All Played Out Quotes & Sayings

He was ever conscious of his obligation to play well. Late in his career, when his legs were bothering him and the Yankees had a comfortable lead in a pennant race, a friend of his, columnist Jimmy Cannon, asked him why he played so hard - the games, after all, no longer meant so much. "Because there might be somebody out there who's never seen me play before," he answered. — David Halberstam

I learned everything by ear and played all the different instruments. So then I was able to find a guitar. That was, like, in the seventh grade. And then I didn't know how to put my fingers on all the different strings, so I had to figure out how to do it upside down and backwards, and I still play that way today. — Dick Dale

I've done all kinds of cool things as an actor - I've jumped out of helicopters and done some daring stunts and played baseball in a professional stadium, but none of it means anything compared to being somebody's daddy. — Chris Pratt

We hung out on the streets, played stickball, and did all of the things that other kids did. — Bob Cousy

I played football; I was a running back, and I took a hit, and I had a hairline fracture in my leg which no one spotted, and I was playing basketball all winter and it got worse. And then I was long jumping, about 20 feet, and I landed one time and there was this big crack, and all the bones were jutting out of my leg. — Nick McDonell

I envy Johnny and at the same time I get sore as hell watching him destroy himself, misusing his gifts, and the stupid accumulation of nonsense the pressure of his life requires. I think that if Johnny could straighten out his life, not even sacrificing heroin, if he could pilot that plane better, maybe he'd end up worse, maybe go crazy altogether, or die, but not without having played it to the depth, what he's looking for in those sad a posteriori monlogues, in his retelling of great, fascinating experiences which, however, stop right there, in the middle of the road. And all this I back up with my own cowardice, and maybe basically I want Johnny to wind up all at once like a nova that explodes into a thousand pieces and turns astronomers into idiots for a whole week, and then one can go off to sleep and tomorrow is another day. — Julio Cortazar

When I was a kid, I played sports a lot. My mom and dad were divorced, but I hung out in the neighborhood a lot, and it was all about sports. I would be out all day on the sand lot or on the hockey rink. My dad would take me to baseball games, but he worked so hard, and he would always fall asleep. — Alex Gibney

Jem's knees gave out, and he sank to the trunk at the foot of his bed, still playing. He played Will breathing the name Cecily, and he played himself watching the glint of his own ring on Tessa's hand on the train from York, knowing it was all a charade, knowing, too, that he wished that it wasn't. He played the sorrow in Tessa's eyes when she had come into the music room after Will had told her she would never have children. Unforgivable, that, what a thing to do, and yet Jem had forgiven him. Love was forgiveness, he had always believed that, and the things that Will did, he did out of some bottomless well of pain. Jem did not know the source of that pain, but he knew it existed and was real, knew it as he knew of the inevitability of his own death, knew it as he knew that he had fallen in love with Tessa Gray and that there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it. — Cassandra Clare

Bob and Maria's kids, now grown and in high school and college, each have a quiet dignity and confidence. They also have an informal charm. [...] It is obvious they'd played the roles in the story their family was living, the roles of foreign dignitaries, traveling with their parents on the important assignment of asking world leaders what they hope in. Their STORY had given them their CHARACTER.

I only say this about the children because I used to believe charming people were charming because they were charming, or confident people were confident because they were confident. But all of this is, of course, circular. The truth is, we are all living out the character of the roles we have played in our stories. — Donald Miller

I felt suffocated. And alone. More alone than ever. Every year, I ostentatiously crossed out of my address book any friend who'd made a racist remark, neglected those whose only ambition was a new car and a Club Med vacation, and forgot all those who played the Lottery. I loved fishing and silence. Walking the hills. Drinking cold Cassis, Lagavulin, or Oban late into the night. I didn't talk much. Had opinions about everything. Life and death. Good and evil. I was a film buff. Loved music. I'd stopped reading contemporary novels. More than anything, I loathed half-hearted, spineless people. — Jean-Claude Izzo

One particular game sticks in my mind: in March 2007 we went to Middlesbrough during a three-month period when we had the Swedish striker, Henrik Larsson, on loan from Helsingborgs. I could not have asked more from him when, under real pressure, he abandoned his attacking position and fell back into midfield just to help dig out the result. When Henrik appeared in the dressing room at the end of the game, all the players and staff stood up and spontaneously broke into applause for the immense effort he had made in his unaccustomed role. At the end of the season we requested an extra Premier League winners' medal for Henrik, even though he had not played the ten games that at the time were required to obtain the award. — Alex Ferguson

