Quotes about fill
page 4

“It was almost like fear, in the way it filled me, rising in my chest. It was almost like tears, in how swiftly it came. But it was neither of those, buoyant where they were heavy, bright were they dull.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Fear, Way, Tear

“What an author doesn't know could fill a book.”

Holly Black book Lucinda's Secret

Source: Lucinda's Secret

Books

“All we had was her room, her stories, and the quiet that settled in as we tried in vain to spread ourselves out and fill the space she'd left behind.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland

“Care not for want of place; care for thy readiness to fill one. Care not for being unknown, but seek to be worthy of note.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Source: Sayings of Confucius

“You must be filled with expectancy. You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next.”

Kate DiCamillo book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Source: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

Love, Hope

“The muffled syllables that Nature speaks
Fill us with deeper longing for her word;
She hides a meaning that the spirit seeks,
She makes a sweeter music than is heard.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Music, Nature

“Whether it was power they sought, or revenge, or love-well, those were all just different forms of hunger. The bigger the hole inside you, the more desperate you became to fill it.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Love, Hunger, Revenge

“I can try to disable it," I said, "but if I mess up, this whole apartment is going to fill with gas. We'll die."

Thalia swallowed. " I trust you. Just… don't mess it up.”

Rick Riordan book The Demigod Diaries

Source: The Demigod Diaries

“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

“The air will always be to filled with something. Your body too sore or tired. Your father too drunk. Your wife too cold. You will always have some excuse not to live your life.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

Life

“I have filled 3 Mead notebooks trying to figure out whether it was Them or Just Me.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

Source: A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

“The history of my stupidity would fill many volumes.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

Stupidity, History

“And the night shall be filled with music,
And the cares, that infest the day,
Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,
And as silently steal away.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

St. 11.
The Day is Done (1845)

Music, Night

“To have her meals, and her daily walk, and her fill of novels, and to be left alone, was all that she asked of the gods.”

Anthony Trollope book The Eustace Diamonds

Source: The Eustace Diamonds

God

“Her best friend was gone and nobody understood that no amount of makeup, fresh air or shopping was going to fill the hole in her heart.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

Heart

“I know what they'd like, they'd like a blank they could fill in. A person already filled in disturbs them terribly.”

Patricia Highsmith book The Price of Salt

Source: The Price of Salt

Personality

“Did the destruction of one dream leave a vacuum that required filling with another? Is a broken heart more vulnerable?”

Cinda Williams Chima (1952) Novelist

Source: The Exiled Queen

Dreams, Heart

“You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.”

Idries Shah (1924–1996) writer and Sufi teacher

Water

“He treasured her, treasured her tears, treasured her love for others. Her heart might even be big enough to fill that empty space in his own chest. Perhaps she could be his heart as well.”

Elizabeth Hoyt (1970) American writer

Source: Scandalous Desires

Love, Tear, Heart

“People give pain, are callous and insensitive, empty and cruel… but place heals the hurt, soothes the outrage, fills the terrible vacuum that these human beings make.”

Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American author

Pain, People, Hurt

“Do not wait for the healing to arrive. It will never come. The holes will never leave or be filled with anything at all.

But holes are interesting things.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Waiting

“Personally, I say, "Out of the frying pan and into the deadly pit filled with sharks who are wielding chainsaws with killer kittens stapled to them." However, that one's having a rough time catching on.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

Source: Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener's Bones

Time, Personality

“A student, filled with emotion and crying, implored, "Why is there so much suffering?"

Suzuki Roshi replied, "No reason.”

Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971) Japanese Buddhist missionary

Source: Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki, Author of "ZEN Mind, Beginner's Mind"

Suffering, Cry

“Upon my word," said Dantes, "you make me shudder. Is the world filled with tigers and crocodiles?"

"Yes; and remember that two legged tigers and crocodiles are more dangerous than the others.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

World

“Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.”

