Best 646 quotes in «metaphor quotes» category

With a horror movie, you're making a metaphor. You're making a personalized nightmare for the protagonist.

Writers think in metaphors. Editors work in metaphors. A great reader reads in metaphors.

Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.

You have to put your own oxygen mask before you put on others... It's a good metaphor for parenting

You live for pretentious metaphors.

You don't organize metaphors . . . you explode them.

A chill swept through the air, the sort of graveyard kiss promising bad news to follow.

You don't see something until you have the right metaphor to perceive it.

[About describing atomic models in the language of classical physics:] We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.

Achilles might be a good papa to the family, but he was also a killer, and he never forgives. Poke knew that, though. Bean warned her, and she knew it, but she chose Achilles for their papa anyway. Chose him and then died for it. She was like that Jesus that Helga preached about in her kitchen while they ate. She died for her people. And Achilles, he was like God. He made people pay for their sins no matter what they did. The important thing is, stay on the good side of God. That's what Helga teaches, isn't it? Stay right with God. I'll stay right with Achilles. I'll honor my papa, that's for sure, so I can stay alive until I'm old enough to go out on my own.

A chill December morning dawned, with rags and tatters of mist hanging on the trees like poor people’s washing.

Acoustics reverberate inside of Lucy Anna, bouncing off her walls and slamming against her bars. Harmonic prison.

A faint tickling on the back of his right hand caused Eragon to look down. A huge, wingless cricket clung to his glove. The insect was hideous: black and bulbous, with barbed legs and a massive skull-like head. Its carapace gleamed like oil.

After that hard winter, one could not get enough of the nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness that winter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I used to watch in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There was only—spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind—rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known that it was spring.

A good metaphor is worth a thousand pictures.

A half roll of Life Savers fused to the pockets, And in yet another, a lone unwrapped mint Had bundled itself in a stole of gray lint.

Amat, Lifa, and Zaccharias were the sort of children who got passed over. They've stuck together ever since. Lifa is less talkative than a tree, Zacharias louder than a radio, and Amat just appreciates the company. They make a good team.

Ale přimět se vidět, jak úžasní jste vy sami, to je jako tlačit do kopce obří marshmallow.

A little of him leaned to the muscularity of the homosexual. He would never practice, of course. The physical buttock act repelled him. Though sometimes he experienced a jolting warmth when Tom, one of his friends, bear-hugged him. Or gave him a bristled kiss on a bristled cheek. Certainly there was masculine voltage there. But it was safe. It was the rose border to the act. And like a voyeur, he could peer into the tropical garden from the safety of the rose border. He could experience male pillage of his sex mentally. Yes, it was safe. He would never step from the rose to the man-eating orchid. English rain and misty sun, yes. The hints, yes. But he would never take his machete into the jungle.

A metaphor is not merely a linguistic expression (a form of words) used for artistic or rhetorical purposes; instead, it is a process of human understanding by which we achieve meaningful experience that we can make sense of. A metaphor, in this "experiential" sense, is a process by which we understand and structure one domain of experience in terms of another domain of a different kind.

A mist rises from a nearby mound. It could be me, that mist, or simply the caretaker’s mower-dust. If the breeze blows just right, I’ll ghost your solid, entwine your hair. Promise me you won’t shampoo, but carry me along, tiny dust-particles of me.

And as for those who might have been following me, odds are I lost them long, long ago. Nothing to do but keep on driving as clearly as if I hadn't, flashing my change of lane and exit, in case there's anyone who needs to know.

And as he leaned in to kiss me, my eye saw his open mouth grow larger and larger until it seemed it could swallow me whole.

And all the time the line of force which bound her to her husband stretched and vibrated so that her heart in secret haemorrhage, gushed blood.

And feast on the dead, I thought with a shudder. As if he could read my thoughts, he pressed a hand to my shoulder. His fingers were long and white, splaying over my arm like a waxen spider. If the gesture was meant to comfort me, it failed.

And for one infinitesimally brief moment, the universe peels open, and I can see everything—how physics and velocity and time intersects with the idea of a heaven above, how meta co-exist with the fundamental truth of their non-existence, how the sun can be a star can be a ball of dung rolled across the galaxy by a gargantuan beetle. Suddenly, it is all so clear.

And do you want to marry him?" "Maybe. I don't know." "That kind of indifference usually means no." "It's not indifference. I just haven't made up my mind." "Either you want to marry him more than anything in the world, or you say no. It's very simple." "It's not simple," Faye said. "Not at all. You don't understand." "So explain it to me." "Okay, here's what it's like. Imagine you're feeling desperately thirsty. Like insanely thirsty. All you can think about is a big tall glass of water. Got it?" "Got it." "And you fantasize about this big tall glass of water, and the fantasy is really vivid in your head, but it does not actually quench your thirst." "Because you can't drink the imaginary glass of water." "Right. So you look around and see this murky, oily puddle of water and mud. It's not exactly the tall glass of water but it does have the advantage of being wet. It's real, whereas the tall glass of water is not. And so you choose the oily mud puddle, even though it's not really what you'd prefer.

