a sponge QUOTES

1 " Disassemble the cells of a sponge (by passing them through a sieve, for instance), then dump them into a solution, and they will find their way back together and build themselves into a sponge again. You can do this to them over and over, and they will doggedly reassemble because, like you and me and every other living thing, they have one overwhelming impulse: to continue to be. "

― Bill Bryson , A Short History of Nearly Everything

2 " I've always been a student of this life, not a teacher. More of a sponge than a fountain. "

― , Chris-In-The-Morning: Love, Life, and the Whole Karmic Enchilada

3 " How then does light return to the world after the eclipse of the sun? Miraculously. Frailly. In thin stripes. It hangs like a glass cage. It is a hoop to be fractured by a tiny jar. There is a spark there. Next moment a flush of dun. Then a vapour as if earth were breathing in and out, once, twice, for the first time. Then under the dullness someone walks with a green light. Then off twists a white wraith. The woods throb blue and green, and gradually the fields drink in red, gold, brown. Suddenly a river snatches a blue light. The earth absorbs colour like a sponge slowly drinking water. It puts on weight; rounds itself; hangs pendent; settles and swings beneath our feet. "

― Virginia Woolf , The Waves

4 " They came to her, naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that; one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human emotions. "

― Virginia Woolf , To the Lighthouse

5 " Charity felt crumpled and wrung out after her cry, like a sponge that had gone through a week of dishes. Of course Lady Beddington said things would be better in the morning, after a good night's sleep. Charity found it was a struggle to believe her; but then it was a struggle just keeping her eyes open. By the time the guest room was ready, Charity was sprawled out face-downwards on the sofa, sound asleep, her tears already forgotten.

And that's what it means to be young, Lady Beddington thought, smiling. "

― Elizabeth Jane Howard , Mr. Wrong

6 " You throw a sponge into a sink full of dirty water and it'll soak up several times its weight and hold onto it. Throw something less porous, like a stone, into a sink full of dirty water, and it'll still get wet. Pull it out and it feels about the same, weighs about the same, but there's a slight change in texture, a film over it, and droplets of water are still settled into the minuscule pits and crevices of the stone. Even as a child, I recognized hypocrisy and prejudice at play, but I was also at my most impressionable and, inevitably, whether I liked it or not, I retained bits of it. "

7 " I wanted to feel like I could open my mouth and fill it with Pepper's flesh, close my teeth on her skin and tear it away, making blood pump like a fountain over everything - rug, clothes, hair, face - both Violet and I stopped in midair. Pepper's eyes had flooded with tears. It was too easy, she was enjoying this. Her body softened like a sponge waiting to soak up my punches. Her lips smiled the same way Valerie's did. It was as if I had discovered maggots in her flesh. I recoiled from her where she lay on the bed like a piece of rotting meat. "

― Mary Woronov , Swimming Underground: My Years in the Warhol Factory

8 " No, I don't work here, I'm taking pictures of messy bathrooms for a photo essay on the American West. But I'm always up for clean, so if you want to pitch in, I've got Pine Sol and a sponge in my car... It's that VW microbus parked next to the dumpster, and you don't need a key, just pull hard. "

― Pansy Schneider-Horst

9 " Although some of her passages seek to persuade the reader of the meaninglessness and marginalization of the mathematics, Hayles is content to use mathematics as a means for understanding Borges, perhaps in the same way a sponge riddled with holes is useful in sopping up fluid reality. "

10 " If John Lennon was right that life is what happens when you're making other plans, parenthood is what happens when everything is flipped over and spilling everywhere and you can't find a towel or a sponge or your " inside" voice. "