#metaphor

The idea that you might end up in a job that doesn't allow you to be who you are, over the course of a lifetime, is still one of the most chilling nightmares to me. It's a good metaphor for fears I have about losing my soul in some accidental, mundane way. So, to me, these jobs that my characters have are very loaded. They immediately suggest a complex character to me, a woman who is, say, a secretary, but also a vigilante on behalf of her own soul. ↗

— Miranda July

#writing-craft #metaphor

Using a metaphor in front of a man as unimaginative as Ridcully was like a red flag to a bu... was like putting something very annoying in front of someone who was annoyed by it. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#simile #metaphor

Metaphors. This was the cost of making out with an artist. ↗

— Richelle Mead

#sydney-sage #metaphor

But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me. ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#metaphor

...as vivid and fabulous as a unicorn... ↗

— Anne Rivers Siddons

#simile #simile

And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them? ↗

— Mervyn Peake

#copy #cry #crying #despair #fall

Where to start? Everything cracks and shakes, The air trembles with similes, No one world's better than another; the earth moans with metaphors. ↗

— Osip Mandelstam

#poetry #simile #simile

The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor — not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies “out there” in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#metaphor #mind #nature #change

There I am then back in the saddle, in my numbed heart a prick of misgiving, like one dying of cancer obliged to consult his dentist. ↗

— Samuel Beckett

#simile

It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it. ↗

— Raymond Chandler

#humour #metaphor #simile #simile