Best 222 quotes in «simile quotes» category

Earle had friendly written all over him the way that a plague rat had "Hug Me" emblazoned on its fur.

Emotions unreel in her like spools of cotton.

... Ennis was back on his feet and somehow, as a coat hanger is straightened to open a locked car and then bent again to its original shape, they torqued things almost to where they had been, for what they'd said was no news. Nothing ended, nothing began, nothing resolved.

Even in dying, a Thennanin ship was reputed to be not worth putting out of its misery. In battle they were slow, unmaneuverable—and as hard to disable permanently as a cockroach.

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.

Everything in the world could be found in the points of contact between them: all the ins and outs of the tides, the pulsations of stars in the sky, and the running of wolves across the cold north—all part of the same rhythm. This one. Theirs.

Everything is soft, like a fresh oil painting.

Eyeing her as a critic eyes a doubtful painting.

Fluorescent lights on the ceiling lit up the white Formica top of her desk like an operating table, white-sand beach at high noon, French fries under the heat lamp at McDonald’s.

Flipped through memories like old copies of National Geographic, pages in a yellowing high-school year book, cable-television channels looking for a baseball game.

Faded like morning fog in the rising sun, sports team logo on a cheap T-shirt, ninety-nine dollar paint job on a Chevy.

Gasps erupted from his nostrils like grouse from a thicket, schoolboys onto a recess yard, grease spatters from frying bacon.

Followed like a goat on a halter, hungry dog closing on his just-filled dinner bowl, water-bottle and towel carrier behind the tuba section of a marching band.

gleaming like a searchlight, Iowa moon, silver plate.

He excused himself for a nap, and this day blended into his dreams like like years blended into a life, unseen but still felt, the line between memory and present always bleeding.

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 memory like a skipping record, bumping continually up against the scratch.

[H]er mind was like a balloon with static cling, attracting random ideas as they floated by[.]

Her hair burst from her head like a fireworks shell erupting, framing her face in spray of red-blond energy.

Her self lagged behind her anger, like a mother picking up after a destructive child.

Her scent was there, swirling all around him. It was feminine, but not elegant. Not like flowers or the spring air, but rather like an autumn breeze, weaving its way through branches well on their way to winter slumber. It was the scent of a fall evening casting its glow over a serene lake. It was the smell of sunset, something he hadn’t seen in so long.

Her quickness of mind was like a hiss, a dart, a lethal bite.

Her smile was a supernova: blazing, beautiful, short-lived.

Her young lover changed positions, grabbed her and pulled her rear up high . . . went inside her at a brand-new angle, stroked and grunted. . . . Like he wanted to crawl inside her.

For a while this seemed to do the trick, and I felt that whatever contamination I had helped to spread, the boundaries I had helped to break, sprinkling flakes of myself all over the surface of New York like so much fish food, had been forgiven.

Hell! His beard grows fast as blazes, like a damp wicket in springtime sun, green, and Rachel's skin is so fine, his bristles can score her red the way a new ball marks a bat, English alum on English unbleached willow, finest quality, special selection, Rachel-grade. Zach, my man, you have cricket on the brain! Thomas has asked him to play on Sunday. Bring Rachel, he said. Thomas 'All Souls' Aubry, gentleman, corinthian at heart, and half French yet more English than a true-born.

[H]e looked like a real bruiser as he stepped from his car, his big sunglasses giving the impression that a large bug had evolved to the point that it could wear a suit.

Her brown eyes flashed like headlamps on a police cruiser, cameras at a Superbowl kickoff, lightning over Frankenstein’s castle.

Her courage seemed to collapse around her ankles like an old pair of elastic undies

He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts... for support rather than illumination.

He stopped the flyers And by his rare example made the coward Turn terror into sport. As weeds before A vessel under sail, so men obeyed And fell below his stem. His sword, Death's stamp, Where it did mark, it took; from face to foot He was a thing of blood, whose every motion Was timed with dying cries. Alone he entered The mortal gate o' th' city, which he painted With shunless destiny; aidless came off And with a sudden reinforcement struck Corioles like a planet. Now all's his, When by and by the dim of war gan pierce His ready sense; then straight his doubled spirit Requickened what in flesh was fatigate, And to the battle came he, where he did Run reeking o'er the lives of men as if 'Twere a perpetual spoil; and till we called Both field and city ours, he never stood To ease his breast with panting.

He was looking at me like I was a very nice thing of his that wasn't working quite like it should, like he'd found a defect, a defect that was extremely disappointing because he had spent a lot of time doing his research and believed he had gotten a thing that was guaranteed against these kinds of defects, and maybe there was some kind of glitch in the system and maybe he needed to have a professional assess the situation, give him an estimate.

He tongue swiped my sex like was licking the frosting off a cupcake. I called out to heaven again. . . . My sounds encouraged him to torture me.

He was waiting, I think, for me to cross that space and take him in my arms again—waiting, as one waits at a deathbed for the miracle one dare not disbelieve, which will not happen.

He yawned like a black bear coming out of hibernation.

High-pitched squeal like a beauty pageant contestant found best in show, Oprah audience member given a new Chevy, rookie actress surprised with an unlikely Oscar.

His eyes were as blank and bright as doorknobs.

His nostrils flared, he was breathing like a picadored bull.

His presence suddenly made things feel off-kilter, gorgeous as if being crushed in lush velvet while cascading off the edge of a cliff.

His lips made a grim twist that was like the joyless cousin of a smile.

His touch was like a bard's on his instrument, and it awakened a deep and mysterious music in my body.

His voice is muddy, that's what it is. Dark and brown and muddy. A note to it like coffee left too long on the burner. And unsweetened, bitter chocolate. But there's dirt in it too, deep, dark dirt, like the garden in October.

How humid the heart, its messy rooms! We eat spicy food, sweat like wood and smolder like the coal mine that caught fire decades ago, yet still smokes more than my great-uncle who will not quit- or go out-

Hung in the air like fart gas in an elevator, insecurity in a prom ballroom, guilt around a police lineup.

I am gifted at blending myself into any given milieu—you've never seen such a typical California teenager as I was, nor such a dissolute and callous pre-med student—but somehow despite my efforts, I am never able to blend myself in entirely and remain in some respects quite distinct from my surroundings, in the same way that a green chameleon remains a distinct entity from the leaf upon which it sits, no matter how perfectly it has approximated the the subtleties of the particular shade.

I asked the boy who wept what it felt like, crystal meth, the prettiest name for a drug besides heroin. Crystal methamphetamine. His head fell back. He closed his eyes, then opened them. 'Come on, you know . . . you're just high as fuck.' Then in a dramatic whisper: 'Everything goes silent like a midnight of the mind.

I began to cry but maintained my shouting through it, like a wind through sheets of rain.

I can't tell you—oh I can't tell you—how awful—how sort of unlivable—everything is now—like a great black wall in front of me—Something's got to smash.

He was going to die soon, you knew when you saw those eyes. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest traces of what had once been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all furniture and fixtures have been removed and which awaited now only its final demolition.

If she were here I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off her. I would hold her so close she'd beg me to let her breathe. I'd kiss her so hard she'd plead for mercy. I'd unfasten her clothing and lie with her on that hard bed, and what was between us would be as far above the ordinary congress between man and woman as the stars are above their pale reflections in the lake below.