Quotes & Sayings About Always Watching Your Back

When I was a baby, my mom used to have a dance school, and she used to teach classes there. We didn't have money for a babysitter, so she always brought me with her to the dancing school. Back then, I was already watching and listening to Michael Jackson for a long time. — Afrojack

He'd give anything to be out there playing instead of standing here watching. Trying to maintain this smile out of respect. He digs into his wrists some more with his nails. Breaks previously broken skin and pulls away. A smear of blood he wipes away with his other hand, rubs off across his dark jeans. Back home his mom is always on him to stop digging, but that only makes him want to dig more."
-exerpt from "Mexican White Boy — Matt De La Pena

I love the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team for many reasons and they have given me some wonderful memories. When I look back, I don't think about the games they lost but I remember going to see the games when I was a little boy with my grandfather. I remember talking to my mom on the phone after the Cardinals won the World Series in 2006 while I was dressed up in my Captain of the Fallopian Swim Team Halloween costume. I remember taking my lovely wife to her first Cardinals game where she broke out in hives due to the heat and humidity. I remember the joy I felt as I sat with my little man watching our first Cardinals game together at Busch Stadium. I know I need to take my obsession down a notch but in the end it is worth it because it takes me back to times I will never forget and always cherish. — Matt Shifley

I learned by watching my favorite shows. I would just rewind and say the words back, until they sounded right to me. I never studied the American accent, in terms of getting a teacher or taking phonetics classes. I've always been a good mimic. It really wasn't that hard for me. — Adelaide Kane

The throttles could only move very, very slowly, always watching the temperature, always watching. And even in throttling back, you could bust it, even being very careful. — Adolf Galland

When people ask about relationships, they always say, "How did you guys meet?" Not, "OMG, tell me about your third year! And when a relationship is in trouble, the desperate couple is always trying to recapture the magic of when they first met. The real tragedy is that, without time travel or amnesia, it's impossible to ever get back there. Which is why to most people, marriage is about as magical as watching David Copperfield make Claudia Schiffer disappear. — Shane Kuhn

His hand drifted up Jared's spine and into his hair. For a moment, he just stroked Jared's scalp, the movements slow, almost tender.
"Always hot watching a man get fucked." And then he grabbed Jared's hair and jerked his head back. "But even hotter watching him beg for it, isn't it? — Aleksandr Voinov

I have always viewed thinking about arguing, about questioning, pushing back with, joking, about sharing and discovering the world and the news as enjoyable, the same way that I view watching basketball. — Chris Hayes

I always look back to awards shows and think about being a kid watching them. — Luke Bryan

Relax," the woman said. "It's just me."
"Just you?" Hale asked with heavy irony, remembering the black leather and predator's eyes with a stab of heat. Dangerous beauty had always been his downfall.
"I'm watching your back."
"Sure you are," he snorted. Beauty or not, he wasn't stupid enough to trust. Screw, sure. Trust, no way. — Michelle O'Leary

I really have to be watching my back all the time; always be on the defensive? Trusting no one but myself was a cold cross to bear, but at that moment, I wore it. — Courtney Giardina

So with a lot of difficulty, I picked up this huge snapping turtle and slowly carried it down the road to the river.
Just as I had slipped it into the water and was watching it swim away, my geology professor came up behind me. "You know," he said quietly, "that turtle has probably spent a month crawling up the dirt path to lay its eggs in the mud on the side of the road - you have just put it back in the river."
I felt terrible. I couldn't believe what I had done, but it was too late. It took me many more years to realize this parable had taught me the first rule of organizing.
Always ask the turtle. — Gloria Steinem

I am a child of the Milky Way. The night is my mother. I am made of the dust of stars. Every atom in my body was forged in a star. When the universe exploded into being, already the bird longed for the wood and the fish for the pool. When the first galaxies fell into luminous clumps, already matter was struggling toward consciousness. The star clouds of Sagittarius are a burning bush. If there is a voice in Sagittarius, I'd be a fool not to listen. If God's voice in the night is a scrawny cry, then I'll prick up my ears. If night's faint lights fail to knock me off my feet, then I'll sit back on a dark hillside and wait and watch. A hint here and a trait there. Listening and watching. Waiting, always waiting, for the tingle in the spine. — Chet Raymo

