Quotes about burst

A collection of quotes on the topic of burst, likeness, use, time.

Quotes about burst

“In a way, you are poetry material; You are full of cloudy subtleties I am willing to spend a lifetime figuring out. Words burst in your essence and you carry their dust in the pores of your ethereal individuality.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

Way

“Every day I discover
more and more
beautiful things.
It’s enough to drive one mad.
I have such a desire
to do everything,
my head is bursting with it.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Variant: Everyday I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.

Beauty, Madness

“I'll have to calm down a bit. Or else I'll burst with happiness”

Tove Jansson book Moominsummer Madness

Source: Moominsummer Madness

Happiness

“My head is bursting
with the joy of the unknown.
My heart is expanding a thousand fold.
Every cell,
taking wings,
flies about the world.
All seek separately
the many faces of my Beloved.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Hush Don't Say Anything to God (1999)

Joy

“Don't condemn me, remember rather that sometimes I, too, can reach the bursting point.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of Anne Frank: And Related Readings

“Just remember, Callum when you’re floating up and up in your bubble, that bubbles have a habit of bursting. The higher you climb, the further you have to fall.”

Malorie Blackman Noughts & Crosses

Source: Noughts & Crosses

“I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Source: The Dance of the Soul

Love, Life, Death, Men

“Well you burst on the scene
Already a legend
The unwashed phenomenon
The original vagabond
You strayed into my arms
And there you stayed
Temporarily lost at sea
The Madonna was yours for free
Yes the girl on the half-shell
Would keep you unharmed”

Joan Baez (1941) American singer

Diamonds & Rust
Diamonds & Rust (1975)

Girl, Sea

“You know, a landscape painter's day is delightful. You get up early, at three o'clock in the morning, before sunrise; you go and sit under a tree; you watch and wait. At first there is nothing much to be seen. Nature looks like a whitish canvas with a few broad outlines faintly sketched in; all is misty, everything quivers in the cool dawn breeze. The sky lights up. The sun has not yet burst through the gauze veil that hides the meadow, the little valley, the hill on the horizon... Ah, a first ray of sunshine!”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Corot's description of the beginning of a day in Switzerland, Château de Gruyères, 1857; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963
1850s

Nature, Tree, Light, Waiting

“England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare’s much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control — that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase.”

George Orwell book England Your England

Part I : England Your England, § III
The Lion and the Unicorn (1941)

Family, Quotes, Silence, Memory

“If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

As quoted in Dreyfus : His Life and Letters‎ (1937) edited by Pierre Dreyfus, p. 175.

Truth, Way

“The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

World

“I see evil when I look in my shaving mirror. It is, philosophically, present everywhere in the universe in order, apparently, to highlight the existence of good. I think there is more to this theory, but I tend to burst out laughing at this point.”

Terry Pratchett book Unseen Academicals

Source: Unseen Academicals

Thinking, Universe, Evil

“Tonight’s December thirty-first,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark, it's midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year!”

Ogden Nash (1902–1971) American poet

Source: Collected verse from 1929 on

Children, Time, New Year

“I'm a born entertainer, when I open the fridge and the light comes on, I burst into song.”

Robbie Williams (1974) British singer and entertainer

Light

“In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Variant: Sometimes our light goes out but is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this inner light.

Life, People, Time, Friendship

“Born on a different cloud
from the ones that have burst round town
It's no surprise to me
that yer classless, clever and free.”

Liam Gallagher (1972) English musician and songwriter

Song Born on a Different Cloud

“"I think the Moon is a world like this one, and the Earth is its moon."
My friends greeted this with a burst of laughter. "And maybe," I told them, "someone on the Moon is even now making fun of someone else who says that our globe is a world."”

