Quotes about stone
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“Our hearts are not stones. A stone may disintegrate in time and lose its outward form. But hearts never disintegrate. They have no outward form, and whether good or evil, we can always communicate them to one another.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: After the Quake

Communication, Evil, Time, Heart

“Never throw stones if you think they're going to come back and hit you.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Hit List

Source: Hit List

Thinking

“We want you gone. Your presence is obviously upsetting for her."

"Oh, aye, the poor, wee lass -- who tossed me like a skipping stone.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, (1963)
Source: I Have A Dream

Faith, Beauty, Dreams, Hope

“There's always the dinner rolls," said Will, pointing to a covered basket. "Though I warn you, they're as hard as stones. You could use them to kill black beetles, if any beetles bother you in the middle of the night.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Night

“The best way to treat obstacles is to use them as stepping-stones. Laugh at them, tread on them, and let them lead you to something better.”

Enid Blyton (1897–1968) author

Source: Mr Galliano's Circus

Way

“I didn't feel empty. I wished I'd felt empty…. I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Feeling

“The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Strong

“Some days simply lay on you like stones.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Slow Regard of Silent Things

Source: The Slow Regard of Silent Things

“We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: Still Another Day

Love

“And I am not one of those women who trips twice over the same stone.”

Isabel Allende book Inés of My Soul

Source: Inés of My Soul

Women

“You try getting through the Hollows traffic with a stoned redhead hanging out the window shouting, 'I'm king of the world!' ~Lee”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Black Magic Sanction

World

“On books and friends I spend my money;
For stones and bricks I haven't any.”

Ruskin Bond (1934) British Indian writer

Source: Rain in the Mountains: Notes from the Himalayas

Money, Books

“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

“Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—
Unless …”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer from Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1989)
Requiem; 1935-1940 (1963; 1987), The Sentence
Context: Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again—
Unless... Summer's ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.

Soul, Learning, Memory

“When stuck in the river, it is best to dive and swim to the bank yourself before someone drops a large stone on your chest in an attempt to hoosh you there.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

“Statues to great men are made of the stones thrown at them in their lifetime.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Men

“If only my heart were stone.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

Heart

“I felt that my views and philosophies had been changed overnight. The philosophies that i had gladly carved in stone, recited and danced upon.”

Cecelia Ahern book If You Could See Me Now

Source: If You Could See Me Now

Change, Dance

“Even as the nineteenth century had to come to grips with the notion of human descent from apes, we must now come to terms with the fact that those apes were stoned apes.”

Terence McKenna (1946–2000) American ethnobotanist

Source: Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge

“And here I am, strapped into a tree, a stone's throw from the biggest idiot in the games.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Game, Tree

“The stone that was rolled before Christ's tomb might appropriately be called the philosopher's stone because its removal gave not only the pharisees but, now for 1800 years, the philosophers so much to think about.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Thinking, Christ

“But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exits and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Carmilla

Variant: Thus fortified I might take my rest in peace. But dreams come through stone walls, light up dark rooms, or darken light ones, and their persons make their exists and their entrances as they please, and laugh at locksmiths.
Source: Carmilla

Dreams, Light, Personality

“Walk out of this with your parents, the stones, and Darroc dead, Ms. Lane, and I‘ll give you the bloody thing.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Parent, Dead

“Nothing is built on stone; All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter Four, Pappin
Context: I am a free man-and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion. I need sunshine and paving tones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me. Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to anyone, I would've responsible to God alone-if he exited!

Music, Heart, Despair

“Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964), The Times They Are A-Changin'
Context: Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown.
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’ or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.

Time

“She was truly a beautiful girl. I could feel a small polished stone sinking through the darkest waters of my heart. All those deep convoluted channels and passageways, and yet she managed to toss her pebble right down to the bottom of it all.”

Haruki Murakami book Dance Dance Dance

Source: Dance Dance Dance

Beauty, Feeling, Girl, Water

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

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Star

“Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

Beauty, Peaceful

“My Akri says that tragedy and adversity are the stones we sharpen our swords against ao that we can fight new battles.- Simi”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Variant: Tragedy and adversary are the stones we sharpen our swords against so we can fight new battles.
Source: Infinity

Fight

“… along with the other animals, the stones, the trees, and the clouds, we ourselves are characters within a huge story that is visibly unfolding all around us, participants within the vast imagination, or Dreaming, of the world.”

David Abram (1957) American philosopher, ecologist

Source: The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World

World, Dreams, Imagination, Tree

“The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.”

Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Murderer (1953)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)
Context: Then I went in and shot the televisor, that insidious beast, that Medusa, which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little, but myself always going back, going back hoping and waiting until—bang!

People, Night

“Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones to genius.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: The Philosophy of Elbert Hubbard

Effort

“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

“Cheeses crusty, got all musty, got damp on the stone of a peach,” I agreed. He looked blank, so I repeated it with proper emphasis. “ ChEEZ-zes crusty. Got Al -musty. Got DAMp on the StoneofapeaCH.”

