Best 451 quotes in «description quotes» category

A thousand stories had painted cities in his mind, the great cities of kings and queens, of thrones and powers and legends, and Caemlyn fit into those mind-deep pictures and water fits into a jug.

At last he said, "Did you come out of the big mountains?" Gitano shook his head slowly. "No, I walked down the Salinas Valley." The afternoon thought would not let Joey go. "Did you ever go into the big mountains back there?" The old dark eyes grew fixed, and their light turned inward on the years that were living in Gitano's head.

At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were to exchange. ‘I cannot swim. You know it?” In the dark she saw the flash of his smile. ‘Trust me.’ And he drew her with a strong hand until the green phosphorescence beaded her ankles, and deeper, and deeper, until the thick milk-warm water, almost unfelt, was up to her waist. She heard him swear feelingly to himself as the salt water searched out, discovered his burns. Then with a rustle she saw his pale head sink back into the quiet sea and at the same moment she was gripped and drawn after him, her face to the stars, drawn through the tides with the sea lapping like her lost hair at her cheeks, the drive of his body beneath her pulling them both from the shore. They were launched on the long journey towards the slim shape, black against glossy black, which was the brigantine, with Thompson on board.

At the moment when, ordinarily, there was still an hour to be lived through before meal-time sounded, we would all know that in a few seconds we should see the endives make their precocious appearance, followed by the special favour of an omelette, an unmerited steak. The return of this asymmetrical Saturday was one of those petty occurrences, intra-mural, localised, almost civic, which, in uneventful lives and stable orders of society, create a kind of national unity, and become the favourite theme for conversation, for pleasantries, for anecdotes which can be embroidered as the narrator pleases; it would have provided a nucleus, ready-made, for a legendary cycle, if any of us had had the epic mind.

A vast field opened like a blossoming tulip, flowers blooming in the rippling airs of spring. High and frothy trees hugged air and sun as they gallantly cast a shade over the earth. On the horizon a florid vessel of mountains trailed to the never-ending, blue as memories distant, poised as statues embroidered into time’s eternal drift.

A writer need not be bound by flat statement like "It was a rough sea," when verbs like tumble and roil and seethe wait to spell from her pen.

Below the village the pastures and plowlands of the Vale slope downward level below level towards the sea, and other towns lie on the bends of the River Ar; above the village only forest rises ridge behind ridge to the stone and snow of the heights.

Birds looked like an echo of birds, fat white clouds looked as if they were there to sell you fabric softener or air travel or health insurance.

But she was wrong; it was what gave her away; she had not taken into account that this fragmentary detail of the truth had sharp edges which could not be made to fit in, except to those contiguous fragments of the truth from which she had arbitrarily detached it, edges which, whatever the fictitious details in which she might embed it, would continue to shew, by their overlapping angles and by the gaps which she had forgotten to fill, that its proper place was elsewhere.

Bicycles, bullock carts, and buses that belched thick, black smoke moved in anarchic streams with the auto rickshaws and cars along the streets. Many of the shops—normally selling everything from groceries to stainless steel cookware to shoes—stood silent behind shutters and honeycomb grilles.

But a man's beauty represents inner, functional truths: his face shows what he can do.

Brother Row you could trust to make a long shot with a short bow. You could trust him to come out of a knife fight with somebody else's blood on his shirt. You could trust him to lie, to cheat, to steal, and to watch your back. You couldn't trust his eyes though. He had kind eyes, and you couldn't trust them.

But the lies which Odette ordinarily told were less innocent, and served to prevent discoveries which might have involved her in the most terrible difficulties with one or another of her friends. And so, when she lied, smitten with fear, feeling herself to be but feebly armed for her defence, unconfident of success, she was inclined to weep from sheer exhaustion, as children weep sometimes when they have not slept. She knew, also, that her lie, as a rule, was doing a serious injury to the man to whom she was telling it, and that she might find herself at his mercy if she told it badly. Therefore she felt at once humble and culpable in his presence. And when she had to tell an insignificant, social lie its hazardous associations, and the memories which it recalled, would leave her weak with a sense of exhaustion and penitent with a consciousness of wrongdoing.

But whatever she was I loved her and was committed to her and had always been, here and out beyond the stars, those stars behind stars behind stars which I had seen that night when I lay on the rocks and the golden sky slowly turned the universe inside out.

C'est un vieil homme auquel on ne peut plus donner d'âge, sec, boucané, fripé comme des pommes reinettes oubliées sur les planches d'un fruitier, mais qui garde encore, sous leur peau ridée, une chair ferme et saine.

Callahan dried his big meaty hands on his apron and cleared his throat with a sound like a bulldozer in pain.

Captain Dave is a salt-and-pepper guy who looks older than forty-six. He doesn't have kids of his own. Some people are born to be uncles and Captain Dave is that kind of people. He's also a recovering alcoholic who's obsessed with what everyone else is drinking at all times. Life is hard for some people.

Canary light of oil lamps

Dark spruce frowned on either side of the frozen waterway.

CONSTANTINE Trigorin has worked out a process of his own, and descriptions are easy for him. He writes that the neck of a broken bottle lying on the bank glimmered in the moonlight, and that the shadows lay black under the mill-wheel. There you have a moonlit night before your eyes, but I speak of the shimmering light, the twinkling stars, the distant sounds of a piano melting into the still and scented air, and the result is abominable.