Cyrano de Bergerac (1619–1655) French novelist, dramatist, scientist and duelist

The Other World (1657)

World, Thinking, Laughter

“I started selling my portraits. Sizing up my customer, I charged ten or twenty francs a caricature, and it worked like a charm. Within a month my clientele had doubled. Had I gone on like that I'd be a millionaire today. Soon I was looked up to in the town, I was 'somebody'. In the shop-window of the one and only frame-maker who could make out a livelihood in Le Havre, my caricatures were impudently displayed, five or six abreast, in beaded frames or behind glass like very fine works of art, and when I saw troops of bystanders gazing at them in admiration, pointing at them and crying 'Why, that's so-and-so!', I was just bursting with pride.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

after Monet's death
Source: Denis Rouart (1972) Claude Monet, p. 22 : About the first steps in his career

Art, Cry

“These big Texas interns kept saying, "Mrs. Kennedy, you come with us", they wanted to take me away from him… But I said "I'm not leaving"… Dave Powers came running to me at the hospital, crying when he saw me, my legs, my hands were covered with his brains… When Dave saw this he burst out weeping… I said "I'm not going to leave him, I'm not going to leave him"… I was standing outside in this narrow corridor… ten minutes later this big policeman brought me a chair.”

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929–1994) public figure, First Lady to 35th U.S. President John F. Kennedy

The "Camelot" interview (29 November 1963)

Cry

“Some people write to make a living; others to share their insights or raise questions that will haunt their readers; others yet to understand their very souls. None of these will last. That distinction belongs to those who write only because if they did not write they would burst… These writers give expression to the divine — no matter what they write about.”

Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) Indian writer

Source: One Minute Nonsense (1992), p. 70

People, Soul, Understanding, Question

“I have at last found a suitable spot and settled her. I have already spend a few days working and started eight canvases, which I hope, if the weather favours me, will give an idea of Norway and the environs of Christiania... This morning I was painting under constant falling snow. You would have burst out laughing seeing me white all over, my beard overgrown with icicles.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

in his letter from Sandviken to Gustave Geffroy, late January 1895; (Geoffrey, 1922, vol 2 pp. 87-88); as cited in: Nathalia Brodskaya, Claude Monet, 2011, p. 106
Similar translation:
One should live here for a year in order to accomplish something of value, and that is only after having seen and gotten to know the country. I painted today, a part of the day, in the snow, which falls endlessly. You would have laughed if you could have seen me completely white, with icicles hanging from my beard like stalactites.
1890 - 1900
Source: Claude Monet, ‎Charles F. Stuckey (1985) Monet: a retrospective, p. 169

Hope, Idea, Painting, Weather

“Now that cricket has been put aside for some few months to come, and cricketers have assumed somewhat of the chrysalis nature (for a time only 'tis true), but at length again will burst forth in all their varied hues, rather than allow this state of torpor to creep over them, and stifle their new supple limbs, why can they not, I say, form a foot-ball club, and form a committee of three or more to draw up a code of laws? If a club of this sort were got up, it would be of vast benefit to any cricket-ground to be trampled upon, and would make the turf quite firm and durable; besides which it would keep those who are inclined to become stout from having their joints encased in useless superabundant flesh.”

Tom Wills (1835–1880) Australian sportsman

From a public letter titled "Winter Practice", published in Bell's Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle, 10 July 1858.

Law, Nature, Time, Drawing

“What a dark world—who knows?—
Ours to inhabit is!
One touch and what a strange
Glory might burst on us,
What a hid universe!”

Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) British writer

Poem: Blind Children

World, Universe

“Unhappiness makes people vulnerable, incessant suffering unjust. Just as in the relations between a creditor and a debtor there is always an element of the disagreeable that can never be overcome, for the very reason that the one is irrevocably committed to the role of giver and the other to that of receiver, so in a sick person a latent feeling of resentment at every obvious sign of consideration is always ready to burst forth.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

People, Feeling, Suffering, Personality

“It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. … Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends…”

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1892–1973) British philologist and author, creator of classic fantasy works

No. 180: To a Mr. Thompson (incomplete draft of a letter, 1956).
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (1981)

War, Dependency, Dead

“There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself…. Burst your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Truth, Beauty, Soul, Universe

“Ah well, towards happiness others will lead me
With their tresses knotted to the horns of my brow:
You know, my passion, that purple and just ripe,
The pomegranates burst and murmur with bees;
And our blood, aflame for her who will take it,
Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire.”

