A Fine Mess Quotes & Sayings

I especially love all the instruments of art: inks, pens, paintbrushes, watercolors and oils, fine papers and canvases, and although I love to mess around with these tools and objects, I have minimal artistic skills. — Sharon Creech

You'll do fine if you have any strength at all, but listen to your Green angel and give yourself more exit points. You're in for some rude awakenings in battle, and young souls often retreat under fire. You'll end up trying to find a shortcut back home and that always makes a big mess. — Dawn Jayne

There is still a kind of unique loneliness to child rearing for women. We so often do it in isolation. Add to the fact that in our competitive, perfectionist culture, in which the price woman are required to pay for freedom still seems to be martyrdom, almost everyone lies about motherhood. Part of that lying is loyalty - I can't let on that my kid is the only one on the playground who can't read or play the piano - and part of it is self-protection, since we've made hyper-motherhood a measure of female success. The preferred answer to the question "How are you?" is always "Fine," and the answer to the question "How are the kids?" is supposed to be "Great!" That's true even if the accurate answers would be "terrible" and "a mess." I think it produces its own kind of desperation, especially for women, who yearn to be emotionally open. — Anna Quindlen

He quite liked the wizards. They didn't commit crimes. Not Vimes's type of crimes, anyway. The occult wasn't Vimes's beat. The wizards might well mess up the very fabric of time and space but they didn't lead to paperwork, and that was fine by Vimes. There — Terry Pratchett

That is one fine female, true?" V said.
There was a low, affirmative grumble.
"And someone you do not want to mess with," the brother continued. "Man, you should have seen her when we came into that barn. She was standing over his body, ready to take the cop and me on with her bare hands if she had to. Like Wrath was her cub, you feel me?"
"Wonder if she has a sister?" Rhage asked.
Phury laughed. "You wouldn't know what to do with yourself if you ran into a female of worth."
"This coming from you, Celibate?" But then Hollywood rubbed the stubble on his chin, as if considering the ways of the universe. "Ah, hell, Phury, you're probably right. Still, a male can dream."
"He sure can," V murmured. — J.R. Ward

Like a button on a shirt buttoned wrong, every attempt to correct things led to yet another fine
not to say elegant
mess. — Haruki Murakami

What kind of performance would your car deliver if every morning before you left for work you scooped up a double handful of dirt and put it into your crankcase? That fine engine would soon be a mess, unable to do what you want it to do. — David J. Schwartz

It may sound like a mess, but sometimes mess can be okay, mess can be fine. Sometimes mess is just another word for living your life as real you, not someone else's version of what they think you should be. — Terence Blacker

Another fine mess you've gotten me into. — Stan Laurel

Strong feelings are fine; it's the overreactions that mess us up. — Albert Ellis

The latter was considered a good fellow and a fine leader, until a year later, when he disappeared with a mess fund of eleven hundred dollars and, like so many leaders, proved exceedingly difficult to follow. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Softly! Softly! I want none but the judges to hear me. The Jews have already gotten me into a fine mess, as they have many other gentleman. I have no desire to furnish further grist for their mills. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The people we love get under our skin and crawl through our veins and fine their way into our heart. They choke up our blood flow and mess up our breathing and tangle themselves through our bodies like wire. Like razors, like fire.
We remember them even when we don't remember them.
We try and forget, but it's pointless.
Even amnesia. Even comas and brain damage and traumatic shock.
Whatever makes us not remember, we still remember.
Our minds flounder like fish but our bodies...
Our bodies remember. — Katrina Leno

The world is a very, very fine place. It wasn't a mess. It didn't need to be conquered and ruled by man. In other words, the world doesn't belong to man - but it does need man to belong to it. Some creature had to be the first to go through this ... Some creature had to find the way, and if that happened, then ... there was no limit to what could happen here. In other words, man does have a place in the world, but it's not his place to rule ... Man's place is to be the first. Man's place is to be the first without being the last. Man's place is to figure out how it's possible to do that - and then to make room for all the rest who are capable of becoming what he's become. And maybe, when the time comes, it's man's place to be the teacher of all the rest who are capable of becoming what he's become. Not the only teacher, not the ultimate teacher. Maybe only the first teacher, the kindergarten teacher - but even that wouldn't be too shabby. — Daniel Quinn

