Sharp Edges Quotes

1. "The signal danger of life in a godless society is that it lacks reminders of the transcendent and therefore leaves us unprepared for disappointment and eventual annihilation. When God is dead, human beings – much to their detriment – are at risk of taking psychological centre stage. They imagine themselves to be commanders of their own destinies, they trample upon nature, forget the rhythms of the earth, deny death and shy away from valuing and honouring all that slips through their grasp, until at last they must collide catastrophically with the sharp edges of reality. Our secular world is lacking in the sorts of rituals that might put us gently in our place."
Author: Alain De Botton

2. "When I go away from youThe world beats deadLike a slackened drum.I call out for you against the jutted starsAnd shout into the ridges of the wind.Streets coming fast,One after the other,Wedge you away from me,And the lamps of the city prick my eyesSo that I can no longer see your face.Why should I leave you,To wound myself upon the sharp edges of the night?"
Author: Amy Lowell

3. "In the grand scheme of things, what's the worst that could possibly happen if I proactively, if somewhat privately, opted for a life less traditional? why can't spinsterhood be the new sexy? After all, whoever heard of a married femme fatale? Does marriage, by its very nature, not oblige one to forcibly blunt all of their sharper and inevitably most interesting edges under the so-called-commendable guise of compromise? It just seems to me that in the burdensome quest for marital bliss one inevitably ends up stumbling upon misery."
Author: Amy Mowafi

4. "I am still not good enough. I am still not whole enough. I am still not pure enough. I am still weakness and sharp edges and broken, but He is good and pure and whole, all that I strive for but am not. I wake up every morning and I sit in silence and I choose to believe. I may speak. I may not. I let Him wrap up all my broken in to His grace. He takes me imperfect. This is the great mystery I never knew."
Author: Anna White

5. "A North Korean soldier would later recall a buddy who had been given an American-made nail clipper and was showing it off to his friends. The soldier clipped a few nails, admired the sharp, clean edges, and marveled at the mechanics of this simple item. Then he realized with a sinking heart: If North Korea couldn't make such a fine nail clipper, how could it compete with American weapons?"
Author: Barbara Demick

6. "It is a pink and blue feeling, as sharp as clear sky; a slight breeze, and the edges of Lake Nakuru would rise like the ruffle at the edge of a skirt; and I am pockmarked with whole-body pinpricks of potentiality. A stretch of my body would surely stretch as far as the sky. The whole universe poised, and I am the agent of any movement."
Author: Binyavanga Wainaina

7. "Do you know how a pearl comes to be?""Oysters make them, from a bit of sand.""Aiyah. From a bit of sand." He rolled the pearl between his fingers. "All pearls begin as something unpleasant that the oysters cannot expel from themselves, even though they may want to. So they embrace these things that will not leave them, shaping them and smoothing away the sharp edges, until over time, they make of these unwanted things great treasures."
Author: C.L. Wilson

8. "I love you for your quickness and your brokenness and your sharp edges too."
Author: Cecilia Grant

9. "Who wants a bag of bones?" he said, with absolute sincerity. "I don't want to hurt myself on the sharp edges of the woman I'm bedding."
Author: Charlaine Harris

10. "I'm going to write to you about the emptiness that was left when you took my boy away. I'm going to write so you can look into my empty life and see what a human boy really is from the shape of the hole he leaves behind. I want you to feel that hole in your heart and stroke it with your hands and cut your fingers on its sharp edges."
Author: Chris Cleave

11. "In the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was kind of tumbler. The sale as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. This isn't suffering. It's erosion."
Author: Chuck Palahniuk

12. "Write down everything you remember. You'll want to have it written down to look back on later, when your mind sands all the sharp edges off your memory and makes it into a dream that it will have you believe is true."
Author: Dexter Palmer

13. "Don't necessarily avoid sharp edges. Occasionally they are necessary to leadership."
Author: Donald Rumsfeld

14. "How thin she is in her coffin, how sharp her nose has grown! Her eyelashes lie straight as arrows. And, you know, when she fell, nothing was crushed, nothing was broken! Nothing but that "handful of blood." A dessertspoonful, that is. From internal injury. A strange thought: if only it were possible not to bury her? For if they take her away, then... oh, no, it is almost incredible that they take her away! I am not mad and I am not raving - on the contrary, my mind was never so lucid - but what shall I do when again there is no one, only the two rooms, and me alone with the pledges? Madness, madness, madness! I worried her to death, that is what it is!"
Author: Fyodor Dostoyevsky