Autobiographia Literaria"
When I was a child
I played by myself in a
corner of the schoolyard
all alone.
I hated dolls and I
hated games, animals were
not friendly and birds
flew away.
If anyone was looking
for me I hid behind a
tree and cried out "I am
an orphan."
And here I am, the
center of all beauty!
writing these poems!
Imagine! — Frank O'Hara

Country music in the mid-'90s was a big influence on my career, and I played all the songs that are referenced in '94' back in my club days. Joe Diffie was rocking a sick mullet, and he was hotter than ever ... just putting out monster hit after monster hit. It totally takes me back to those days, and it makes me smile every time I hear it. — Jason Aldean

Every milestone in the history of the company, even when forecast with heaps of hoopla, was ultimately played out according to some secret timeline of geologic tedium, so that it was drained of all interest and drama well before it took place and afterward went all but unnoticed. — Thomas Ligotti

There is one key area in which Zuma has made no attempt at reconciliation whatsoever: criminal justice and security. The ministers of justice, defence, intelligence (now called 'state security' in a throwback to both apartheid and the ANC's old Stalinist past), police and communications are all die-hard Zuma loyalists. Whatever their line functions, they will also play the role they have played so ably to date: keeping Zuma out of court - and making sure the state serves Zuma as it once did Mbeki. — Mark Gevisser

My American accent is really, really good. I started out in the theater, doing all different characters with all different accents. When I first came to America, I thought I would be playing American, all the time. It was just weird how it worked out that I played more international characters. — Rebel Wilson

This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction. It's a reconstruction now, in my head, as I lie flat on my single bed rehearsing what I should or shouldn't have said, what I should or shouldn't have done, how I should have played it. If I ever get out of here
Let's stop there. I intend to get out — Margaret Atwood

It was the character of the Packers, man. We played for sixty minutes. We let it all hang out. There was no tomorrow for us. We got the adrenaline flowing, and we just let it go, man. — Ray Nitschke

I would predicate that in all great works of genius masculine and feminine elements in the personality find expression, whether this androgynous nature is played out sexually or not. — May Sarton

You are the only beautiful thing that has ever come close to me. You came line an angel out of the sky. You are like the music you sing, you are like the stars and the snow on the mountains where I played when I was a little boy. You are like all tha they have killed in me. I die for you tonight, tomorrrow, for all eternity. I am not a cowaqrd; I was afraid cause I lovey ou more than Christ who died for me, more than I am afraid of hell, or hope for heaven. I was never afraid before. — Willa Cather

But he was an only child and an only son, and for a mother in such a position it is not always easy to accept that another woman will eventually enter her son's life and, if all goes according to plan - the plan being that of the other woman - take him away. This common conflict, so understandable and so poignant, is played out time and time again, and almost always with the same painful result: Mother loses. It is so, of course, if Mother is overt in her attempt to put off the almost inevitable; if she is covert, then she stands a chance, admittedly a remote one, of introducing into her son's mind a germ of doubt that the woman he has chosen might not be the right one for him. That takes skill, and boundless patience, but it is a course fraught with dangers for the relationship between mother and future daughter-in-law, let alone for that between mother and son. — Alexander McCall Smith

I played Lucifer once, which is sort of a difficult character to research. I thought to myself, "We all have the potential to be selfish, to be cruel - at least to think evil thoughts, even if we don't ever act out on them. Even if we don't ever think we behave badly, we probably do more than we realize." — Viggo Mortensen

Basically, Sam Phillips recorded Bill Haley, Johnny Cash, and all those other Memphis guys; Chuck Berry played the top two strings; Elvis appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show above the waist; the Beatles made all the girls squirm by singing about wanting to hold their "hands"; Ray Davies got lost in a sunset; Pete Townshend smashed his guitar; Brian Wilson heard magic in his head and made it come out of a studio; the Rolling Stones urinated on a garage door; and then (skipping a bit) you've got Joey Levine and Chapman-Chinn and Mott the Hoople and Iggy and the Runaways and KISS and the Pink Fairies and Rick Nielsen and Jonathan Richman and Johnny Ramone and Lemmy and the Young brothers and Cook and Jones and Pete Shelley and Feargal Sharkey and Rob Halford ... and Foghat. You get what I'm saying. It didn't happen in a vacuum, but it did happen, and now here we are in the aftermath. — Frank Portman

Lightning flashed around the island; thunder played its favorite game of scaring the crap out of all the shivering mortals on the earth below. — Pat Conroy

I think 'All Out of Love' is my favorite song because it's been the most successful. It's been in about 30 movies, it's been a number one record, and it keeps getting played on the radio, it's always somewhere. — Graham Russell

