“Men are apt to idolize or fear that which they cannot understand, especially if it be a woman.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“Her Lips Are Copper Wire”
whisper of yellow globes
gleaming on lamp posts that sway
like bootleg licker drinkers in the fog
and let your breath be moist against me
like bright beads on yellow globes
telephone the power-house
that the main wires are insulate
(her words play up and down
dewy corridors of billboards)
then with your tongue remove the tape
and press your lips to mine
till they are incandescent”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“Call them from their houses, and teach them to dream.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“If you have heard a Jewish cantor sing, if he has touched you and made your own sorrow seem trivial when compared with his, you will know my feeling when I follow the curves of her profile, like mobile rivers, to their common delta.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“It takes a well-spent lifetime, and perhaps more, to crystalize in us that for which we exist.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“Happy, Muriel? No, not happy. Your aim is wrong. There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to. Perfect joy, or perfect pain, with no contrasting element to define them, would mean a monotony of consciousness, would mean death.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“Whats beauty anyway but ugliness if it hurts you?”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“You are the most sleepiest man I ever seed.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“Night winds in Georgia are vagrant poets, whispering.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“Men had always wanted her, this Karintha, even as a child, Karintha carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“But words is like th spots on dice: no matter how y fumbles em,
there's times when they jes wont
come.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“But words is like th spots on dice: no matter how y fumbles em, there's times when they jes wont come.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“Her dress was of some fine, costly stuff. I suggested the park, and then added that the grass might stain her skirt. Let it get stained, she said, for where it came from there are others.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
“Men had always wanted her, this Karintha, even as a child, Karintha carrying beauty, perfect as dusk when the sun goes down.”
― Jean Toomer, quote from Cane
Jean Toomer
Born place: in Washington, D.C., The United States
Born date December 26, 1894
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“Affordances define what actions are possible. Signifiers specify how people discover those possibilities: signifiers are signs, perceptible
signals of what can be done. Signifiers are of far more importance to designers than are affordances.”
― Donald A. Norman, quote from Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition (Revised)
“I wake up at 4:30 am to jump on a plane, which is that part of the morning before the earth even exists. Before they've even programmed the Matrix. You walk out of your apartment and the road isn't even there. You walk out of your house, and there's just a guy with a laptop who yells, "We need a road, stat!" "How 'bout a building, Tank!”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“a book always keeps something of its owner between its pages.”
― Cornelia Funke, quote from Sangre de tinta
“... je t'emmènerais dans une contrée resplendissante et prospère, au foyer d'une famille aristocratique des lettrés, fastueux domaine où abondent les fleurs et les saules, terroir de la douceur, de richesse et d'honneurs, pour t'installer dans la joie et en toute sécurité.
Cao Xueqin, "Le Rêve dans le pavillon rouge", trad, fr. par Li Tche-Houa, J. Alézaïs, révision par A. D'Hormon, Paris, Gallimard, "Bibliothèque de la Pléiade", 1981, vol. 1, p. 8.”
― Cao Xueqin, quote from A Dream of Red Mansions
“Acknowledging that my biological imperative may not include the drive to procreate, that I just might be attracted to XX chromosomes instead of XY? That's so stupid-minor in comparison to the fact that I might actually be in love for the first time in my life. It's with a girl...so what? Lesbian, bisexual, whatever! Thus isn't about categorisation or chromosomes. This is about how I feel about another person.”
― Kristen Zimmer, quote from The Gravity Between Us
I Am the Messenger
Reflected in You
Specials
The Awakening
Howl and Other Poems
CrankBookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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