Especially politics; that was the best trough to wallow in. You could get your snout, eyes, head and front hooves in that mess of muck and have a fine old time splashing around. It was an inexhaustible subject to devour, a swill with a little of everything in it, because everything, according to Judd, was political. — Clive Barker

Ewan McGregor stars as Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, again doing a fine Alec Guinness impersonation but otherwise seeming lost and alone in the galaxy as the one actor attempting to give a real performance in this mess. — Stephanie Zacharek

There was a certain beauty in the chaos, a certain order in the mess. — Sarah Fine

I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men's shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast "bloody wars and dread diseases" because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that's how it's always been, in the military. — Lee Child

To sit in this awful mess and maybe smoke some dope and watch some innocuous shit on a dumb glass tube and feel fine about it and know there's really nothing you have to do, ever, but feel your warm friend's silent content. You don't feel guilty about not fighting a war or carrying signs to protest it either. We've just mastered the life of doing nothing, which when you think about it, may be the hardest thing of all to do. — Jim Carroll

Nine-Line Triolet
Here's a fine mess we got ourselves into,
My angel, my darling, true love of my heart
Etcetera. Must stop it but I can't begin to.
Here's a fine mess we got ourselves into -
Both in spin with nowhere to spin to,
Bound by the old rules in life and in art.
Here's a fine mess we got ourselves into,
(I'll curse every rule in the book as we part)
My angel, my darling, true love of my heart. — Wendy Cope

I'm fine," Nick snarled, and shut his eyes. "Mae, he is not fine!" Jamie almost yelled, and Mae scrambled to her feet.
"Oh God," she said. "Alan's down. Alan's down.
I can't see him. I think he could be
"
"What?" Nick rasped.
Mae looked down and saw Nick struggle up on one knee. He glared up at her and then got painfully to his feet, a knife in either hand. There was blood running down his arm, his shoulder was a mess, and his mouth was set in a grim, determined line. "Where's Alan?"
"Oh, Alan's fine," Mae said, nodding to where Alan was throwing himself at the magicians again. Sin was beside him now, and the rest of the Goblin Market was behind her. "I was lying so you'd get up. Sorry about that."
Nick laughed, spun, and stabbed something. "Don't be sorry. I've just decided that lying's kind of sexy. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Living in the middle of beauty like this, we've no call to have puny ideas about God. Why do you suppose His world is so fancy-fine, so full of wonderment if He doesn't want everything to be good and perfect and right and healthy? But we can spoil His good work. When we mess things up, then we shouldn't blame Him and try to make ourselves feel better by contending that it's what He wanted. — Catherine Marshall

Wait," I said. "so you're saying that you proposed to me because I'm a mess and I'm a person and because we need each other, while Rebecca was - something else? I get it, I follow you, but I'm also thinking, is the bullshit getting a little deep in here?"
"Yes, it is. You've caught me. And so fine, I will come clean, and I will tell you the absolutely true and naked reason why I want to marry you and only you, and not Rebecca."
"Why?"
"Because when I'm with you, I'm the pretty one. — Paul Rudnick

If you screwed up and said out loud that you thought something scary was happening, grown-ups would say, "Oh, for Pete's sake - what an imagination." This is the best way to gaslight children. It keeps them under control, because if the parent is a mess, the children are doomed. It's best for the child to think he or she is the problem. Then there is toxic hope, which is better than no hope at all, that if the child can do better or need less, the parents will be fine. — Anne Lamott

People are always saying that Hollywood messes up kids. I'm like, 'No, families mess up kids!' I grew up in Hollywood, and I'm perfectly fine. If my children want to go into the entertainment business, I won't stop them, as long as they're passionate about it. — Tori Spelling

People go through life blindly, ignoring death like revellers at a party feasting on fine foods. They ignore that later they will have to go to the toilet, so they do not bother to find out where there is one. When nature finally calls, they have no idea where to go and are in a mess. — Ajahn Chah

The woman stared at the ruined body. Blood dripped from her arm. A fine spray of red covered her face
must've been cast off when she slammed down the cans. She wiped her face with her left forearm and kicked the stalker's corpse with her sneakered foot. Don't mess with Texas. — Ilona Andrews