Even though I always came back, he said he was always watching me leave. — Kimberly Novosel

The future of America may or may not bring forth a black President, a woman President, a Jewish President, but it most certainly always will have a suburban President. A President whose senses have been defined by the suburbs, where lakes and public baths mutate into back yards and freeways, where walking means driving, where talking means telephoning, where watching means TV, and where living means real, imitation life. — Arthur Kroker

Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God. Close your eyes and breathe your way beneath your troubles, the way a diver slips to that depth of stillness that is always waiting beneath the churning of the waves. Now, consider two things you love doing, such as running, drawing, singing, bird-watching, gardening, or reading. Meditate on what it is in each of these that makes you feel alive. Hold what they have in common before you, and breathing slowly, feel the spot of grace these dear things mirror within you. — Mark Nepo

Joan Cusack is one of my favorite comedic actresses, and every part she plays is so different. She does the wackiest stuff and somehow it works. I like watching her a lot, and I think you can always go further and pull back. That's something I really have to work on. — Rachel McAdams

I find it very difficult to talk here now because I'm watching the sea all the time. The sea always makes me watch it all the time. I've spent hours and hours not just on the sea but just watching wave after wave come in. If it's an image of anything, I think it's an image of our own unconscious, the unconscious of our own minds ... or you can put it the other way around, and that is that we have a sea in us. After all, we are sea creatures that learnt to walk on the land, are we not? And perhaps one way or another we go back to it. Every night when we dream we go back into that kind of depths, and that kind of beauty and monstrosity and mystery. So really the sea is not a single image, it can really image almost anything that the human mind can discover. — William Golding

What Gaal was waiting for after the disappointment of the Jump was that first sight of Trantor. He haunted the View-room. The steel shutter-lids were rolled back at announced times and he was always there, watching the hard brilliance of the stars, enjoying the incredible hazy swarm of a star cluster, like a giant conglomeration of fireflies caught in mid-motion and stilled forever. At one time there was the cold, blue-white smoke of a gaseous nebula within five light years of the ship, spreading over the window like distant milk, filling the room with an icy tinge, and disappearing out of sight two hours later, after another Jump. — Isaac Asimov

Watching this little scene makes my throat ache. It seems an apt metaphor for the role most men play--even in egalitarian modern marriages--as quasi-outsiders in their own families. Of course, men have always contributed importantly to the family, and our wives and children would miss us if we were gone. But there's also a tacit understanding that we are the expendable ones: if something evil comes through the front door, everyone knows whose job it is to die guarding the family's retreat out the back. Men are a little on the periphery of family life, cut off from the biologically precious mother and children as though by an invisible pane of glass. — Jonathan Gottschall

I sit watching until dusk, hypnotized. I think of the sea as continually sloshing back and forth, repetitive, but my psyche goes with the river- always loping downhill, purposeful, listening only to gravity. — Ann Zwinger

It will be all right, Kirito. I will always be watching your back. We're the greatest forward and backup in the world. — Reki Kawahara

Mortality is inscribed in your cellular structure, and you say you're not ill? Look at the painting. Look at it." She nods towards The Adoration of the Magi. I obey. I always will. "Thirteen subjects, if you count them, like the Last Supper. Shepherds, the Magi, the relatives. Study their faces, one by one. Who believes this newborn manikin can one day conquer death? Who wants proof? Who suspects the Messiah is a false prophet? Who knows that he is in a painting, being watched? Who is watching you back? — David Mitchell