Dark-bright fire lit eyes

Elles étaient en touffes avec des racines d'or, épanouies, enfoncées dans les ténèbres et qui soulevaient des mottes luisantes de nuit. (à propos des étoiles)

Description is what makes the reader a sensory participant in the story. Good description is a learned skill,one of the prime reasons you cannot succeed unless you read a lot and write a lot. It's not just a question of how-to, you see; it's a question of how much to. Reading will help you answer how much, and only reams of writing will help you with the how. You can learn only by doing.

Detonations crash in from nearby like walls she's a void at the center of.

Dr. Morris soon recognized that the difference between successful and unsuccessful marriages can often be traced to how well couples are able to "bond" during the courtship period. By bonding he referred to the process by which a man and woman become cemented together emotionally. It describes the chemistry that permits two previous strangers to become intensely valuable to one another. It helps them weather the storms of life and remain committed in sickness and health, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, forsaking all others until they are parted in death. It is a phenomenal experience that almost defies description.

Ela olhou os miolos esbranquiçados destacando-se no arroz. Por aquele labirinto tinham corrido, um por um, todos os pensamentos do boi, alguns ainda deviam ter ficado perdidos por ali, os últimos: pensamentos da hora da morte, quando sentira o cheiro do sangue dos companheiros sacrificados lá na frente. Afastou o prato, repugnada. Era sinistro mastigar pensamentos, poderiam ressuscitar e ela ficaria conhecendo o boi. Pior do que isto, ficaria o próprio boi!

Drunken women in very sheer catch-a-cold-or-catch-a-man dresses were acting like they were on spring break in Cancún. Inebriated men in dark suits were . . . making passes and grabbing asses and refilling glasses.

Eloquence is painted thought, and thus those who, after having painted it, add somewhat more, make a picture, not a portrait.

Elle se souviendrait toujours de la pâle lune automnale éclairant la scène du crime, des bandes jaunes entourant l'emplacement du cadavre. Elle se souvenait d'avoir serré son corps sans vie contre elle, et d'avoir pleuré toutes les larmes de son corps.

Era d'altronde uno di quegli uomini che amano assistere alla propria vita, ritenendo impropria qualsiasi ambizione a viverla. Si sarà notato che essi osservano il loro destino nel modo in cui, i più, sono soliti osservare una giornata di pioggia.

Even the beauty of the landscape was an abstraction, like the beauty of a man in an advertisement for a cologne you could not smell.

Eyeing her as a critic eyes a doubtful painting.

Every day of his life alternated between this calm consumptive and Emmanuel bursting into song, between the smell of coffee and the smell of tar, alienated from his interests, from his heart, his truth. Things that in other circumstances would have excited him left him unmoved now, for they were simply part of his life, until the moment he was back in his room using all his strength and care to smother the flame of life that burned within him.

Everything about her was sweet, pale like honey. You would not have been surprised to see a bee caught in the tangles of that yellow hair.

Everything is soft, like a fresh oil painting.

Famous revolutionary,' you say, and the laughter pumps out of your chest like blood, great almost painful spurts of it splashing up the building faces toward the marquee moon.

Gansey clucked at his bedraggled reflection in the dark-framed mirror hanging in the front hallway. Chainsaw eyed herself briefly before hiding on the other side of Ronan's neck; Adam did the same, but without the hiding-in-Ronan's-neck bit. Even Blue looked less fanciful that usual, the lighting rendering her lampshade dress and spiky hair as a melancholy Pierrot.

Fitz pulled her forward, and the warm tingling in her hand shot through her body--like a million feathers swelling underneath her skin, tickling her from the inside out.

Fuori, la neve che ricopriva il selciato era così liscia e compatta da sembrare un velo di sfoglia spianata da un mattarello. Fiocchi impalpabili cadevano dal cielo scuro, assorbivano la luce dei lampioni accessi e mulinavano nell'aria come granelli di polvere di un vecchio tappeto percosso da un battipanni.

For the moment however behold me sitting with Priscilla and Francis. A domestic interior. It is about ten o'clock in the evening and the curtains are drawn.

Fragrant, dreaming, unreal, and having to do, terribly, with love.

He laughed and came forward impulsively to kiss her—his affection a potent thing, a flourish of light. She was smiling, her tears feeling fresh on her face. He smelled of sweat and roses. She felt it in the palms of her hands, in her loins. It was right. It was Southampton she had wanted all along.

Gula and Cali lie on their sides, their tiny adder-mouths showing the pink of their palates, their bodies throbbing with lustful and obscene dreams. The sky releases its burden of sun and color. Eyes closed, Catherine takes the long fall that carries her deep into herself, down where some animal stirs gently, breathing like a god.

He had a W.C. Fields twang and a nose like a prize strawberry.

He had the beginning of wrinkles and the easy manner of one who has already made his mistakes.

He looked as if he had been beaten to death with a wine bottle, but by doing it with the contents of the bottle.

Here he comes like a stealing shadow, like a footprint of death into the rooms, stalking the past with freshcut blood in his hands.

Her fat neck jiggled as the words came out of her botoxed, pink mouth. Her heavy bosoms moved up and down from her agitated breathing, like two mountains that rose and fell from the turbulence of the earth beneath it.

Her freckles looked as if someone had blown cinnamon across her nose and high cheekbones.

Her features were dainty, her small slender wrists climbed up to become the delicate shoulders that beckoned him. Her skin was like peach-tinted cream and he need not have touched her to experience the melting softness of her body. Her perfectly oval face was austere and her manner a little haughty. Her expressions had delicacy as well as a particular strength that did not abate her femininity. It seemed that the world had stopped. Her voice sounded like a melody and she looked like a dream, an illusion, up close and personal.