“My words in her mind: cold polished stones sinking through a quagmire.”
Giacomo Joyce (1968)
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James Joyce 191
Irish novelist and poet 1882–1941Related quotes

“It is not my words that I polish, but my ideas.”

Source: Peter and Wendy (1911), Ch. 1
Context: Occasionally in her travels through her children's minds Mrs. Darling found things she could not understand, and of these quite the most perplexing was the word Peter. She knew of no Peter, and yet he was here and there in John and Michael's minds, while Wendy's began to be scrawled all over with him. The name stood out in bolder letters than any of the other words, and as Mrs. Darling gazed she felt that it had an oddly cocky appearance.
"Yes, he is rather cocky," Wendy admitted with regret. Her mother had been questioning her.

“Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own!
For that I love
Thy heart of stone!”
"The Dirge of the Sea" (April 1891)
Context: Years! Years, ye shall mix with me!
Ye shall grow a part
Of the laughing Sea;
Of the moaning heart
Of the glittered wave
Of the sun-gleam's dart
In the ocean-grave. Fair, cold, and faithless wert thou, my own!
For that I love
Thy heart of stone!
From the heights above
To the depths below,
Where dread things move, There is naught can show
A life so trustless! Proud be thy crown!
Ruthless, like none, save the Sea, alone!

“Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.”
Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), The Times They Are A-Changin'
Context: Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown.
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
“He felle dede doun colde as ony stone.”
Thomas Hearne (ed.) Peter Langtoft's Chronicle, as Illustrated and Improv'd by Robert of Brunne (1725) vol. 1, p. 56.