Quotes about shape
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“as the shadows assume
shapes
I fight the slow
retreat

now
my once-promise
dwindling
dwindling

now
lighting new cigarettes
pouring more
drinks

it has been a beautiful
fight

still
is.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

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

Beauty, Drink, Light, Fight

“You'll be okay. No matter what shape reality takes, you can handle it.”

Shiro Amano (1976) Japanese manga artist

Source: Kingdom Hearts, Vol. 1

Reality

“Everything has shape, if you look for it. There is no escape from form.”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

“why do our enemies shape us more than our friends?”

Rafik Schami (1946) German writer

Source: The Dark Side of Love

“The water crumbles on it's way down as my hands and feet push me forward. The world is lightening, taking shape, and turning to color. It feels like it's being painted around me.”

Markus Zusak (1975) Australian author

Source: I Am the Messenger

World, Color, Way, Feeling

“He knew me in all the ways that truly mattered: the shape of my fears, the contours of my dreams.”

Justina Chen (1968) American writer

Fear, Dreams, Way

“Love is like the sea. It's a moving thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from the shore it meets, and it's different with every shore.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

Variant: Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore.
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Love, Sea

“Behind every specific call, whether it is to teach or preach or write or encourage or comfort, there is a deeper call that gives shape to the first: the call to give ourselves away - the call to die.”

Michael Card (1957) singer, songwriter, author, composer, Radio Host

Source: The Walk: The Life-changing Journey of Two Friends

“I am an instrument in the shape/ of a woman trying to translate pulsations/ into images for the relief of the body/ and the reconstruction of the mind.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Source: The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984

“Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.”

Guy Gavriel Kay book Tigana

Source: Tigana (1990), Chapter 17 (p. 561)

Change

“I have things in my head that are not like what anyone taught me — shapes and ideas so near to me, so natural to my way of being and thinking.”

Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) American artist

Way, Idea, Nature, Thinking

“Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Source: American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

Books, World, Time

“Hope is a critical thing. Whithout it, we are nothing. Hope shapes will. The will shapes the world.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

World, Hope

“Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.”

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

As quoted in How to Be the Employee Your Company Can't Live Without : 18 Ways to Become Indispensable (2006) by Glenn Shepard

“A rune, hovering like an angel: a shape like two wings joined by a single bar.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Angels

“The stems stood tall and straight, one series arranged in a single line, the other in a crudely shaped heart, the final one in the shape of the letter U. I love you.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: Don't Die, My Love

Love, Heart

“Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality.”

Stephen Fry book Moab Is My Washpot

Source: Moab Is My Washpot

Life, Reality, Effort

“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

Source: Shadow & Claw

Truth

“In light this bright, after so long in the dark, everything we can see is only black and white. Only glaring
shape-outlines we have to blink against.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

Light

“One of the troubles is this: the heart isn't heart-shaped.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Heart

“Their closeness wouldn't break, but it would bend and stretch into a new shape.”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“Liminal sucks. You can't grasp it with your hands and shape it. You can't make midnight come faster, or grow up sooner, or avoid the in-betweens. You can only hang in there, and get through them.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

“The Shadow-maker shapes forever.”

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) writer

“It can be… difficult to to learn how the world truly is, to see it in its true shape and form… most human beings never do. Most could not bear it.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

World, Learning

“She felt as if she bled her regret and loneliness from her very pores, and yet she could not shape those feelings into any sentiment she could imagine her parents could bear reading.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Feeling, Imagination, Parent, Reading

“Traditional Botswana men like ladies who are more traditionally shaped. You and I, Mma. We remind men of how things used to be in Botswana before these modern-shaped ladies started to get men all confused.”

Alexander McCall Smith book The Full Cupboard of Life

Source: The Full Cupboard of Life

Men

“When they finished laughing they were on their way to being not just friends, but the dearest of friends, the sort of friends whose lives are shaped by the friendship.”

Robin McKinley book Spindle's End

Source: Spindle's End

Friendship, Way

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

“She had always wanted words, she loved them; grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Love

“We have
Not one
In common
No two
Are shaped alike
The third
Because of that eye we lack
In the fourth
Direction there is hope
The fifth Is at the heart
-Orihime Inoue”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach―ブリーチ― 27 [Burīchi 27]

Hope, Heart

“Keeping you safe keeps me in shape.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Strikes

“And now that its ruby eyes are set into the gold, you cannot see their tear-shape, so they seem to be laughing rather than crying. It is a constant reminder to me of the human ability to create something beautiful even when things are at the darkest.”

Cressida Cowell (1966) British writer

Source: How to Twist a Dragon's Tale

Beauty, Tear, Cry

“No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.”

