Am Sitting Quotes & Sayings

Ask yourself, 'who is the one suffering from this anger? The person who has harmed me has gone on to live their life (or perhaps has died), while I am the one sitting here feeling the persecution, burning and constriction of anger. Out of compassion for myself, to ease my own heart, may I let go. — Sharon Salzberg

I looked over at the dresser and saw a new issue of Zoobooks sitting there.

On the cover was an owl. I love owls. Owls are beautiful and fierce. There was an owl right there on the front. A close-up of its face. Two big black eyes, bulbous, shiny, and empty. A brown-and-black feathered face. And its beak. I didn't see its beak. What were those two things coming out of its neck?

I stepped closer.

And in the lower corner of the cover, in white all-caps sans-serif font: "SPIDERS." I looked back into that face, brown and black fur, two big black eyes, and more eyes, and pincers. And oh god.

I screamed. I screamed and I ran. I am still screaming and running from this, only on the inside now. — Joseph Fink

But I didn't really enjoy my secondary education that much, probably because I am a very physical person and don't enjoy sitting at a desk all day. I just dragged myself through GCSE and A Levels, so it suited me very much to go on to drama school, which was very active. — Amanda Burton

Who am I? Laia muttered to her invisible audience, and they knew the answer and told it to her with one voice. She was the little girl with scabby knees, sitting on the doorstep staring down through the dirty golden haze of River Street in the heat of late summer, the six-year-old, the sixteen-year-old, the fierce, cross, dream-ridden girl, untouched, untouchable. She was herself — Ursula K. Le Guin

You, you buy into all this stuff about good guys and bad guys in the world. A loan shark breaks a guy's leg for not paying his debt, a banker throws a guy out of his home for the same reason, and you think there's a difference, like the banker's just doing his job but the loan shark's a criminal. I like the loan shark better because he doesn't pretend to be anything else, and I think the banker should be where I am sitting right now. I'm not going to live some life where I pay my fucking taxes and fetch the boss a lemonade at the company picnic and buy life insurance. Get older, get fatter, so I can join a men's club in Back Bay, smoke cigars with a bunch of assholes in a back room somewhere, talk about my squash game and my kid's grades. Die at my desk, and they'll already have scraped my name off the office door before the dirt's hit the coffin. — Dennis Lehane

I will continue to exist in all these little moments. where we took the first dip of love and my heart skipped a beat. Our first walk, the first touch which burnt my soul, that first rain, the first kiss, the first comfortable silence between us. How many years may pass, Whenever I am sitting near the window and its raining or whenever I am sitting by a fireside and its cold, There will always be a piece of me which reminds me of you. It will stay in this moment forever. — Akshay Vasu

Emotions, particularly strong emotions in people we care about, are contagious. But just as so-called negative emotions are contagious, so are calming and compassionate ones. [...] Mirror neurons in the brain are what cause us to feel the experiences and emotions of people around us. In the classic example, if I am watching you eat a banana, the neurons in my brain that are involved in eating bananas begin to fire. Likewise, if I am sitting across from you and feeling sad or angry, you are likely to have those neurons fire in your brain as well; thus you are *feeling* those emotions yourself, not just detecting them. — Christopher Willard

Some students look at the problems that they're facing and they draw global conclusions from them. They say this is not just a professor giving me a bad grade or someone not sitting next to me in the cafeteria. This reflects that fact that I am not ready for college, or I shouldn't be in this college at all. — Shankar Vedantam

I don't struggle because I was always the stupidest kid in the class and the idea that I would ever be brilliant was knocked out of me in the third grade. So I'm not sitting around trying to be brilliant, or Shakespeare. I'm just trying to get the work I have in my head down on the page in the best way I possibly know how without putting that horrible pressure on myself of saying I'm going to write it today and in 200 years at Princeton they will be studying these words." Yeah, I want my stuff to be as good as I can conceivably make it, but I am not going to put that on my head — Stephen J. Cannell

Nobody, at least sitting in my seat , is defending drunk driving. I am not for drunk driving. — Tucker Carlson

I am charmed by the idea that there is an activity known as work and another as play, although even in grade school the distinction eluded me. I remember how full of hope I was sitting in first-period home room listening to the teacher divide up our activities into purposeful sections. I got a grip on her process, at last, by picturing it in the following way: A cow stands in clover. When she is milked, that is her work; when she is merely eating, that is her play. But the problem lay, then as now, in the realization that, in any case, she is standing in clover. Not a handsome or elegant analogy, but it approximates for me the habit of reading - standing in a world of clover, the eating of which is occasionally utilitarian, usually nourishing, because that's what one does — Toni Morrison

I am not obsessing.
I am just sitting here
perforating this post-it
with a push-pin. — Ada Limon

