Quotes about bone
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“Each morning, before Jackie started her studies, she wrote on a clean piece of paper: Tarde venientibus ossa.
To the latecomers are left the bones.”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Study

“Because you can't be as in love as we were and not have it invade your bone marrow. Our kind of love can go into remission, but it's always waiting to return. Like the world's sweetest cancer.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Love, World, Waiting

“Things that break - be they bones, hearts, or promises - can be put back together but will never really be whole.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Heart, Hurtful

“Sometimes we know in our bones what we really need to do, but we're afraid to do it. Taking a chance and stepping beyond the safety of the world we've always known is the only way to grow, though and without risk there is no reward.”

Wil Wheaton (1972) American actor and writer

Source: Just a Geek: Unflinchingly honest tales of the search for life, love, and fulfillment beyond the Starship Enterprise

World, Way, Chance

“To think new thoughts you have to break the bones in your head”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Thinking

“Digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)
Context: For, let's face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take the philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet's father's ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.

Soul

“… what makes you older is when your bones, muscles and blood wear out, when the heart sinks into oblivion and all the houses you ever lived in are gone and people are not really certain that your civilization ever existed.”

Richard Brautigan The Tokyo-Montana Express

Source: The Tokyo-Montana Express

People, Heart, Housing

“To write requires an ego, a belief that what you say matters. Writing also requires an aching curiosity leading you to discover, uncover, what is gnawing at your bones.”

Terry Tempest Williams (1955) American writer

Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice

“It was the hat. He looked sweet in the hat. How could a man in a fuzzy blue hat have used human bones to pave his roads?”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

“Mortality, behold, and fear,
What a change of flesh is here!
Think how many royal bones
Sleep within this heap of stones”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Fear, Thinking, Sleep, Change

“She answered by standing and kissing him first and held his cheeks and closed her eyes and felt sure as bones and deep as blood that she had found her place.”

Shannon Hale The Goose Girl

Source: The Goose Girl

Kiss

“You asked me who I belong to," he whispered. "I belong to. Your blood is my blood, your bones my bones. The first time you saw me, I looked familiar, didn't I? Just like you looked familiar to me.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Time

“They weren't nice words he said. He could've lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together.”

Shannon Hale book Book of a Thousand Days

Source: Book of a Thousand Days

Life, Sadness, Feeling, Personality

“You fainted and I caught you. It was the first time I'd supported a human. You had such heavy bones. I put myself between you and gravity. Impossible.”

Elizabeth Knox (1959) New Zealand writer

Source: The Vintner's Luck

Support, Time

“Phineas gave Abigail an encouraging smile. “Chillax, dudette. He didn’t want to bite you.”
She wondered if she’d overreacted. “He didn’t?”
“Naw.” Phineas smirked. “He just wanted to jump your bones.”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Source: Sexiest Vampire Alive

Smile

“Sometime I’ll lay down my wrath,
As I lay my body down
Between the ache of breath and breath,
Golden slumber in the bone.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Source: Collected Poems 1947-1997

“I remember every single spot of light that ever gouged a shadow beside your bones.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Light

“The wind makes you ache is some place that is deeper than your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die - migrate or die.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Soul, Memory

“Should God create another Eve, and I
Another Rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart; no no, I feel
The Link of Nature draw me: Flesh of Flesh,
Bone of my Bone thou art, and from thy State
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.”

John Milton book Paradise Lost

Source: Paradise Lost

God, Art, Feeling, Nature

“All this time I'd thought we were strangers, and it turned out we knew each other intuitively, in our bones, in our blood. It was kind of romantic. Catastrophically romantic.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Time

“Her mouth was a gash of red, like the torn-open stomach of a sacrifice, bloody and oracular. Behind it her teeth shone sharp and white as bone.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

“Blood of my Blood," he whispered, "and bone of my bone. You carry me within ye, Claire, and ye canna leave me now, no matter what happens, You are mine, always, if ye will it or no, if ye want me or nay. Mine, and I wilna let ye go.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

“All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones moving easily under the flesh.”

Doris Lessing book The Golden Notebook

Anna Wulf, in "The Golden Notebook"
The Golden Notebook (1962)
Context: I knew, and it was an illumination — one of those things one has always known, but never understood before — that all sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under flesh.
Context: I knew, and it was an illumination — one of those things one has always known, but never understood before — that all sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under flesh. If this goes, then the conviction of life goes too. But I could feel none of this. … I knew I was moving into a new dimension, further from sanity than I had ever been. <!-- p. 585

Feeling, Dependency

“When you're alive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out.

