Quotes & Sayings About Being Done With Something

...killing someone with a gun is a lot different than doing it up close. A gun usually puts distance between you and the target, a separation to some degree. It's like the silly statement about something being easier said than done - what isn't easier to say than do? It's easier to shoot someone than stab them, just like it's easier for a pilot to drop a bomb on bad guys than shoot them - it's all relative."

Excerpt From: Jamie Smith. "Gray Work — Jamie Smith

Writing, music, sculpting, painting, and prayer! These are the three things that are most closely related! Writers, musicians, sculptors, painters, and the faithful are the ones who make things out of nothing. Everybody else, they make things out of something, they have materials! But a written work can be done with nothing, it can begin in the soul! A musical piece begins with a harmony in the soul, a sculpture begins with a formless, useless piece of rock chiseled and formed and molded into the thing that was first conceived in the sculptor's heart! A painting can be carried inside the mind for a lifetime, before ever being put onto paper or canvass! And a prayer! A prayer is a thought, a remembrance, a whisper, a communion, that is from the soul going to what cannot be seen, yet it can move mountains! And so I believe that these five things are interrelated, these five kinds of people are kin. — C. JoyBell C.

You know what's sad about reading books? It's that you fall in love with the characters. They grow on you. And as you read, you start to feel what they feel - all of them - you become them. And when you're done, you're never the same. Sure you're still you, you look the same, talk in the same manner, but something in you has changed. Something in the way you think, the way you choose, sometimes, even the things you say may differ. But it all comes down to the state you go to after a nice novel. The after-feeling. It's amazing, but somehow, you feel left alone by that world you were once in. It's overwhelming. But it makes you sad. Cause for once you were this, this otherworldly being in ... Neverwhere, and then you suddenly have to say goodbye after a few weeks from when you read the last page. When you've recovered from that state it's just ... quite sad. — Suzanne Collins

That there is in this world neither brains, nor goodness, nor good sense, but only brute force. Bloodshed. Starvation. Death. That there was not the slightest hope not even a glimmer of hope, of justice being done. It would never happen. No one would ever do it. The world was just one big Babi Yar. And there two great forces had come up against each other and were striking against each other like hammer and anvil, and the wretched people were in between, with no way out; each individual wanted only to live and not be maltreated, to have something to eat, and yet they howled and screamed and in their fear they were grabbing at each other's throats, while I, little blob of watery jelly, was sitting in the midst of this dark world. Why? What for? Who had done it all? There was nothing, after all, to hope for! Winter. Night. — A. Anatoli Kuznetsov

When Chris talks, he has a very clear and authoritative manner - but don't let yourself be lulled into a feeling of complete confidence that he's right. Yes, he used to be a spacewalking instructor and evaluator and he's Mr. EVA, but he hasn't done a walk since 2001. There have been a lot of changes since then. I don't want the junior trainers to ignore that little voice inside and not question something just because it's being said with authority by someone who's been here a long time. At — Chris Hadfield

I begin to want things I've never wanted before: braids, a dressing-gown, a purse of my own. Something is unfolding, being revealed to me. I see that there's a whole world of girls and their doings that has been unknown to me, and that I can be part of it without making any effort at all. I don't have to keep up with anyone, run as fast, aim as well, make loud explosive noises, decode messages, die on cue. I don't have to think about whether I've done these things well, as well as a boy. All I have to do is sit on the floor and cut frying pans out of the Eaton's Catalogue with embroidery scissors, and say I've done it badly. Partly this is a relief. — Margaret Atwood

I have been speaking with Dyhern a great deal on the subject of dueling," Temeraire said, "and it seems plain to me that something must be done. You must give me your word, Laurence, that if anyone ever should insult you again, they must be told at once that I will insist on being your second myself. I am very much indebted to Mr. Hammond for having killed that wretched fellow, but in future, if anyone likes to prove they are not a coward by insulting you, they may fight me, and then they cannot complain of not having had satisfaction: I am sure everyone will agree they were brave, once they are dead. — Naomi Novik

