. Montalbano non ringraziò la moglie del questore, si limitò a taliarla con gli occhi di un cane randagio al quale viene fatta una carezza.
Andrea Camilleri (Il cane di terracotta)
Aride colline, quasi tumoli giganteschi, coperte solo di stoppie gialle d’erba secca, abbandonate dalla mano dell’uomo per sopravvenute sconfitte dovute alla siccità, all’arsura o più semplicemente alla stanchezza di un combattimento perso in partenza, di tanto in tanto interrotte dal grigio di rocce a pinnacolo, assurdamente nate dal nulla o forse piovute dall’alto, stalattiti o stalagmiti di quella fonda grotta a cielo aperto ch’era la Sicilia.
Andrea Camilleri (Il cane di terracotta)
Ordinarily I would use white silk for this thobe, but I found this gorgeous terra-cotta silk that harkens to Jericho.
Susan Abulhawa (Against the Loveless World)
Visual design proved to be a fifth wonder of life. Buildings, terra-cotta warriors in China, dams, and paintings appeared in stories of awe from around the world.
Dacher Keltner (Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life)
these seals are molded in terracotta while others are carved from steatite, a hard metamorphic rock.
Hourly History (Indus Valley Civilization: A History from Beginning to End)
It's complicated,' he said out loud. Terracotta wrinkled her nose. 'Grown-ups never say that about good things.
Sangu Mandanna (The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches)
reference to the Nok culture and the Igbo-Ukwu bronzes, that the peoples of west Africa had an ancient tradition of fine artistic work in terracotta and copper alloys. Techniques of metal casting need not necessarily have been imported from afar.
Kevin Shillington (History of Africa)
As Dina walked down the hall, the floorboards seamlessly transformed into blue and white tiles beneath her feet. She found herself standing in the heart of the house: a riad with a bubbling mosaic fountain, vines twisting up the walls and, above her, fuchsias blooming in terra-cotta pots and miniature date trees coiling around the pillars. It was more of a garden than a room, really. The ceiling was open to the night sky, burnished stars in an inky darkness. It wasn't the real sky of course, but the house's magic was powerful. Dina could even hear crickets chirping in the distance and the cinnamon scent of the earth in Khemisset, where her mother had grown up. She exhaled deeply, the feeling of being home sinking into her bones.
Nadia El-Fassi (Best Hex Ever)
I turn, unthinkingly, to one side, choosing a path that winds through a small copse of cypress trees, stopping often to bend over and examine the various flowers that are splashed about, tumbling in a riot of crimson and violet from terracotta pots or growing in tangled golden constellations underneath the tres.
Laura Wood (Under a Dancing Star)
guessing,
Andrea Camilleri (The Terra-Cotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano #2))
Sex standing up and walking on sand will bring any man to a bad end. He
Andrea Camilleri (The Terracotta Dog (Inspector Montalbano, #2))
Il bambino fuggì una terza volta: andava dalla madre, che se ne stava sotto un albero. Aveva accatastato due pietre, e sopra aveva messo un piccolo recipiente di terracotta, e stava cuocendo qualcosa che aveva raccolto dall'immondizia. Le Sorelle gli chiesero: "Perché scappi sempre da casa?". E il bambino rispose: "Ma casa è qui, perché è qui che c'è la mamma". La mamma era lì. Quella era la casa. Che il cibo fosse raccolto dall'immondizia andava benone, perché era la mamma a cucinarlo; lì c'era la mamma che lo coccolava, che lo voleva. Quel bambino aveva la sua mamma.
Kathryn Spink
The donkey would’ve made for an ass-tastic photo.” Tracy pulled her camera from her bag. Lifting her lens toward the balcony of a terracotta home along the alleyway, she captured a shot of rustic blue shutters missing a few louvers. “All
Beverly Preston (Shayla's Story (The Mathews Family, #2))
ave you thought of your family photos as a collection? One of my tables held photos of many generations of women in our family. I displayed them in a variety of frames, and the mother-daughter-granddaughter theme pulled the collection together. No one could resist stopping and taking a peek. Group as black-and-white photos or formal or informal in groups. Another idea is to keep the same frames but change the photos for the seasons. If you have a ton of photos, rotate them so you can enjoy your entire collection. And for a designer touch, add a surprise to your grouping-something that doesn't "match," such as that silly picture of your Aunt Lily. The idea is to share yourself with others in a way that is interesting. ant to change your room? Put two lamps of different sizes on a side table with books, a small clock, a pot of flowers, or a ceramic creation. These change the look and provide better lighting. Your coffee table is an ideal spot for a plant or a terracotta pot with candles. For a softer look, add a throw rug made of mohair or wool-something warm and inviting. And I don't know about you, but I like bookshelves in the living room-complete with books, family pictures, and a mixture of the things I collect. I also love to frame favorite scriptures to welcome me as I go from room to room.
