Scraping Quotes:

Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails with horsehair.

- Alan Watts

source: Alan Watts (2010). “What Is Tao?”, p.89, New World Library

topic: Cat, Violin, Scraping

Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they're scraping the top of the barrel.

- Gore Vidal

source: "This column will change your life: Couch potatoes v creators" by Oliver Burkeman, August 20, 2010.

topic: Funny, Television, Literature, Scraping

I was able to support myself by acting alone about six years ago. Until then, I was just scraping by.

- Edie Falco

topic: Years, Support, Acting, Scraping

How is faith to endure, O God, when you allow all this scraping and tearing on us? You have allowed rivers of blood to flow, mountains of suffering to pile up, sobs to become humanity's song--all without lifting a finger that we could see. You have allowed bonds of love beyond number to be painfully snapped. If you have not abandoned us, explain yourself.We strain to hear. But instead of hearing an answer we catch sight of God himself scraped and torn. Through our tears we see the tears of God.

- Nicholas Wolterstorff

topic: Song, Love Is, Blood, Strain, Explain Yourself

The more you walk with God, the harder it is to scrape your knee

- Big K.R.I.T.

source: Song: Rich Dad, Poor Dad, 2012

topic: Knees, Walking With God, Walks, Scraping

You're killing me because you want me to give a message to God for you?" Jace shook his head, the point of the blade scraping across his throat. "You're crazier than I thought

- Cassandra Clare

source: Cassandra Clare (2010). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (3 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass”, p.1177, Simon and Schuster

topic: Giving, Want, Messages, Scraping

Sometimes in my tent, late at night, I think I can hear the stars scraping against the sky.

- Rick Yancey

source: Rick Yancey (2013). “The 5th Wave”, p.39, Penguin

topic: Stars, Night, Thinking, Late Night, 5th Wave

Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiselingand scraping and polishing.

- B. C. Forbes

topic: Hard Work, Thinking, Careers, Inspirational Hard Work, Career Motivation

I wanted to do a set of love songs for Valentine's Day so I went through my old material. I found myself scraping around the edges of good taste.

- Tom Rush

topic: Song, Valentine, Taste, Scraping

Fiction isn't made by scraping the bones of topicality for the last shreds and sinews, to be processed into mechanically recovered prose. Like journalism, it deals in ideas as well as facts, but also in metaphors, symbols and myths.

- Hilary Mantel

topic: Ideas, Lasts, Facts, Scraping

African film makers are scraping by on a mere pittance.

- Wole Soyinka

topic: Film, Makers, Scraping

My grandmother spent her whole life working as a maid, a cook and a babysitter, barely scraping by, but still working hard to give my mother, her only child, a chance in life, so that my mother could give my brother and me an even better one.

- Julian Castro

topic: Mother, Brother, Children, Chances In Life, Scraping

People who believe in flying saucers are the scrapings from the bottom.

- Nigel Kneale

topic: Believe, People, Flying, Flying Saucers, Scraping

He stood there for a moment looking around the silent room, shaking his head slowly. All these books, he thought, the residue of a planet’s intellect, the scrapings of futile minds, the leftovers, the potpourri of artifacts that had no power to save men from perishing.

- Richard Matheson

source: Richard Matheson (1954). “I Am Legend”, Greenwich, Connecticut : Fawcett

topic: Book, Men, Mind, Leftovers, Perishing

Jesse, who had not stirred the whole time from the spot he'd been standing, confident I could handle Cheryl myself, was grinning. "It's every girl's dream to guy to go to prom with the guy she loves?" he echoed, not just one, but both inky black eyebrows raised. "Don't start with me," I said. I tried to hide my suddenly flaming cheeks by scraping away what was left of the cannolis, and replacing them with the contents of an upended bag of chocolate chip cookies. "I have things to do.

- Meg Cabot

topic: Girl, Dream, Eyebrows, Cannolis, Chocolate Chip Cookies

I liked school and was a bit of an all-rounder academically, I struggled with music. I can't hold a note when singing and abandoned any notion of a career in music after barely scraping a pass in grade 2 piano.

- Stephen Curry

source: Source: www.thefreethinktank.com

topic: School, Careers, Piano, Scraping

People are curious. A few people are. ... They will put things together, knowing all along that they may be mistaken. You see them going around with notebooks, scraping the dirt off gravestones, reading microfilm, just in the hope of seeing this trickle in time, making a connection, rescuing one thing from the rubbish.

- Alice Munro

topic: Notebook, Reading, Knowing, Scraping

There was a time when I liked a good riot. Put on some heavy old street clothes that could stand a bit of sidewalk-scraping, infect myself with something good and contagious, then go out and stamp on some cops. It was great, being nine years old.

- Warren Ellis

topic: Years, Clothes, Nine, Scraping

I know my head isn't screwed on straight. I want to leave, transfer, warp myself to another galaxy. I want to confess everything, hand over the guilt and mistake and anger to someone else. There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs. Even if I dump the memory, it will stay with me, staining me. My closest is a good thing, a quiet place that helps me hold these thoughts inside my head where no one can hear them.

- Laurie Halse Anderson

source: Laurie Halse Anderson (2011). “Speak”, p.51, Macmillan

topic: Memories, Mistake, Hands, Dump, Warp

I don't think we have all the words in a single vocabulary to explain what we are or why we are. I don't think we have the range of emotion to fully feel what someone else is feeling. I don't think any of us can sit in judgment of another human being. We're incomplete creatures, barely scraping by. Is it possible--from the perspective of this quickly spinning Earth and our speedy journey from crib to coffin--to know the difference between right, wrong, good, and evil? I don't know if it's even useful to try.

- Alexandra Fuller

topic: Journey, Thinking, Vocabulary, Range Of Emotions, Scraping

I only have have one question, scraping the inside of me. Answer it, and I will stumble back into her shadow, shut my mouth, never ask again. I've tried to ignore it, but it won't go away. It haunts my dreams, chases me through every single day, and I don't have the strength to turn around, face it down. So please tell me and I swear I'll never ask again. It's in your power to make it go away, and all you have to do is tell me why you love her more.

- Ellen Hopkins

topic: Dream, Shadow, Going Away, Scraping

Legion hissed like a startled cat, the noise scraping at Reyes’s skin. “Me no boy. You think me a boy?” Everyone stopped, stared. Even Aeron. Reyes was the first to find his voice. “You’re a…girl?” A nod. “Me pretty.” “Yes, you are.” Reyes exchanged a glance with Lucien. “Beautiful.

- Gena Showalter

source: Gena Showalter (2014). “Lords of the Underworld Collection 1: The Darkest Night\The Darkest Kiss\The Darkest Pleasure”, p.838, Harlequin

topic: Beautiful, Girl, Cat, Legion, Scraping

It had been the longest time since she had had a rib-scraping laugh. She had forgotten how deep and down it could be. So different from the miscellaneous giggles and smiles she had learned to be content with these past few years.

- Toni Morrison

topic: Past, Years, Laughing, Scraping

Once in my life I knew a grief so hard I could actually hear it inside, scraping at the lining of my stomach, an audible ache, dredging with hooks as rivers are dredged when someone's been missing too long. I have to think my mother felt something like that.

- Leif Enger

source: Leif Enger (2001). “Peace Like a River”, p.54, Atlantic Monthly Press

topic: Mother, Grief, Thinking, Scraping, Dredging

I could hear rain still pouring from the gutters and a thin branch scraping against one of the windows; but the church seemed completely cut off from the restless day outside--just as I felt cut off from the church. I thought: I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.

- Dodie Smith

topic: Rain, Cutting, Church, Scraping

In District 12, looking old is something of an achievement since so many people die early. You see an elderly person, you want to congratulate them on their longevity, ask the secret of survival. A plump person is envied because they aren't scraping by like the majority of us. But here is different. Wrinkles aren't desirable. A round belly isn't a sign of success.

- Suzanne Collins

source: Suzanne Collins (2011). “The Hunger Games Trilogy”, p.167, Scholastic Inc.

topic: Wrinkles, Elderly, People, District 12, Scraping

I need to smell its smells, to hear its sounds, to see food in a pot that simmers, bubbles, sizzles. I enjoy the physical involvement of stirring, turning, poking, mashing, scraping.

- Marcella Hazan

topic: Smell, Cooking, Sound, Scraping

I don't believe in the scraping of stuff. Take the existing condition, offer up a diagnosis for what's wrong, and a prescription for making it work.

- Tim Gunn

topic: Believe, Stuff, Diagnosis, Prescriptions, Scraping

I always felt I was scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to get a song together.

- Leonard Cohen

topic: Song, Bottom Of The Barrel, Trying, Scraping

If these were indications of new love, as Sergei expected they were, then he was not surprised. All that scraping and arguing, the teasing and playful antagonism, could only mean on thing. It was a sure sign of attraction.

- Suzanne Weyn

topic: Mean, Arguing, Tease, Antagonism, Scraping

I alone must solve my problem. I have to clear my mind of everything else, think hard, analyze, explore my options, plan a strategy for the immediate situation, and then do whatever it takes. Sometimes it means scraping off what I have done and starting over again and again.

- Richard Schmid

topic: Mean, Thinking, Starting Over, Starting Over Again, Scraping

Fear of success is one of the new fears I've heard about lately. And I think its definitely a sign that we're running out of fears. A person suffering from fear of success is scraping the bottom of the fear barrel.

- Jerry Seinfeld

topic: Running, Thinking, Suffering, Fear Of Success, Scraping

Is the scraping off of a barnacle the destruction of a ship?

- H. P. Blavatsky

topic: Change, Ships, Destruction, Barnacles, Scraping

Who cares what a man's style is, so it is intelligible,--as intelligible as his thought. Literally and really, the style is no more than the stylus, the pen he writes with; and it is not worth scraping and polishing, and gilding, unless it will write his thoughts the better for it. It is something for use, and not to look at. The question for us is, not whether Pope had a fine style, wrote with a peacock's feather, but whether he uttered useful thoughts.