15. "Keep thinking back about what Mum said about being real and the Velveteen Rabbit book (though frankly have had enough trouble with rabbits in this particular house). My favorite book, she claims of which I have no memory was about how little kids get one toy that they love more than all the others, and even when its fur has been rubbed off, and it's gone saggy with bits missing, the little child still thinks it's the most beautiful toy in the world, and can't bear to be parted from it.That's how it works, when people really love each other, Mum whispered on the way out in the Debenhams lift, as if she was confessing some hideous and embarrassing secret. But, the thing is, darling, it doesn't happen to ones who have sharp edges, or break if they get dropped, or ones made of silly synthetic stuff that doesn't last. You have to be brave and let the other person know who you are and what you feel."
Author: Helen Fielding

16. "All around them people were speaking a language Brown didn't understand; it was like silence with sharp edges in it."
Author: Helen Oyeyemi

17. "What can it be about low temperatures that sharpens the edges of objects?"
Author: Ian McEwan

18. "When I wake, a piece of sharp green glass on the floor is cutting into my hand and I know it's a sign. I etch a letter on my hand; put it on top so I can see the jagged edges bleeding out; S.S is for sorrow, for all I don't say. S is for sick now, my punishing ways."
Author: Ibi Kaslik

19. "It rushes through me, like razor sharp poison, jagged edges catching my skin, tearing me apart on the inside. Everything. Every blissful moment. Every promise. Every kiss. Hug. Word. Touch. Breath. Every single second Ive spent with him, will be gone. I won't know it."
Author: Jessica Sorensen

20. "The city glitters past us with its sharp edges, reminding us of how tiny, how weak, how totally unimportant we are."
Author: Joe Meno

21. "During those times, they'd stand there watching me watching them. I'd pray, please. Put a pillow to my face. Clench a hand around my throat. Stab me. Shoot me. Put me out of everyone's misery.Why did you give birth to such a loser? Why didn't you admit I was hopeless and fat and stop trying to make me fit in? This world wasn't meant for me. I was born too soon or too late. Too defective.I wish I could tell my parents, "If you want to help me, help me die."I wonder, Are they required to fill out a 24-hour suicide watch form? Is the Defect at home? Check. Is It alive? Check.Why did they bother with the constructive surgery on my throat anyway? Waste of money. They threw away or hid from me everything with sharp edges or breakables. Picture frames. Pottery. Did they think they could suicide-proof this place?I want to tell them, "Chip, Kim, there is no way to suicide-proof a person"
Author: Julie Anne Peters

22. "It's a soft-sounding word, 'never,' but its velvety timbre can't hide its sharp edges...Never pressed down on him. It grabbed him by the neck and shook him. He sucked in a deep breath, sucked in all that never and started to sneeze. Never filled his nose, his eyes, his soaking fur."
Author: Kathi Appelt

23. "They're like the opposites poles of my personality. Mild-mannered, responsible Reese is who I used to be, while in-your-face Olivia's who I want to be—with a few sharp edges dulled."
Author: Kirsten Hubbard

24. "That's right." He threaded both hands through her hair to hold her in place. "You like it like this. Dirty and rough, getting fucked by a man who wants you so bad he'll risk all your sharp edges. Who fucking loves your sharp edges."
Author: Kit Rocha

25. "It always struck Fire, the physical affection between these siblings, who as often as not were at each other's throats over one thing or another. She liked the way the four of them shifted and changed shape, bumping and clanging against one another, sharpening each other's edges and then smoothing them down again, and somehow always finding the way to fit together."
Author: Kristin Cashore

26. "Even her beauty had sharp edges. Her long ebony hair was cut like a razor blade. Her face was strong and fine.But her eyes. A milky green, they betrayed an air of vulnerability she seemed desperate to hide."
Author: Laura Oliva

27. "Gritting my teeth as if it requires actual physical strength, I push the memory of him dying in my arms down, deep down. It almost seems to fight me, to want to surge into the forefront of my mind, and I sigh. Long ago I came to the realization that painful memories are persistent. The agony of them stays with you much longer, sharper, and clearer than sweet memories, that soften and assume a hazy, rosy glow in your mind, almost as if they have been airbrushed. Remembrance of pain is different; there is no muting of colors, no blurring of edges. No, its colors remain stark and bold, a palette of vibrant primary reds, blues, and yellows; its edges stay defined and razor sharp. Years later it can still cut you as deeply, make you bleed as profusely, as the day it was formed. FROM AN UNTITLED WORK IN PROGRRESS"
Author: Lily Velden