I don't see big subjects as separate from little ones. Yes, you could trudge through life with great human tragedies played out before your eyes without ever taking notice. Or you could see a universe in the smallest thing. The way a person takes their coffee, for example, might say something profound and important about that person, about all humanity, about existence itself. — Johnny Rich

It seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing experience of longing, a restlessness sometimes, but not inevitably, played out romantically, or sexually. Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least, apprehensible, but unreachable. To perceive it at all is to be haunted by it; some sound, some tone, becomes a torment - the poem embodying that sound seems to exist somewhere already finished. It's like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims towards it, it backs away. — Louise Gluck

Gandhi has sound economic and cultural reasons for encouraging the revival of cottage industries, but he does not counsel a fanatical repudiation of all modern progress. Machinery, trains, automobiles, the telegraph have played important parts in his own colossal life! Fifty years of public service, in prison and out, wrestling daily with practical details and harsh realities in the political world, have only increased his balance, open-mindedness, sanity, and humorous appreciation of the quaint human spectacle. — Paramahansa Yogananda

It has started to snow. We all ran out when it began, and played at catching flakes as we used to when we were children. But it was cold, and our boots and gloves and cloaks were soon wet - you feel these things more when you are grown-up. — Natasha Farrant

Thirteen years after Basic Instinct, Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone) is now in London, and is going out with a footballer played by Stan Collymore, of all people. On the rebound from John Motson, perhaps. It is difficult to convey just how uproariously awful this movie is, all of the time. — Peter Bradshaw

He turned the crank handles, hoping the thing wouldn't explode in his face. A few clear tones rang out-metallic yet warm. Leo manipulated the levers and gears. He recognized the song that sprang forth-the same wistful melody Calypso sang for him on Ogygia about homesickness and longing. But through the strings of the brass cone, the tune sounded even sadder, like a machine with a broken heart-the way Festus might sound if he could sing.
Leo forgot Apollo was there. He played the song all the way through. When he was done, his eyes stung. He could almost smell the fresh-baked bread from Calypso's kitchen. He could taste the only kiss she'd ever given him. — Rick Riordan

Lars is played by Ryan Gosling, the Prince of Tics, whose idea of acting is to wait a few beats before reacting to other people's remarks, as if acting were merely a matter of adhering to the seven-second delay rule. Jack Nicholson has made a career out of doing this sort of thing, as did Paul Newman, as did Marlon Brando (who the other two learned it from), but they didn't do it all the time and they were more fun to look at ... Lars And The Real Girl joins a number of other recent films in the category of motion pictures where the director doesn't know that his protagonist is unsympathetic. — Joe Queenan

'Madden' is all about speed, and the Falcons have it on both sides of the ball. I love playing sports games. I played my PlayStation so much, I pretty much wore it out. — Carl Crawford

All I can tell you is I played with Johnny Mitchell. Johnny Mitchell was one of the greatest athletic talents I ever played with, but I could never trust him. When the game was on the line and he was supposed to run an out route at 10 yards, he would run an in route at eight and slide to the outside and scream to me that he was open. But it was how he got open that really made me uncomfortable in trusting him. — Boomer Esiason

Dad's death didn't hollow me out the way Helen's had. After all, everyone had assumed Dad was a goner back when he got kicked in the head as a child. Instead, he had cheated death and, despite his gimp and speech impediment, lived a long life doing pretty much what he wanted. He hadn't drawn the best of cards, but he'd played his hand darned well, so what was there to grieve over? — Jeannette Walls

The most terrible struggle in our recent history is being played out. It is not only a struggle for our land, it is a struggle for our soul ... A thousand years of tradition suffice for a nation to learn once and for always these two things: to defend its existence, and with all its heart and all its strength to stand on the side of peace and liberty. — Karel Capek

Tony Cottee once played in all four divisions in one season. Cottee started 2000-01 at Leicester City, where he made a couple of Premiership appearances as a sub before being released to Norwich, in what was then Division One. In November the chance to be player-manager of Barnet came up and soon Cottee was playing in Division Three, but alas it did not work out. By March he was again looking for work and found it, with two sub appearances, at Millwall in Division Two. — Phil Cornwell

The basic script of an agonist tending, an antagonist reacting, played out in different combinations and outcomes, underlies the meaning of the causal constructions in most, perhaps all, of the world's languages. And in language after language, the prototypical force-dynamic scenario-an antagonist directly and intentionally causing a passive agonist to change from its intrinsic state-gets pride of place in the language's most concise causative construction. — Steven Pinker

Involve yourself every day. Work hard and figure out how to love acting all day, every day. It's getting into a made-up situation and making it good and making it real and just playing, just practicing and playing. Like the musicians that I played piano with: they never expect to be rich or famous, but they, for the sheer joy of it, play every day, all day. — Jeff Goldblum

I see on a immense scale, and as clearly as in a demonstration in a laboratory, that good comes out of evil; that the impartiality of the Nature Providence is best; that we are made strong by what we overcome; that man is man because he is as free to do evil as to do good; that life is as free to develop hostile forms as to develop friendly; that power waits upon him who earns it; that disease, wars, the unloosened, devastating elemental forces have each and all played their part in developing and hardening man and giving him the heroic fiber. — John Burroughs

I wrote every day throughout my twenties. For a while, I had a boyfriend who was a musician, and he practiced every day. He played scales; I wrote small fictional scenes. It was the same idea - to keep your hand in your craft, to stay close to it. On bad days, when I felt no inspiration at all, I would set the kitchen timer for thirty minutes and make myself sit there and scribble something, anything. I had read an interview with John Updike where he said that some of the best novels you've ever read were written in an hour a day; I figured I could always carve out at least thirty minutes somewhere to dedicate myself to my work, no matter what else was going on or how badly I believed the work was going. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Maybe that's what Hell is, in the end. All of your wrongful shit played out there in front of you while you're being pumped from behind by someone you've hurt. That you've screwed over in life. Or worse, worse still...some person who doesn't really love you anymore. No one to ever look at again, make contact with. Just you being fucked as your life splashes out across this big headboard in the Devil's bedroom. Maybe. Even if that's not it, even if Hell is all fire and sulfur and that sort of thing, it couldn't be much worse than that. — Neil LaBute

I went out and started on my way up in television. I wrote music, I wrote books, I played an instrument half-ass. I would always have liked to play in a band. I would always have liked to be a substantial writer, to write country music for big singers. I had all sorts of proclivities, but I never had any big success. — Chuck Barris

When I played the Shins, I changed someone's life. When I play Belle and Sebastian in a pivotal scene in my next movie ... well, let's just say I made sure I that I can't be held legally responsible for all the deaths people will suffer out of shock upon hearing them. They're a terrific band. — Zach Braff

Samuel may have thought and played and philosophized about death, hut he did not really believe in it. His world did not have death as a member. He, and all around him, was immortal. When real death came it was an outrage, a denial of the immortality he deeply felt, and the one crack in his wall caused the whole structure to crash. I think he had always thought he could argue himself out of death. It was a personal opponent and one he could lick. — John Steinbeck

Strange, the impact of History, the grip it had on us, yet it was nothing but words. Accidental accretions for the most part, leaving most of the story out. We have not yet begun to explore the true power of the Word, I thought. What if we broke all the rules, played games with the evidence, manipulated language itself, made History a partisan ally? Of course, the Phantom was already onto this, wasn't he? Ahead of us again. What were his dialectical machinations if not the dissolution of the natural limits of language, the conscious invention of a space, a spooky artificial no-man's land, between logical alternatives. I loved to debate both sides of any issue, but thinking about that strange space in between made me sweat. Paradox was one thing I hated more than psychiatrists and lady journalists. — Robert Coover

I am out of step with present conditions. When the game is no longer played your way, it is only human to say the new approach is all wrong, bound to lead to trouble, and so on. On one point, however, I am clear. I will not abandon a previous approach whose logic I understand ( although I find it difficult to apply ) even though it may mean foregoing large, and apparently easy, profits to embrace an approach which I don't fully understand, have not practiced successfully, and which possibly could lead to substantial permanent loss of capital. — Warren Buffett

humiliation then would have been unbearable. It was bad enough now. And what about that poor woman he married? Had the circumstances played out for her in just the way her mother said they would for Susanna if she ever gave her heart to a man? Maybe for Albert, the romance had been all about the chase, and as soon as they'd consummated their love, his ardor had cooled, and he'd left her with child. — Caroline Fyffe

All serious poker players try to minimize their tells, obviously. There are a couple ways to go about this. One is the robotic approch: where your face becomes a mask and your voice a monotone, at least while the hand is being played. . . . The other is the manic method, where you affect a whole bunch of tics, twitches, and expressions, and mix them up with a river of insane babble. The idea is to overwhelm your opponents with clues, so they can't sort out what's going on. This approach can be effective, but for normal people it's hard to pull off. (If you've spent part of your life in an institution, this method may come naturally.) — Dan Harrington

The dog next-door had settled down, and the neighbourhood seemed stunned by this event occurring in our backyard. It was like it could sense it. It could sense some form of tragedy and helplessness being played out, and to tell you the truth, it all surprised me. I was so used to things just going on, oblivious and ignorant to all feeling. — Markus Zusak

But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt. He wanted to change the rules [of chess] already, back in the twenties, because he said chess was getting played out. He was right. Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorisation and prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative. — Bobby Fischer

A kitten is the delight of a household. All day long a comedy is played out by an incomparable actor. — Champfleury

Baseball isn't just a game. It's life being played out on a field - a field of dreams - on diamonds of green, where players pursuing their dreams try to be the best they can be on the grandest stage of all - where men become boys and boys become men, all speaking one universal language without uttering a single word. — Tom Tatum

All I know is that when you look over at the coaches on the other sideline, and all you see are guys who either coached with you or played for you, then you know it's time to get out. — Sid Gillman

Basically, when I went to school in Sri Lanka from age five onward, the classes there were sometimes sorted into a hierarchy of your skin tone. So the fairer-skinned kids sat at the front row, and the darker-skinned kids sat at the back by the poor ones who played out in the street all day long. — M.I.A.

Still the music, the deep slow melody, the high and broken counterpoint, as if the mountains themselves had become the score, as if the glories of hidden caves and secret peaks had wrapped around the ageless majesty of the ocean and turned into the music of all men's lives, played out by a woman's fingers, without pause or mercy, reaching in, twisting, laying us bare. — Mark Lawrence

But we are the same, yes, but were not. We are three completely different people, we play three completely different instruments and all epically fail when trying to play each other's" he said as Daniel and I nodded slowly. That was far to true. "I wrote this piece because I love that these three instruments that make three different sounds, are played three different ways and look different, can create such a beautiful harmony if they're played correctly" he swallowed again then looked at Daniel and I "And I think although we are three different people, who - usually - look different, and who come out with three different kinds of ridiculous-ness" he said and we both laughed "If we come together we work perfectly with each other and can in some senses create a beautiful harmony — R.J. Seeley

When you bowl at him you are not just trying to get him out, you are trying to impress him. "I want him to walk off thinking 'that Flintoff, he's all right isn't he?" I feel privileged to have played against him. — Andrew Flintoff

I liked it all, but most of all I liked the fact that although the play was entirely focused on Quintana there were, five evenings and two afternoons a week, these ninety full minutes, the run time of the play, during which she did not need to be dead.
During which the question remained open.
During which the denouement had yet to play out.
During which the last scene played did not necessarily need to be played in the ICU overlooking the East River.
During which the bells would not necessarily sound and the doors would not necessarily be locked at six.
During which the last dialogue heard did not necessarily need to concern the vent.
Like when someone dies, don't dwell on it. — Joan Didion

Because Mateo Torres is loud, and I'm quiet. Because he's reckless, and I'm cautious. Because he belongs everywhere, and I don't.
Because I think I'm in danger of falling in love with him. — Cora Carmack

What happened next played itself out like a terrible drama with two spectators. Lee and I stayed on our side of the fence, like an audience. Of course if the bull had wanted to smash through the fence he could have done so any time, but luckily nearly all cattle live and die without learning that. It's like school, most students go from kindergarten to Year 12 without noticing that they could do a fair amount of damage if they wanted to. They stay inside the fence. — John Marsden

Racism is ignorant. And it's stupid. And it's old. And it's played out. So beat it already with that, you know what I mean? 'Let's all get along' - I'm so tired of that damn sentence, but it's true. — Queen Latifah

I wonder sometimes if I'm not, after all, a piece in some other player's game, following blindly his grand designs without ever knowing that my path along the board is only a feint, while the important matters are played out elsewhere by other men.
But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: To see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost. When a life spins out as joyfully as mine has done, then the price, one paid so painfully, is now recalled in gladness. I have received full value. Here among the shepherds, my cup is filled with the water of life; it overflows. — Orson Scott Card

I never get enough of the adrenaline rush of hearing good music played live and played loud like this. Hearing these songs again snatches me out of the day-to-day and helps me forget all the things I usually waste my time worrying about. As long as the music's playing I don't have to do anything except listen, relax, and enjoy myself. — David Moody

There are stories within stories, whispered in the quiet of the night, shouted above the roar of the day, and played out between lovers and enemies, strangers and friends. But all are fragile things made of just twenty-six letters arranged and re-arranged to form tales and imaginings which will dazzle your senses, haunt your imagination and move you to the very depths of your soul. — Neil Gaiman

I played the game for 20 years, and I think that kept me on the football field, being adjusted. Getting hit so many times, being all out of whack, and going in to see my chiropractor kept me back on the football field. — Jerry Rice

Intellectuals seemed to think that their life - the life of the mind, the endless self examination, the continuous autobiography afflicted upon all comers-was somehow higher than the repetitive, meaningless lives of the common people. Virlomi knew the opposite to be true. The intellectuals in the university were all the same. They had precisely the same deep thoughts about exactly the same shallow emotions and trivial dilemmas. They knew this, unconsciously, themselves. When a real event happened, something that shook them to the heart, they withdraw from the game of university life, for reality had to be played out on a different stage.
In the villages, life was about life, not about one-upmanship and display. Smart people were valued because they could solve problems, not because they could speak pleasantly about them. — Orson Scott Card

Today you go into make a modern recording with all this technology. The bass plays first, then the drums come in later, then they track the trumpet and the singer comes in and they ship the tape somewhere. Well, none of the musicians have played together. You can't play jazz music that way. In order for you to play jazz, you've got to listen to them. The music forces you at all times to address what other people are thinking and for you to interact with them with empathy and to deal with the process of working things out. And that's how our music really could teach what the meaning of American democracy is. — Wynton Marsalis

We found that if you played a bunch of punk singles in a row, people would dance like crazy and then get worn out and go somewhere else in the house. And if you played reggae all the time, people ended up leaning against the walls and nodding their head. But if you mixed it up, the floor got more and more packed, and the energy from the two types of music seemed to feed into each other, and the adrenaline from the punk, and the seductive sway of the reggae seemed to fit together. — Dave Wakeling

See, the thing is I didn't think that that song would get much attention because it's such a personal song to me. I just wrote it about my childhood, and I didn't know how that would read on an album. But it's been everybody's favorite song. I didn't tell my mom. It was a total secret. So I wrote it in secret and then decided to record it secretly, so she had no idea that the song was recorded. My producers sent me the track and I synched it up to all my baby videos and I played it for her one Christmas Eve, and she bawled her eyes out. She didn't even think that it was my song. She didn't think there was any way for me to record a song without her knowing. — Taylor Swift

With Jason I thought I'd finally played my cards right, and now I'm just one more of those
broken, sad people out there, figuring out a year in advance where they can have Easter and
Christmas dinner without feeling like a burden or duty to others, cursing the quality of modern
movies because it's so hard to fill weeknights with movies when they're all crap, and waiting, just
waiting, for those three drinks a night to turn into four - and then, well, then I'll be applying my
makeup in the morning, combing my hair, washing my clothes, but it's not really for anyone. I'm
alive, but so what. — Douglas Coupland

It was like picking a scab off a sore; he actually wanted scar tissue - it would be quite wrong to try and forget, to blank it all out. Every fraught memory that lurked here had played its role: everything he was today was an indirect result of the life he had led then. It confirmed the rightness of every step he had taken. — William Boyd

Lines Written In Early Spring

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:--
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature's holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man? — William Wordsworth

It was our story, played out on the open highway chasing sunsets. It wasn't an easy story to tell you. It was a story of kisses, lust, passion, youth, mistakes, lies, hiding, stupidity, judging, but most of all, love. — Shey Stahl

Do you know my best quality?" she asks.
"Of your many, I could not say, my darling."
"I see the best in people. I fall in love with people when I see a window into their beings, their shining moments. I've fallen in love with so many people but the trouble is I fall out of love so quickly too. I see the worst in them just as easily.
"Do you know I fell in love with you right away? That day at the Trotters' I had noted you because you were new, of course, and then you sat down at the piano, and you played a few notes, but you played them so well, with no self consciousness, and no idea that anyone might be listening. It was in that room off the garden and you were the only one there. I was passing through on the way to the ladies' room and saw you there. I fell in love with you right then, and so I slipped my drink all over myself so I could meet you." — Janice Y.K. Lee

You get all of your neuroses worked out on stage. I haven't actually played very many nice characters, certainly not on stage. It's not a quality that attracts me. — Patrick Stewart

The Universe/God fluctuates from the appearance of many facets and then to Oneness then reverts back again to many facets. This is played out with the cycle of birth, death and reincarnation. This cycle of reincarnation is a fundamental pattern of our physical existence. Despite our appearance as many, we are all still one organism and long to be consolidated as one. — Russell Anthony Gibbs

But we shouldn't be concerned about trees purely for material reasons, we should also care about them because of the little puzzles and wonders they present us with. Under the canopy of the trees, daily dramas and moving love stories are played out. Here is the last remaining piece of Nature, right on our doorstep, where adventures are to be experienced and secrets discovered. And who knows, perhaps one day the language of trees will eventually be deciphered, giving us the raw material for further amazing stories. Until then, when you take your next walk in the forest, give free rein to your imagination-in many cases, what you imagine is not so far removed from reality, after all! — Peter Wohlleben

Playing guitar was one of my childhood hobbies, and I had played a little at school and at camp. My parents would drag me out to perform for my family, like all parents do, but it was a hobby - nothing more. — Bonnie Raitt

He slouched back in his seat, looking tired, and leaned his face on his shoulder to look at me while he played with my hair. He started to hum a song, and then, after a few bars, he sang it. Quietly, sort of half-sung, half-spoken, incredibly gentle. I didn't catch all the words, but it was about his summer girl. Me. Maybe his forever girl. His yellow eyes were half-lidded as he sang, and in that golden moment, hanging taut in the middle of an icecovered landscape like a single bubble of summer nectar, I could see how my life could be stretched out in front of me. — Maggie Stiefvater

They say sex is all in the mind. That's not strictly true. Desire begins in the mind but is satisfied in the body. The erotic understands this. The erotic is the completion of a mental need played out on a physical playground. Once you go erotic you never go back. — Chloe Thurlow

If he had but a little more brains, she thought to herself, I might make something of him; but she never let him perceive the opinion she had of him; listened with indefatigable complacency to his stories of the stable and the mess; laughed at all his jokes...When he came home, she was alert and happy; when he went out she pressed him to go; when he stayed at home, she played and sang for him, made him good drinks, superintended his dinner, warmed his slippers, and steeped his soul in comfort. The best of women {I have heard my grandmother say) are hypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidential: how often those frank smile which they wear so easily are traps to cajole or elude or disarm--I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models and paragons of female virute. — William Makepeace Thackeray

I'm no shrinking violet. I played hockey until half my teeth were knocked down my throat. And I'm extremely competitive on a tennis court ... But that experience at the slaughterhouse overwhelmed me. When I walked out of there, I knew I would never again harm an animal! I knew all the physiological, economic, and ecological arguments supporting vegetarianism, but it was firsthand experience of man's cruelty to animals that laid the real groundwork for my commitment to vegetarianism. — Peter Burwash

When I played the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year's Eve, I got to bring Wiley, my 85-pound black lab. He's responsible for my favorite New Year's memory of all: At the end of the show, he ran onstage and then out across all the tables in the showroom, sending champagne glasses and gamblers flying. — Elayne Boosler

When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;
Five will return and one go alone.
Iron for the birthday; bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning; stone out of song;
Fire in the candle ring; water from the thaw;
Six signs the circle and the grail gone before.
Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of old.
Power from the Green Witch, lost beneath the sea.
All shall find the Light at last, silver on the tree. — Susan Cooper

It occurred to Raule that all children were monsters in the world and were instinctively aware of it. They were reminded of their anomalous nature by adults, whom they failed to resemble, and with whose habitations and tools their bodies were at odds. This was surely why the little girl played with the sequins so solemnly and with such intense concentration. She was doing nothing less than conjuring, out of pattern and colour, a world that conformed to her desires and obeyed her will. The boy, on the other hand, showed with the whole attitude of his being that he knew there was only the one world and he would kill it if he could. — K.J. Bishop

Perhaps as he was lying awake then, his life may have passed before him
his early hopeful struggles, his manly successes and prosperity, his downfall in his declining years, and his present helpless condition
no chance of revenge against Fortune, which had had the better of him
neither name nor money to bequeath
a spent-out, bootless life of defeat and disappointment, and the end here! Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling, when a day of our life comes and we say, To-morrow, success or failure won't matter much, and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Ducky played a lot of games of hide-and-go-seek with Benny and the other bunnies. One game, he hid behind a tree, but he was found quickly because his large bill stuck out of the top. Then, Ducky tried hiding under a bush like Benny, but his long neck stuck out of it. Ducky even tried hiding behind a rock, but all he could do is lie down next to the rock and hide his head behind it. Ducky was found quickly every time. — Jenny Loveless

I'm not your pet project anymore. I don't fucking need you to help me adjust because let's face it ... I'm doing just fine here. I've played by all your silly rules. I eat with my fucking utensils, and I don't go around killing people on a whim. I understand your rules, and nothing about this world freaks me out. And I was tired of fucking hiding what we have. Do you know how much it kills me not to be able to touch you when I want, or to keep my eyes averted for fear someone might guess that were fucking each other? I was sick of it, and I'm glad I did it, and I'd do it again. So be pissed at me if you want, but I'm fucking the remaining bitterness out of you tonight. — Sawyer Bennett