And instead my beloved, luck sent you back to me colder than ashes, later than shadow.

...All without any more sound than flipping over a playing card. And sitting in this limo, compared to my fifteen-year-old Volkswagen Beetle I'd bought off a friend, was as quiet as sitting at the bottom of a lake wearing earplugs.

A man's words reveal, first, the man. The words are not the man, and yet they reveal him faithfully and are to be identified with him. Out of the abundance of the heart, the man speaks. The foundational nature of all language is therefore metaphorical because every word a man speaks reveals himself—just as God reveals Himself through the Word. Every word spoken ultimately reveals the speaker.

... and she was awed to see that vibrant life still struggled to thrive despite such destruction.

And the box inside him in which his mother resides is velvet and black and without size.

Andy: ugh I’ve never felt so old and slimy. Sinter: You’re 25. That isn’t old to a 19 year old Andy: Old. And slimy. Slimy like a slug. Like seaweed. Sinter: Are you done with your metaphors Andy: I think these are similes Though he’d been a computer science major, he’d also been, like me, an English minor. It made him remarkably hot at moments such as this. Sinter: Right, you’re right Andy: And no. There are many slimy things and I’m like them all. Slimy like mayo Sinter: Gross Andy: Exactly, I am gross Sinter: Ha no, mayo is gross Andy: Slimy like a dog’s tongue. Sinter: Seriously stop.

Anger is the wind which blows out the lamp of the mind.

. . . a nightmarish thing that frightens Love, haunting her, weighing her down, the thing that she's supposed to love, the way the world initially instructs children to love clowns even though we all know deep down that they're creepy, old, puffy men in masks leering at children.

Anne tried to bite her tongue, but she was finding her mouth bloody too often.

Anonymous > Quotes > Quotable Quote “I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don’t know where it will take me, because I don’t know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I’m compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social centre, for it’s here that I meet others. But I’m neither impatient nor common. I leave who will to stay shut up in their rooms, sprawled out on beds where they sleeplessly wait, and I leave who will to chat in the parlours, from where their songs and voices conveniently drift out here to me. I’m sitting at the door, feasting my eyes and ears on the colours and sounds of the landscape, and I softly sing – for myself alone – wispy songs I compose while waiting.

Any important disease whose causality is murky, and for which treatment is ineffectual, tends to be awash in significance. First, the subjects of deepest dread (corruption, decay, pollution, anomie, weakness) are identified with the disease. The disease itself becomes a metaphor. Then, in the name of the disease (that is, using it as a metaphor), that horror is imposed on other things. The disease becomes adjectival. Something is said to be disease-like, meaning that it is disgusting or ugly.

Anyone else feel like that? Like your life's a big act. Like you're trying to be a man when you're just a scared kid, trying to keep under control when you really want to scream, cry, maybe hit someone. Ever feel like you're breathing underwater, and you have to stop because you're gulping in too much fluid?

Anyway, as you say, what the hell. I know, I've been to hell, I've seen it, I've been shown round. I'll kill myself. You'll see, you'll be sorry.

A poem without metaphor is a gelding; useless to nightmares.

A river starts by longing for the ocean...

Arts degrees are awesome. And they help you find meaning where there is none. And let me assure you, there is none. Don’t go looking for it. Searching for meaning is like searching for a rhyme scheme in a cookbook: you won’t find it and you’ll bugger up your soufflé.

As accurate as a blind man pissing during an earthquake.” “Wow...,” I breathed. She frowned at me. “That was a great metaphor,” I said. “Oh please.” “I need to write that down,” I said, ignoring her complaints, fishing for my new mobile to type it out.

As dawn leaks into the sky it edits out the stars like excess punctuation marks, deleting asterisks and periods, commas, and semi-colons, leaving only unhinged thoughts rotating and pivoting, and unsecured words.

A sheet spread beneath an apple-tree can receive only apples; a sheet spread beneath the stars can receive only star-dust.

As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.

...a small stream...sings a carefree song as it runs by your house. It is so nonthreatening that you can sit by it, look at your reflection in the water, and even wash your hands in it. It is yours, your personal stream. Yet you know that it has originated in the sea and is on its way back to where it has come from. When passing by your house, however, it is yours. You can say it is a personal moment you have torn out of eternity to keep in your pocket for yourself.

As Roran watched, the man's arms, neck, and chest shriveled, and his bones appeared in sharp relief-from the bowlike curve of his collarbones to the hollow saddle of his hips, where his stomach hung like an empty waterskin. His lips puckered and drew back farther than they were intended to over his yellow teeth, baring them in a grisly snarl, while his eyeballs deflated as if they were engorged ticks being squished empty of blood, and the surrounding flesh sank inward.

As the new Adam, it might be said, his final act was to cast the Apple of Knowledge into the deep blue sea.