Let's get something clear up front. I'm not Harry Dresden. Harry's a wizard. A genuine, honest-to-goodness wizard. He's Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket. He'll spit in the eye of gods and demons alike if he thinks it needs to be done, and to hell with the consequences
and yet somehow my little brother manages to remain a decent human being. I'll be damned if I know how. But then, I'll be damned regardless. My name is Thomas Raith, and I'm a monster. — Jim Butcher

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for, it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. — Henry David Thoreau

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason
if the worlds are in any way blurred
the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'. — Raymond Carver

I was good with being alone, always liked it, but there's something about doing a job alone that you've always done with someone else that just doesn't feel right. Maybe it's like making Christmas cookies by yourself. There's nothing wrong with it in theory, but you're really supposed to be doing it with other people, and not just any other people. — Anna Quindlen

Being an actress has something in common with being a housewife. They both look terribly easy to someone who hasn't done them. And the easier it looks, probably the better you are doing your job. — Glenda Jackson

Jobs liked to tell the story- and he did so to his team that day- about how everything that he had done correctly had required a moment when he hit the rewind button. In each case he had to rework something that he discovered was not perfect. He talked about doing it on Toy Story, when the character of Woody had evolved into being a jerk, and on a couple of occasions with the original Macintosh. " If something isn't right, you can't just ignore it and say you'll fix it later," he said. " That's what other companies do. — Walter Isaacson

Verbs come in two types, active and passive. With an active verb, the subject of the sentence is doing something. With a passive verb, something is being done to the subject of the sentence. — Stephen King

The notion of the hero as outsider, as alien, is forget it, over, done with. It's not about being against society anymore. It's about standing there, holding something up. It's not pulling away. — Twyla Tharp

Sometimes - more often than not - he thought that Rachel and her classmates were just playing at being caring and open-minded, at noticing that there was a world wider than them, their college, their peers. They'd experience poverty in two-hour chunks twice a month. like it was a movie they were going to see or a TV show they were watching, something they'd click off or walk out of when it was done, something they sat through just so they could talk about it with everyone else who'd seen it and had something to say. — Jennifer Weiner

Catherine de Medici brought her cooks to France when she married, and those cooks brought sherbet and custard and cream puffs, artichokes and onion soup, and the idea of roasting birds with oranges. As well as cooks, she brought embroidery and handkerchiefs, perfumes and lingerie, silverware and glassware and the idea that gathering around a table was something to be done thoughtfully. In essence, she brought being French to France. — Ashley Warlick

Having done quite a bit with studios and networks, I thought if I'm going to do something new and unformed, it would be fun to do it in a completely new space and place. The space being the Internet and the place being Crackle. — Jerry Seinfeld

There was no reason to think she would survive this. So she was surprised to notice that she was happy. Not the powerful, irrational, and dangerous joy of a euphoric attack, but a kind of pleasure and release all the same. At first, she thought it was because there wasn't anyone there with her, guarding her, judging her. And that, she decided, was part of it. But more than that, she was simply doing what needed to be done without having to concern herself about what anyone else thought. Even Jim. And wasn't that odd? She wanted nothing in the world more than for Jim to be there - followed by Amos and Alex and a good meal and a bed at a humane gravity - but there was a part of her that was also expanding into the silence of simply being herself and utterly alone. There were no dark thoughts, no guilt, no self-doubt tapping at the back of her mind. Either she was too tired for that, or something else had happened to her while she'd been paying attention to other things. — James S.A. Corey

We done something brave and good here ... Maybe [we] don't want to be deprived a any a the things that go along with being brave and good. Even the bad. — Kathryn Stockett

I had stood and stared at the webbing of steel then wished for a hole to climb through. The wires had just unraveled without setting off the klaxon. I remembered thinking with a horrible kind of panic that I had somehow done withcraft, and was convinced I was the blackest kind of evil. Then I realized how ridiculous I was being, and figured it was a coincidental gift from the universe, or something. — Penelope Fletcher