Heaven is on the other side of that feeling you get when you're sitting on the couch and you get up and make a triple-decker sandwich. It's on the other side of that, when you don't make the sandwich. It's about sacrifice ... It's about giving up the things that basically keep you from feeling. That's what I believe, anyway. I'm always asking, "What am I going to give up next?" Because I want to feel. — Jim Carrey

I promise to charm the dickens out of him,' said Will, sitting up and readjusting his crushed hat. 'I shall charm him with such force that when I am done, he will be left lying limply on the ground, trying to remember his own name.'
'The man's eighty-nine', muttered Jem. 'He may well have the problem anyway. — Cassandra Clare

Sitting with Maharaj-ji creates who I am as much as sitting in a 12 Step meeting creates who I am. — Jai Uttal

You will never know everything. Knowledge unfolds as we move forward. Sitting back and waiting to know everything before we do anything is a waste of life.
~ I Am Another You — Priya Kumar

A Knock On The Door

They ask me if I've ever thought about the end of
the world, and I say, "Come in, come in, let me
give you some lunch, for God's sake." After a few
bites it's the afterlife they want to talk about.
"Ouch," I say, "did you see that grape leaf
skeletonizer?" Then they're talking about
redemption and the chosen few sitting right by
His side. "Doing what?" I ask. "Just sitting?" I
am surrounded by burned up zombies. "Let's
have some lemon chiffon pie I bought yesterday
at the 3 Dog Bakery." But they want to talk about
my soul. I'm getting drowsy and see butterflies
everywhere. "Would you gentlemen like to take a
nap, I know I would." They stand and back away
from me, out the door, walking toward my
neighbors, a black cloud over their heads and
they see nothing without end. — James Tate

[To the critic who wrote a negative review:] I am sitting in the smallest room of the house. Your review is before me. Soon it will be behind me. — Tallulah Bankhead

I meet Daniel Day-Lewis. He's just sitting in a chair on the set. Now, I had been told that Daniel Day-Lewis was kind of an intense person. And he's really not. He's really THE MOST INTENSE PERSON THAT HAS EVER EXISTED ON THE PLANET OF EARTH. He's not doing anything, he's just sitting in a chair, and I am terrified of him as if a jungle cat has wandered onto the set, like- WHOA! What do we do! Are we supposed to move around a lot or stay perfectly still?! What are the rules of Daniel Day-Lewis?! — Paul F. Tompkins

Each big idea like that is an operating system upgrade," she says, smiling. Comfortable territory. "Writers are responsible for some of it. They say Shakespeare invented the internal monologue."
Oh, I am very familiar with the internal monologue.
"But I think the writers had their turn," she says, "and now it's programmers who get to upgrade the human operating system."
I am definitely talking to a girl from Google. "So what's the next upgrade?"
"It's already happening," she says. "There are all these things you can do, and it's like you're in more than one place at one time, and it's totally normal. I mean, look around."
I swivel my head, and I see what she wants me to see: dozens of people sitting at tiny tables, all learning into phones showing them places that don't exist and yet are somehow more interesting ... — Robin Sloan

He could be anywhere by now, so that is where I look for him. Anywhere...
There are times when I don't recognize this woman who plays with such self-possession. She is something that I have faked. She is William Tyne's daughter, I supposed; his idea of her. I put her forward when I am performing so that he will approach me. I strive to make her taller than she is, more graceful, less unsure. I don't think other people have to try so hard in their lives. Or do they? Are we all living like this? So close to this mesh of nerves?
So I played for my father another concerto, though he was never one for sitting still in a chair. He would make an exception for me, though, his firstborn. He would see the progress I have made. — Claire Kilroy

I sit and feel lonely. Sitting and feeling lonely is something I am a spectacular success at. I can do it for hours. Everyone is good at something. — Martin Millar

My car's my best friend. My office. My home. My location. I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me. We're in the most comfortable seats because we're not facing each other, but sitting side by side. We don't look at each other, but instead do so only when we want to. We're allowed to look around without appearing rude. We have a big screen in front of us and side views. Silence doesn't seem heavy or difficult. Nobody serves anybody. And many other aspects. One most important thing is that it transports us from one place to another. — Abbas Kiarostami

I have killed, robbed and injured too many white men to believe in a good peace. They are medicine and I would eventually die a lingering death. I had rather die on the field of battle. Look at me, see if I am poor, or my people either. The whites may get me at last, as you say, but I will have good times till then. You are fools to make yourselves slaves to a piece of fat bacon, some hard-tack, and a little sugar and coffee. — Sitting Bull

I am also a drummer of sorts. I've got an electronic set sitting in my bedroom. — Gary Cole

