Weekend Words: Dry
In response to a prolonged dry spell, the state of California has instituted mandatory water restrictions, bringing to mind the line from Chinatown (1974): "Middle of a drought, the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A."
In response to a prolonged dry spell, the state of California has instituted mandatory water restrictions, bringing to mind the line from Chinatown (1974): “Middle of a drought, the water commissioner drowns. Only in L.A.”
My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh also longeth after thee: in a barren and dry land where not water is.
—Psalms, 63:2, Book of Common Prayer
You ought to get out of those wet clothes and into a dry Martini.
—Mae West, Every Day’s a Holiday
Your dry heat feels like power
your eyes are stars of a different magnitude
they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT
—Adrienne Rich, “Trying to Talk with a Man”
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.
—T.S. Eliot, “Gerontion”
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?
—Langston Hughes, “Harlem”
The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?
—Katharine Hamnett
I sit watching the brown oceanic waves of dry country rising into the foothills and I weep monotonously, seasickly. Life is not like the dim ironic stories I like to read, it is like a daytime serial on television. The banality will make you weep as much as anything else.
—Alice Munro
O rose, who dares to name thee?
No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet,
But pale, and hard, and dry, as stubblewheat,–
Kept seven years in a drawer, thy titles shame thee.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “A Dead Rose”
The books we think we ought to read are poky, dull, and dry;
The books that we would like to read we are ashamed to buy;
The books that people talk about we never can recall;
And the books that people give us, oh, they’re the worst of all.
—Carolyn Wells, On Books
If there is an eighth deadly sin, it ought to be stupidity, by which all virtues run out into dry sands. Yet…where does prudence end and cowardice begin? That’s a very good damn question!
—Lois McMaster Bujold, The Spirit Ring
I haven’t much opinion of words. They’re apt to set fire to a dry tongue, that’s what I say.
—Ellen Glasgow, The Deliverance