Thanks to the centrifugal pump, places like Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas had thrown on the garments of fertility for a century, pretending to greenery and growth as they mined glacial water from ten-thousand-year-old aquifers. They'd played dress-up-in-green and pretended it could last forever. They'd pumped up the Ice Age and spread it across the land, and for a while they'd turned their dry lands lush. Cotton, wheat, corn, soybeans
vast green acreages, all because someone could get a pump going. Those places had dreamed of being different from what they were. They'd had aspirations. And then the water ran out, and they fell back, realizing too late that their prosperity was borrowed, and there would be no more coming. — Paolo Bacigalupi

Came Honker's trip to Slice City along about then: our sax-man got a neck all full of the sharpest kind of steel. So we were out one horn. And you could tell: we played a little bit too rough, and the head-arrangements Collins and His Crew grew up to, they needed Honker's grease in the worst way. But we'd been together for five years or more, and a new man just didn't play somehow. We were this one solid thing, like a unit, and somebody had cut off a piece of us and we couldn't grow the piece back so we just tried to get along anyway, bleeding every night, bleeding from that wound. ("Black Country") — Charles Beaumont

Now, when you play this game, even though you've never played it with me before, you're playing to get even - not with me but with what I represent to you, all those terrible people who cheated you out of your right to win. Then — Bernard De Koven

Syn was new to relationships Furi had no doubt he could keep him spellbound indefinitely. He would show the gorgeous specimen stretched out beneath him how beautiful it is to be a gay man in a committed relationship. He'd hoped the scene tonight at God and Day's didn't dissuade him. Furi didn't need any more cocks in bed with them. While it could be fun, not all gay men played with other couples. One man was enough for Furi. Syn was man enough for Furi. He'd show him every day if he'd let him. Syn would be able to trust him with his heart and his body, knowing there was no way he'd hurt him. And he secretly hoped Syn felt the same way. "Furi, — A.E. Via

He'd figured out the body, so now it was on to the brain. Specifically: How do you make anyone actually want to do any of this stuff? How do you flip the internal switch that changes us all back into the Natural Born Runners we once were? Not just in history, but in our own lifetimes. Remember? Back when you were a kid and you had to be yelled at to slow down? Every game you played, you played at top speed, sprinting like crazy as you kicked cans, freed all, and attacked jungle outposts in your neighbors' backyards. Half the fun of doing anything was doing it at record pace, making it probably the last time in your life you'd ever be hassled for going too fast. — Christopher McDougall

It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority - a majority, mark you; not all - of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?"

"No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down.

"Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage. — Iain M. Banks

I had a son and I breathed for him. When we buried him my sorrow consumed me. Was my grief holy? Was it unique? All our hurts and follies are repeated time and again. Generation after generation live the same mistakes. But we're not like the fire, or the river, or the wind - we're not a single tune, its variations played out forever, a game of numbers until the world dies. — Mark Lawrence

The Patriots had picked Brady in the sixth round, and he soon turned out to be one of the two or three best quarterbacks in the League, and absolutely perfect for the Belichick system and for the team's offense. So, as the team continued to make a series of very good calls on other player personnel choices, there was a general tendency to talk about how brilliant Pioli and Belichick were, and to regard Pioli as the best young player personnel man in the League. Just to remind himself not to believe all the hype and that he could readily have screwed up on that draft, Pioli kept on his desk a photo of Brady, along with a photo of the team's fifth-round traft choice, the man he had taken ahead of Brady: Dave Stachelski. He was a Tight End from Boise State who never a played a down for New England. Stachelski was taken with the 141st pick, Brady with the 199th one. 'If I was so smart,' Pioli liked to say, 'I wouldn't have risked an entire round of the draft in picking Brady. — David Halberstam

All girls have sex with a stranger fantasies and fantasies played out are healthier than those that have been left to fester and go mouldy. When we look back, we don't regret the things we have done, only the things left undone, the things we wanted to do and never did. — Chloe Thurlow

Something quite special has played out in the picturesque valleys and mountains, towns and villages of France over the past three weeks. For all who appreciate sport, it was a privilege and an inspiration to watch. — Paul Ramadge

We grew up in Woolton, Liverpool. We didn't have much, but it was irrelevant. We played out a lot with all the kids on the street. — Rebecca Ferguson