Best 183 quotes in «clay quotes» category

won't you celebrate with me what i have shaped into a kind of life? i had no model. born in babylon both nonwhite and woman what did i see to be except myself? i made it up here on this bridge between starshine and clay, my one hand holding tight my other hand; come celebrate with me that everyday something has tried to kill me and has failed.

Yeah, the actors really come in as lumps of clay. We're ready to work with the directors and find our way. These guys really come in having done their work.

You are not your bank account, or your ambitiousness. You're not the cold clay lump with a big belly you leave behind when you die. You're not your collection of walking personality disorders. You are spirit, you are love.

You are the human clay," Vosch whispers fiercely in my ear. "And I am Michelangelo. I am the master builder, and you will be my masterpiece.

You ask what I have found and far and wide I go, Nothing but Cromwell's house and Cromwell's murderous crew, The lovers and the dancers are beaten into the clay, And the tall men and the swordsmen and the horsemen where are they?

You can't discover one foot of clay on an idol without suspecting the other.

You see, a potter can only mold the clay when it lies completely in his hand. It requires complete surrender.

You don't need to watch out for me, Clay." But I did, Hannah. And I wanted to. I could have helped you. But when I tried, you pushed me away. I can almost hear Hannah's voice speaking my nest thought for me. "Then why didn't you try harder?

And now indeed this substance with its precious humility becomes, through its indestructibility, the most faithful bearer of man's message. As far back as one goes in time, the works of humanity from prehistoric times have reached us not through stone which crumbles and wears away, or through metal which oxidizes and becomes like powder, but through slabs of pottery, the writing on which is as clear today as it was under the stiletto of the scribe who traced it.

About Daniel: Two, he hates Clay * Five, he really hates Clay. * Nine, he really, really, REALLY hates Clay.

And now that it's reached 1660 degrees, I can salt glaze it." "What's that?" Aiden held up the bowl. "Watch." He pinched a small amount of salt between his fingers and deposited it through a hole at the top of the kiln. There were actually many holes along the rim, tiny rectangular openings, and Aiden moved from one to the next, sprinkling fingerfuls of salt through them. "Salt does amazing things to clay," he said. "The crystals actually explode when they hit the heat, and then turn into a vapor. It's the vapor that transforms the look of the clay." "How?" I asked. "What's it do?" "It makes the clay glossy, and the surface gets this sort of orange-peel texture. But the really cool thing about salt glazing is that no two pieces ever look the same. Each one is completely unique, depending on how much or how little salt you use.

But if I close my eyes And wish it all away Pretend I'm someone else, Pretend I'm here to stay Gave us half a chance, Let my stupid heart decide There's no doubt in my mind, You'd be mine

I am not the potter, nor the potter's wheel, but the potter's clay, does it depend on the value achieved intrinsic as much as the value of the clay as the wheel and master craftsmanship?

Closed door means knock," Elena said to Clay, shooing him out. You've been in here for two hours," he said. "She can't need that much work." He frowned as he examined my outfit. "What the hell is she? A tree?" "A dryad," Elena said, cuffing him in the arm. "Oh, my god," Jamie said, surveying my outfit. "We forgot the bag!" "Bag?" Clay said. "What does a dryad need with-" "An evening bag," Cassandra said. "A purse." "She's got a purse. It's right there on the bed." "That's a day purse," Cassandra snapped. "What, do they expire when the sun goes down?

But you don't need anything. You have everything,' I tell him. Rip looks at me. 'No I don't.' 'What?' 'No I don't.' There's a pause and then I ask, 'Oh, shit, Rip, What don't you have?' 'I don't have anything to loose.

Divinity retains the appearance of insight, when in reality it celebrates ignorance. Its tenets are so much clay, and when the clay sets, it becomes dogma.

Grace leaned forward, studying him up close, able to make out some of his facial features in the clay mask: strong brow, broad cheekbones, prominent jawline and chin. As a flavorist, she was familiar with kaolin clay, a virtually tasteless edible mineral often used as an anti-caking agent in processed foods, various toothpastes, and originally kaopectate. But she'd never encountered the raw product out of the lab, and certainly not like this. She leaned closer to him. He smelled of sediment and mostly sweat, a decidedly masculine note, the precise replication of which one could base an entire career, and then some. Even the most skilled perfumers in the world, experts in the animal secrets of civet and ambergris, couldn't get it just right. It was a human thing. And she'd studied it, androstadienone and most of the known male pheromones, and she knew the effects certain concentrates could have on certain women. She'd written the reports and seen the CT scans of activity in women's brains. Still, knowing about it intellectually and rationally did not in any way lessen what it was doing to her right now, the effect it was having on her senses and her body. 'Can he tell?' she wondered. Lean and broad-shouldered, he had the build of a man who spent his days using his body in labor. She could see it in the way the mud set into the ridged musculature of his forearms, like the russeting across a firm apple. Still, the inner details of him escaped her. His hair was caked with dry clay, and she thought of the figures she'd seen artists craft in their hillside studios in Montmartre, with the Sacre-Coeur church on the summit above and the bawdy Moulin Rouge crowds teeming below. He looked like that, an unglazed unfinished sculpture of a man, but for his eyes, vast and deep, and very much alive, as if he were trapped inside his statued body.

