Quotes About Sensory

Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell, from Anya Seton, from M.M. Kaye, and a host of other authors, in their crackly plastic library bindings. Whether historians acknowledge it or not, scholarly history's illegitimate cousin, the historical novel, plays a profound role in shaping widely held conceptions of historical realities.

He had forgotten that anything could be so tender. He breaks the bun open, revealing glossy bits of pork and glaze, a secret red heart. When he puts it to his mouth, it is like a kiss: sweet and salty and warm.

smell of an apple alone, when what you really wanted was to devour it, to sink your teeth into it and consume it, seeds, core, and all.

He has almost forgotten what it felt like. To touch her. To be forgiven even just this much

Love, Hannah decided, would be sweet, like her mother's perfume, and soft as marshmallows.

Making love to him was like going through a car wash, except you came out dirtier and more alive at the other end.

and behind them the quivering mucosity of her tongue.

Love is tears of joy, It's the baptism of fingers. (L'amour, c'est larme de joie, C'est le baptême des doigts)

The drunkard who is colorblind still sees where is the wine. (L'ivrogne qui est daltonien - Voit quand même où est le vin.)

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism, are all very good words for the lips: especially prunes and prism.

He was consious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares, long, long, forgotten.

He described it as if he were there, and it was evident that he saw it vividly; perhaps he had not seen much in his life.

When the voice stopped, he put his hand over his eyes, murmuring

Her first proceeding there was to unlock a tall press, bring out several bottles, and pour some of the contents of each into my mouth. I think they must have been taken out at random, for I am sure I tasted aniseed water, anchovy sauce, and salad dressing.

Perhaps it is the increasing abstraction of ourselves from the world, to which language contributes, that explains why "fifteen years ago people could distinguish 300,000 sounds; today many children can't go beyond 100,000 and the average is 180,000. Twenty years ago the average subject could detect 350 shades of a particular color. Today the number is 130."13 By naming the world, abstracting it and reducing it, we impoverish our perception of it. Language

When we walk into a wood, we share its sensory outputs (light, colour, smell, sound and so on) with all the other creatures there. But would any of them recognise our description of the wood? Every organism creates a different world in its brain. It lives in that world.

...a ball of Ice Cream gooed with Chocolate and enveloped with Salted Nuts...

An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing.

A kiss without a hug is like a flower without the fragrance.

Music is the color of sound.

Music is one of the best ways to enjoy the present. It's not that much fun to look forward to hearing music or to remember what a song sounded like last week, but music right now absorbs us and places us directly in the moment.

She could feel the echo of lovemaking in her body in the same way she could feel the rock and shift of waves after a day of swimming, long after she left the water.

Haloes of heat shimmer from the guests and their hosts. The candles burn brighter. The plump flies of dusk now congregate around the plates of cheese and crackers on the wooden table. From the cut glass bowl of children's punch, sweet rosy fumes spiral up into the air.

Walls shift as the day's warmth rushes out and coolness from the garden flows in to take its place. Couches exhale. In the attic, objects made of suede and velvet stir. Forgotten horsehair mattresses sigh and wonder. Something flutters.