Sinner's Prayer Heavenly Father, I come to you in prayer asking forgiveness for my sins. I believe that Jesus died for my sins and was resurrected sitting on the right hand of the Father. Through Jesus, I believe I have eternal life. I believe that His death and resurrection provided for my forgiveness. I trust in Jesus and Jesus alone as my personal Lord and Savior. Thank you Lord, for saving me and forgiving me! I ask you right now to come into my heart and I give you my life. I accept Jesus as my personal savior. I confess with my mouth that I am born again. Fill me with your Holy Spirit and cleanse me Lord. Make me new in you. I receive your Holy Spirit and can begin a new life now in you Jesus. Help and guide me daily to read your word and to walk with you God. In Jesus' name Amen. — Janie McGee

No. When I was a girl, I wanted to be a pirate."
That brought up an all-too-pleasant image - Miss Marshall, the rich, dark red of her hair unbound and flying defiantly in the wind aboard a ship's deck. She'd wear a loose white shirt and pantaloons. He would definitely surrender.
"I am less shocked than you might imagine," Edward heard himself say. "Entirely unshocked."
She smiled in pleasure.
"A bloodthirsty cutthroat profession? Good thing you gave that up. It would never have suited you."
Her expression of pleasure dimmed.
"You'd have succeeded too easily," Edward continued, "and now you'd be sitting, bored as sin, atop a heap of gold too large to spend in one lifetime. Still, though, wouldn't it solve ever so many problems if you married a lord? James Delacey could never touch you again if you did. — Courtney Milan

At some point during my research, I came across the term "gender fluid." Reading those words was a revelation. It was like someone tore a layer of gauze off the mirror, and I could see myself clearly for the first time. There was a name for what I was. It was a thing. Gender fluid.

Sitting there in front of my computer--like I am right now--I knew I would never be the same. I could never go back to seeing it the old way; I could never go back to not knowing what I was.

But did that glorious moment of revelation really change anything? I don't know. Sometimes, I don't think so. I may have a name for what I am now--but I'm just as confused and out of place as I was before. And if today is any indication, I'm still playing out that scene in the toy store--trying to pick the thing that will cause the least amount of drama. And not having much success. — Jeff Garvin

What, suddenly I am a figure from an ancient bit of nursery nonsense?" He lifted a forepaw and began chewing his toes, the picture of dismissive indifference. "And the next egg you come across you'll ask, 'Tell me, sir, what were you doing up on that wall anyway?'"
"Are you ashamed to answer?"
"I am ashamed of nothing. I am a cat." The cat gracefully placed his paw next to the other, sitting as prim as a perfect statue. — Anne Elisabeth Stengl

I am a prince(ss) of peace, sitting on the throne of poise, directing my kingdom of activity. — Shakuntala Devi

I am the king. You're the knight sitting at my round table. That's the nature of our relationship when it comes to war or other conflict resolution in this family. — Sarah Black

If!" protested Mercy. "I am marrying you, Kit Turner, and there's an end to it!"
Tobias nudged James. "I told you she'd produce a landslide when she got rolling."
Kit, however, was not yet fully aware of the character of the girl whom he had just pledged himself. He put his finger to her lips. "Hush, now, this is between your father and me, Mercy. Let me deal with it."
"Oh, dear, oh, dear," muttered James, shaking his head. "Our brother has a lot to learn about the fairer sex. You never, ever do that."
Kit was suddenly sitting in a chair, a sharp elbow having found a tender spot. Mercy stood before her father, looking defiant, if somewhat bedraggled after her night in prison. — Eve Edwards

I aspire to know when best to walk or eat, which music I need, and how to keep myself sitting as I am now, stubbornly enraptured with doing practically nothing. — James Richardson

The best thing that can happen to me when I'm writing fiction is to lose sight of the fact that I'm writing at all. It's as though I enter into a kind of trance. I know I'm writing, but I don't THINK about it. I just let my fingers type
it's as though the feeling comes out directly through them, bypassing the brain altogether. When that happens, I feel completely transported. There is nothing else like this feeling, very little else is more important to me. That intimacy I feel between myself and my work is what makes me feel at home on the earth. I am basically a shy person, basically a loner and an outsider; and I have been all my life. But when I achieve the kind of connection I can through writing, I feel I'm sitting in the lap of God. — Elizabeth Berg

When good things come in, my agent calls or sends me the script. But I allow them to sort through the offers so that I am not just sitting and reading everything because honestly, sometimes the scripts that appeal to me are projects that are not good projects, but I just really like the script or the characters. — Megan Fox

Still in my coat and hat, I sank onto the stair to read the letter. (I never read without making sure I am in a secure position. I have been like this ever since the age of seven when, sitting on a high wall and reading The Water Babies, I was so seduced by the descriptions of underwater life that I unconsciously relaxed my muscles. Instead of being held buoyant by the water that so vividly surrounded me in my mind, I plummeted to the ground and knocked myself out. I can still feel the scar under my fringe now. Reading can be dangerous.) — Diane Setterfield