I have come to see this fear, this sense of my own imperilment by my creations, as not only an inevitable, necessary part of writing fiction but as virtual guarantor, insofar as such a thing is possible, of the power of my work: as a sign that I am on the right track, that I am following the recipe correctly, speaking the proper spells. Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. Telling the truth, when the truth matters most, is almost always a frightening prospect. If a writer doesn’t give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves; if she doesn’t court disapproval, reproach and general wrath, whether of friends, family, or party apparatchiks; if the writer submits his work to an internal censor long before anyone else can get their hands on it, the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth. The adept handles the rich material, the rank river clay, and diligently intones his alphabetical spells, knowing full well the history of golems: how they break free of their creators, grow to unmanageable size and power, refuse to be controlled. In the same way, the writer shapes his story, flecked like river clay with the grit of experience and rank with the smell of human life, heedless of the danger to himself, eager to show his powers, to celebrate his mastery, to bring into being a little world that, like God’s, is at once terribly imperfect and filled with astonishing life. Originally published in The Washington Post Book World

If Bagel's face was a lump of clay on a pottery wheel, it'd been rapidly thrown from an angry grey blob to a rather enthusiastic vase.

Next Clay gave the house rules for living with theSorrentinos , which sounded a lot like the Ten Commandments. Thou shall not lie, steal anything, kill anyone, disrespect your hosts or covet any of Nick's girlfriends. And if you break the rules, you'll get your ass kicked and handed to you in pieces—a part I suspect God left out.

It was strange to realize that a dragon who couldn't be hurt on the outside could have so many ragged holes on the inside.

I knew even then that she was right. An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them. Nobu's touch had made a deeper impression on me than most. No one could tell me whether he would be my ultimate destiny, but I had always sensed the en between us. Somewhere in the landscape of my life Nobu would always be present. But could it really be that of all the lessons I'd learned, the hardest one lay just ahead of me? Would I really have to take each of my hopes and put them away where no one would ever see them again, where not even I would ever see them?

Meg felt her heart lurch. It bothered her that the twins realized that she hated their brother. The words coming from their innocent mouths sounded so ugly.

She fucking turns me inside out." "Women who matter have a way of doing that." Lucas scowled. "We sound like a couple of women, talking about feelings. I think Sascha's having a bad influence on me." "You started it.

Oh, Clay darling, if you had told me you were feeling irritated because of your...problems, I wouldn't have made a fuss." She knew very well the changelings around her could hear every whispered word. "Tally." It was a warning growl. "I mean it must be embarrassing for you...being that you're such a big man." her tone implied all sorts of things. "Last night was an aberration, I'm sure. And if not, there are always the pills.

And clay-caked clothes are so last year.

... the scarlet thread,the red clay from which we were made, runs in tiny streams through all our veins, reminding us of where we began ...

With red clay between my toes, and the sun setting over my head, the ghost of my mother blows in, riding on a honeysuckle breeze, oh lord, riding on a honeysuckle breeze.

All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

We live in a world where a hut made of clay is more durable than brick buildings, because poverty doesn't allow it to be reconstructed.

What you repeatedly do carries the clay to mold you into who you eventually become. Don’t despise any tiny minute of the day; each counts so much!

Within the shadows of honor, courage often walks in silence. -Engraved on the monument Clay built

Absolute power turns its possessors not into a God but an anti-God. For God turned clay into men, while the absolute despot turns men into clay.

A good man may fall, but he falls like a ball [and rebounds]; the ignoble man falls like a lump of clay.

Are you as much of a criminal if you don't act when there's a crime taking place in front of you as you are one of the participants? That was something that I was thinking about a lot because there are many moments in 'Less Than Zero' where horrific things happen and Clay could do something about them, but his passivity stops him.

And you poor creatures--who conjured you out of the clay? Is God in show business, too?

Boo," I said. He reacted as all mutts react when I confront them. He leapt from his chair and dove for the nearest exit, shaking in terror. In my dreams. He glanced at me and started looking for Clay. It never failed. Mutts only quaked when I appeared because it usually meant Clayton wasn't far behind. I was nothing but a harbinger of doom.

As ye of clay were cast by kind, So shall ye waste to dust.

Beautiful in form and feature, lovely as the day, can there be so fair a creature formed of common clay?

But eventually I moved the portraiture into the smaller clay things which gave them more of a caricature look to them, rather than a characterization.

But clay and clay differs in dignity, Whose dust is both alike.

Cassius Clay must be beaten and the Black Muslims' scourge removed from boxing.

Clay is molded to form a cup, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the cup depends. Doors and windows are cut out to make a room, But it is on its non-being that the utility of the room depends. Therefore turn being into advantage, and turn non-being into utility.

Clay Cook is a first class musician. Tender tormented genius here in 'North Star'. I will kill him if he leaves my band and he knows it. Great record.

Clay is one of the best things you can put in your body.

Clay is used to make vases, but it is the emptiness they contain that makes them useful.

Creative work is more accurately a machine that digs down and finds stuff, emotional stuff that will someday be raw material that can be used to produce more stuff, stuff like itself - clay to be available for future use.

Cold hopes swarm like worms within our living clay.

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay To mould me man? Did I solicit thee From darkness to promote me?

Dice Rules is one of the most appalling movies I have ever seen. It could not be more damaging to the career of Andrew Dice Clay if it had been made as a documentary by someone who hated him. The fact that Clay apparently thinks this movie is worth seeing is revealing and sad, indicating that he not only lacks a sense of humor, but also ordinary human decency.