MOTES QUOTES ...
| Literary "motes" references that we've encountered: |
| Perhaps after reading these Motes Quotes, you'll be inspired to read more work by the authors who penned these lines. These aren't from books published by MotesBooks, but we recommend works from these and other good intellects, as well as from the outstanding minds of our own fine authors. Poetry abides in such phrasings. |
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.” -- Carl Sagan, discussing pictures of Earth from space |
| If you find literary "motes" references you'd like to share, email them to us. Include (1) the TITLE of the book or magazine (including date and article title) or website address where you encountered it and (2) the WRITER's name. If we can verify the quote so that we are sure we can credit it to the proper author, we might add it to this page. For this or any other reason, you can email us here at MotesBooks by clicking on the mailbox ... |
| Click on the mailbox to email us ... |
We'd enjoy hearing from you. |
(c) 2012
photo by EK Larken
“She studied the dust in the air [next to the open window] while we listened, and kept putting her finger out, like E.T., to touch the glitter. The dust was letting her see the air, suspended as we are, held and blown about, even though we appear to be sitting, planted. The dust made the invisible visible, for a few moments, immersing both of us in another dimension, beyond what we could usually see.” -- Anne Lamott |
“… [N]otice flickers of the divine, like dust motes on sunbeams in your dusty kitchen. Without all the shade and shadows, you’d miss the beauty of the veil. The shadow is always there, and if you don’t remember it, when it falls on you and your life again, you’re plunged into darkness. Shadows make the light show. Without shadows, we’d see only what a friend of mine refers to as 'all that goddamn light.'” -- Anne Lamott |
back to ...
Did you ever notice a shaft of light falling through a window pane or slanting through trees in
shady woods and find yourself watching tiny particles dance within it? Those little particles are
called motes. Some people call them 'dust motes' because they look like dust floating around.
Dust, pollen, flakes ... they are particles of things that are always in our air. Minuscule bits and
pieces of us and of our world. And even though we are so involved with them that we breathe
them in and out all the time, we do not see them until a focused beam of light slices through their
particular segment of the universe to illuminate them.
Motes are fascinating to behold. They look kind of like a photographic negative of stars in the
night sky, except for the fact that they are seen moving around constantly. Motes in a shaft of
sunlight evoke a certain sensibility.
Many the peaceful morning or afternoon we have spent, from childhood forward, reading in a
shaft of sunlight coming through a window, motes dancing, the beam seeming almost solid.
Many's the mote we've seen fly off a tome finally handled after having been left too long on the
shelf. Motes can settle, but it's easy to make them dance, too. Like imaginary fairy dust.
Motes are matter ... and they matter.
Once we are aware of motes, we have to acknowledge their fascinating movements. We have to
realize that they have existed, without our awareness, all along. We have to wonder where they
have come from, and how long they have traveled, and where next they will float ... or settle.
Our books are kind of like that ... filled with interesting thoughts that might otherwise go
unnoticed, even though they exist all around us. We like to think that these are books that might
not have found a publishing home elsewhere until we turned a beam of light on them to
illuminate these fascinating realizations, ideas, phrasings, characters, lives, events. Once seen,
such notions are no longer invisible ... they seem to take on a life of their own. Such literary
Motes, like their physical namesakes, co-exist with us. We share newly understood space with
them.
MotesBooks doesn't claim to be a large or powerful publishing house. We're contented being
small but significant ... finding fascinating ideas that might otherwise go unnoticed and bringing
them into a focused "light" so that you, too, can enjoy their dance.
And so, in the spirit of literary metaphor and the ancient tradition of allusion, MotesBooks are the
kind of well-written, intelligent, engaging reads that might otherwise have remained obscure
and, perhaps, unpublished -- the kind of literature you might not have known to be sorry you
missed ... until now.
shady woods and find yourself watching tiny particles dance within it? Those little particles are
called motes. Some people call them 'dust motes' because they look like dust floating around.
Dust, pollen, flakes ... they are particles of things that are always in our air. Minuscule bits and
pieces of us and of our world. And even though we are so involved with them that we breathe
them in and out all the time, we do not see them until a focused beam of light slices through their
particular segment of the universe to illuminate them.
Motes are fascinating to behold. They look kind of like a photographic negative of stars in the
night sky, except for the fact that they are seen moving around constantly. Motes in a shaft of
sunlight evoke a certain sensibility.
Many the peaceful morning or afternoon we have spent, from childhood forward, reading in a
shaft of sunlight coming through a window, motes dancing, the beam seeming almost solid.
Many's the mote we've seen fly off a tome finally handled after having been left too long on the
shelf. Motes can settle, but it's easy to make them dance, too. Like imaginary fairy dust.
Motes are matter ... and they matter.
Once we are aware of motes, we have to acknowledge their fascinating movements. We have to
realize that they have existed, without our awareness, all along. We have to wonder where they
have come from, and how long they have traveled, and where next they will float ... or settle.
Our books are kind of like that ... filled with interesting thoughts that might otherwise go
unnoticed, even though they exist all around us. We like to think that these are books that might
not have found a publishing home elsewhere until we turned a beam of light on them to
illuminate these fascinating realizations, ideas, phrasings, characters, lives, events. Once seen,
such notions are no longer invisible ... they seem to take on a life of their own. Such literary
Motes, like their physical namesakes, co-exist with us. We share newly understood space with
them.
MotesBooks doesn't claim to be a large or powerful publishing house. We're contented being
small but significant ... finding fascinating ideas that might otherwise go unnoticed and bringing
them into a focused "light" so that you, too, can enjoy their dance.
And so, in the spirit of literary metaphor and the ancient tradition of allusion, MotesBooks are the
kind of well-written, intelligent, engaging reads that might otherwise have remained obscure
and, perhaps, unpublished -- the kind of literature you might not have known to be sorry you
missed ... until now.
| MotesBooks publishes in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, USA Contact us: ask@MotesBooks.com Unsolicited manuscripts are not considered. We have a healthy queue of publishing projects in progress; however, when we open a submission period, it is during the months of January and February. Our next will be in 2014. However, even when a submission period is open, always query first. |
Motes Notes &
Motes Quotes ...
about our unusual name
& its significance
Motes Quotes ...
about our unusual name
& its significance
| fiction non-fiction memoir poetry |
the trees in narrow streams that showed dust motes and little bugs floating about. It seemed the world was holding its breath, as if there were no movement anywhere.” -- Silas House |
floor; it caught the auburn highlights in Phoebe's thin braids as she stood before a big wooden bin, scooping lentils, letting them cascade into jars.” -- Kim Edwards |
-- Jeff Mann |
| --EK Larken, publisher |
that makes seen what is behind the air (it is just dust, motes, Lucy says, there is nothing to see behind the air), the behind the air taking shape in loose-linked sparkles like it seems to Lil the Holy Ghost looks.” -- Ann Pancake |
