Cicadas Quotes

“I guess I felt attached to my weakness. My pain and suffering too. Summer light, the smell of a breeze, the sound of cicadas - if I like these things, why should I apologize?”
― Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

“The sidewalks were haunted by dust
ghosts all night as the furnace wind summoned them up,
swung them about, and gentled them down in a warm spice on
the lawns. Trees, shaken by the footsteps of late-night strol-
lers, sifted avalanches of dust. From midnight on, it seemed a
volcano beyond the town was showering red-hot ashes every-
where, crusting slumberless night watchmen and irritable
dogs. Each house was a yellow attic smoldering with spon-
taneous combustion at three in the morning.

Dawn, then, was a time where things changed element for
element. Air ran like hot spring waters nowhere, with no
sound. The lake was a quantity of steam very still and deep
over valleys of fish and sand held baking under its serene
vapors. Tar was poured licorice in the streets, red bricks were
brass and gold, roof tops were paved with bronze. The high-
tension wires were lightning held forever, blazing, a threat
above the unslept houses.
The cicadas sang louder and yet louder.
The sun did not rise, it overflowed.”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“It was August. The cicadas swarmed overhead, iridescent wings beating the air as they flew above the landscape, breathing fresh air for the first time in seventeen years. Each summer brought a new brood, erupting forth from the earth, like corpses rising on judgment day, a reminder of the never-ending cycle of life and decay.”
― Jesse Stryker, Ravaged by the Rancher

“She said something in Kiowa in a happy tone. My name is Ay-ti-Podle, the Cicada, whose song means there is a fruit ripening nearby. She gestured back toward the big bay saddle horse and tossed her hair back. It was as if she wanted to include Pasha in this newfound happiness.”
― Paulette Jiles, News of the World

“Cicadas," Poppy said. "This is the only place you'll see them in England. They're usually found only in the tropics. Only a male cicada makes that noise- it's said to be a mating song."
"How do you know he's not commenting on the weather?"
Sending him a provocative sideways glance, Poppy murmured, "Well, mating is rather a male preoccupation, isn't it?"
Harry smiled. "If there's a more interesting subject," he said, "I have yet to discover it.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Tempt Me at Twilight

“How do you fancy making some dark cherry ganache with me, and we can fill these little yuzu shells with that instead? They can be a temporary special: a macaron de saison." I scrape the offending basil mixture into the bin.
"Whatever you want." Her brightening eyes betray her.
"That's the enthusiasm I was looking for," I reply, smiling. "What shall we call them then? It has to be French."
We surrender to a thoughtful silence. Outside the cicadas are playing their noisy summer symphony. I imagine them boldly serenading one another from old tires, forgotten woodpiles, discarded plastic noodle bowls.
"Something about summer..." she mumbles.
After conferring with my worn, flour-dusted French-English dictionary, we agree on 'Brise d'Ete.”
― Hannah Tunnicliffe, The Color of Tea

“If locusts are ravenous sociopaths, cicadas are more like frat boys - clumsy, loud, and obsessed with sex.”
― Catherine Price, 101 Places Not to See Before You Die

“In late summer, when sprays of purple loosestrife, goldenrod, and ripening cranberries burst into color along the old road cutting through the Great Marsh of West Barnstable on Cape Cod, the air vibrated with the drumbeat of cicadas, the caws of seagulls and geese.”
― Nancy Rubin Stuart, The Muse of the Revolution: The Secret Pen of Mercy Otis Warren and the Founding of a Nation

“...to Junior's mind, there had always been cicadas. But sometime, long before he could remember, he'd been on his father's hip, looking up into a tree at a cicada for the first time---for the very first time; that buzzing saw had always been there, but to know where it came from---to see the frantic flutter of cicada wings---to know the why, the how of something that is---What's that buzzing noise out there?”
― Allie Ray, Children of Promise

“The electric hum of cicadas, which was a low drone near the road, become an overwhelming vibration in the neck-deep brush that had taken back what was once a long driveway and front yard. By the time I reached the structure, beads of sweat were rolling off my lips and the tip of my nose, and my skin was covered in the slick of Louisiana humidity.”
― Mike Correll, Abandoned Sulphur, Louisiana

“But now I wanted nothing more than to be the girl so free that fireflies shined as her night-lights, cicadas sang her symphonies, and the forest stood as her cathedral.”
― Meagan Church, The Last Carolina Girl