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898) French Symbolist poet

The Afternoon of a Faun (1876)

Happiness, Passion, Bee

“Joy from truth's own glass of fire
Sweetly on the searcher smiles;
Lest on virtue's steeps he tire,
Joy the tedious path beguiles.
High on faith's bright hill before us,
See her banner proudly wave!
Joy, too, swells the angels' chorus,—
Bursts the bondage of the grave!”

Friedrich Schiller Ode to Joy

Stanza 5
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)

Truth, Faith, Smile, Angels

“Night's darkness is a bag that bursts with the gold of the dawn.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

213
Stray Birds (1916)

Night

“Some revolutions are inevitable. There are moral eruptions, just as the outbreak of volcanoes are physical eruptions. When the chemical combinations which produce them are complete, the volcanic eruptions burst forth, just as revolutions do when the moral factors are in the right state. In order to foresee them the trend of ideas must be understandingly observed.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Idea

“Whether I have too little sense to see, or too much to be imposed upon; whether I have too much or too little pride, or of anything else, I leave out of the question; but certain it is, that what is called monarchy, always appears to me a silly, contemptible thing. I compare it to something kept behind a curtain, about which there is a great deal of bustle and fuss, and a wonderful air of seeming solemnity; but when, by any accident, the curtain happens to be open — and the company see what it is, they burst into laughter.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Chapter III http://www.constitution.org/tp/rightsman2.htm <br class="br">1790s, Rights of Man, Part 2 (1792)

Question, Sense, Laughter, Appearance

“They can't be worse than vampires. And you did all right with them."
"Did all right with them? By which I take it you mean we survived?"
"Well..."
"Faeries," Jace went on, as if Simon hadn't spoken, "are the offspring of demons and angels, with the beauty of angels and the viciousness of demons. A vampire might attack you, if you enter its domain, but a faerie could make you dance until you died with your legs ground into stumps, trick you into a midnight swim and drag you screaming underwater until your lungs burst, fill your eyes with faerie dust until you gouged them out at the roots-"
"Jace!”

Cassandra Clare The Mortal Instruments

Clary snapped.
Simon, Jace, and Clary, pg. 146-147
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

Beauty, Angels, Dance

“Suddenly he saw them, the bottles of aguardiente, of anís, of jerez, of Highland Queen, the glasses, a babel of glasses—towering, like the smoke from the train that day—built to the sky, then falling, the glasses toppling and crashing, falling downhill from the Generalife Gardens, the bottles breaking, bottles of Oporto, tinto, blanco, bottles of Pernod, Oxygènée, absinthe, bottles smashing, bottles cast aside, falling with a thud on the ground in parks, under benches, beds, cinema seats, hidden in drawers at Consulates, bottles of Calvados dropped and broken, or bursting into smithereens, tossed into garbage heaps, flung into the sea, the Mediterranean, the Caspian, the Caribbean, bottles floating in the ocean, dead Scotchmen on the Atlantic highlands—and now he saw them, smelt them, all, from the very beginning—bottles, bottles, bottles, and glasses, glasses, glasses, of bitter, of Dubonnet, of Falstaff, Rye, Johnny Walker, Vieux Whiskey blanc Canadien, the apéritifs, the digestifs, the demis, the dobles, the noch ein Herr Obers, the et glas Araks, the tusen taks, the bottles, the bottles, the beautiful bottles of tequila, and the gourds, gourds, gourds, the millions of gourds of beautiful mescal...”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. X (p. 292)