Edwidge Danticat Krik? Krak!

Source: Krik? Krak!

Women

“If some lives form a perfect circle, other take shape in ways we cannot predict or always understand. Loss has been part of my journey. But it has also shown me what is precious. So has love for which I can only be grateful.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Love, Way, Understanding, Loss

“My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, always with various silence and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated.”

Edward Said (1935–2003) Professor of English and literature

Women, Men, History, Silence

“The small wad of burning paper drew down to a wisp of flame and then died out leaving a faint pattern for just a moment in the incandescence like the shape of a flower, a molten rose. Then all was dark again.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Flowers

“At the end of our lives it is our loves we remember most, because they are what shaped us. We have grown to be who we are around them, as around a stake.”

Anna Funder book All That I Am

Source: All That I Am

Love

“There are generations yet unborn,
whose very lives will be shifted and shaped by the moves you make and the actions you take.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

“Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Variant: Our job in this life is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it.
Source: The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks & Win Your Inner Creative Battles

Imagination

“Worry is the secret weapon perpetrated upon us by the dark forces of the world that lurk in the shape of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and loss.

We, on the other hand, have our own secret weapon against these incorporeal fiends.

It is laughter.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Secret, World, Fear, Laughter

“In time you shall see Fate approach you
In the shape of your own image in the mirror;
Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth,
And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest,
And you shall know that guest,
And read the authentic message of his eyes.”

Edgar Lee Masters book Spoon River Anthology

Lyman King
Source: Spoon River Anthology

Fate, Time, Reading

“What if the puzzle of the world was a shape you didn't fit into? And the only way to survive was to mutilate yourself, carve away your corners, sand yourself down, modify yourself to fit? How come we haven't been able to change the puzzle instead?”

Jodi Picoult book Small Great Things

Source: Small Great Things

World, Way, Change

“A tornado of thought is unleashed after each new insight. This in turn results in an earthquake of assumptions. These are natural disasters that re-shape the spirit.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Nature

“Yeah, but I forgot to take my George Orwell-shaped multivitamins along with my breakfast bowl of Big Brother Os this morning.”

Jim Butcher book White Night

Source: White Night

“When she can't bring me to heal with scolding, she bends me to shape with guilt.”

Libba Bray book The Sweet Far Thing

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

“In essence, if we want to direct our lives, we must take control of our consistent actions. It's not what we do once in a while that shapes our lives, but what we do consistently.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Motivational

“My problems are like waves - just as one disappears with a snarl and a hiss there’s another shaping up to knock me down.”

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

Source: Six Impossible Things

Problem

“Break my heart? Is that what you just said? I have news for you; you didn't break my heart. My heart's fine. My heart's in the best shape of its life. You know what you did to me? You took an AK-47 and blew my soul open.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

Life, Soul, Heart

“The light of a new day always chases the shadows of the night away, and shows us that the shape of our fears is only the ghost of our own minds.”

Terry Goodkind book Wizard's First Rule

Source: Wizard's First Rule

Fear, Light, Night

“You can break a thing, but you cannot always guide it afterward into the shape you want.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Tithe

“The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.”

John O'Donohue (1956–2008) Irish writer, priest and philosopher

Source: Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

Life, Way

“A world grows up around me. Am I shaping it, or do its predetermined contours guide my hand?”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

World

“In the space between chaos and shape there was another chance.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: The World and Other Places: Stories

Chance

“We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech to the House of Commons (October 28, 1943), on plans for the rebuilding of the Chamber (destroyed by an enemy bomb May 10, 1941), in Never Give In! : The best of Winston Churchill’s Speeches (2003), Hyperion, p. 358 ISBN 1401300561
The Second World War (1939–1945)

“You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?”

John Steinbeck book Sweet Thursday

Source: Sweet Thursday

Beauty, Light, Time, Sun

“when things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it's because a little piece gets lost -- the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Change

“Our lives are marked and shaped by our regrets. Things we all want to take back and can’t. In a perfect world, we would never hurt the ones we love or cause hurt to befall them. But the world isn’t perfect and neither are we.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Styxx

Love, World, Hurt, Perfection

“Ideas shape the course of history.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

As quoted in The Peter Plan: A Proposal for Survival (1976) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 97
Attributed

History, Idea

“Whoever tells the best story shapes the culture.”