He doesn't know who he's making love to, I would think, and panic would slash through me until I reminded myself that it was over now, a freakish aberration not to be repeated. It was Hansen who first made me aware of shadow selves. He would lie in bed watching me for whole minutes, and I would look back into his eyes and wonder, What does he see? How can he not see the truth? Where is it hidden? It made me ask, when I looked at other people, what possible selves they were hiding behind the strange rubber masks of their faces. I could nearly always find one, if I watched for long enough. It became the only one I was interested in seeing. — Jennifer Egan

That's the way it is with God, don't you reckon? He always around somewheres, if you can see His face or not. He's out there watching through the dark. Sometimes that's got to be enough, I suppose. Knowing He sees us even if we can't see Him back." -- Levi Snow — Jonathan Odell

Become your own soulmate. Then you'll always have someone watching your back, and you'll always have someone who loves you. — Rebecca O'Donnell

I'd gazed into the abyss and the abyss had gazed back, just like Daddy always said it would: You want to know about life, Mac? It's simple. Keep watching rainbows, baby. Keep looking at the sky. You find what you look for. If you go hunting good in the world, you'll find it. If you go hunting evil ... well, don't. — Karen Marie Moning

But in the back of my mind I've always looked to the biggest-scale Hollywood movies. Because to me the most satisfying experience is of watching a movie, if it's done really well. And so that aspiration is always it for me, if I have the opportunity to do it. — Christopher Nolan

I have 236 movies on my queue and I feel like I should always be watching movies. Like if I wake up in the middle of the night and don't fall directly back to sleep, I'm like, 'I've been up for an hour and a half I could have watched 'Toy Story 3' by now.' In this economy it is a sin not to be watching movies when you have Netflix. — Gary Gulman

One guy that really inspired me was Michael Jordan. I wouldn't say that he inspired me as a sportsman, but I love going back and watching videos of him, especially how he conducts himself in interviews. He always seemed to be very careful about the words that he used and thought about everything differently to anybody else. — Matteo Manassero

We kissed each other until we were too tired to keep going. I could still feel him holding back. It was my penance for what I had done to him. All I could do was hope the walls would fall and that I could have all of him again, but I was always leaving and he was tired of watching me walk away. We both knew that I couldn't stay and that he couldn't come with me, but still, we couldn't let go. — Kimberly Novosel

Remember when you had her fight Lea when Lea couldn't skin the sheep? Trying to make her tough," Pebble says with a little laugh. Sevro laughs too. "Why are you laughing?" Clown asks. "You were still off eating mushrooms and howling at the moon back then." "I was watching," Sevro says. "I was always watching." "That's creepy, boss," Screwface says drolly. "What were you doing while you were watching?" "Wanking in the bushes, obviously," I say. Sevro grunts. "Only when everyone was asleep. — Pierce Brown

The path stretching before us was one of darkness, a life of blood and death and danger, a future of always watching my back, of knowing every day could be Luca's last, of fearing that one day I might have to watch him receive a lethal injection. But this was my world and Luca was my man, and I would go this path with him until the bitter end. — Cora Reilly

I don't mind getting drunk, but there always comes a moment in the evening when I find myself watching myself bumping into things and thinking - I'm bored of this, can I have full control of my brain back, please? — Ben Aaronovitch

It's always surprising to be reminded that while you're watching and thinking about people, all knowing and superior, they're watching and thinking about you, right back at you. — Terry Pratchett

Then James took Parker's hands, and without waiting, gave her a long, hot kiss that made her nearly forget there were a hundred people watching. Then he pulled back and smiled that full, wonderful grin, his dark eyes so happy.
"Parker," he said, "always lovely to see you. — Kristan Higgins

I looked back to Dominic, who was watching me with unguarded affection. "You are insane, infuriating, and in dire need of aid if you're going to survive this," he said. "My help was always yours. All you had to do was ask for it." "I'm asking," I said. "Then I'm yours. — Seanan McGuire

The best part of seeing your way through a storm, even if you think you have been blown off course, is watching how God takes the wheel and delivers you to safety. Sometimes poor life choices will blow you off course, but God knows how to get you back on course. He will chart an even better progression, and then use your roving to accomplish the purpose He always intended! — Cheryl Zelenka