Beauty, Training, Sea, Dead

“They have seen in his round, jolly fruitful face, post-offices, land-offices, marshalships and cabinet-appointments, charge-ships and foreign missions, bursting out in wonderful exuberance, ready to be laid hold of by their greedy hands. Nobody has ever expected me to be president. In my poor, lean lank face nobody has ever seen that any cabbages were sprouting.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Speech in Springfield, Illinois (17 July 1858), referring to Stephen Douglas. Quoted in Charles Sumner (1861), The Promises of the Declaration of Independence
1850s

“It is beautiful here [in Etretat, Normandy], my friend; every day I discover even more beautiful things. It is intoxicating me, and I want to paint it all - my head is bursting.... I want to fight, scratch it off, start again, because I start to see and understand. I seems to me as if I can see nature and I can catch it all.... it is by observation and reflection that I discover how. That is what we are working on, continuously..”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote of Monet, 1864 in a letter to his friend Frédéric Bazille; as cited in Monet's landschappen Vivian Rusell; Icob, Alphen aan de Rijn, The Netherlands 2010, p. 12
1850 - 1870

Beauty, Understanding, Nature, Fight

“The brave Norwegian drove his vessel head on against the pursuing jelly which rose above the unclean froth like the stern of a daemon galleon. The awful squid-head with writhing feelers came nearly up to the bowsprit of the sturdy yacht, but Johansen drove on relentlessly. There was a bursting as of an exploding bladder, a slushy nastiness as of a cloven sunfish, a stench as of a thousand opened graves, and a sound that the chronicler could not put on paper. For an instant the ship was befouled by an acrid and blinding green cloud, and then there was only a venomous seething astern; where — God in heaven!”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

the scattered plasticity of that nameless sky-spawn was nebulously recombining in its hateful original form...
Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

God, Hate

“All the concentrated agony of the Universe bursts out in every living thing.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: The wife of my God is matter; they wrestle with each other, they laugh and weep, they cry out in the nuptial bed of flesh.
They spawn and are dismembered. They fill sea, land, and air with species of plants, animals, men, and spirits. This primordial pair embraces, is dismembered, and multiplies in every living creature.
All the concentrated agony of the Universe bursts out in every living thing. God is imperiled in the sweet ecstasy and bitterness of flesh.
But he shakes himself free, he leaps out of brains and loins, then clings to new brains and new loins until the struggle for liberation again breaks out from the beginning.

Universe

“You know," he said, "every time a vampire says he doesn't believe in lycanthropes, a werewolf bursts into flames.”

Elizabeth Bear (1971) American novelist

Source: New Amsterdam

Time

“I turned to Alex. 'Hey, are you female today?'
'Hold on… There! Now I'm female.'
My expression must have been priceless.
Alex burst out laughing. 'I'm kidding. Yes, I'm female today. She and her.”

Rick Riordan book The Hammer of Thor

Source: The Hammer of Thor

“Regret, already sogging me down, burst its dam. It seeped into my legs, it pooled in my heart.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Heart

“He burst into one of his rare fits of laughter as he turned away from the picture. I have not heard him laugh often, and it has always boded ill to somebody.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Hound of the Baskervilles

Source: The Hound of the Baskervilles

Laughter

“So it's true. You can walk in sunlight. I thought perhaps it might have worn off."
"If I feel the urge to burst into flames, I'll let you know.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Feeling

“I mean, to me, freaking out is different. More of a running away, not telling anyone what's wrong, slowly simmering until you burst kind of thing.”

Sarah Dessen book Just Listen

Source: Just Listen

“Blood spurted from his nose. Okay, I couldn't help myself. I burst out laughing.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

Help

“So that means that Peter…" I swallowed. "That his full name was Peter Parker."
"Yeah"
I burst into tears. "Oh, my God! I killed Spiderman!”

Michelle Rowen (1971) Canadian writer

Source: Fanged & Fabulous

God, Tear

“Nereus spun and expanded, turning into a killer whale, but I grabbed his dorsal fin as he burst out of the water.
A whole bunch of tourists went, "Whoa!"
I managed to wave at the crowd.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Water

“With the truth so dull and depressing, the only working alternative is wild bursts of madness and filigree.”

