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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

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

“I know that you are a mere flea! I know that you need only be squashed to be done away with! I know that I have fought this same battle a thousand thousand times before...but, perhaps this time I can crush you like the insect you are!”
― Marv Wolfman, Fantastic Four: In Search of Galactus

“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

“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

“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

“She is a Weyward. And she carries another Weyward inside her. She gathers herself together, every cell blazing, and thinks: Now.
The window breaks, a waterfall of sharp sounds. The room grows dark with feathered bodies, shooting through the broken window, the fireplace.
Beaks, claws, and eyes flashing. Feathers brushing her skin. Simon yells, his hand loosening on her throat.
She sucks in the air, falling to her knees, one hand cradling her stomach. Something touches her foot, and she sees a dark tide of spiders spreading across the floor. Birds continue to stream through the window. Insects, too: the azure flicker of damselflies, moths with orange eyes on their wings. Tiny, gossamer mayflies. Bees in a ferocious golden swarm.
She feels something sharp on her shoulder, its claws digging into her flesh. She looks up at blue-black feathers, streaked with white. A crow. The same crow that has watched over her since she arrived. Tears fill her eyes, and she knows in that moment that she is not alone in the cottage. Altha is there, in the spiders that dance across the floor. Violet is there, in the mayflies that glisten and undulate like some great silver snake. And all the other Weyward women, from the first of the line, are there, too.
They have always been with her, and always will be.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“She feels a tickling sensation against her hand, different from the silky touch of soil. Looking down, she sees the pink glimmer of a worm---and then another, and another. As she watches, spellbound, other insects emerge from the earth, glowing like jewels in the summer sun. The copper glint of a beetle's shell. The pale, segmented bodies of larvae. There is a buzzing in her ears, and she's not sure if it's from the roar of her pulse or the bees that have begun to circle nearby.
They're getting closer. It's as if something---as if Kate---is drawing them. A beetle climbs her wrist, a worm brushes against the bare skin of her knee, a bee lands on her earlobe.”
― Emilia Hart, Weyward

“बहन को हवाई अड्डे बुरे लगते थे इसलिए बार बार वो खुद को हवाई अड्डों में ही पाती । वहाँ उसे लगता वो कीड़े के बराबर का कीड़ा है, किसी ज़बरदस्त प्रयोगशाला में बंद। नकली बत्तियाँ, नकली गर्मियाँ, नकली धींगाधांगी जहाँ है। उसी की तरह के कीड़े हर दिशा में भरे हुए हैं, सब बेहद व्यस्त और बदहवास, निकास का रास्ता ढूँढने को चारों ओर भागते हुए। सब को चकाचक पहनावा पहनाया है और सब को एक जैसी पहियों वाली अटैचियों से अटका दिया है, जो उन्हें खींचती ले चल रही हैं। और इस जगर-मगर रौशनी में उनकी हर ज़रा सी हरकत पे नज़र है, कैमरे में क़ैद हो रहे सबके ब्योरे हैं।”
― Geetanjali Shree, Tomb of Sand

“6. Embrace the midge
Everyone has a theory on what attracts the Highland midge to certain people. What can be agreed upon is that these miniscule biting insects are the greatest hindrance to enjoying life outdoors in Scotland.
The midge is most common in any location where water meets land. They prefer acidic soils, peaty and rich in nutrients, and dance over rushes and reeds in a fast-paced mating ritual.
Science suggests some people are more attractive to the midge because of the taste of their blood. Researchers deduced that the blood of subjects with the fewest numbers of bites contained high levels of ketone, a chemical produced when the body burns fat.
Personally, I think it's worth running the gamut of midges to sip at least one hot drink on the patio.”
― Gabriella Bennett, The Art of Coorie: How to Live Happy the Scottish Way

“All the knowledge and science that human beings have, it only helps humans. Get it? No living thing in the world besides humans is happy that humans exist.”
― Kōtarō Isaka, Three Assassins

“They seemed to skitter past her like living creatures. Their movements were purposeful, organic, just the slightest bit unsteady. It was as if instead of rubber tires, each wheel comprised thousands of tiny insectoid limbs, all black and chitinous with cruel hooked claws for feet.”
― Cliff Jones Jr., Dreck

“Laila could picture the flow of traffic all around her. From above, she watched the cars move along in streams like all those ants on her kitchen floor. What had they been looking for anyway? A crumb here, a speck of sugar there? The vast stockpiles of food in the pantry and fridge remained untouched. For that matter, what kept all these cars returning to the city day after day? A little money, a little entertainment? Surface operations like Livetrac kept the ants fighting over crumbs while the obscene fortunes of a shadowy elite were counted not in dollars but in lives.”
― Cliff Jones Jr., Dreck

“Moths have the animal world’s most exceptional sense of smell and can capture separate scent molecules with their antennae.”
― Johan Eklöf, The Darkness Manifesto: On Light Pollution, Night Ecology, and the Ancient Rhythms that Sustain Life

“Moths have shown themselves to be at least as important pollinators as the diurnal bees and they even visit more kinds of flowers than bees do.”
― Johan Eklöf, The Darkness Manifesto: On Light Pollution, Night Ecology, and the Ancient Rhythms that Sustain Life

“No one knows exactly how many insect species there are in the world. It’s a question of millions and new ones are constantly being discovered. In Sweden and Norway alone, one-thousand-six-hundred completely new species of insect have been identified in the last decade. In the tropics, every insect eventually leads to new discoveries and many species presumably die out before we even have time to meet them.”
― Johan Eklöf

“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

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