Lilac Quotes

“The lilac branches are bowed under the weight of the flowers: blooming is hard, and the most important thing is - to bloom. (“A Story About The Most Important Thing”)”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin

“And stay, my dear
stay...
forever, as my quiet song,
in my lilac dawn.”
― Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos

“Holding up an oil-paper umbrella,
I loiter aimlessly in the long, long
And lonely rainy alley,
I hope to encounter
A lilac-like girl
Nursing her resentment
A lilac-like color she has
A lilac-like fragrance,
A lilac-like sadness,
Melancholy in the rain,
Sorrowful and uncertain;
She loiters aimlessly in this lonely rainy alley
Holding up an oil-paper umbrella
Just like me
And just like me
Walks silently,
Apathetic, sad and disconsolate
Silently she moves closer
Moves closer and casts
A sigh-like glance
She glides by
Like a dream
Hazy and confused like a dream
As in a dream she glides past
Like a lilac spray,
This girl glides past beside me;
She silently moves away, moves away
Up to the broken-down bamboo fence,
To the end of the rainy alley.
In the rains sad song,
Her color vanishes
Her fragrance diffuses,
Even her
Sigh-like glance,
Lilac-like discontent
Vanish.
Holding up an oil-paper umbrella, alone
Aimlessly walking in the long, long
And lonely rainy alley,
I wish for
A lilac-like girl
Nursing her resentment glide by.”
― Dai Wangshu

“My mom’s smile is genuine,
A lilac beaming
In the presence of her Sun.

Indentions in the sand prove
Time’s linear progression,

Her hair yet unblighted,
Carrying midnight’s consistency.

Clear tracks fading as the
Movement slips further
In the past.

Cheekbones
High, soft,
In summer’s hue,
Hopeful.

Each step’s unknown impact,
A future looking back.

My father’s strength:
One whose
Life is in his arms.

Squinting past the camera,
He rests upon a rock
Like caramel corn half eaten,

Just to the left
Of man-made concrete convention

Daylight’s eraser
Removing color to his right.

Dustin sits
In my father’s lap,
Open mouth of a drooling
Big mouth bass;

Muscle tone
Of a well exercised
Jelly fish,

He looks at me
Half aware;

His wheelchair
Perched at the edge
Of parking lot gravel grafted
Like a scar on nature’s beach,

Opening to the ironic splendor
Of a bitter tasting lake.

I took the picture.

Age 11.

Capturing the pinnacle arc
Of a son
To my lilac
Who
Outlived him and weeps,

Still.

Their sky has staple holes –

Maybe that’s how the
Light
Leaked out.”
― Darcy Leech, From My Mother

“I miss the floral scent of her hair, the perfume that barely masked the underlying truth of what she was. She was lost time. She smelled of dusty libraries and unwound clocks, salted sand and rain riding on the first rays of dawn. And lilac. When she held me to her, lilac was what I smelled first.”
― Courtney M. Privett, Rain Falls on Malora

“We are ghosts in Victorian gowns,
lilac apparitions with parasols…”
― Simone Muench

“Spring as always was in full bloom, the breeze laden with lilac, the brush flanking the path rustling with life.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. My cold lips fumble the words.

“Don’t be.” His voice is a low rumble against me, the sound carrying through my bones, clearer than any of the voices I’ve been hearing. “You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”
― Amie Kaufman, These Broken Stars

“In the Balkans the peasants say that if you long for faraway countries and leave your own land and home to find them, you are born under A LILAC-BLEEDING STAR.”
― Lesley Blanch, Under a Lilac-Bleeding Star

“We were in the woods, and not a parent or a friend on earth knew where. At this moment, we were untraceable, this notion an odd pleasure. A patch of fallen leaves glowed in a pool of golden sun, and the dim forest air smelled sweet, of young lilac, invisible sage.”
― Aspen Matis, Your Blue Is Not My Blue: A Missing Person Memoir

“Power smelling of lilac and cedar and the first bits of green, swirled around me.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“Promise me that no matter what you hear, you won’t go off on your own to investigate. I want your word.” There’s a command in his voice, soft as it is.”
― Amie Kaufman, These Broken Stars

“The strong floral fragrance was sickening, suffocating, and threatened to snuff out any lingering remainder of fragile lilac—of the mother she’d loved so, so much.”
― Katherine McIntyre, A Reflection of Ice