Erwin Raphael McManus (1958) Salvadoran minister

“In the end we had the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptinesses mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Country

“She had always wanted words, she loved them, grew up on them. Words gave her clarity, brought reason, shape. Whereas I thought words bent emotions like sticks in water.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Love, Water

“You're getting into some kind of shape, cop."
Aw, come on, now." Butch grinned. "Don't let that shower we took go to your head."
Rhage fired a towel at the male. "Just pointing out your beer gut's gone."
It was a Scotch pot. And I don't miss it.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Eternal

Source: Lover Eternal

Beer

“At moments like this I envy those who have found a safe haven in which to bestow their hearts; or perhaps I envy them for having a heart to bestow. I often feel that I myself am without one, and possess in its stead merely a heart shaped stone.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Feeling, Heart, Envy

“You have splendid breasts, lass," he purred, cupping the plump mounds. "Splendid," he repeated stupidly, and she almost laughed. Men loved breasts any shape or form, they just loved them.

-Drustan to Gwen”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Kiss of the Highlander

Love, Men

“I like shape very much. A novel has to have shape, and life doesn't have any.”

Jean Rhys (1890–1979) novelist from Dominica

Source: Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography

Life

“Another person's life, observed from the outside, always has a shape and definition that one's own life lacks.”

Pat Barker (1943) British writer

Life, Personality

“Your destiny is shaped by choice, never by chance. Beware the decisions you make, no matter how small, for they will be your salvation… or your death.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Death, Decision, Chance

“Picture this," said Magnus. "Me with a little monkey friend. I could teach him tricks. I could dress him in a cunning jacket. He could look just like me! But more monkey-shaped.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What Really Happened in Peru

“I'm going to tell you a secret. Our lives are shaped by the future, not by the past. Once you decide how you want your life to be, all you need to do is live into that future.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Source: Heaven Looks a Lot Like the Mall

Life, Secret, Past, Future

“Happy Valentines Day to those who have found love, in whatever shape or form, and to those who are still hunting, don’t give up. If you feel bad, send yourself a card. You must be worth it…”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Love, Happiness, Feeling

“Hell goes round and round. In shape it is circular, and by nature it is interminable, repetitive, and nearly unbearable.”

Flann O'Brien book The Third Policeman

Source: The Third Policeman (1967)

Hell, Nature

“Before going back to sleep I imagined (I saw) a plastic universe, changeable, full of wondrous chance, an elastic sky, a sun that suddenly is missing or remains fixed or changes its shape.”

Julio Cortázar book Hopscotch

Source: Hopscotch

Imagination, Sleep, Universe, Change

“Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, / Shaped to the comfort of the last to go / As if to win them back”

Philip Larkin (1922–1985) English poet, novelist, jazz critic and librarian

Sadness, Home

“If you have a soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. Whatever the color, the shape, the design of the shade that conceals it, the flame inside the lamp remains the same. You are that flame.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Color, Soul

“Because the question for me was always whether that shape we see in our lives was there from the beginning or whether these random events are only called a pattern after the fact. Because otherwise we are nothing.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Source: All The Pretty Horses: All The Pretty Horses

Question

“A poet's work… to name the unnamable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it from going to sleep.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

World, Fraud, Sleep

“I just believe that the interesting time in a career is pre-success, what shaped things, how did you get to this point?”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Source: Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

Time, Success

“And I think now that fate is shaped half by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over.
-Rose”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

Love, Fate, Faith, Thinking

“Brand a man as a thief and no one will ever hire him for honest labor - he will be a hardened robber within weeks. The brand does not reveal a person's nature, it shapes it.”

Frances Hardinge book Fly by Night

Source: Fly by Night

Nature, Personality

“There is an empty space next to you in the backseat of the station wagon. Make it the shape of everything you need. Now say hello.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

“Our past may shape us, but it doesn't define us.”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Variant: Our past may shape us, but it doesn't define who we become.
Source: Night Star

Past

“Never let stress shape your strategy. Most women think better after a brisk walk, a light meal, a massage and a nap.”

Barbara Taylor Bradford (1933) British author

Source: Her Own Rules

Women, Thinking, Light

“And here in this room, I re-experience the memories again and again it is how wisdom comes and how we shape our future.”

Lois Lowry book The Giver

Source: The Giver

Wisdom, Memory, Future

“Fiction comes in all shapes and sizes. Secrets, lies, stories. We all tell them. Sometimes, because we hope to entertain. Sometimes, because we need to distract. And sometimes, because we have to.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Secret, Hope

“Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Nausea

Variant: Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.
Source: Nausea

Time, Forgetting

“The Rudderless World is not shaped by vague metaphysical Forces. It is not God who kills the Children. Not Fate that butchers them or Destiny that feeds them to the Dogs…. It´s us. Only us.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

God, Fate, Children, World

“The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: Dreams of the Compass Rose

World, Memory