Quotes about cactus (18 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Juno MacGuff: "Thanks a heap coyote ugly. This cactus-gram stings worse than your abandonment.”

Diablo Cody (1978) Screenwriter and author

Source: Juno: The Shooting Script

“You told us to leave you in the desert, because you planned to start a new life as cactus," Catarina said, her voice flat. "Then you conjured up tiny needles and threw them at us. With pinpoint accuracy.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

Life

“Being negative only makes a difficult journey more difficult. You may be given a cactus, but you don't have to sit on it.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

Source: Approval Addiction: Overcoming Your Need to Please Everyone

“I had forgotten that talking to you is like trying to pet a cactus." Saiman said dryly. "Thank you for reminding me."
"Always happy to oblige.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Rises

Happiness

“Even from far away, I could see people being chased by hellhounds, burned at the stake, forced to run naked through cactus patches or listen to opera music.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

People , Music

“A man with nothing left to lose is a very dangerous man and his energy/anger can be focused toward a common/righteous goal. What I'm asking you to do, then, is sit back and be honest with yourself. Do you have kids/wife? Would you back out at the last minute to care for the family? Are you interested in keeping your firearms for their current/future monetary value, or would you drag that '06 through rock, swamp and cactus…to get off the needed shot? In short, I'm not looking for talkers, I'm looking for fighters…And if you are a fed, think twice. Think twice about the Constitution you are supposedly enforcing (isn't "enforcing freedom" an oxymoron?) and think twice about catching us with our guard down – you will lose just like Degan did – and your family will lose. [”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

Letter to Steve Colbern, as quoted in American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0060394072 (2001), by Lou Michel and Dan Herbeck, New York: ReganBooks (HarperCollins), pp. 184-185.
1990s

Family , Thinking , Freedom , Future

“I tossed my shoulders and swaggered away, whistling with pleasure. In the gutter I saw a long cigaret butt. I picked it up without shame, lit it as I stood with one foot in the gutter, puffed it and exhaled toward the stars. I was an American, and goddamn proud of it. This great city, these mighty pavements and proud buildings, they were the voice of my America. From sand and cactus we Americans had carved an empire. Camilla's people had had their chance. They had failed. We Americans had turned the trick. Thank God for my country. Thank God I had been born an American!”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Source: Ask the Dust (1939), Chapter Five

God , People , Pleasure , Star

“It was very important for me to move back to Kingsville because my work is all about the land and the terrain and the cactus and the myths and legends and people. Especially the people, the Mexican community.”

Santa Barraza (1951)

People , Communication

“"All this beauty makes a person realize how insignificant they are," Paul says.
"How insignificant I am. You're the insignificant one"
He grins real big as he realizes how his words sounded. "I didn't mean it like that," he chuckles.
"No, I know what you meant, bud. I was just thinking kind of the same thing. I was looking at all this depth and it came to me how very shallow you are."
"Ha, ha," Paul chortles. He takes a few steps down the trail and turns. "You know, Don, I was just looking at this little flowery cactus here and thinking how nice it looks and it made me realize how ugly you are."
"Is that right," I say. "Well, I was just considering how smart these rocks look and it made me realize how dumb you are." With that I give him a little kick in the backside.
"How smart these rocks are?" he heckles. "Well, I was just looking at that cloud up there, reflecting on its beauty and stuff, and it hit me how much you smell."
"Is that right," I say. "The cloud made you realize that, huh?"
Paul distances himself a little and keeps turning to see if I am going to kick him again. He's got this grin going like he got the last laugh.
"You know, Paul, I was just looking at this pebble and it made me realize that I'm going to tackle you and throw you off the ledge."
"I see. That's real deep, Don. The pebble; you got that from a pebble?"”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Beauty , Thinking , Personality

“When I write "paradise" I mean not only apple trees and golden women but also scorpions and tarantulas and flies, rattlesnakes and Gila monsters, sandstorms, volcanoes and earthquakes, bacteria and bear, cactus, yucca, bladderweed, ocotillo and mesquite, flash floods and quicksand, and yes — disease and death and the rotting of flesh.”

Edward Abbey book Desert Solitaire

"Down the River", p. 147
Desert Solitaire (1968)

Death , Women , Disease , Tree

“Slight, wiry, his blond, curly hair worn long, Bob Dylan never wears a tie and never lets anyone else make decisions for him. His unshakable independence courses through his songs—some of them wryly irreverent, others harshly critical of what he regards as hypocrisy and cruelty. His voice is acrid but curiously compelling, and he has become the most influential folksinger among today's teenagers—as well as among older dissenters. […] Now 24, he is less the angry preacher of causes than he was two years ago. His songs have become more warmly personal and more deftly witty. He is cactus on the outside and romantic revolutionary within. He has no ideology except that of inner freedom. He is his own man.”

Nat Hentoff (1925–2017) American music critic

"Cosmo Listens to Records" http://www.mediafire.com/view/za1l4i1dftotwg9/.png, Cosmopolitan (November 1965)

Decision , Freedom , Personality

“We welcome folks in Cactus Center if they've got an honest lay;
If their game ain't too durn crooked, we never stop the play;
But a get-rich-quicker blew in, with a game we did n't like,
So we did n't waste the minutes in invitin' him to hike.”

Arthur Chapman (poet) (1873–1935) American poet and newspaper columnist

Discipline in Cactus Center http://www.cowboypoetry.com/ac.htm#Discipline, st. 1.
Cactus Center http://www.cowboypoetry.com/ac.htm#ccbk (1921)

Game

“In the Middle Ages people took potions for their ailments. In the 19th century they took snake oil. Citizens of today’s shiny, technological age are too modern for that. They take antioxidants and extract of cactus instead.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

"The Return of the Primitive" http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,984031,00.html, TIME magazine (29 January 1996)
1990s, 1996

People , Age

“This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
[…]
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley”

T.S. Eliot book The Hollow Men

The Hollow Men (1925)
Context: This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
[... ]
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
http://aduni.org/~heather/occs/honors/Notesonpoem.htm#fiftysevensixtyGathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear http://aduni.org/~heather/occs/honors/Notesonpoem.htm#sixtyonesixtytwo
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose http://aduni.org/~heather/occs/honors/Notesonpoem.htm#sixtyfoursixtythree
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.