The first time I saw my wife, Marjorie, I was doing stand-up in Memphis, and she was sitting in the front row. Afterward, I walked up and said, 'Ma'am, I'm going to marry you one day.' And 15 years later, I did. — Steve Harvey

Sinjin was sitting bare-chested with Petra's blue feather boa wrapped around his neck and draped over his shoulder. His long dark curls had been teased and sprayed into a sexy mane. Heavy black eyeliner rimmed his eyes. "Am I not gorgeous? I want to snog myself. I'm like a postmodern Lord Byron." "You put the ironic in Byronic," Petra quipped. "Well said, luv. — Libba Bray

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system - that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. — Harper Lee

I was asked by a concerned church-goer: "Is your relationship with God okay?" and I answered "My relationship with God is far better than yours. You have to be in a certain place, with a certain group of people, pray at certain days of the week, read the Bible at certain times of the day; all in order to have a relationship with God. But I am with God from the moment I wake up, to the moment I fall asleep at night, I am with God wherever on this earth that I wander to, and whosoever I may be with! I may be sitting on the subway, and I am with God. I can assure you that I am closer to God than you are. — C. JoyBell C.

Creating the characters is the most creative part of the novel except for the language itself. There I am, sitting in front of my computer in right-brain mode, typing the things that come to mind - which become the seeds of plot. It's scary, though, because I always wonder: Is it going to be there this time? — Elizabeth George

Tohr jacked forward his in his seat. "What the hell!"
As Lassiter's big body cut through the projection onto the screen, a gigantic pair of flapping breasts covered his face and chest. "Adventures in the Milfy Way. A true classic."
"It's porn!"
"Duh
"
"Okay, I am not sitting through this with you"
The angel, still standing up. shrugged. "Just wanted to make sure you know what you're missing. — J.R. Ward

A strange night, he thought. Somewhere now there is shooting and men are being hunted and imprisoned and tortured and murdered, some corner of a peaceful world is being trampled upon, and one knows it, helplessly, and life buzzes on in the bright bistros of the city, no one cares, and people go calmly to sleep, and I am sitting here with a woman between pale chrysanthemums and a bottle of calvados, and the shadow of love rises, trembling, lonesome, strange and sad, it too an exile from the safe gardens of the past, shy and wild and quick as if it had no right — Erich Maria Remarque

I don't actually go to that many conferences. I do that a couple of times a year. Normally, I am not recognized; people don't throw their panties at me. I'm a perfectly normal person sitting in my den just doing my job. — Linus Torvalds

I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband - I see the treacherous seducer of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid - I see these sights on the earth; 5
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny - I see martyrs and prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea - I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these - All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent. — Walt Whitman

The sun has come up and I am sitting by a window that is foggy with the breath of a life gone by. — Nicholas Sparks

I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. — Sitting Bull

...and I am sitting in this park watching an old couple almost cry together, and I want this to be the most important thing I do all year. — Neil Hilborn

When I die, my epitaph or whatever you call those signs on gravestones is going to read: I joked about every prominent man of my time, but I never met a man I dident like. I am so proud of that I can hardly wait to die so it can be carved. And when you come to my grave you will find me sitting there, proudly reading it. — Will Rogers

Callie tucked her brother into bed, and once he fell asleep, she left her room in search of her husband. She found him outside her door, leaning against the wall with his sword beside him.
"Sin? What are you doing?"
"'Twould appear I am sitting."
"And why are you sitting there?"
"Because it's rather difficult to sleep while standing."
Callie faltered as his meaning became clear. "You are sleeping outside my door? Why?"
"Because if I slept outside of Simon's door, the innkeeper might think I'm strange."
-Callie & Sin — Kinley MacGregor

I am probably the last of a generation able to gain an education in country music by osmosis, by sitting in a '64 Ford banging the buttons on the radio. — Dwight Yoakam

Even as I begin to realize the magnitude of what I'm doing, a thought occurs to me. Somewhere in the city of rebirth, Paul is lifting himself out of bed, staring out his window, and waiting. There are pigeons cooing on rooftops, cathedral bells tolling from towers in the distance. We are sitting here, continents apart, the same way we always did: at the edges of our mattresses, together. On the ceilings where I am going there will be saints and gods and flights of angels. Everywhere I walk there will be reminders of all that time can't touch. My heart is a bird in a cage, ruffling its wings with the ache of expectation.
In Italy, the sun is rising. — Dustin Thomason

I, who cannot stay in my chamber for a single day without acquiring some rust, ... confess that I am astonished at the power of endurance, to say nothing of the moral insensibility, of my neighbors who confine themselves to shops and offices the whole day for weeks and months, aye, and years almost together. I know not what manner of stuff they are of,
sitting there now at three o'clock in the afternoon, as if it were three o'clock in the morning. — Henry David Thoreau