Hunter S. Thompson Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

Source: Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72

Truth, Madness

“My bursting heart must find vent at my pen.”

Abigail Adams (1744–1818) 2nd First Lady of the United States (1797–1801)

Heart

“The bird, the pin, the song, the berries, the watch, the cracker, the dress that burst into flames. I am the mockingjay. The one that survived despite the Capitol's plans. The symbol of the rebellion.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Bird

“The sky is like a black sieve pierced by silver drops that tremble, ready to burst through.”

Ayn Rand book Anthem

Source: Anthem

“A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Commentary on the Psalms http://dhspriory.org/thomas/english/PsalmsAquinas/ThoPs0.htm , Introduction

God

“The fair breeze blew,
The white foam flew,
And the forrow followed free.
We were the first to ever burst into the silent sea.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Source: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Sea

“Singin' in the Rain was most excellent if you like movies where people burst into song and tap-dance. Which I do, though not as much as I like movies where people don't.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them

People, Dance

“There was nothing I wanted to do more than be unconscious again, wrapped in black, gone away. I was raw. I felt swollen with potential tears, like a water balloon filled to burst. Begging for a pin prick.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Tear, Water

“Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Flowers, Lying

“Oh, Daisy, it's revolting the way I want to fawn all over him. I'm afraid I'm going to do something dreadfully silly today. Burst into song or something. For God's sake, don't let me.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: It Happened One Autumn

God, Way

“Hannah was about to burst with excitement, which would have been disgusting because she would have sprayed blood, guts and glitter in every direction.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: Twisted

“Then Octavia drops to her knees, rubs the hem of a skirt against her cheek, and burst into tears. "It's been so long," she gasps, "since I've seen anything pretty.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Tear

“The news should have terrified her, but it was difficult to be frightened of anything when she was sitting so close to Rom. 'I thought we had convinced him that I was leading a blameless life?' 'We had, till you burst out of that damnable cake.”

Eva Ibbotson A Company of Swans

Source: A Company of Swans

Life

“She looked into the staring glass eyes and complacent face, and suddenly a sort of heartbroken rage seized her. She lifted her little savage hand and knocked Emily off the chair, bursting into a passion of sobbing- Sara who never cried.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

Rage, Passion

“The time has come, everybody lie down so you won't get hurt when the sun bursts.”

Neal Cassady (1926–1968) American cultural figure of 1950s and 1960s

Source: First Third & Other Writings - Revised & Expanded Edition Together With A New Prologue

Lie, Time, Sun, Hurt

“We looked at each other until it felt like everything would burst into flames”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.”

Jack London book The Turtles of Tasman

Source: The Turtles of Tasman

Singing, Heart

“Long ago, in a burst of friendliness, Aunty and Uncle Jimmy produced a son named Henry…”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“I am a little man and this is a little town, but there must be a spark in little men that can burst into flame.”

John Steinbeck book The Moon Is Down

Source: The Moon Is Down

Men

“But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell burst, the plummet of the car from a bridge.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

Life, Cars

“They're betting on how long I'll live!' I burst out. 'They're not my friends!”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“She had been proud of his decision to serve his country, her heart bursting with love and admiration the first time she saw him outfitted in his dress blues.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Love, Decision, Time, Heart

“Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. New facts burst old rules; then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together into a reconciling law.”

William James The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy

Source: The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy

Life, Law, Science

“I imagine that it will not be easy to persuade Mortmain into a bonnet," Magnus observed. "Though the color would be fetching on him."
Henry burst into laughter. "Very droll, Mr. Bane."
"Please, call me Magnus."
"I shall!”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Color, Imagination, Laughter

“There's nothing like your mother's sympathetic voice to make you want to burst into tears.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

Tear, Mother's Day, For Parents, For Mother

“Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into the shallow creek at the bottom. Chunks of the bridge fell on top of it. Nothing much was left but charred smithereens.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin (2000) first lines