But it's a lie.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

People, Lie, Hurt

“Don't screech like that. You'll wake the dead." - Jace - The Mortal Instruments - City Of Bones”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Variant: Don't screech like that. You'll wake the dead.
Source: City of Bones

Dead

“He's as nutty as a vegan T-bone.”

David Sedaris (1956) American author

“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but Chinese throwing stars get you a dozen stitches.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Star

“Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Help Thanks Wow: The Three Essential Prayers

Love, People, Soul, Affliction

“Dead girl walking” the boys say in the halls.
“Tell us your secrets” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
"I am that girl. I am the spaces between my thighs, daylight shinning through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Secret, Girl, Boy, Dead

“In a strange way we were free. We'd reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: all of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

Source: Girl, Interrupted (1994)

Way

“Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you.”

Philip G. Zimbardo book The Lucifer Effect

Source: The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil

“Women don't realize how much store men set on the regularity of their habits. We absorb their comings and goings into our bodies, their rhythms into our bones.”

Louise Erdrich book The Round House

Source: The Round House

Women, Men

“Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Suddenly, they become the bleached bones of a story.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“If love were food, I would have starved on the bones you gave me”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Love, Food

“He had known the love that is fed on caresses and feeds them; but this passion that was closer than his bones was not to be superficially satisfied.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Love, Passion

“Because sometimes that is the only way to remember what is in your bones. You must peel off your skin, and that of your mother, and her mother. Until there is nothing. No scar, no skin, no flesh.
-An-mei”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

Way

“Artemis: I am not buoyed by that.
Foaly: You are not supposed to be buoyed by that. You are supposed to be equalized.
Mulch: I'm pretty sure that both of you just made really horrible jokes. But I'm not sure because I think you broke my funny bone.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Atlantis Complex

Thinking

“when you're young
a pair of
female
high-heeled shoes
just sitting
alone
in the closet
can fire your
bones;
when you're old
it's just
a pair of shoes
without
anybody
in them
and
just as
well.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Shoe

“Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Beauty, Beauty

“…the love we most cherish will, of necessity, bring us pain. Because that love is like the setting of a body with broken bones. But I want to stage the setting. I want to direct all scenes.”

Rebecca Wells book Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Source: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Love, Pain

“Corpus Bones! I utterly loathe my life.”

Karen Cushman book Catherine, Called Birdy

Source: Catherine, Called Birdy

Life

“You have ruthlessness in your bones and ice in your heart, Clarissa. Don't tell me any differently.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Heart

“They were not half living, or quarter living. They were simply so many bags of bones in which sparks of life fluttered faintly.”

Jack London book Call of the Wild

Source: The Call of the Wild

Life

“Sticks and stones may break your bones, but watch out for those damn words.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Variant: Sticks and stones may break your bones but words can hurt like hell.
Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 14

“My bones are ringing the way sometimes people say their ears are ringing, I'm so tired.”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

People, Way

“Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on. Cuts your throat and takes your bones, sells 'em off for a coupla stones.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

“Our bones ache only while the flesh is on them.”

Djuna Barnes book Nightwood

Source: Nightwood

“Sucking the marrow out of life doesn't mean choking on the bone.”

Tom Schulman (1950) American film director, screenwriter

Source: Dead Poets Society

Life

“[Harriet] hated math. She hated math with every bone in her body. She spent so much time hating it that she never had time to do it.”

Louise Fitzhugh book Harriet the Spy

Source: Harriet the Spy

Hate, Time

“William untucked the covers and stood, making a mental list of everything he'd need for the coming trip. A few blades, serrated and non serrated. A vial of acid. A bone saw. A spiked paddle. A cat-o'-nine-tails. And a bag of Gummy Bears.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Secret

Cats

“Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.”

Sylvia Plath book The Colossus and Other Poems

Source: The Colossus and Other Poems

Love

“In November, the trees are standing all sticks and bones. Without their leaves, how lovely they are, spreading their arms like dancers. They know it is time to be still.”

Cynthia Rylant (1954) American author of children's books and librarian

Source: In November

Love, Tree, Time

“It was the time of year, the time of day, for a small insistent sadness to pass into the texture of things. Dusk, silence, iron chill. Something lonely in the bone.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

Sadness, Silence, Time

“We, the bones that are here, await yours.”

Rick Riordan book The Blood of Olympus

Source: The Blood of Olympus

“Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones.”