I've had boyfriends before, and frankly, each one was a disappointment.
There was nothing horribly wrong with these boys. It was my fault. I'm kind of a snob when it comes to guys.
So far, the biggest problem with the boys I've dated is that they weren't too smart. And eventually I ended up hating myself for being with them. It scared me, trying to pretend I was something I wasn't. I could see how easily it could be done, and it made me realize that was what most of the other girls were doing as well - pretending. If you were a girl, you could start pretending in high school and go on pretending your whole life, until, I suppose, you imploded and had a nervous breakdown, which is something that's happened to a few of the mothers around here. All of a sudden, one day something snaps and they don't get out of bed for three years. — Candace Bushnell

And something happened in Katie's heart, and she realized it wasn't just two people being joined together, not even two families. She felt as if she were joining hands with everyone who'd done this before her, just as she'd done after giving birth to Jacob, a feeling that she finally belonged, that she was part of the whole enterprise, a brick in that great arch which rose out of the dark behind you and swung over your head and curved into the future, and she was helping to keep it strong and solid, and helping to protect everyone beneath it. — Mark Haddon

Being a troll, he loved the earth. A troll's love for the earth is a peculiar thing - it is something like the way you and I love our parents and our dogs and our favorite novels and the stuffed rabbits we have had since we were in our cradles and the very best thing we have ever done with our own two hands, all smashed up together in a rough, enormous ball of feeling the size of a planet. — Catherynne M Valente

You didn't want to put in the work to make us happen.
It was true. I had been so captivated by Duncan, so enamored, so infatuated, that I let his life drown mine for two years. I went along, and when I got tired of it, tired of it just being easy and comfortable and convenient but not love, I ended it. And that was why I had the man in my lobby looking at me like there were still places for us to go.
I had let him believe that he was my whole world, let him be everything, and then one day just stopped loving him and walked away. It was something I did, something I had always done - poured on the charm, made myself into the ideal partner, lover, friend, indispensable and irreplaceable, and then, when I got bored or tired or tapped out, instead of fighting, I just quit. It was wildly unfair, and the only people I didn't do it with were my family. Even my friends complained that I was always around and then just gone.
Nathan Qells — Mary Calmes

Horses have taught us about the transfiguring effect of reducing anger. We have repeatedly observed that they rarely show offense at a handler who reprimands them legitimately for something they have done wrong, if the handler is devoid of rage or vengeance. Howeve, if reprimanded in a fury, horses will counterattack because they feel challenged. Many power struggles can be avoided by learning not to meet anger with anger. This is an invaluable lesson in life. Developing patience and being unemotional is the key. — Adele Von Rust McCormick

It is not easy being you just when you think you made it and its done and over with something comes up and your back to square one all over again wishing with all your heart that it was not so that you weren't back in the darkness you escaped. don't worry you just started and it is not easy but in the end it'll be worth every tear. — Morigann Sidhe

Playing Japanese characters and being in environments that are Japanese, like a character's apartment or whatever, if you have directors or art directors who just don't know what' s what with Japanese culture, then pretty soon something's just passed through. I've been through many times where I've pointed out the incorrectness of so much of what's been done to a set. — Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

Something is unfolding, being revealed to me. I see that there's a whole world of of girls and their doings that has been unknown to me, and that I can be part of without making any effort at all. I don't have to keep up with anyone, run as fast, aim as well, make loud explosive noises, decode messages, die on cue. I don't have to think about whether I do these things well, as well as a boy. All I have to do is sit on the floor and cut frying pans our of the Eaton's Catalogue with embroidery scissors, and say I've done it badly. — Margaret Atwood