Patricia Briggs book Iron Kissed

Source: Iron Kissed

“Hearing nuns' confessions is like being stoned to death with popcorn.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Death

“In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Mid-Winter http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/blrossettichristmas.htm, st. 1 (1872). Source: The Poetical Works of Christina Georgina Rossetti

Water, Winter

“To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, and”

Robyn Davidson (1950) Australian writer

Source: Tracks

Fear, Learning

“Have your dream… What you need now more than anything is discipline. Cast off mere words. Words turn into stone. (from Thailand)”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: After the Quake

Dreams

“As my mother once said: The boys throw stones at the frogs in jest.
But the frogs die in earnest.”

Joanna Russ book The Female Man

Part 8, Chapter 10 (p. 196)
Source: Fiction, The Female Man (1975)

Boy

“The moon is a stone and the sky is full of deadly hardware, but oh God, how beautiful anyway.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

God, Beauty

“Well, what? Sophie-"
"I hit her on the head with a mirror," Sophie said hopelessly. "One of those silver-backed ones, so it was quite heavy. She went down just like a stone, miss. So I… I tied her to the bed and I came looking for you.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“FABLEHAVEN: None who enter will leave unchanged. Trespassers will be turned to stone.”

Brandon Mull (1974) American fiction writer

“She's like a prisoner inside stone walls, and every day the walls get a little thicker, the doorways a little narrower."
"And?" Eddis prompted.
"Well," said Eugenides, "it's a challenge.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia

Source: The Queen of Attolia

“Really, I scolded myself, you should have known that you'd end up in a stone dungeon with no facilities. That's how these things always end up, isn't it?”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Working for the Devil

“The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Deep, Mountain

“Imagine a man who stands before a mirror; a stone strikes it, and it falls to ruin all in an instant. And the man learns that he is himself, and not the mirrored man he had believed himself to be.”

Gene Wolfe book The Urth of the New Sun

Source: The Urth of the New Sun

Imagination, Learning

“When you call me close
to tell me
your body is not beautiful
I want to summon
the eyes and hidden mouths
of stone and light and water
to testify against you.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Beauty, Light, Water

“Good-bye -- if you hear of my being stood up against a stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease or falling down the cellar stairs.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Life, Age, Disease, Way

“Cheeses crusty, got all musty, got damp on the stone of a peach.”

Patricia Briggs book Iron Kissed

Source: Iron Kissed

“I did not lose myself all at once. I rubbed out my face over the years washing away my pain, the same way carvings on stone are worn down by water.”

Amy Tan (1952) American novelist

Pain, Way, Water

“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

“It seems to me that no matter what religion you subscribe to, acts of kindness are the stepping-stones to making the world a better place--because we become better people in it.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

People, World, Religion

“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

“He repeated until his dying day that there was no one with more common sense, no stone cutter more obstinate, no manager more lucid or dangerous, than a poet.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Sense

“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

“(At the back of the cave, Phoebe placed her hand against one of the stones where a spring release opened an elevator door. Chris gave an over exaggerated gape.)
Holy Hand Grenade, Batman, it’s a bat cave. (Chris)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Kiss of the Night

Spring

“Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

Source: Complete Poems

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

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

Interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism 16 (April-May 1949), Einstein Archive 30-1104, as sourced in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 173 Differing versions of such a statement are attributed to conversations as early as 1948 (e.g. The Rotarian, 72 (6), June 1948, p. 9 http://books.google.com/books?id=0UMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA9: "I don't know. But I can tell you what they'll use in the fourth. They'll use rocks!"). Another variant ("I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones") is attributed to an unidentified letter to Harry S. Truman in "The culture of Einstein" by Alex Johnson http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7406337/, MSNBC, (18 April 2005). However, prior to 1948 very similar quotes were attributed in various articles to an unnamed army lieutenant, as discussed at Quote Investigator : "The Futuristic Weapons of WW3 Are Unknown, But WW4 Will Be Fought With Stones and Spears" http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/16/future-weapons/#more-679. The earliest found was from “Quote and Unquote: Raising ‘Alarmist’ Cry Brings a Winchell Reply” by Walter Winchell, in the Wisconsin State Journal (23 September 1946), p. 6, Col. 3. In this article Winchell wrote: <blockquote> Joe Laitin reports that reporters at Bikini were questioning an army lieutenant about what weapons would be used in the next war. “I dunno,” he said, “but in the war after the next war, sure as Hell, they’ll be using spears!” </blockquote> : It seems plausible, therefore, that Einstein may have been quoting or paraphrasing an expression which he had heard or read elsewhere. 1940s Variant: I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Peaceful, War, World

“Our songs travel the earth. We sing to one another. Not a single note is ever lost and no song is original. They all come from the same place and go back to a time when only the stones howled.”