Italo Calvino book Invisible Cities

Source: Invisible Cities

Star

“All my life, she gave to me a shovel and said, Fill these holes inside of me, Pari.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Life

“The thing about light is that it really isn’t yours; it’s what you gather and shine back. And it gets more power from reflectiveness; if you sit still and take it in, it fills your cup, and then you can give it off yourself.”

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

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Light

“I unpetalled you, like a rose,
to see your soul,
and I didn't see it.
But everything around
-horizons of land and of seas-,
everything, out to the infinite,
was filled with a fragrance,
enormous and alive.”

Juan Ramón Jimenéz (1881–1958) Spanish poet

Soul, Sea

“To cry was to release all sorts of ugly little pressures and tensions. Like waking out of a long, dark dream to a sun-filled day.”

Anne McCaffrey book Nerilka's Story

Source: Nerilka's Story

Dreams, Sun, Cry

“once you laugh at you own weaknesses, you can move forward. Comedy breaks down walls. It opens up people. If you're good, you can fill up those openings with something positive. Mabye…….. combat some the ugliness in the world.”

Goldie Hawn (1945) American actress, film director, and producer.

People, World

“The mind thinks thoughts that we don't plan. It's not as if we say, 'At 9:10 I'm going to be filled with self-hatred.”

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

Thinking

“When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that's awfully hard not to poke.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

“… think of the solution, not the problem. If your mind was filled only with thoughts of why you were going to lose, then you couldn't think of how to win.”

Terry Goodkind Blood of the Fold

Source: Blood of the Fold

Problem, Thinking

“When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.”

W. Clement Stone (1902–2002) American New Thought author

Feeling

“A postcard. Neat handwriting fills the rectangle.

Half my days I cannot bear to touch you.
The rest of my time I feel like it doesn’t matter if I will ever see you again. It isn’t the morality, it’s how much you can bear.

No date. No name attached.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Feeling, Time

“The eye always fills in the imperfections.”

Rabih Alameddine (1959) Lebanese-American painter and writer.

Source: I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us.”

John Muir book My First Summer in the Sierra

Terry Gifford, EWDB, page 195
Source: 1860s, My First Summer in the Sierra, 1869

Mountain

“seven wonders of the world
and I have to ask for an eighth
fill a bottle with some prayers
and spend them on hope
create an easy route
just so I can complicate
send my heart down that
slippery slope”

David Levithan The Realm of Possibility

Source: The Realm of Possibility

World, Hope, Heart

“People seem to think that if you keep your head empty you automatically fill your balls.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Mandarins

Source: The Mandarins

People, Thinking

“I smoke to fill the potholes in my soul”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Soul

“All people have religions. It's like we have religion receptors built into our brain cells, or something, and we'll latch onto anything that'll fill that niche for us.”

Neal Stephenson book Snow Crash

Source: Snow Crash

People, Religion

“If pinpointing God's presence were really that simple, then he supposed the beaches would be more crowded in the mornings. They would be filled with people on their own quests, instead of people jogging or walking their dogs or fishing in the surf.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

God, People, Dogs, Fish

“My lovely shining fragile broken house is filled with flowers and founded on a rock.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Love, Flowers, Housing

“Never question the truth of what you fail to understand, for the world is filled with wonders.”

L. Frank Baum book Rinkitink in Oz

Source: Rinkitink in Oz

Truth, World, Understanding, Question

“The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Truth, Beauty, Joy, Beauty

“I got to eavesdrop at a window. As Clay said, I did have another option. I could wait in the car and let them fill me in later. So, eavesdropping it was.”

Kelley Armstrong Broken

Source: Broken

Cars, Waiting

“And after a while… I mean, how do you choose? Who gets to live? Part of life is that… well, some people have to die. My powers aren't a prescription you can get filled as needed.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

Life, People, Parting

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Love, Life, People

“If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?”

Jodi Picoult book Nineteen Minutes

Source: Nineteen Minutes (2007)

Heart, Sad, Depressing, Hurtful

“… the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Variant: The human face has limited space. If you fill it with laughter there will be no room for crying.
Source: A Fine Balance

Cry

“TRYING TO FILL THE empty SPACE

i don't know
if I will
ever understand
this Ache.
Perhaps it is
simpley and completely
Love and

what

HAPPENS.
at the end.

Loss

November 17, early morning”

Sabrina Ward Harrison (1975) Canadian writer

Source: Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself

Love, Understanding, Loss

“… so young, so lonely and naive, that she imagined herself as some sort of vessel to be filled up with love. But it wasn't like that. The love was within her all the time and its only renewal came from giving it away.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Love, Imagination, Time

“I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don’t know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

People, Loneliness

“When somebody walks out, it leaves a hole in you. Some people fill it up, the good and the bad, and get on that way. Some people leave it open, maybe long enough to heal, maybe too long, picking at it now and then so it doesn't heal all the way.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Chasing Fire

People, Way

“We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over. So in a series of acts of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over.”

James Boswell book The Life of Samuel Johnson

(19 September 1777)
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)
Variant: We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.

Friendship, Heart

“The glory of science is, that it is freeing the soul -- breaking the mental manacles -- getting the brain out of bondage -- giving courage to thought -- filling the world with mercy, justice, and joy.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: Humboldt From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'

World, Justice, Soul, Courage

“Even the merest gesture is holy if it is filled with faith.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

Faith

“Annoyed?” said Sophie. “Why should I be annoyed? Someone only filled the castle with rotten aspic, and deafened everyone in Porthaven, and scared Calcifer to a cinder, and broke a few hundred hearts. Why should that annoy me?”

Diana Wynne Jones book Howl's Moving Castle

Source: Howl's Moving Castle

Heart

“Snow was falling,
so much like stars
filling the dark trees
that one could easily imagine
its reason for being was nothing more
than prettiness.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Imagination, Star, Tree

“We’ve been filled with great treasure for one purpose: to be spilled.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

“You dwell in whitened castles
with deep and poisoned moats
and cannot hear the curses
which fill your children's throats.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Children

“What? I bring joy to the world. I am filled with mirth and sunlight. Also, I am Batman.”

Warren Ellis (1968) English comics and fiction writer

World, Joy

“When one is nothing, one invents. It fills a void.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

“She wanted to be buried in a coffin filled with used paperbacks.”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Source: Ten Little Indians

“Children aren't coloring books. You don't get to fill them with your favorite colors.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Rahim Khan, Ch. 3
Variant: Rahim Khan laughed. “Children aren’t coloring books. You don’t get to fill them with your favorite colors.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)

Children, Books, Color

“Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

1836
Notebooks, The American Notebooks (1835 - 1853)

World

“The world, even the smallest parts of it, is filled with things you don't know.

If you care about something enough, it's going to make you cry. But you have to use it. Use your tears. Use your pain. Use your fear. Get mad.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Pain, World, Fear, Tear

“Welcome to the truth of our world-a massive seed shot out to the stars, filled with deadly children. A seed designed to slay everything it touches.”

Greg Bear book Hull Zero Three

Source: Hull Zero Three

Children, Truth, World, Star

“Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each others welfare, social justice can never be attained.”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

People, Justice, Sense

“I wasn’t going anywhere and neither was the rest of the world. We were all just hanging around waiting to die and meanwhile doing little things to fill the space. Some of use weren’t even doing little things. We were vegetables.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

World, Waiting

“If a man truly loves, he gives no heed to what others may think. His heart has no room for that, for it is filled to the brim with the unutterable truth of his feelings.”

Juliet Marillier book Cybele's Secret

Source: Cybele's Secret

Love, Truth, Feeling, Thinking

“It is anticipation and recollection that fill the heart—never the sensation of the moment.”

