“She would sweep the floor – unending expanses, acres and acres of floor – with a short broom called the jhadu, swiping away the dust in an arc with its long tail, which reminded one of the drooping tail of some nameless, exotic bird.”
A Strange and Sublime Address (1991)
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Amit Chaudhuri 94
contemporary Indian-English novelist 1962Related quotes
“… the floor was a stone slab of coolness, an expanse of warm ice that would not melt.”
A Strange and Sublime Address (1991)
Gregory S. Paul (1988) Predatory Dinosaurs of the World, Simon and Schuster, p. 22
Predatory Dinosaurs of the World
The Romance of Commerce (1918), A Representative Business of the Twentieth Century
“I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God's-Acre!”
God's-Acre, st. 1 (1842).
Context: I like that ancient Saxon phrase, which calls
The burial-ground God's-Acre! It is just;
It consecrates each grave within its walls,
And breathes a benison o'er the sleeping dust.
The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 153
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)
Malcolm Fade, to Maia Roberts, pg. 404
The Mortal Instruments, City of Heavenly Fire (2014)
“What is time? It is a serpent which eats its tail”
Breakfast of Champions (1973)
Context: I was on par with the Creator of the Universe there in the dark in the cocktail lounge. I shrunk the Universe to a ball exactly one light-year in diameter. I had it explode. I had it disperse itself again.
Ask me a question, any question. How old is the Universe? It is one half-second old, but the half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far. Who created it? Nobody created it. It has always been here.
What is time? It is a serpent which eats its tail, like this:
This is the snake which uncoiled itself long enough to offer Eve the apple, which looked like this:
What was the apple which Eve and Adam ate? It was the Creator of the Universe.
And so on.
Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.
Source: City of Bones
Man's Rise to Civilization (1968)
Context: A well-intentioned movement had gained support to give the remnant Indian populations the dignity of private property, and the plan was widely adopted in the halls of Congress, in the press, and in the meetings of religious societies.... the Dawes Allotment Act of 1887... provided that after every Indian had been allotted land, any remaining surplus would be put up for sale to the public. The loopholes... made it an efficient instrument for separating the Indians from this land.... The first lands to go were the richest—bottom lands in river valleys, or fertile grasslands. Next went the slightly less desirable lands... and so on, until all the Indian had left to him was desert that no White considered worth the trouble to take.... Between 1887, when the Dawes Act was passed, and 1934, out of 138 million acres that had been their meager allotment, all but 56 million acres had been appropriated by Whites.... not a single acre [of which] was judged uneroded by soil conservationists.