Louise Erdrich book The Master Butchers Singing Club

Source: The Master Butchers Singing Club

Travel, Singing, Time

“Even stone can be worn down with enough rain.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

“Evening of a hot day started the little wind to moving among the leaves. The shade climbed up the hills toward the top. On the sand banks the rabbits sat as quietly as little gray, sculptured stones.”

John Steinbeck Of Mice and Men

Source: Of Mice and Men

“Everybody sounds stoned, because they're e-mailing people the whole time they're talking to you.”

Jennifer Egan A Visit from the Goon Squad

Source: A Visit from the Goon Squad

People, Time

“My heart is broken,” she goes. “It’s turned to a piece of stone. I’m no good. That’s what’s as bad as anything, that I’m no good anymore.”

Raymond Carver book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

Source: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)

Heart

“Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

#127-128
1900s, Maxims for Revolutionists (1903)

Men, Learning

“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

“When I can feel you breathing into me i, like a stone gargoyle
atop some crumbling building,
spring to life
a resuscitated
angel.”

Saul Williams (1972) American singer, musician, poet, writer, and actor

Source: , said the shotgun to the head.

Life, Angels, Feeling, Spring

“Our hearts of stone become hearts of flesh when we learn where the outcast weeps.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

Learning, Heart

“And were an epitaph to be my story I'd have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover's quarrel with the world.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

World, Lovers

“Still clutching each other by the arm, they turned to watch the last stones plummet over the edge.

“I don't know how many times a day I can stand to watch you almost die,” Seregil gasped.

“Twice is my limit,” croaked Alec, sinking to his knees.”

Lynn Flewelling Luck in the Shadows

Source: Luck in the Shadows

Time

“Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.”

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

Source: The Collected Poems

Change, Dead

“Nothing is as contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the myth of Orpheus; it moves stones, and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Truth, Victory, Sincerity

“I am one of the sort that lives by throwing stones at other people's
glass houses, but I never mean to put up one for them to stone.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe book Uncle Tom's Cabin

Source: Uncle Tom's Cabin

People, Housing

“At the entrance to the original tower, there is a stone into which Jung carved some words with his own hand: 'Cold or not, God is present.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

God

“Jesus watches from the wall,
But his face is cold as stone,
And if he loves me
As she tells me
Why do I feel so all alone?”

Stephen King book Carrie

Source: Carrie

Love, Feeling

“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

“Some stones are so heavy only silence helps you carry them!”

Anne Michaels book Fugitive Pieces

Source: Fugitive Pieces

Silence, Help

“Nothing is written stone, child. Even if it were, the stones can be shattered”

Melanie Rawn book Dragon Prince

Source: Dragon Prince

“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

“Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and the heart has turned to stone.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Love, Learning, Heart

“We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever… and all the time it is carrying us about… It is the human nervous system itself.”

Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) American author and polymath

Source: Cosmic Trigger Volume I: Final Secret of the Illuminati

God, Secret, Time

“It's possible, in a poem or short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earring—with immense, even startling power.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

“Me, I was still in the pygmy hippo in a skirt, singing lusty songs about Solomon's private life and a giant stone back and forth through the air as I climbed out of the quarry at the edge of the site.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Ring of Solomon

Source: The Ring of Solomon

Life, Singing

“Throw a stone into the stream and the ripples that propagate themselves are the beautiful type of all influence.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson book Nature

Source: Nature

Beauty

“And what of the dead? They lie without shoes
in their stone boats. They are more like stone
than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse
to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"The Truth the Dead Know"
All My Pretty Ones (1962)

Lie, Shoe, Sea, Dead

“I alternate between thinking of the planet as home - dear and familiar stone hearth and garden - and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.”

Annie Dillard (1945) American writer

Source: Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters

Home, Thinking

“A man falling into dark waters seeks a momentary footing even on sliding stones.”

George Eliot book Silas Marner

Source: Silas Marner

Water

“How does it feel? To be on your own, with no direction home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Like a Rolling Stone

Feeling, Home

“Once you call something a story, it's set in stone. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end that can't be transformed, because by definition, if you do that, it's not the same story anymore”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

“And I flunked anger management the moment I put the counselor through a stone wall. You might want to keep that in mind.
[Thorn]”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Bad Moon Rising

Anger

“Don't accept the limitations of other people who claim things are 'unchangeable'. If it's written in stone, bring your hammer and chisel.”

Peter McWilliams (1949–2000) American author and civil liberties advocate

People

“All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one…”

Stephen King The Dark Tower

Source: The Dark Tower

Dead

“Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

Shirley Jackson book The Haunting of Hill House

Source: The Haunting of Hill House (1959), Ch. 1
Context: No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.

Silence, Housing

“Inside the peach, there is a stone.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer