Symbolism Quotes

“White for Shadowhunters is the color of funerals," Luke explained. “ But for mundanes, Jace, it’ s the color of weddings. Brides wear white to symbolize their purity.”
“I thought Jocelyn said her dress wasn’t white,” Simon said.
“Well,” said Jace, “I suppose that ship has sailed.”
Luke choked on his coffee.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels

“Black is the color of night. White is the true color of death”
― Melissa de la Cruz, Blue Bloods

“We're actors — we're the opposite of people!”
― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

“It's Nathaniel Hawthorne Month in English. Poor Nathaniel. Does he know what they've done to him? We're reading The Scarlet Letter one sentence at a time, tearing it up and chewing on its bones.
It's all about SYMBOLISM, says Hairwoman. Every word chosen by Nathaniel, every comma, every paragraph break -- these were all done on purpose. To get a decent grade in her class, we have to figure out what he was really trying to say. Why couldn't he just say what he meant? Would they pin scarlet letters on his chest? B for blunt, S for straightforward?”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm [sic]. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”
― Ernest Hemingway, Ernest Hemingway Selected Letters 1917-1961

“Who cares what the color means? How do you know what he meant to say? I mean, did he leave another book called "Symbolism in My Books?" If he didn't, then you could just be making all of this up. Does anyone really think this guy sat down and stuck all kinds of hidden meanings into his story? It's just a story.... But I think you are making all of this symbolism stuff up. I don't believe any of it.”
― Laurie Halse Anderson, Speak

“Behind these eyes
there is a girl trapped within
her pain – a girl feeling all the emotions
of anger and sadness.
She’s fighting for a way out.” (In her eyes, p. 39)”
― Chimnese Davids, Muses of Wandering Passions

“Every Valentine's Day, the student council sponsered a holiday fundraiser by selling roses that would be delievered in class. The roses came in four colors:white, yellow, red, pink, and the subtleties of thier meaning were parsed and analyzed by the female population to no end. Mimi had always understood it thus:white for love, yellow for friendship, red for passion, and pink for a secret crush.”
― Melissa de la Cruz, Masquerade

“The girl dreams she is dangerously ill. Suddenly birds come out of her skin and cover her completely ... Swarms of gnats obscure the sun, the moon, and all the stars except one. That one start falls upon the dreamer.”
― Carl Gustav Jung, Man and His Symbols

“What do you think dignity's all about?'

The directness of the inquiry did, I admit, take me rather by surprise. 'It's rather a hard thing to explain in a few words, sir,' I said. 'But I suspect it comes down to not removing one's clothing in public.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“Chocolate symbolizes, as does no other food, luxury, comfort, sensuality, gratification, and love.”
― Karl Petzke

“Pull a thread here and you’ll find it’s attached to the rest of the world.”
― Nadeem Aslam, The Wasted Vigil

“Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions

“Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“If you have to ask what it symbolizes, it didn't.”
― Roger Ebert

“The world is emblematic. Parts of speech are metaphors, because the whole of nature is a metaphor of the human mind.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature

“In many college English courses the words “myth” and “symbol” are given a tremendous charge of significance. You just ain’t no good unless you can see a symbol hiding, like a scared gerbil, under every page. And in many creative writing course the little beasts multiply, the place swarms with them. What does this Mean? What does that Symbolize? What is the Underlying Mythos? Kids come lurching out of such courses with a brain full of gerbils. And they sit down and write a lot of empty pomposity, under the impression that that’s how Melville did it.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

“No symbols where none intended.”
― Samuel Beckett, Watt

“From recovery to rags and rags to recovery symbolizes art - a perfect compilation of human imperfections.”
― Criss Jami, Salomé: In Every Inch In Every Mile

“White is associated with purity because the entire spectrum is functioning in unity. White is a healing color. White is appropriate for weddings because the unity of male and female symbolizes the unity of allness.”
― Tae Yun Kim, The First Element: Secrets to Maximizing Your Energy

“Live? Our servants will do that for us..”
― Auguste de Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Axel

“They are talking about how we can't trust the faded women, women who can't be touched but can stand on the earth, which means they must be lying about something, they must be deceiving us somehow.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

“People think blood red, but blood don't got no colour. Not when blood wash the floor she lying on as she scream for that son of a bitch to come, the lone baby of 1785. Not when the baby wash in crimson and squealing like it just depart heaven to come to hell, another place of red. Not when the midwife know that the mother shed too much blood, and she who don't reach fourteen birthday yet speak curse 'pon the chile and the papa, and then she drop down dead like old horse. Not when blood spurt from the skin, on spring from the axe, the cat-o'-nine, the whip, the cane and the blackjack and every day in slave life is a day that colour red. It soon come to pass when red no different from white or blue or black or nothing. Two black legs spread wide and mother mouth screaming. A black baby wiggling in blood on the floor with skin darker than midnight but the greenest eyes anybody ever done seen. I goin' call her Lilith. You can call her what they call her.”
― Marlon James, The Book of Night Women

“The morning weighs on my shoulders with the dreadful weight of hope and I take the blue envelope which Jacques has sent me and tear it slowly into many pieces, watching them dance in the wind, watching the wind carry them away. Yet, as I turn and begin walking toward the waiting people, the wind blows some of them back on me.”
― James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room

“The grave and the image are equally links with the irrecoverable and symbols for the unimaginable.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“It is only a gesture," he said, turning back to Shadow. "But gestures mean everything. The death of one dog symbolizes the death of all dogs.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“I do give them to you," he announced. "Of my free will. Because this is my sword." He laid a hand on Arisa's shoulder. "And Weasle is my shield. What you hold are only pieces of iron.”
― Hilari Bell, Crown of Earth

“... as a convention, you get up and walk to the window to make the audience believe that you're looking out. It's for the audience, not for you! And what it means to you is something emotional [...] If you went to the Actors Studio you'd spend six months seeing the snow before you could say, 'Look at the snow.' This takes a terrible burden away from the actor, who thinks he's got to see the woods and the snow. 'Give me my gun! I see a rabbit! Give me my gun!' "

Meisner sounds thrilled at the possibility of a hunt.

"That happens when you're still sitting there reading. Then when they put in the scenery you move to the window. Isn't that simple? How simple it is to solve the problem of seeing things when you know that it's all in you emotionally, and that walking to the window is only a convention.”
― Sanford Meisner, Sanford Meisner on Acting

“The Sphinx must solve her own riddle.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays

“The true Tarot is symbolism; it speaks no other language and offers no other signs.”
― Arthur Edward Waite