In America, even the homeless were profligate. Back in Toronto, after a big bank dinner, Brad would gather the leftovers into covered tin trays and carry them out to a homeless guy he saw every day on his way to work. The guy was always appreciative. When the bank moved him to New York, he saw more homeless people in a day than he saw back home in a year. When no one was watching, he'd pack up the king's banquet of untouched leftovers after the NY lunches and walk it down to the people on the streets. "They just looked at me like, 'What the fuck is this guy doing?'" he said. "I stopped doing it because it didn't feel like anyone gave a shit. — Michael Lewis

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
And you keep on pissing yourself, and can't remember
Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,
They could alter things back to when they danced all night,
Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?
Or do they fancy there's really been no change,
And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,
Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming
Watching the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange;
Why aren't they screaming? — Philip Larkin

You can't forget anything," I said, watching the words vanish into nothing. "And even if you do, it always comes back to bitch-slap you in the morning. — Kim Harrison

Fundamental security comes from realizing that you have broken through something. You reflect back and realize that you used to be extraordinarily paranoid and neurotic, watching each step you made, thinking you might lose your sanity, that situations were always threatening in some way. Now you are free of all those fears and preconceptions. You discover that you have something to give rather than having to demand from others, having to grasp all the time. For the first time, you are a rich person, you contain basic sanity. You have something to offer, you are able to work with your fellow sentient beings, you do not have to reassure yourself anymore. Reassurance implies a mentality of poverty--you are checking yourself, "Do I have it? How could I do it?" But the bodhisattva's delight in his richness is based upon experience rather than theory or wishful thinking. It is so, directly, fundamentally. He is fundamentally rich and so can delight in generosity. — Chogyam Trungpa

When I'm running, there's always this split second when the pain is ripping through me and I can hardly breathe and all I see is color and blur - and in that split second, right as the pain crests, and becomes too much, and there's a whiteness going through me, I see something to my left, a flicker of color [ ... ] - and I know then, too, that if I only turn my head he'll be there, laughing, watching me, and holding out his arms.
I don't ever turn my head to look, of course. But one day I will. One day I will, and he'll be back, and everything will be okay.
And until then: I run. — Lauren Oliver

Sometimes a cloudless swatch of sky would blow past the moon, and Pella could see the outline of Mike's face in a slightly sharper relief. It was strange the way he loved her: a sidelong and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention. Like their first meeting on the steps of the gym, when he'd hardly so much as glanced at her. With David and every guy before David, what passed for love had always been eye to eye, nose to nose; she felt watched, observed, like the prize at the zoo, and she wound up pacing, preening, watching back, to fit the part. Whereas Mike was always beside her. She would stand at the kitchen window and look out at the quad, at the Melville statue and beyond that the beach and the rolling lake, and realize that Make, for however long, had been standing beside her, staring at the same thing. — Chad Harbach

All right, shadow-priest, you've been spying - on what? What state secrets have you learned watching me groom these horses?'
'Only that they hate you, Daru. Every time your back was turned, they got ready to nip you - only you always seemed to step away at precisely the right moment-'
'Yes, I did, since I knew what they were intending. Each time.'
'Is this pride I hear? That you outwitted two horses? — Steven Erikson

Nilda is watching the ground as though she's afraid she might fall. My heart is beating and I think, We could do anything. We could marry. We could drive off to the West Coast. We could start over. It's all possible but neither of us speaks for a long time and the moment closes and we're back in the world we've always known. — Junot Diaz

I am interested in you, Gretchen." When I still won't look at him, he presses his fingers against my jaw and gently turns my face. He is looking straight in my eyes when he says, "I'm interested in you."
His midnight blues burn with an intensity that almost makes me believe him. Makes me want to believe him. He knows just the right thing to say to mess with my mind. He always has. He leans closer, watching me. His lips are a breath away from mine.
This time I'm not buying it.
My knee connects with his soft spot and he doubles over, gasping for air.
"Find your own way home," I snap before turning and marching back to my car. — Tera Lynn Childs