“A scholarly acquaintance in Samarkand had sent my colleague the finest and rarest tulips, as perfectly fresh as though they had just been cut from the stem. He was principally concerned with the microscopic study of their internal organs, especially of the pollen. He therefore dissected a beautiful lilac and yellow tulip, and discovered inside the calyx a tiny grain of alien matter which caught his attention in a singular fashion. How great was his astonishment when, on applying the magnifying glass, he clearly perceived that the tiny grain was none other than Princess Gamaheh, who was reposing on the pollen of the tulip's calyx and seemed to be sleeping calmly and peacefully.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, The Golden Pot and Other Tales

“Ghosts with periscope eyes,
each a mausoleum of violet lilac sent to earth in
another form.”
― Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Ghost Tracks

“Lucien snorted but didn't say anything else as we passed beneath a flowering lilac, its purple cones drooping low enough to graze my cheek like cool, velvety fingers. The sweet, crisp scent lingered in my nose even as we rode on.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“She doesn’t ask what broke me.
She just shows up
A mug of coffee in one hand,
a wilted orchid in the other.
The purple matches the bruise of the sky,
sun bleeding out behind the hills.
We sit with silence between us.
She lets mine grow wild.
Pours warmth into it without stirring.
When I finally say “it still hurts,”
she doesn’t say it’ll stop.
She just shifts closer,
like grief is a door she knows how to hold open
without letting anything spill.
The orchid rests between us on the table.
One petal falls.
She catches it.
Says, “even the softest things
learn how to let go.”
And I believe her.”
― Maimoona Abidi, A Shelf of Things I Never Said

“The oblong, one-layer cake was coated in powder-pink frosting. Around the sides of the cake the pink was decorated with white frills resembling lace. Both the top left corner and the bottom right corner of the upper surface were adorned with lilac roses and white rosebuds tipped with strawberry pink. And across the center of the cake, starting at the bottom corner on the left and sloping up towards the top corner on the right, was the baby's name in lilac cursive script: "Perfect.”
― Gaile Parkin, Baking Cakes in Kigali

“Remember that ladylike behaviour of yours?” I call out, letting her hear the smile in my voice. “This is the time for it. No pushing, shoving, screaming, or—“

I don’t get any further. She’s heard the shift in my voice and crossed the hallway in a heartbeat. She wastes only a moment in gaping, then shoves past me to dash across the pile of clothes, laughing.

“Tarver, Tarver. There are—can you see them all?” She’s running the flashlight over the offerings, revealing swaths of fabric of every colour.

I’ve got my mouth half open to reply when she starts unzipping the mechanic’s suit, and then my mouth falls the rest of the way open by itself. It’s dark inside the room, but I catch a quick glimpse of pale skin beneath the remnants of her dress before I remember myself, and decide to take a good, hard look at my boots. To judge by the sounds over on the other side of the room, she’s forgotten I exist. The mechanic’s suit must have been really uncomfortable, even wearing it over her dress, if she’s that eager to get it off while I’m standing here.

“There’s dresses,” she whispers, and I catch a movement in my peripheral vision. Oh, God, come on. It’s the mechanic’s suit and the ruined green dress being kicked across the floor away from her. So what does that mean she’s wearing right now? She didn’t actually say I couldn’t look.

“Don’t look,” she cautions me, as though she just read my mind. Dammit.”
― Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner

“My heart threatening to slam its way out past my rib cage, I put my head down on my knees and focus on my breathing. Anything but the thought of what waits for me outside, the dead eyes and bloated corpses.

One. Oh, God. Two. Three. Four. Something snapped when I fell on that body. I broke something in it. It was like a wet branch. No. No. Five. Six. Seven. He would have despised me for running. Eight. What if one of those bodies was Anna’s? Oh, God. No. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Pull yourself together, Miss LaRoux. Twelve. You’re no use to anybody cowering in a broom cupboard. Thirteen. Fourteen. Don’t sell yourself short. I don’t know many soldiers who’d have done better. Fifteen.”
― Amie Kaufman & Meagan Spooner, These Broken Stars

“California wild lilac: A flowering native California plant in the buckthorn family whose cones of delicate blossoms emit an intense, boiling-honey scent that recalls first love”
― Meg Donohue, The Memory Gardener