Roger Zelazny (1937–1995) American speculative fiction writer

Source: Threshold

Heart

“Suffering is not enough. Life is both dreadful and wonderful… How can I smile when I am filled with so much sorrow? It is natural--you need to smile to your sorrow because you are more than your sorrow.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Life, Smile, Nature, Suffering

“It is sometimes necessary for each person. Fill up with delicious food, get drunk, sing loudly and chat frivolously.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: 1Q84 BOOK 3

Food, Singing, Personality

“If God wanted a world filled with saints, He never would have created adolescence.”

Susan Beth Pfeffer The Dead and the Gone

Source: The Dead and the Gone

God, World

“I don't really know if it's the right thing to do, making new life. Kids grow up, generations take their place. What does it all come to? More hills bulldozed and more ocean fronts filled in? Faster cars and more cats run over? Who needs it?”

Haruki Murakami book A Wild Sheep Chase

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 15, The Song Is Over

Life, Cars, Cats

“He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Truth, Error

“A home filled with nothing but yourself. It's heavy, that lightness. It's crushing, that emptiness.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Source: The Tent

Home, Light

“Eating rice cakes is like chewing on a foam coffee cup, only less filling.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Coffee

“There are women who inspire you with the desire to conquer them and to take your pleasure of them; but this one fills you only with the desire to die slowly beneath her gaze.”

Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867) French poet

Women, Pleasure

“As long as a thing is unknown, it belongs to us in a way that well-known things do not. For we have the opportunity to fill the empty, unknown spaces for ourselves, and in them there is room for imagination and for hope.”

Cameron Dokey (1956) American writer

Hope, Way, Imagination

“The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity…”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

Love, God, Effort, Light

“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”

Annie Dillard book The Living

Source: The Living

Books, Reading

“Seth was a wonderful kisser. He gave the kind of kisses that melted into your mouth and filled you with sweetness. They were like cotton candy.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Dreams

Kiss

“If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.”

Anne Fadiman (1953) American essayist, journalist and magazine editor

Love, Books, Sleep, Reading

“Fill your house with stacks of books, in all the crannies and all the nooks.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Books, Housing

“How wonderful to know someone who was bad and dishonorable and a cheat and a liar, when all the world was filled with people who would not lie to save their souls and who would rather starve than do a dishonorable deed!”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

People, Lie, World, Soul

“Maybe someone will know I didn't weave crowns to draw blood; that I faught against mockery;
that I did fill the high tide of my soul with truth.
I repaid vileness with doves.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Truth, Soul, Drawing

“These are the four that are never content: that have never been filled since the dew began-
Jacala's mouth, and the glut of the kite, and the hands of the ape, and the eyes of Man.”

Rudyard Kipling book The Jungle Book

Source: The Jungle Books

“His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.”

J.M. Coetzee book Disgrace

Source: Disgrace (1999), p. 3-4
Context: Although he devoted hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: 'Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings, and intentions to each other.' His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.

Lie, Soul

“Only half a page left now. Shall I fill it with 'I love you, I love you'-- like father's page of cats on the mat? No. Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.”

Dodie Smith (1896–1990) English novelist and playwright

Love, Cats, Heart

“The physics are simple in theory, but in practice they are filled with the possibility for limitless error.”

Christopher Pike book The Last Vampire

Source: The Last Vampire

Error

“Ladies in bunches always filled me with vague apprehension and a firm desire to be elsewhere.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“Built to be lonely
to love the absent.
Find me
Free me
from this
corrosive doubt
futile despair
horror in repose.
I can fill my space
fill my time
but nothing can fill this void in my heart.”

Sarah Kane book 4.48 Psychosis

Source: 4.48 Psychosis

Love, Time, Heart, Despair

“He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.”

Anne Tyler The Amateur Marriage

Source: The Amateur Marriage

Life

“As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Historical Notes (p. 311)
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985)
Source: The Handmaid's Tale
Context: As all historians know, the past is a great darkness, and filled with echoes. Voices may reach us from it; but what they say to us is imbued with the obscurity of the matrix out of which they come; and, try as we may, we cannot always decipher them precisely in the clearer light of our own day.

Past