The Bishop, who was sitting close to him, gently touched his hand. "You could not help telling me who you were. This is not my house; it is the house of Jesus Christ. This door does not demand of him who enters whether he has a name, but whether he has a grief. You suffer, you are hungry and thirsty; you are welcome. And do not thank me; do not say that I receive you in my house. No one is at home here, except the man who needs a refuge. I say to you, who are passing by, that you are much more at home here than I am myself. Everything here is yours. What need have I to know your name? Besides, before you told me you had one which I knew."
The man opened his eyes in astonishment.
"Really? You knew what I was called?"
"Yes," replied the Bishop, "you are called my brother. — Victor Hugo

Czar Nicholas the Second was overthrown by Lenin in 1917."
I blink in surprise. "Yes," I say, "he was."
"And do you think I want to know that? IT's not even on your exam syllabus. I never had to know that. So now it's your turn to pick up a few pairs of shoes and make ooh and aah sounds for me becuase Jo ate prawns and she's allergic and she got sick and couldn't come and I'm not sitting on a bus on my own for five hours, OK?"
Nat takes a deep breath and I look at my hands in shame. I am a selfish, selfish person. I am also a very sparkly person; my hands are covered in gold glitter. — Holly Smale

Do you know I've been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced in fact that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment
still I should want to live. Having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it! At thirty though, I shall be sure to leave the cup even if I've not emptied it, and turn away
where I don't know. But till I am thirty I know that my youth will triumph over everything
every disillusionment, every disgust with life. I've asked myself many times whether there is in the world any despair that could overcome this frantic thirst for life. And I've come to the conclusion that there isn't, that is until I am thirty. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I write because I have an innate need to. I write because I can't do normal work. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can partake of real life only by changing it. — Orhan Pamuk

I love bookshelves, and stacks of books, spines, typography, and the feel of pages between my fingertips. I love bookmarks, and old bindings, and stars in margins next to beautiful passages. I love exuberant underlinings that recall to me a swoon of language-love from a long-ago reading, something I hoped to remember. I love book plates, and inscriptions in gifts from loved ones, I love author signatures, and I love books sitting around reminding me of them, being present in my life, being. I love books. Not just for what they contain. I love them as objects too, as ever-present reminders of what they contain, and because they are beautiful. They are one of my favorite things in life, really at the tiptop of the list, easily my favorite inanimate things in existence, and ... I am just not cottoning on to this idea of making them ... not exist anymore. Making them cease to take up space in the world, in my life? No, please do not take away the physical reality of my books. — Laini Taylor

A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. "Spare some change?" mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. "I have nothing to give you," said the stranger. Then he asked: "What's that you are sitting on?" "Nothing," replied the beggar. "Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember." "Ever looked inside?" asked the stranger. "No," said the beggar. "What's the point? There's nothing in there." "Have a look inside," insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold. I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself. — Eckhart Tolle

I am sitting here 93 million miles from the sun on a rounded rock which is spinning at the rate of 1000 miles an hour ... and my head pointing down into space with nothing between me and infinity but something called gravity which I can't even understand, and which you can't even buy any place so as to have some stored away for a gravityless day ... — Russell Baker

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two. — Frank Herbert

Not a thousand years ago, it was illegal to teach a slave to read. Not a thousand years ago, the Supreme Court decided that separate could not be equal. And today, as we sit here, no one is learning anything in this country. You see a nation which is the leader of the rest of the world, that had to pay the price of that ticket, and the price of that ticket is we're sitting in the most illiterate nation in the world. THE MOST ILLITERATE NATION IN THE WORLD. A monument to illiteracy. And if you doubt me, all you have to do is spend a day in Washington. I am serious as a heart attack. — James Baldwin

Usually I am the only subject I care to discuss with company. But when I'm getting reacquainted with an old friend, I really enjoy just sitting back and listening to them talk about me for a while. — Bauvard

About a week ago I was sitting in L.A.'s chicest nightclub with a few friends and the DJ was playing Yaz and Bowie and the videos were on and I was on my third gin and tonic and I realized that no matter where I am it's always the same. Camden, New York, L.A., Palm Springs - it really doesn't seem to matter. Maybe this should be disturbing but it's really not. I find it kind of comforting. — Bret Easton Ellis

While at Colonel Niel's marquee I saw a detail of soldiers bring out a man by the name of Rowland, whom they were going to shoot to death with musketry, by order of a court-martial, for desertion. He was being hauled to the place of execution in a wagon, sitting on an old gun box, which was to be his coffin. When they got to the grave, which had been dug the day before, the water had risen in it, and a soldier was baling it out. Rowland spoke up and said, 'Please hand me a drink of that water, as I want to drink out of my own grave so the boys will talk about it when I am dead, and remember Rowland. — Sam R. Watkins