28. "Carrie doesn't seem to talk about anything with sharp edges. Maybe she's afraid they might poke her and then she'd burst."
Author: Lisa McMann

29. "There were no men in this painting, but it was about men, the kind who caused women to fall. I did not ascribe any intentions to these men. They were like the weather, they didn't have a mind. They merely drenched you or struck you like lightning and moved on, mindless as blizzards. Or they were like rocks, a line of sharp slippery rocks with jagged edges. You could walk with care along between the rocks, picking your steps, and if you slipped you'd fall and cut yourself, but it was no use blaming the rocks."
Author: Margaret Atwood

30. "These were true things, Laura knew, but they were only part of the truth which was something less orderly than Kate made it sound. Some parts of the full, disorderly truth were lodged in Kate and Laura like splinters of corroding steel. Their feelings had grown around the sharp, wounding edges which didn't hurt anymore but were still there, fossils of pain laid down in the mixed-up strata of memory."
Author: Margaret Mahy

31. "There was a boy down at the stables." She laughed suddenly with her back comfortably nestled against Grant's chest. "Oh,Lord,he was a bit like Will, all sharp,awkward edges.""You were crazy about him.""I'd spend hours mucking out stalls and grooming horses just to get a glimpse of him.I wrote pages and pages about him in my diary and one very mushy poem.""And kept it under your pillow.""Apparently you've had a nodding aquaintance with twelve-year-old girls."He thought of Shelby and grinned, resting his chin on the top of her head. Her hair smelled as though she'd washed it with rain-drenched wildflowers. "How long did it take you to get him to kiss you?"She laughed. "Ten days.I thought I'd discovered the answer to the mysteries of the universe.I was a woman.""No female's more sure of that than a twelve-year-old."
Author: Nora Roberts

32. "If it's all the same to you, I'm not really great with the knives," I told her. "Is there anything else I can do? Anything less…deadly?"Shaking a pillow into its case, Aislinn shrugged and said, "You can go up to the War Room an check our files on Hecate Hall and the Casnoffs. See if there's any information we have wrong, or details you can add."Ah, yes. Files. Books. Nothing with sharp edges. Perfect."
Author: Rachel Hawkins

33. "I'll tell you, my friends: it's all in the nerves. The nerves that tense and relax as you approach the edges of companionship and love. The razor-sharp edges of companionship and love."
Author: Roberto Bolaño

34. "Few things have such sharp edges as the careless words of a boy."
Author: Robin Hobb

35. "And if we had learned anything from this story it was to be cautious of paper--to be mindful of its fragile construction and sharp edges, but mostly to be cautious of what is written on it."
Author: Salvador Plascencia

36. "Kurt dreamt about more than the rough squeeze of James's hands over his jeans. He dreamt of the warmth of his tongue and a sharp bite from his teeth in sensitive places. He dreamt of taking it further, a thought that held more of the sharp edges of delicious reality than any previous fantasy. Finally, he'd dreamt of feeling James's arms around him as he slept, feeling at once safe and needed, as if every worry could be erased if the right person cared for him."
Author: Sara Winters

37. "Familiarity has a way of filing the sharp edges off our feelings for other people. You'll see."
Author: Scott Lynch

38. "I was recently living more comfortably surrounded by secrets... Like dozens of luxurious satiny pillows, they were embracing me from all directions into safe lulling warmth, thus isolating me from the sharp dead-cold edges of the truth hiding behind their endearingly smooth textures and tender soothing colours.Secrets could be so irresistibly beautiful..."
Author: Simona Panova

39. "My new knight mistress is famed for wielding sharp edges: Sword, Knife and Tongue!"
Author: Tamora Pierce

40. "Everyone knew there were wolves in the mountains, but they seldom came near the village - the modern wolves were the offspring of ancestors that had survived because they had learned that human meat had sharp edges."
Author: Terry Pratchett

41. "It's strange how you can know something—know the pointy, sharp truth—but still want to bend and blunt the edges so it fits better in your mind."
Author: Veronica Rossi

42. "So with the lamps all put out, the moon sunk, and a thin rain drumming on the roof, a downpouring of immense darkness began. Nothing, it seemed, could survive the flood, the profusion of darkness which creeping in at keyholes and crevices, stole round window blinds, came into bedrooms, swallowed up here a jug and basin, there a bowl of red and yellow dahlias, there the sharp edges and firm bulk of a chest of drawers. Not only was furniture confounded; there was scarcely anything left of body or mind by which one could say, 'This is he,' or, 'This is she."
Author: Virginia Woolf

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