#description

Show Pleasant Riderhood a Wedding in the street, and she only saw two people taking out a regular license to quarrel and fight. Show her a Christening, and she saw a little heathen personage having a quite superfluous name bestowed upon it, inasmuch as it would be commonly addressed by some abusive epithet; which little personage was not in the least wanted by anybody, and would be shoved and banged out of everybody's way, until it should grow big enough to shove and bang. Show her a Funeral, and she saw an unremunerative ceremony in the nature of a black masquerade, conferring a temporary gentility on the performers, at an immense expense, and representing the only formal party ever given by the deceased. Show her a live father, and she saw but a duplicate of her own father, who from her infancy had been taken with fits and starts of discharging his duty to her, which duty was always incorporated in the form of a fist or a leathern strap, and being discharged hurt her. All things considered, therefore, Pleasant Riderhood was not so very, very bad. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#good-writing #nature

I suppose hobbits need some description nowadays, since they have become rare and shy of the Big People, as they call us. They are (or were) a little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded Dwarves. Hobbits have no beards. There is little or no magic about them, except the ordinary everyday sort which helps them to disappear quietly and quickly when large stupid folk like you and me come blundering along, making a noise like elephants which they can hear a mile off. They are inclined to be fat in the stomach; they dress in bright colours (chiefly green and yellow); wear no... ↗

— J.R.R. Tolkien

#description

It's easy to set a story anywhere if you get a good guidebook and get some basic street names, and some descriptions, but, for me, yes, I am indebted to my travels to India for several of the stories. ↗

— Jhumpa Lahiri

#anywhere #basic #descriptions #easy #get

I love the description of Gothic churches before the printed word, that they were the bibles of the poor. ↗

— John McGahern

#churches #description #gothic #i #i love

I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall. ↗

— Eleanor Roosevelt

#against #bed #catalogue #description #fine

It's easy to set a story anywhere if you get a good guidebook and get some basic street names, and some descriptions, but, for me, yes, I am indebted to my travels to India for several of the stories. ↗

— Jhumoa Lahiri

#anywhere #basic #descriptions #easy #get

how impossibly clean-cut, with its twin sets of twelve, neat as walnut shells. ↗

— Karen Thompson Walker

#age

Even her beauty had sharp edges. Her long ebony hair was cut like a razor blade. Her face was strong and fine.But her eyes. A milky green, they betrayed an air of vulnerability she seemed desperate to hide. ↗

— Laura Oliva

#heroine #romance #beauty

I need you to get inside Wayne's head. I need someone who thinks a bit left field and in your own unpleasant way, Helen Walsh, you're a genius. He had a point. I'm lazy and illogical. I've limited people skills. I'm easily bored and easily irritated. But I have moments of brilliance. They come and they go and I can't depend on them but they do happen. ↗

— Marian Keyes

#humorous #turn-of-phrase #family

The grandmother, the mother, the worker, the student, the intellectual, the professional, the unemployed, everybody identified with the songs because they were descriptions of life in the city. ↗

— Ruben Blades

#city #descriptions #everybody #grandmother #identified