Symbolic Act Quotes

When Jesus wanted to explain to his disciples what his death was all about, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal.

There is a communication of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine is drunk. And that is my answer when people ask me: Why do you write about hunger, and not wars or love.

Gardening is not a rational act. What matters is the immersion of the hands in the earth, that ancient ceremony of which the Pope kissingthe tarmac is merely a pallid vestigial remnant.

He had divested himself of the little cloaked godlet and his other amulets in a place where they would not be found in his lifetime and he'd taken for talisman the simple human heart within him.

The priest has just baptized you a Christian with water; and I baptize you a Frenchman, daring child, with a dewdrop of champagne on your lips.

When the spring comes, we will manure the plains of Kosova with the bones of Serbs, for we Albanians have suffered too much to forget

The sharing of food is like breaking bread, it's very symbolic.

We like to put sacred texts in flowing waters, so I rolled it up, tied it to a piece of wood, placed a dandelion on top, and floated it in the stream which flows into the Swat River. Surely God would find it there.

I shall also take you forth and carve our names together in a yew tree, haloed with stars.

Deathlessness should be arrived at in a... haphazard fashion. Loving fame as much as any man, we shall carve our initials in the shell of a tortoise and turn him loose in a peat bog.

When I was nine, I wrote a vow of celibacy on a piece of paper and ate it.

I'll cover you in flowers someday, Julie-girl.

I thought it was a wonderfully conceptual act actually, to fire a replica pistol at a figurehead - the guy could have been working for Andy Warhol!

In ancient African cultures, a young man was not considered a full member of the tribe, an elder, a man. He couldn't marry and he couldn't own land until he had killed a lion. It was symbolic.

I got his initials tattooed on the back of my neck, you know, since we both now have the same initials.

A flower, when offered in the bud, is no vain sacrifice.

The mustache represented the old John; I didn't want to be that guy anymore, so I shaved it off. It was ritualistic in a way.

Sacrifice is nothing other than the production of sacred things.

After that, whenever I drove past Mangakahia, I would empty my ashtray - and I was a heavy smoker in those days - on the road outside the hall.

I may buy the Alamo and give it back to Mexico.

Soon after the inauguration, the Obamas gave Big Food a case of heartburn when, in the spring of 2009, Michelle Obama planted an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn, a symbolic but nevertheless powerful act that thrilled the food movement.

I want to lay my kill at your feet.

Burning in effigy. Kissing the picture of one's beloved... it aims at nothing at all; we just behave this way and then we feel satisfied.

It is an old custom of these people to pick up a stone and toss it on the pile. Perhaps it is a symbolical lightening of the load they carry, perhaps a small offering to the gods of the trails.

I took my waitress uniform. Seemed fitting.