The candor was infectious. It spread back to the beginning of your life. You tried to tell her, as well as you could, what it was like being you. You described the feeling you'd always had of being misplaced, of always standing to one side of yourself, of watching yourself in the world even as you were being in the world, and wondering if this was how everyone felt. That you always believed that other people had a clearer idea of what they were doing, and didn't worry quite so much about why. — Jay McInerney

I was looking for Quincy Jones, that's who I was obsessed with. Watching Mike [Jackson], I always knew that I had to be a showman on stage, because when people come to you live you always want them to come back. You gotta give them something to remember. — Wyclef Jean

I always wanted to be an actor, even when I was a little kid. When I used to run away from home, I'd go to movies and sit all night watching Kirk Douglas. When I was 16, I tried getting into the Actors Studio, and they told me to get lost. I said 'I'll come back when I'm a man,' and I came back when I was 30. — Lance Henriksen

You realize we can't go back to Sheridan."

"I know."

"Have to keep heading southwest now, and I don't know anything about the area. We'll probably get lost or walk into a road and a patrol."

"Well"-Hadrian looked down at Royce's side-"you're bleeding again, and I think I am, too, so the good news is we'll likely die before morning. Still, I suppose it could be worse."

"How?"

"They could have caught us at the tavern, or we could have drowned in that river."

"Either way we'd be dead. At this point I'm inclined to see that as better off."

"Anything can always be worse," Hadrian assured him.

They lay staring up at the sky and watching clouds blot out the stars. Royce heard it before he felt it. A distant patter on the blades of grass along the hillside. He turned once more to Hadrian. "I'm really starting to hate you. — Michael J. Sullivan

He walked from one end of the basement to the other, the lamplight magnifying his shadow. It turned him into a giant on the wall, walking back and forth. When he stopped pacing, his shadow loomed behind him, watching. Someone was always watching. — Markus Zusak

The street lamps and illuminated signs were all extinguished, and on impulse everybody looked into the sky. The frogs and crickets fell quiet to the count of five before they began to sing again. The smaller stars were spread across the darkness in a fine white powder, and the brighter ones pierced the air like nail points. In Andrew Brady's yearbook she wrote: The thing I will always remember about you is the time we were watching the film strip in Miss Applebome's class, and the lights were out, and you sat behind me scratching my back with your fingers. — Kevin Brockmeier

To reach out to you when I'm in need, and to try to be here for you when you need me back. And to feel such tenderness when I look at you that I want to stand between you and all the world: and yet also to lift you up and carry you above the strong currents of life; and at the same time, I would be glad to stand always like this, at a distance, watching you, the beauty of you. — Orson Scott Card

She was with her flying companion-her playmate. The one who was sacred to her, who was the other half of the mysteries of life for her. The one who would always be there for her, helping her, watching her back, picking her up when she fell down, listening to her stories-no matter how many times she told them. Loving her even when she was stupid. Understanding her without words. Being inside the innermost circle in her mind.
Her soulmate. — L.J.Smith

I once held a belief that life made sense, that working toward a dream would birth substance. Nothing else mattered. I soon discovered that success is as long-lasting as any of life's novelties.
We've all been happy with new things, only to be disappointed later. Dolls and soldiers our parents toiled to give us found their way to pedestals, then to the back of closets.
I'd always dreamed of marrying a woman I loved and watching my children grow. I wonder if our lives should be filled with the pursuit of such dreams, those magical hopes interwoven into our story. Our stories are decorative shells for the crabs we really are, both protecting and exposing us to the manic outside. — Christopher Hawke

My mom was an aesthetician and she went to beauty school back in the '60s. I just remember watching her do her makeup all the time. She always had her nails done, makeup on - her face was ready to go when she went out. I loved it. — Emmanuelle Chriqui

Whenever I have endured or accomplished some difficult task
such as watching television, going out socially or sleeping
I always look forward to rewarding myself with the small pleasure of getting back to my typewriter and writing something. — Isaac Asimov