Alice Hoffman The Story Sisters

Source: The Story Sisters

Love

“When this is over… we will got to the rainforest, or a beach as white as bone. We will eat grapes from the vine, we will swim with sea turtles, we will walk miles on cobblestone streets. We will laugh and talk and confess. We will.”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes

Sea

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will always hurt me.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

Hurt

“My bones are brittle, my heart weak and erratic, my esophagus and stomach riddled with ulcers, my reproductive system shot, my immune system useless… I'm not going to have a happy ending.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Happiness, Heart

“sometimes there are reasons for our fears that we can’t
quite explain. Sometimes it’s just something we feel in our bones, something we know to be true, but
would sound foolish to anyone else.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: The Viscount Who Loved Me

Fear, Feeling

“it sounded stupid, but of course everything does when you're just getting the bare bones facts, only the basics…”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

Stupidity

“I say what other people only think, and when all the rest of the world is in a conspiracy to accept the mask for the true face, mine is the rash hand that tears off the plump pasteboard, and shows the bare bones beneath.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: The Woman in White

People, World, Thinking, Tear

“You’re in my bones and my blood and my heart,” he said. “I’d have to tear myself open to let you go.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Tear, Heart

“I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“It’s a sword made out of your grandmother’s bones, Kate.”

I shrugged.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Breaks

“He was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Idea, Freedom, Perfection

“I prefer winter and fall, when you can feel the bone structure in the landscape---the lonliness of it---the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it---the whole story dosen't show.”

Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009) Realist painter

Feeling, Winter, Waiting, Dead

“I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land

Men, Thinking, Dead

“Water and stone
Flesh and bone
Night and morn
Rose and thorn
Tree and wind
Heart and mind”

Juliet Marillier book Cybele's Secret

Source: Cybele's Secret

Tree, Water, Heart, Night

“All that remains of that minute is time in all its purity, bone-white time.”

Marguerite Duras book The Ravishing of Lol Stein

Source: The Ravishing of Lol Stein

Time

“and I get refill number three or four and the wine is making my bones loose and it's giving my hair a red sheen and my breasts are blooming and my eyes feel sultry and wise and the dress is water.”

Aimee Bender (1969) Novelist, short story writer

Feeling, Water, Wine

“sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will make me cry by myself in a corner for hours.”

Eric Idle (1943) British comedian, actor, singer and writer

Cry

“Memory is a part of the present. It builds us up inside; it knits our bones to our muscles and keeps our hearts pumping. It is memory that reminds our bodies to work, and memory that reminds our spirits to work to: it keeps us who we are.~Candle”

Gregory Maguire book Son of a Witch

Source: Son of a Witch

Memory, Heart, Parting

“I felt lethal, on the verge of frenzy. My nightly bloodlust overflowed into my days and I had to leave the city. My mask of sanity was a victim of impending slippage. This was the bone season for me and I needed a vacation.”

Bret Easton Ellis book American Psycho

Source: American Psycho

Season

“I could never leave,' Pine Sap said.
'Why?' she asked.
Pine Sap shrugged, and gestured in the direction of the village. 'Because I think people must be the same everywhere. Only these people are my bones.”

Jodi Lynn Anderson American children's writer

Source: Tiger Lily

People, Thinking

“small talk comes from small bones”

Ezra Pound (1885–1972) American Imagist poet and critic

“Yet what keeps me from dissolving right now into a complete fairy-tale shimmer is this solid truth, a truth which has veritably built my bones over the last few years--I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Truth

“I close my eyes. And i scream. If my whole world is crashing down around me, then I am going to make the sound of the crashing. I want to scream until all my bones break.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

World

“He pleaded so much that he lost his voice. His bones began to fill with words.”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude

“You want the truth, of course. You want me to put two and two together. But two and two doesn’t necessarily get you the truth. Two and two equals a voice outside the window. Two and two equals the wind. The living bird is not its labeled bones.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Truth, Bird

“I learned that the world didn't see the inside of you, that it didn't care a whit about the hopes and dreams, and sorrows, that lay masked by skin and bone. It was as simple, as absurd, and as cruel as that.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

World, Dreams, Hope, Learning

“In the pit of red
You hid from the bone-clinic whiteness

But the jewel you lost was blue.”

Ted Hughes Birthday Letters

Source: Birthday Letters

“it is good to be sitting some place
in public at 2:30 in the afternoon
without getting the flesh ripped from
your bones.”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

“Henceforth I will look upon all things with love and I will be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars.”

Og Mandino book The Greatest Salesman in the World

Source: The Greatest Salesman in the World (1968), Ch. 9 : The Scroll Marked II, p. 59.
Context: Henceforth I will look upon all things with love and I will be born again. I will love the sun for it warms my bones; yet I will love the rain for it cleanses my spirit. I will love the light for it shows me the way; yet I will love the darkness for it shows me the stars. I will welcome happiness because it enlarges my heart; yet I will endure sadness because it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards because they are my due; yet I will welcome obstacles because they are my challenge.
I will greet this day with love in my heart.

Love, Way, Star, Light