Insects Quotes

“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“The poets say some moths will do anything out of love for a flame
[...]
The moth takes off again, and we both step back, because he's circling at eye level now and seems to have lost rudder control, smacking into the wall on each round. He circles lower and lower, spinning around the candle in tighter revolutions, like a soap sud over an open drain. A few times he seems to touch the flame, but dances off unhurt.
Then he ignites like a ball of hair, curling into an oily puff of fumes with a hiss. The candle flame flickers and dims for a moment, then burns as bright as before.
Moth Smoke Lingers.”
― Mohsin Hamid, Moth Smoke

“Hip," I murmur, remembering last night, how I lost it completely in a stall at Nell's---my mouth foaming, all I could think about were insects, lots of insects, and running at pigeons, foaming at the mouth and running at pigeons.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

“A stray fact: insects are not drawn to candle flames, they are drawn to the light on the far side of the flame, they go into the flame and sizzle to nothingness because they're so eager to get to the light on the other side.”
― Michael Cunningham, By Nightfall

“I'll stop eating steak when you stop killing spiders." Absurdity: comparing cows to spiders. Arachnids are pure evil. They're like a cigarette manufacturer or a terrorist. They're organized religion on eight legs.”
― Davey Havok, Pop Kids

“I've just been bitten on the neck by a vampire... mosquito. Does that mean that when the night comes I will rise and be annoying?”
― Vera Nazarian

“And all the insects ceased in honor of the moon.”
― Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

“We’re organisms; we’re conceived, we’re born, we live, we die, and we decay. But as we decay we feed the world of the living: plants and bugs and bacteria.”
― Bill Bass, Death's Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales

“In summer the empire of insects spreads.”
― Adam Zagajewski

“It is amazing what a lot of insect life goes on under your nose when you have got it an inch from the earth. I suppose it goes on in any case, but if you are proceeding on your stomach, dragging your body along by your fingernails, entomology presents itself very forcibly as a thoroughly justified science.”
― Beryl Markham, West with the Night

“Despite its dark veins, the transparency of dragonfly’s wings assures me of a pure, innocent world”
― Munia Khan

“Insects all business all the time.”
― David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

“Some big insect flew in and began walking on the table. I don’t know what insect it was, but it was brown, shining, and rich in structures. In the city the big universal chain of insects gets thin, but where there’s a leaf or two it’ll be represented.”
― Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

“Insect life was so loud that when you parked the car and got out it sounded as if you had suddenly tuned into a radio frequency from another planet.”
― David Samuels

“Life is but a flash of time, a momentous flicker-- in the life that we know and space we live in on earth.© VW”
― Virginia Wright, Buzzzzzzzz...: What Honeybees Do

“Organic foods are richer in nutrients. This means they improve satiety and naturally help regulate body weight…Plants produce antioxidants to protect themselves from pests like insects and to withstand harsh weather. When they’re treated with chemicals such as pesticides, they don’t need to produce as much of their own natural defenses, so the levels are lower.” (p.203)”
― Cynthia Sass, Cinch! Conquer Cravings, Drop Pounds, and Lose Inches

“Be respectful of the small insects, birds and animal people who accompany you.
Ask their forgiveness for the harm we humans have brought down upon them.”
― Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems

“Insects have always spoiled my life.”
― Françoise Hardy

“Just listen to this: take two fruit flies and leave them in ideal living conditions for a year - equivalent to 25 generations for fruit flies. Every fruit fly mother lays 100 eggs. Let's say that they all grow to adulthood, and that half of them are females who mate and lay another 100 eggs. Once the year is over, you will be left with the 25th generation and that alone will amount to almost a tredecillion sweet little redeyed fruit flies. A tredecillion is the figure 1 followed by 42 zeros. To make this figure more meaningful, imagine packing these flies together densely, as densely as possible, into one enormous fruit fly ball. You'd end up with a sphere whose diameter exceeded the distance between the Earth to the Sun! It's a good thing these insects have so many enemies, because otherwise there wouldn't be any room left on Earth for us humans.”
― Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson, Buzz, Sting, Bite: Why We Need Insects

“There are more than 1,000 different species of bats in the world, and many of them can be seen with relative ease if you know the environments they like. Bat houses can also be installed in one’s yard to attract some leathery-winged friends, which are great at keeping insects to a minimum.”
― Aesop Rock

“Some 200 miles south of Gadau, where the climate is less severe, morsitans still has to vacate log sites in the dry season and breeds in the riverine vegetation of stream-beds together with tachinoides and palpalis. Still farther south, and approaching the forest belt, morsitans breeds under small, deciduous, umbrella-like Gardenia erubescens bushes in the savannah, until the grass fires destroy the leaves when the female larviposits under small thickets of evergreen Combretrum micranthum in eroded, waterless gullies.
This seasonal shifting of the breeding grounds is not confined to West Africa. Recently Glasgow found that in a hot part of Tanzania morsitans breeds under logs in the wet season, but after the fires prefers rot holes in trees, returning to logs when the rains break. Burtt has found that pallipides breeds in the early dry season in deciduous thickets, but moves after the fires to evergreen thicket along the main watercourse. The wet-season site defeated him.
When investigating a strange area, forget past experience; instead, consider the climatic conditions prevailing and the vegetation available, and remember the basic principles. The tsetse is a most adaptable insect: pupae have even been found on the floors of native huts.”
― T. A. M Nash

“Eat bees and you will have a stinging appetite.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Here, Lena, tie this cotton kerchief 'round yo' mouth when we out walkin' in the woods...so yo' breath don't draw those 'squitas and bitin' flies.”
― Tina McElroy Ansa, The Hand I Fan With

“The steps, also brick, were lined on both sides with potted plants. Grandma grew lemongrass, citronella, and catnip in those pots to keep mosquitoes and other annoying bugs away. And it worked. Their porch had been a source of bite-free enjoyment for my whole childhood.”
― Rhonda McKnight, Bitter and Sweet

“Another instance when I see sparkles is when I do a kind deed for an insect or animal. I often put beetles, millipedes, spiders and the like outside when I find them inside, so I do not have to kill them. I use a piece of paper or in the dustpan. I have done this for years, but since I started seeing the fairy sparkles with my actual eyesight, I have also seen animal and insect fairy sparkles, often in the half-light at dusk.
They sometimes light-up when I put them outside, just a single flash of brightly coloured sparkle and then it goes away just as suddenly. I then have a sense that it really was the insect fairy, thanking me for saving its insect’s life. A little sparkle of insect appreciation!”
― Sarah Rajkotwala, Fairy Sparkles

“Great flocks of raindrops swelled and folded, and fell upon her like insects to a feast. She hadn’t thought to bring a raincoat; she was not well-prepared, and she hated that. Her mind seemed as stirred, dark and brooding, as the coffee-colored clouds.”
― J.R. Tompkins, The Gardens of Marguerite

“No, certainly not. There I should find people who would try to force me to understand things of which I would prefer to remain ignorant, and insist on trying to explain a mystery that is beyond their grasp. Come! I want to keep my illusions about insects; it is enough to have lost those I had about human beings.”
― Alexander Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Then she saw them both as little girls with wicker baskets in hand as they gathered treasures from Ivy's garden. Beautiful beetles with iridescent green wings clung to Brigid's black sundress, and ghostly white cabbage moths fluttered around her head. A ladybug landed on Brigid's nose and she passed it to Phoebe. "Make a wish," she told her sister.”
― Kirsten Miller, The Women of Wild Hill

“If all insects on Earth disappeared, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish.”
― Jonas Salk

“Every miracle has a cleanup crew”
― Abyssino