Hang in there, Kirito. Keep trying, for the sake of what you believe in. I'll always be at your side. I'll always be behind you, watching your back and supporting you. — Reki Kawahara

Back when childhoods were often so protracted, it is unsurprising that so many people got into the lifelong habit of believing, even after their parents were gone, that somebody was always watching over them - God or a saint or a guardian angel or the stars or whatever. People — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Tell me how you could say such a thing, she said, staring down at the ground beneath her feet. You're not telling me anything I don't know already. 'Relax your body, and the rest of you will lighten up.' What's the point of saying that to me? If I relaxed my body now, I'd fall apart. I've always lived like this, and it's the only way I know how to go on living. If I relaxed for a second, I'd never find my way back. I'd go to pieces, and the pieces would be blown away. Why can't you see that? How can you talk about watching over me if you can't see that? — Haruki Murakami

But now, sitting on this airplane on my way back to the life I went on to fashion after she left, I think of her differently. I see her so many ways: sitting back on her heels at the side of the bathtub, singing softly as she washes Sharla and my backs; watching at the window for the six o'clock arrival of our father; wrapping Christmas presents on the wide expanse of her bed; biting her lip as she stood before the open cupboards, making out the grocery list; leaning out the kitchen window that last summer to call Sharla and me in for supper. Most clearly, though, I see her sitting at the kitchen table, in her old, usual spot. There is a cup of coffee before her, but she doesn't drink it. Instead, she stares out the window. I see the sharp angle of her cheekbone, the beautiful whitish down at the side of face, illuminated by the sun. Her hands are quiet, resting in the cloth bowl of her apron. She sits still as a statue - waiting, I can see now; she was always waiting. -What We Keep — Elizabeth Berg

Being a competitor, you always believe you can come back. I'll be up at 3 in the morning watching World Cup races in my hotel whether I'm in Asia on a business trip or in New York City and have to get up in 2 hours. — Apolo Ohno

Now I see how many wolf characteristics you had. You were wary, didn't really trust anyone or anything. You were elusive and secretive. You paced out behind the trees, watching everything and waiting for the moment when it was safe to come in and rest by the fire. But you weren't happy there -- no, I take that back, you were happy there, but you weren't comfortable. It wasn't what you knew. It wasn't what you trusted. You trusted meanness, not kindness. Kindness spooked you -- you were always looking for the trap in it. You trusted in a scrappy existence where you had to fight for your survival. — Helen Humphreys

There's always someone bigger and badder who can knock you off your perch - even if you're me. Never forget it and you don't have to worry about corruption. You'll be too afraid with watching your own back.
Alexandria "Dria" McAndrews — C.J. Ellisson

One day I was standing with my stage manager, Sandy Prudden, and Buddy Sheffield watching as Kermit the Frog (with the help of the late Jim Henson) sweetly sang a song. Sandy was always a big joker. He sidled up to me and said, "Isn't it amazing the way Kermit can sing like that with somebody's hand up his ass." Without missing a beat, I came back with, "Shoot, that ain't nothin'. I did that for seven years on the 'The Porter Wagoner Show. — Dolly Parton

What are you? Who are you? I have never met a Chosen like you in my entire existence. You are everything that is free. You are freedom. And I... I'm the bird trapped in the cage, watching you fly away. But then, you look back at me, you always look back, and you reach through the bars and offer your hand to me. Though I am nothing, though I am just a heartless creature, you still offer me your hand. But I won't take it. I won't because... what will happen to us if I do?

It doesn't matter. None of it matters. Because you were kind to me, you made me laugh - that isn't something I will forget easily, and I will repay you. — Giselle Simlett

O put it in the modern parlance, this is a re-run. We have been here before. This is like watching TV in Bombay or Kingston or Dhaka, watching the same old British sitcoms spewed out to the old colonies in one tedious, eternal loop. Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - something to do with that experience of moving West to East or East to West or island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. — Zadie Smith