- Henry David Thoreau

source: Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.272, Simon and Schuster

topic: Writing, Men, Style, Scraping, Useful Thoughts

Novel-writing is a highly skilled and laborious trade. One does not just sit behind a screen jotting down other people's conversation. One has for one's raw material every single thing one has ever seen or heard or felt, and one has to go over that vast, smoldering rubbish-heap of experience, half stifled by fumes and dust, scraping and delving until one finds a few discarded valuables. Then one has to assemble these tarnished and dented fragments, polish them, set them in order, and try to make a coherent and significant arrangement of them.

- Evelyn Waugh

topic: Writing, Dust, Order, Scraping, Delving

My favorite moments are when the bass falls in the pocket with the drums, the guitar is on top just slicing it, and the melody is scraping across like a sidewinder shattering through the monitor. It's just, ahhh, I love it! That's the jones, the hit, the buzz right there. It gets me off.

- Nikki Sixx

topic: Fall, Guitar, Pockets, Shattering, Scraping

I don't see any point in having a public service broadcaster which attempts to compete with the commercial sector. Obviously part of its remit is to entertain, but entertainment doesn't necessarily mean scraping the bottom of the barrel and appealing to the very lowest common denominator.

- Jonathan Meades

source: Source: thequietus.com

topic: Mean, Bottom Of The Barrel, Entertainment, Scraping, Lowest Common Denominator

Flaky devotionalism, bowing and scraping and sucking up to the teacher is very phony. It is counterproductive to enlightenment and spiritual development. What is necessary is mutual respect.

- Frederick Lenz

topic: Spiritual, Teacher, Buddhist, Spiritual Development, Counterproductive

Things are very rudimentary as far as women's rights really go here, and it seems fine, but once you start scraping the surface, you start to see the ripple effect of how not having equal rights is so detrimental and how many mothers are single parents trying to raise their families.

- Patricia Arquette

topic: Mother, Rights, Parent, Detrimental, Single Parent

When people complain of the decay of manners they have in mind not the impudent abbreviations of the crowd, but the decline in bowing and scraping and in speaking of one's employer as "the master." What the rich mean by the good manners of the poor is usually not civility, but servility.

- Robert Wilson Lynd

topic: Mean, People, Good Man, Abbreviations, Servility

I had a brief experience in the food industry. I was a bus boy in a Mexican restaurant in Arizona, scraping re-fried beans off people's plates. It teaches you a bit of humility and the importance of a good deodorant.

- Wentworth Miller

topic: Humility, Boys, People, Deodorant, Food Industry

The intelligent and efficient politician is a species virtually unknown in the galaxy. Perhaps I might secure a scraping [for my] cell library.

- George R. R. Martin

topic: Intelligent, Cells, Library, Scraping

...when a reporter is quoting Sid Blumenthal on president Bush, you know he's scraping the barrel.

- Andrew Sullivan

topic: President, Politics, Sids, Scraping

A Beethoven string-quartet is truly, as some one has said, a scraping of horses' tails on cats' bowels, and may be exhaustively described in such terms; but the application of this description in no way precludes the simultaneous applicability of an entirely different description.

- William James

source: William James (2015). “Essays in Popular Philosophy: Top Essays”, p.51, 谷月社

topic: Horse, Cat, Science, Bowels, String Quartets

The leaves hop, scraping on the ground. It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice. It is in this solitude, a syllable, Out of these gawky flitterings, Intones its single emptiness, The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

- Wallace Stevens

topic: Winter, Ice, Sky, Syllables, Scraping

I thought how utterly we have forsaken the Earth, in the sense of excluding it from our thoughts. There are but few who consider its physical hugeness, its rough enormity. It is still a disparate monstrosity, full of solitudes, barrens, wilds. It still dwarfs, terrifies, crushes. The rivers still roar, the mountains still crash, the winds still shatter. Man is an affair of cities. His gardens, orchards and fields are mere scrapings. Somehow, however, he has managed to shut out the face of the giant from his windows. But the giant is there, nevertheless.

- Wallace Stevens

topic: Crush, Men, Garden, Dwarfs, Scraping

Percussion music is revolution. Sound and rhythm have too long been submissive to the restrictions of nineteenth century music. Today we are fighting for their emancipation. Tomorrow, with electronic music in our ears, we will hear freedom. At the present stage of revolution, a healthy lawlessness is warranted. Experiment must necessarily be carried on by hitting anything-tin pans, rice bowls, iron pipes-anything we can lay our hands on. Not only hitting, but rubbing, scraping, making sound in every possible way...What we can't do ourselves will be done by machines which we will invent.

- John Cage

topic: Music, Fighting, Hands, Percussion, Scraping

Of myself I must say this, I never was any greedy, scraping grasper, nor a strait fast-holding prince, nor yet a master; my heart was never set on worldly goods, but only for my subjects' good.

- Elizabeth I

topic: Heart, Greedy, Masters, Scraping

History teaches us no race, no people, no nation has ever been freed through cowardice, through cringing, through bowing and scraping, but all that has been achieved to the glory of mankind, to the glory and honour of races and nations was through the manly determination and effort of those who lead and those who are led.

- Marcus Garvey

topic: Determination, Race, People, Scraping