Emilie Barnes (365 Things Every Woman Should Know)
We gazed back over the fields to the farmhouse. Its white walls, faded wooden shutters and terra-cotta tiled roof peeped sleepily over the deep green domes of the orange trees, while the mountains looked benignly on - secure, solid and serene. Without exchanging a word, we both knew that this was going to be our new home.
Peter Kerr (Snowball Oranges: One Mallorcan Winter)
the old and worn buildings held a theatrical magic to their fading façades. They were weathered almost by design; they almost looked like they had been lifted from some stage designer's idyllic dream for an opera setting. The dusty, powdery ochres, terracottas, pale blues and pine greens lit by that soft morning glow; the comforting sun's ascent to its daily station, high and shining above that glorious, sparkling old city.
Robertson Tait (Scot Free in Hollywood (Kyle in Hollywood Book 2))
Mika glared at them. “You’ve decided now is the time to protect me? Really? Why?” “Beause you’ve been protecting us since you got here,” said Terracotta. “Because we want you to be safe” said Altamira. “Becauase we love you,” said Rosetta. Jamie shrugged at her as if to say, Yes, that.
Sangu Mandanna
Shep-en-Mut The painted wooden face was known to me. She stood in the dusty museum sun, Painted eyes lengthened with kohl. Azure, terra-cotta, white, Emblazoned cartonnage. The Isis wings, spread in care and love. Curving protective Neckbet and Nepthys. Beneath, the corticated skin, Black bitumen. Eyeless, cracked and black, Dessicated viscera, wrapped apart. Leaving child and husband, moving through satin bands of shadow, Singing in the ecstatic sun. Feet hissing through the silken sand She carried the Milk Jar and a Palm frond, Worshipping and serving each day. This lady was the songstress of Amun-Re, Her songs curved upward in the great Temple of Thebes. The stone beauty of the face of the God above her frailty Gave her voice a scope of praise denied to our dessicated senses When death stooped on her, claws and beak ripped. Then feathers lay outstretched in love. Horus wings, Night Heron beak, Having slain, now standing guard in fearful phalanx. Leaving the echo between the roof trees. Her flesh must be pickled, cured with cinnamon and myrrh. The skull, frail as a blown egg, Emptied of its convolute majesty, Stuffed with delicate resinous rags. When the sucking natron has had its meal Her shell will taste the shriving sun and wind once more. Blow gently, shine kindly down, Amun-Re, on thy slave. She shall be wrapped in fine linen Layer on layer, and laced like a shoe. The last we shall see in linen and plaster and paint. May her journey be safe through the dark tunnels May her soul sing in light before her God, In soft peace. The holding wings enfold my friend. Priestess of Thebes. Singer of Amun-Re Bearer of the little Milk Jar.
Elizabeth Sigmund (Sylvia Plath in Devon: A Year's Turning)
His skin was rich and golden, browned by the sun, the color of a terra-cotta pot.
Olivia Muenter (Such a Bad Influence)
The Eternal Army: The Terracotta Soldiers of the First Emperor.
Susan Isaacs (Takes One to Know One)
This story isn't over.' He pulled again at the loose thread, winding it around his thumb. The thread was long and silvery, like a thread of moonlight. Spider's skillful fingers teased and pulled on the delicate thread. And as they did so, the Daylight Folk gradually became aware of the cloud of butterflies and moths returning. Softly, they settled onto the stones and terracotta tiles of the roof. Softly, they settled onto the stones of the parapet where Spider sat. Softly, they clustered and blossomed and bloomed, hanging like grapes in the luminous air-- and soon the onlookers started to see a figure-- no, two figures-- taking shape among them. For a moment, it was impossible to see more than an outline. But as the shapes became clearer, the Daylight Folk were able to see a man and a woman, hand in hand. Their faces were almost familiar, and yet not quite the same as before: the woman small-featured and freckle-faced; the man dark-haired and soulful. Each of them was staring at the other in amazement. 'Tom?' said Charissa. 'Charissa?' said Tom.