Brooding is more something I do when I'm working. I know so much more about sitting around worrying about a work project than I do about worrying about kids. This could just be a fact of life for older moms. We've worked and worked and worked and if we are lucky enough to finally have a child or two, we find ourselves suddenly catapulted into a most alien kind of chaos.
Work is so much easier. Anyone will tell you that. To have a desk, where you have everything all lined up, and a schedule you more or less get to agree to. Work. I am a worker. This is so funny because I never really think of my work as work. I certainly never though of myself as having a career. Writing, work, this is just who I am. I am a person who sits at a desk and makes phone calls and taps at a computer keyboard and sips coffee and calls her mom at five. That I am anything better or smaller than that has come as sudden news to me.
Brand new.
News. — Jeanne Marie Laskas

He had become completely mad in his movements; He seemed to be doing everything at the same time. It was a shaking of the head, up and down, sideways; jerky, vigorous hands; quick walking, sitting, crossing the legs, uncrossing, getting up, rubbing the hands, rubbing his fly, hitching his pants, looking up and saying 'Am,' and sudden slitting of the eyes to see everywhere; and all the time he was grabbing me by the ribs and talking, talking — Jack Kerouac

I had to find meaning in it. So I go through this, I see all these homies die; I see all this terrible devastation, people sitting in prison. I've been saved from prison, from death, and from heroine addiction. What am I going to do with that? — Luis J. Rodriguez

I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it shall be behind me. — Max Reger

I will be calmly active, actively calm. I am a prince of peace, sitting on the throne of poise, directing the kingdom of my activity. — Paramahansa Yogananda

I've been so focused on what's horrible and unfair and terrifying about my condition that I hadn't acknowledged what is positive about my condition, as if the positive had been sitting quietly by itself on the far edge of the left side of my condition, there but completely ignored. I can't copy a whole cat. But I can recognize it, name it, know what one sounds and feels like, and I can copy most of it, enough for anyone who looks at it to know what I've drawn. I am lucky. — Lisa Genova

It's 11 am and I'm sitting in a restaurant
3 beers in. Believe me, even I'm surprised
I'm still alive sometimes.
I have been drinking about you for 2 days.
Lately you remind me of a wild thing
chewing through its foot. But you
are already free and I don't know what to do
except trace the rough line of your jaw
and try not to place blame.
Here is the truth: It is hard to be in love
with someone who is in love someone else.
I don't know how to turn that into poetry. — Clementine Von Radics

This is not exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to miss lunch," Alex said grumpily forty minutes later. He shifted uncomfortably and tried to see what I was doing.
I stared him back into submission. "Wait."
The art room is usually empty Thursday afternoons except for me. Ms. Evers leaves early to teach her UArts class and looks up.Of course, I am one of the few entrusted with the Secret Location of the Key.
A few feet away from where I sat perched on a stool,Alex was posed on the anchient chaise we use for figure drawing. It's a relic, probably from the Palladinetti years: chipped mahogany and dusty velvet, what little remaining stuffing pokes out from a century of holes. I was probably luxurious once. Now it's like sitting on a slightly smelly board. But I'd wanted to sketch Alex as I so often saw him, reclining with his head propped on one hand,listening or talking or coaxing me to put down the glass, already,Ella,and come here. — Melissa Jensen

All this, and discontent too! Otherwise, why am I sitting here dreaming of England? Why am I gazing at this campfire like a lost should seeking a hope when all that I love is at my wingtips? Because I am curious. Because I am incorrigibly, now, a wanderer. — Beryl Markham

I am absolutely convinced that the E.U. will still be around. I am convinced the U.K. will be sitting at that table and not negotiating an exit, but being there to stay. — Mark Rutte

Shut up about Leibniz for a moment, Rudy, because look here: You - Rudy - and I are on a train, as it were, sitting in the dining car, having a nice conversation, and that train is being pulled along at a terrific clip by certain locomotives named The Bertrand Russell and Riemann and Euler and others. And our friend Lawrence is running alongside the train, trying to keep up with us - it's not that we're smarter than he is, necessarily, but that he's a farmer who didn't get a ticket. And I, Rudy, am simply reaching out through the open window here, trying to pull him onto the fucking train with us so that the three of us can have a nice little chat about mathematics without having to listen to him panting and gasping for breath the whole way. — Neal Stephenson

It's promising and seductive, that huge Italian family, sitting around the dinner table, surrounded by olive trees. But it's not my family and I am not their family, and no amount of birthing sons, and cooking dinner and raking leaves or planting the gardens or paying for the plane tickets is going to change that. If I don't come back in eleven months, I will not be missed, and no one will write me or call me to acknowledge my absence. Which is not an accusation, just a small truth about clan and bloodline. — Gabrielle Hamilton