War, Cars, Sister

“You never know when, and you never know who, but someday a stranger will burst through the door of your life and transform it utterly. The world will be turned upside down, and you will be happier for it.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Nothing but Shadows

Life, World

“Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life, Waiting

“She was a beautiful woman." Gavner sighed, tracing the outline of one of the elephants. "She just had very bad taste in underwear …"
"And in boyfriends," I added impishly.
Mr. Crepsley burst into laughter at that”

Darren Shan book Vampire Mountain

Source: Vampire Mountain

Beauty, Laughter

“Doesn't sunlight kill them? Doesn't it turn them to dust, or make them burst into flames or something?"
"Nope. Vampires tan, just like you and me. Well, just like you. I tend to bleach.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

“People weren't firecrackers who burst into the night sky with brilliance and glory, and a moment later faded away to nothing. Our souls had to be more lasting than that.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: Just One Wish

People, Soul, Night

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Life, Tree, Summer

“And of course I'm a chauvinist, but it isn't my fault."
"It isn't?"
"No, Jack was born first and I share his genes. I can't help it if he infected me inside the womb."
Briony burst out laughing. "I should have known that would be your excuse.”

Christine Feehan book Conspiracy Game

Source: Conspiracy Game

Help

“He bursts out laughing. It's short, as if he regretted allowing me to make him laugh, but the satisfaction's already mine.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

“The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.”

Philip Pullman book Northern Lights

Source: The Golden Compass

Way, Idea, Thinking

“Whatever story you're telling, it will be more interesting if, at the end you add, "and then everything burst into flames.”

Brian P. Cleary (1959) American writer

Source: You Oughta Know By Now

“Why don't you ever wait a second and see what I'm planning, or thinking, before you burst in with your opinions and ideas? You never even give me a chance.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Someone Like You

Idea, Thinking, Chance, Waiting

“Adrian!" Something inside of me burst. "Will you shut the hell up for five seconds?”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Hell

“There was a pause, static, a muttered "Give me that," by an indignant female. Then the normally quiet reserved Ashlyn was demanding, "Did you just drunk dial my husband?"
"Yes, ma'am," Strider said, and the other two finally burst into laughter.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Secret

Laughter

“When she comes
She pulls you close
She breathes in short bursts
Her eyes close
Her head tilts back
Her mouth opens slightly
Her thighs turn to steel, and then melt
She is perfect
And you feel like you are everything.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: The Portable Henry Rollins

Feeling, Perfection

“I paused with the pen in my hand. "He burst into flames?"
"He became engulfed in fire."
"Was his buddy made out of orange rocks and at any point yell, 'It's clobbering time'?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds

Time

“Elinor could sit still no longer. She almost ran out of the room, and as soon as the door was closed, burst into tears of joy, which at first she thought would never cease.”

Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility

Source: Sense and Sensibility

Tear, Joy

“if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Heart

“Now, young lady, I suppose you're here for a work assignment."
Work?" Tally said.
They both looked down at her puzzled expression, and Shay burst into laughter.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Laughter

“But now and then, a woman walks up, full blossom, a woman just bursting out of her dress…a sex creature, a curse, the end of it all.”

Charles Bukowski book Post Office

Source: Post Office

Sex

“Something large and happy has unfolded in my chest, erupting in a smile that won’t quit. I can’t remember ever feeling so light-hearted. Or is my heart full? Or bursting? Not aching, that’s for sure.”

Fiona Wood (1958) British–Australian physician and plastic surgeon

Source: Six Impossible Things

Happiness, Smile, Feeling, Light

“We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

As quoted in Michel Foucault (1991) by Didier Eribon, as translated by Betsy Wind, Harvard University Press, p. 282
Context: There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

Books, Idea, Birth

“Lively, intelligent, and quite immature, [Emily] usually burst out with exactly the comment that summed up the situation beautifully and therefore could never in politeness be said.”

Clare B. Dunkle book The Hollow Kingdom

Source: The Hollow Kingdom

Intelligence