Joanne Harris (The Moonlight Market)
It was the sunset when he put his had on my shoulders. Blue-red skies, so blue as the farewell might be, so red as the life will be. - How long? - For them? Maybe forever, maybe one day longer... - My Jinn is sad today and I'm not sure, why? - Want to see them back? - It was just my faith in impossibility. - Want to give them a few seconds more? - The stone is the stone, Eve. The not-alive is... - We can try, Jinnie, why not? You tried. - Tears warmed my face. What the day is today? - Do you believe in magic, Eve? When were you crying last time? Honestly, I don't remember. What can it change, my tears? Terracotta cheeks, porcelain temples, stony trap, the eternity. - Are you still afraid of the sarcophagus? - Just my thought, his crazy and psychedelic fear, conjecture. Do the Genies have a kind of trauma?? - We do have the hearts. Is it making you better? - I hear his question, I can't find his mind, the one I feel, skies in fire and howling wind. -It is the Time, Eve, that wind, it is the breeze, uncommonly, experienced. Nothing cannot be back, we have to pay for this, from us, our particles, all who we are... The man on crossing, perception of junction, step forward step back, I saw him before. Before of what? Where is he going now? - That moment when can go to nowhere, Eve. How many times were you dying? Honestly, I don't remember, what can it change, my death? Terracotta palms, porcelain thumbs, stony breath after all. - Jinnie, what day is today? You are talking about the Death, yes? - The warm touch, route, depth. - Why here is so cold? - Do you know what was before them, Eve? Do you want to see? - No!!! - My feeling was No, my blood said Back, my senses Stroke pushing me back. Do not be imprisoned, Do not let Them to imprison you. - You and Us... - His whisper, his step, gates slam shut. WTF... Terracotta-Stony gates. Nothing more, nothing less, nothingness. I am smashed. With them... With??? Oh no, whatever, not they!!! Buried alive. Do not move, do not turn back, this is a delusion, you do not hear them, you are only the... Author??? - RED! - Shreds of his voice. - Blue and Red. - What is she doing here??? - Rustle - Is she our Salvation??? They stepped, closer, they are the coldest I ever met. - Hey, I am not him!!! - I was shouting. - Do not step on me!!! There was something crushing under my feet. Sounds like... Ice? Not possible. Or yes, it is the frozen stone, millions of them, buttered Time. - Go! - This is my Jinn - Get out from ice!!! Go where? I am stuck, for eternity. With them and their horses. What the Jinn said? 'Ride them'. It was about the Dragons. Sorry, this is what I said! Was it? Upper, North, South. Go upper. Before they will arise... - The woman is a woman is a woman... - Sometimes the thoughts are touching, the desires surrounding.
Eve Janson
She and her husband exchange smug, self-satisfied looks. A child whose name is either Terracotta or Ricotta rolls her eyes. Target once paid her fifteen grand to do that in a commercial, so now she keeps doing it. I glare at her. She isn’t better than me.
Sarah Hogle (Just Like Magic)
Of course you do,” Jamie said drily. “Why wouldn’t your inability to win Terracotta over be my fault?
Sangu Mandanna (The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches)
I should have put a stop to it a long time ago, but the choices you made today are all on you, Terracotta. And they were inexcusable. You could have been hurt. You could have hurt one of your sisters. You did hurt Mika.
Sangu Mandanna (The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches)
I left because I knew we would be the end of each other if I stayed," she [Ling'en] said. "We were always too busy trying to save the other from becoming what we did not like. (...)
Zen Cho (The Terracotta Bride)
We sat quietly for a while, and as I gazed out over the terracotta-coloured buildings of Milan, images of Elisabetta flitted through my mind. And although I couldn’t help but think of her with sadness, the feeling was now tinged with a sense of relief – and, yes, happiness even – that I’d finally managed to get justice for her. And as a bonus I’d also cleared Ugo’s name and Falco’s legacy. Justice felt good, I thought.
Carina Axelsson (Dressed to Kill (Model Under Cover #4))
Interestingly, lingas are found all over the world. In Africa, there are terra-cotta lingas, largely used for occult purposes. In Delphi, Greece, there is a linga below the ground, known as the “navel of the earth.” This is purely a manipura linga, meant to promote prosperity and material well-being. When someone showed me a picture of it, I immediately knew what type of people had consecrated this. It was definitely done by Indian yogis thousands of years ago; there is no doubt about that.
Sadhguru (Inner Engineering: A Yogi’s Guide to Joy)
They passed the Confluence sometime that afternoon, where the Little Colorado River emerged from its own canyon on the left and bent around its delta to join the Colorado. The waves turned choppy and coffee-brown where the two rivers met. Tumbled stones, rounded by water, lay on the delta: azure and mauve, taupe and terracotta, some white and cracked like eggs ready to open, others like blunt black knives. The Confluence is a sacred place to the region’s tribes. Zuni send spiritual offerings down the Little Colorado to the Grand Canyon, the home of their ancestors. Hopis say nearby is the place of emergence, where all humankind climbed into this world, the Fourth World, through the hollow stem of a reed, and spread over the Earth, leaving footprints and broken pottery to mark their journeys. Hopi youth make a sacred pilgrimage to the Confluence to gather the salt that seeps out of the sandstone, pressed from an ancient sea and crystallized into gleaming stalagmites. They bring the salt back to the mesas east of the Grand Canyon, where, they say, their people settled at the center of the earth.
Melissa L. Sevigny (Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon)
Believe me, the statues brought from Syracuse into our city came as enemies. I hear all too many people deride the terracotta ornaments of Roman gods' (Cato, in Liv., 34, 4,
Robert Turcan (The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times)
My favorite color? Terracotta for sure. Then they laughed and said that I never answer the color question with the basic colors, red, green, pink, white, brown, gray, blue, yellow, purple, orange, black… I replied, never have I ever colored with regular crayons.
Niedria Kenny (Order in the Courtroom: The Tale of a Texas Poker Player)