I am in a fabulously lucky position in that I get to wear beautiful, beautiful gowns for functions, which I can then give back. That way, they're not sitting in my wardrobe with me looking at them and feeling guilty. I love that, and I think when people have a fabulous function to go to, I'd recommend renting. — Helen Mirren

I find that the three truly great times for thinking thoughts are when I am standing in the shower, sitting on the john, or walking. And the greatest of these, by far, is walking. — Colin Fletcher

Who is going to influence whom in the new association? Warren may have entered the ocean in California, but I am sitting down in Virginia with Ben Graham's beginner's book and "How to Read a Financial Report" by someone called Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith. I am told I have to finish Ben Graham very soon because Warren is unwilling to pay the small fine involved in having the book out of the Omaha public library too long. — Katharine Graham

The reason, I am sure, that journalism is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane. The Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature, are the other children sitting on the doorstep. He instructs and improves them. But I digress. It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination to be the vehicle of useful information that I recalled these matters. Let us now return. — Jerome K. Jerome

Are you not afraid of death?'
I am not in the least afraid! ... I would rather die than drink that bitter medicine.'
At that moment the door of the room flew open, and four rabbits as black as ink entered carrying on their shoulders a little bier.
What do you want with me?' cried Pinocchio, sitting up in bed in a great fright.
We are come to take you,' said the biggest rabbit.
To take me? ... But I am not yet dead! ... '
No, not yet: but you have only a few minutes to live, as you have refused the medicine that would have cured you of the fever.'
Oh, Fairy, Fairy!' the puppet then began to scream, 'give me the tumbler at once ... be quick, for pity's sake, for I will not die
no ... I will not die ... — Carlo Collodi

As of today, I have absolutely no regrets. I think I am a mature person who can take things in stride. I'm grateful for people in my past. They helped me get to where I am, wherever that is. But now, I am thinking for myself and sitting in on all the business transactions. — Marilyn Monroe

I would not see our candle blown out in the wind. It is a small thing, this dear gift of life handed us mysteriously out of immensity. I would not have that gift expire ... If I seem to be beating a dead horse again and again, I must protest: No! I am beating, again and again, living man to keep him awake and move his limbs and jump his mind ... What's the use of looking at Mars through a telescope, sitting on panels, writing books, if it isn't to guarantee, not just the survival of mankind, but mankind surviving forever! — Ray Bradbury

I daydream too. I visualise. I think ahead, I can do it now, sitting here. I think ahead to the walk-in, I can hear the crowd, the music, I can feel the cameras all around me, I can feel movements in my body as I am heading there, I can bring up that incredible feeling you get when you step into the cage. — Conor McGregor

You're not very good at this," Emma said, laughing at the frustration on Sean's face.
He pulled his hand out from under the back of her T-shirt. "You're distracting me."
"How am I distracting you?" She shook the bag at Sean, reminding him to pull two letter tiles to replace the C and the T he'd used to make CAT.
"You look totally hot. And you did it on purpose so I wouldn't be able to concentrate and you'd win."
Emma laughed. Sure, she'd thrown on baggy flannel boxers and an old Red Sox T-shirt after her shower just to seduce him out of triple-word scores. "You not having a shirt on is distracting. And you keep pretending you want to rub my back so you can peek at my tile rack."
"Nothing wrong with checking out your rack." He craned his neck to see better and she shoved him away. It wasn't easy playing Scrabble sitting side by side on the couch, but after a long workday, neither was willing to take the floor. — Shannon Stacey

He yelled at the kid: "Stay here, don't go anywhere." He came out, said everything was okay, called over the squad commander from the checkpoint, stood facing the kid and told the squad commander, "That's how you deal with them." Then he gave the kid another two slaps and let him go. It's a crazy story, I remember sitting in the vehicle, looking on, and telling myself: I've been waiting for a situation like this for three years. From the minute I enlisted, I wanted to stop things like this, and here I am doing nothing, choosing to do nothing, is that okay? I remember answering myself: Yes, it's okay. He's hitting an Arab, and I'm doing nothing. I was really aware of doing nothing because I was scared of the company commander, and what could I do? Jump off the jeep and tell him to stop, because it's stupid, what he's doing? — Breaking The Silence

You wear your armor even to dinner, Lady Wilhelmina?"
"Of course I wear armor. I am sitting with a pirate, a mercenary, an adventurer, and a bounder. If a shot is not fired tonight, I daresay that your reputations are nothing but lies. — Meljean Brook

Comedy is so subjective. You could be in a room with 400 people laughing at a joke and you could just not think it's funny. You're just sitting there like, 'Am I in the twilight zone? Why is everyone laughing?' It's such a personal thing. People have such a personal visceral response to comedy. — Todd Phillips

