Background That Says Quotes & Sayings

In the story of Thetis and Achilles, it's clear this isn't really a safe environment. She's gone down to the River Styx - the dead are being ferried across in the background. There's something in this mythology that says that if you want invulnerability, if you want immortality, you pay a price. — Eula Biss

So High,
So Low,
So Many Things to Know — Vernor Vinge

When are you coming?"
"Uh, we're actually in the car right now. It's a road trip, because y'know, vampires don't do really well with the flying, suprisingly. I guess it's the fear of people opening up the window shades and all the frying and screaming. Plus, it seems like a lot of them have a fear of heights." Claire heard Michael's indistinct voice in the background, and Eve added, "Not him though. He says." -Fall of Night — Rachel Caine

Mariac tells us about the books he's read, the painters he's liked, the plays he's seen. He finds himself by looking in the works of others. He defines his own faith by a passionate anger against Gide the Luciferian. Reading his 'memories' is like meeting a man on a train who says, 'Don't look at me; that's misleading. If you want to know what I'm like, wait until we're in a tunnel, and then study my reflection in the window.' You wait, and look, and catch a face against a shifting background of sooty walls, cables, and sudden brickwork. The transparent shape flickers and jumps, always a few feet away. You become accustomed to its existence, you move with its movements; and though you know its presence is conditional, you feel it to be permanent. Then there is a wail from ahead, a roar and a burst of light; the face is gone for ever. — Julian Barnes

I'm Cuban-American, everybody says. I have a Cuban background, Cuban blood. — Gio Gonzalez

I suppose that history will remember my term in office as the years when the Cold War began to overshadow our lives. I have hardly a day in office that has not been dominated by this all-embracing struggle. And always in the background there has been the atomic bomb. But when history says that my term of office saw the begining of the Cold War, it will also say that in those eight years we have set the course that can win it. — Harry S. Truman

The world today says we cannot openly disagree, especially in the area of religion, without being hateful or bigoted. I suggest that, conversely, it is the world's attitude that is hateful and bigoted. If we will not say that anything is wrong, then at the same time, whether or not we want to admit it, we also are saying there is nothing that is right. Herein we are denying the existence of truth in the realm of faith, and that is a slap in the face of every believer of every creed or background. I — James R. White

That's what keeps me humble because I know my background, know what my mother went through. I never get too high on my stardom or what I can do. My mom always says and my friends all say, 'You're just a very low-maintenance guy'. I don't need too much. Glamour and all that stuff don't excite me. I am just glad I have the game of basketball in my life. — LeBron James

Tolerance says I am just going to stomach your right to be different. That if you disappear from the face of the earth, I am no better or worse off. But love - love knows that every American has worth and value, no matter what their background, race, religion, or sexual orientation. — Cory Booker

I welcome anyone that wants to come into the WWE and try it, because, I was the type of person that was not welcome with open arms. People didn't want me to come in because I was from a Reality background. But I'm the first person that says, bring anybody in. — The Miz

Academic credentials are neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for having your ideas taken seriously. If a famous professor repeatedly says stupid things, then tries to claim he never said them, there's no rule against calling him a mendacious idiot - and no special qualifications required to make that pronouncement other than doing your own homework.Conversely, if someone without formal credentials consistently makes trenchant, insightful observations, he or she has earned the right to be taken seriously, regardless of background. — Paul Krugman

It is in Christianity that our arts have developed; it is in Christianity that the laws of Europe
until recently
have been rooted. It is against a background of Christianity that all of our thought has significance. An individual European may not believe that the Christian faith is true, and yet what he says, and makes, and does will all spring out of his heritage of Christian culture and depend upon that culture for its meaning ... I do not believe that culture of Europe could survive the complete disappearance of the Christian faith. And I am convinced of that, not merely because I am a Christian myself, but as a student of social biology. If Christianity goes, the whole culture goes. — T. S. Eliot