I might've said something welcoming to the boy, but I'd learnt from it happening to me personal that if you wet your pants in front of a bunch of strangers, you don't really want no one talking to you. You don't want no one asking why you're walking stiff legged or doing nothing that will draw attention to yourself. My keeping quiet waren't from being ignorant and unwlecoming, it was done so's not to shame him. 'Sides, after he got done walking all the way to the Settlement with that pee chaffing 'round his pants rubbing him raw, he waren't gonna want to talk atall! — Christopher Paul Curtis

I love the idea of relationships as being the ultimate team - someone you share everything with, who completely and utterly backs you, and whom you give to completely unselfishly. It's easier said than done, but we all need something to aspire to. — Matthew Hussey

If something is being done on a secret basis in national security, that's a great reason for elected officials to not talk about it. And that's a great way to shirk accountability for it with the public. — Rachel Maddow

If someone is being bullied or feels like an outsider, and they relate to something that I've done, even if it's just igniting a spark, that's great. I had that feeling as a kid. I was messed with no end. — Johnny Depp

And yet, despite the multiplicity of times we've done it, it is still a funny, exultant, true thing - where for a short time you turn into something else and fly; where you stop fretting and wanting, and are simply alight with joy - and all while never venturing beyond the walls of your room. And I would put our continued success down to one simple thing. At the end of every tumbling session, one of us will turn to the other and say, "Thank you very much. That was very pleasant. Very pleasant indeed. My dear, I am much obliged to you."
Because at the end of the day, that is the hottest sex tip of all: gratitude. That you've found someone who wants to do that thing, with you, and no government has yet found a way to charge you VAT on it. You can set fire to the sky, and not be charged a penny.
Sometimes, it's great being a human. — Caitlin Moran

Being afraid's not always bad." he said gently. "It can keep you moving forward. It can help you get things done."
The silence between us was different than any silence I'd known before, full and warm and waiting. "What are you afraid of?" I dared to ask.
There was a flicker of surprise in his eyes, as if it were something he'd never been asked before. For a moment I thought he wouldn't answer. But he let out a slow breath, and his gaze left mine to sweep across the trailer park. "Staying here." he finally said. "Staying until I'm not fit to belong anywhere else."
"Where do you want to belong?" I half whispered.
His expression changed with quicksilver speed, amusement dancing in his eyes. "Anywhere they don't want me. — Lisa Kleypas

The evening with its lamps burning
The night with its head in its hands
The early morning

I look back at the worried parents
Wandering through the house
What are we going to do

The evening of the clinical
The night of the psychological
The morning facedown in the pillow

The experts can handle him
The experts have no idea
How to handle him

There are enigmas in darkness
There are mysteries
Sent out without searchlights

The stars are hiding tonight
The moon is cold and stony
Behind the clouds

Nights without seeing
Mornings of the long view
It's not a sprint but a marathon

Whatever we can do
We must do
Every morning's resolve

But sometimes we suspected
He was being punished
For something obscure we had done

I would never abandon the puzzle
Sleeping in the next room
But I could not solve it — Edward Hirsch

I went to Lila's house in search of comfort. But I knew I had made a mistake with her, too. I had done something stupid: I hadn't told her about going with Stefano to get the photograph. Why had I been silent? Was I pleased with the role of peacemaker that her husband had proposed and did I think I could exercise it better by being silent about the visit to the Rettifilo? Had I been afraid of betraying Stefano's confidence and as a result, without realizing it, betrayed her? I didn't know. Certainly it hadn't been a real decision: rather, an uncertainty that first became a feigned carelessness, then the conviction that not having said right away what had happened made remedying the situation complicated and perhaps vain. How easy it was to do wrong. I sought excuses that might seem convincing to her, but I wasn't able to make them even to myself. I sensed that the foundations of my behavior were flawed, I was silent. On — Elena Ferrante

It's really nice to be able to do something that you've never done. I think that's the gift of being an actor because I get to play a cop, a racist cop and I've never done that before. It's nice to inhabit these other worlds especially when you get to work with great actors. — Matt Dillon