I think of you often. Especially in the evenings, when I am on the balcony and it's too dark to write or to do anything but wait for the stars. A time I love. One feels half disembodied, sitting like a shadow at the door of one's being while the dark tide rises. Then comes the moon, marvellously serene, and small stars, very merry for some reason of their own. It is so easy to forget, in a worldly life, to attend to these miracles. — Katherine Mansfield

The sole really unpredictable factor in this life, from autumn to winter, spring to summer, from one school year to the next, was Dad. I was so frightened of him that even with the greatest effort of will I am unable to recreate the fear; the feelings I had for him I have never felt since, nor indeed anything close.
His footsteps on the stairs - was he coming to see me?
The wild glare in his eyes. The tightness around his mouth. The lips that parted involuntarily. And then his voice.
Sitting here now, hearing it in my inner ear, I almost start crying. — Karl Ove Knausgard

Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty." Atticus's — Harper Lee

There's a mouse in here with me. He's sitting there in the light of the lamp, looking up at me. He seems as surprised to see me as I am to see him. There he goes. I can hear him still, scurrying about somewhere under the hayrick. I think he's gone now. I hope he comes back. I miss him already. — Michael Morpurgo

One weekend it rained for 48 hours without stopping. The rain beat like bony fingers against the window panes. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Fungus was growing on the walls. I polished off a bottle of gin sitting huddled over the two-bar electric fire and wrote a poem, one of the few that has lasted through the moves and the years. It is called 'Where Can I Go?'
If this is not the place where tears are understood where do I go to cry?
If this is not the place where my spirits can take wing where do I go to fly?
If this is not the place where my feelings can be heard where do I go to speak?
If this is not the place where you'll accept me as I am where can I go to be me?
If this is not the place where I can try and learn and grow where can I go to laugh and cry? — Alice Jamieson

You will think me rhapsodizing; but when I am out of doors, especially when I am sitting out of doors, I am very apt to get into this sort of wondering strain. One cannot fix one's eyes on the commonest natural production without finding food for a rambling fancy. — Jane Austen

'I don't need very much now,' said the boy, 'just a quiet place to sit and rest. I am very tired.' 'Well,' said the tree, straightening herself up as much as she could, well, an old stump is good for sitting and resting. Come, Boy, sit down. Sit down and rest.'And the boy did. And the tree was happy. — Shel Silverstein

Back in the sitting room, Wylan was lighting the lamps. "Are you hungry?"
"Famished," said Jesper. "But Da's asleep. I'm not sure we're allowed to ring for food." He cocked his head to one side, peering at Wylan. "Did you have her make you better-looking?"
Wylan pinked. "Maybe you forgot how handsome I am."
Jesper raised a brow.
"Okay, maybe a little. — Leigh Bardugo

Harry leaned back, his hat over his inscrutable face.
"Well?" Ben nudged him. "Thomas Paine, or a nubile beauty from Sicily?"
"Clearly Thomas Paine. I'd be asleep now in my bed."
"Do you remember the name of the street they live on?"
"Let's see ... Crazy Street? Cuckoo Street? Commitment Street? Cranial Injury Inflicted by Enraged Sibling Street?"
"Canal Street! Thank you."
"I'm going to stop speaking."
"Harry, admit it, if you weren't so utterly uninterested in all women save Alice, you would be sitting on this train yourself."
"Ben Shaw, I hate to point out the startlingly obvious, but I am sitting on this train myself."
"Exactly!"
"Ugh."
"I'm surprised to learn that Lawrence is the world leader in the production of cotton and woven textiles. Are you?"
"Stunned. — Paullina Simons

(After getting out of another treatment center) I came home one Sunday morning. I sat on the edge of my bed. I never grew up going to church. I never read a Bible. I wasn't anti-God. I just never thought about God. I just lived for myself and thought about myself ... I was married by this point. I'd been married for two years. So, here I am sitting on the edge of my bed, nine o'clock Sunday morning. I have a son who's not quite two yet and I just broke down crying because I had been out all weekend doing cocaine. — Jay Haizlip

What about you?" I ask her. "What do you think I should read next?" She takes my hand and leads me to the children's section. She looks around for a second, then heads over to a display at the front. I see a certain green book sitting there and panic. "No! Not that one!" I say. But she isn't reaching for the green book. She's reaching for Harold and the Purple Crayon. "What could you possibly have against Harold and the Purple Crayon?" she asks. "I'm sorry. I thought you were heading for The Giving Tree." Rhiannon looks at me like I'm an insane duck. "I absolutely HATE The Giving Tree." I am so relieved. "Thank goodness. That would've been the end of us, had that been your favorite book." "Here - take my arms! Take my legs!" "Take my head! Take my shoulders!" "Because that's what love's about!" "That kid is, like, the jerk of the century," I say, relieved that Rhiannon will know what I mean. "The biggest jerk in the history of all literature, — David Levithan