Of all the times you've undressed me in my fantasies, I never remember feeling this ... unfulfilled."
"Please, Morpheus," I beg upon hearing Jeb stir in the background.
"Ah, but those delectable words," Morpheus says with a provocative smirk, "those are always in the fantasy."
I glare at him. "You're unbelievable."
"And that sentiment is reserved for the end. — A.G. Howard

I often enjoy singing in an acoustic setting more than an amplified one. — Eric Clapton

I love when I reach Marcus on the phone and as he says hello, I can hear the music he's listening to in the background. That music is the sound of him without me. How he surrounds himself when I'm not there, which is almost all the time. — Megan McCafferty

Phoebe doesn't quite believe in fate the way I do. She says you have to chase your destiny, and she always expects life to be like a romantic comedy: all you have to do is dress the part of the heroine, and pretty soon you'll be kissing some hottie while fountains spew and music swells in the background. — Lauren Morrill

Something new is blowing. On a downtown Kingston wall: IMF - Is Manley Fault. General election called for October 30, 1980. Somebody is driving you through Bavaria, near the Austrian border. A hospital sprouting out of the forest like magic. Hills in the background tipped with snow like cake icing. You meet the tall and frosty Bavarian, the man who helps the hopeless. He smiles but his eyes are set too far back and they vanish in the shadow of his brow. Cancer is a red alert that the whole body is in danger, he says. Thank God the food he forbids, Rastafari had forbidden long time. A sunrise is a promise. Something new is blowing. November 1980. A new party wins the general election and the man who killed me steps up to the podium with his brothers to take over the country. He has been waiting for so long he leaps up the stairs and trips. — Marlon James

When an office-holder facing a multi-count indictment says that he has decided to spend more time with his family, the proper response is a horse-laugh. When an accused politician explains that a charge of corruption is 'really' an attack on his or her race, religion, ethnic background or gender, the odds that something felonious happened jumps. — Jeff Greenfield

You should know," he says. His whisper is low enough that even angels probably couldn't hear it beyond the background noise of conversations in the corridor. "I don't even like you. — Susan Ee

I invited myself. Thought this table needed some class. — Libba Bray

In the parking lot of a Safeway on Oahu," he says. And he's telling the truth;
in the background she can hear the shopping carts performing their clashy, anal
copulations.
"I'm kind of busy now, Whitey -- but what can I do for you?"
"It's Y.T., " she says, "and you can help bust me out of The Clink." She gives
him the details.
"How long ago did he put you there?"
"Ten minutes."
"Okay, the three-ring binder for Clink franchises states that the manager is
supposed to check on the detainee half an hour after admission."
"How do you know this stuff?" she says accusingly.
"Use your imagination. As soon as the manager pulls his halfhour check, wait
for another five minutes, and then make your move. I'll try to give you a hand.
Okay?"
"Got it. — Neal Stephenson

Hence we did not foster competition in our school, on the contrary. — Dora Russell

The commentator says: The West is trying to spread panic, telling lies about the accident. And then they show the dosimeter again, measuring some fish on a plate, or a chocolate bar, or some pancakes at an open pancake stand. It was all a lie. The military dosimeters then in use by our armed forces were designed to measure the radioactive background, not individual products. This level of lying, this incredible level, with which Chernobyl is connected in our minds, was comparable only to the level of lies during the big war. — Svetlana Alexievich

Ford? You OK, man?" I take a sip of whiskey and enjoy it. "Why wouldn't I be?" Rook is going crazy in the background now. I can hear her losing control. "Well, Rook says you broke up with her ... " He stops as she snaps at Ronin and I enjoy that a little too much. "Rook, those were your words, OK? Ford, what the fuck is going on? — J.A. Huss

Mozart," Julie says in a bitter chuckle, staring at the speaker. "It's supposed to be the pinnacle of art, right? This transcendent human achievement? And we use it for background noise in bathrooms. We literally shit on it. — Isaac Marion

The soul lives there in the silent breath. — Rumi

Obama doesn't run around wearing a Carrie Bradshaw-esque nameplate necklace that says 'Socialist.' But his policies, actions, words, background and associations speak louder than any ID necklace ever could. — Monica Crowley