I read daily, not so much for the benefit of my writing, but because I am addicted to it. There is nothing in the world for me that compares to being lost in a really good novel. That said, reading is an absolute must if you want to write. It is a trite enough thing to say, but very true nonetheless. I cannot understand aspiring writers who email me for advice and freely admit that they read very little. I have learned something from every writer I have ever read. Sometimes I have done so consciously, picking up something about how to frame a scene, or seeing a new possibility with regards to structure, or interesting ways to write dialogue. Other times, I think, my collective reading experience affects my sensibilities and informs me in ways that I am not quite aware of, but in real ways that impact how I approach writing. The short of it is, as an aspiring writer, there is nothing as damaging to your credibility as saying that you don't like to read — Khaled Hosseini

The thing about this bookshelf is that each of these books is a vast experience unto itself, while also being both self-contained and superbly useless. Reading any one of them doesn't get you anywhere particularly meaningful; you haven't arrived or graduated; you've just gone and done something that passed the time. It's like taking a long walk with a friend who's got a lot to say. There's not cumulative purpose to it - it's just an excellent way to waste your life. — Jonathan Lethem

This is the threat to our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? It doesn't help to try to change it to accord with your system of thought. The momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really significant to evolve from that kind of action. The thing to do is learn to live in your period of history as a human being. That's something else, and it can be done. — Joseph Campbell

The mystery of presence is that encounter wherein the self-disclosure of one evokes a deeper life in the other. There is nothing you need to "think" or understand to be present; it is all about giving and receiving right now, and it is not done in the mind. It is actually a transference and sharing of Being, and will be experienced as grace, gratuity and inner-groundedness. Thus there is always a great leap of inner authenticity that is associated with true mutual presence, because in being received graciously, we are able to receive ourselves at an ever-deeper level yet recognize that we are both part of something Greater itself. It gives one great happiness and deep joy. We really are socially contagious human beings, but we settle for "human doings." It is at the being level that life is most vitally transferred. — Richard Rohr

Jen shakes her head sadly and I can see her lower lip trembling, the tear that's starting to form in the corner of her eye. I can't touch her, kiss her, love her, or even, as it turns out, have a conversation that doesn't degenerate into angry reincriminations in the first three minutes. But I can still make her sad, and for now, I'll have to be satisfied with that. And it would be easier, so much easier, if she didn't insist on being so goddamned beautiful, so gym-toned and honey-haired and wide-eyed and vulnerable. Because even now, even after all that she's done to me, there's still something in her eyes that makes me want to shelter her at any cost, even though I know it's really me who needs the protection. It would be so much easier if she wasn't Jen. But she is, and where there was once the purest kind of love, there is now a snake pit of fury and resentment and a new dark and twisted love that hurts more than all the rest put together. — Jonathan Tropper

Well, thought Harry, as he crossed Magnolia Crescent, turned into Magnolia Road and headed towards the darkening play park, he had (by and large) done as Sirius advised. He had at least resisted the temptation to tie his trunk to his broomstick and set off for The Burrow by himself. In fact, Harry thought his behaviour had been very good considering how frustrated and angry he felt at being stuck in Privet Drive so long, reduced to hiding in flowerbeds in the hope of hearing something that might point to what Lord Voldemort was doing. Nevertheless, it was quite galling to be told not to be rash by a man who had served twelve years in the wizard prison, Azkaban, escaped, attempted to commit the murder he had been convicted for in the first place, then gone on the run with a stolen Hippogriff. Harry — J.K. Rowling

What if this was a sign? Maybe I'm not supposed to be an Outsider.
He surprised her by taking her hand and threading his fingers through hers. "You already are an Outsider. You fit everywhere. You just don't see it yet."
She stared at their hands. He'd never done that before.
Roar gave her a droll look. "It's just odd having you lay your hand on my arm all the time," he said, responding to her thoughts.
Yes, but this feels intimate. Don't you think it does? I don't mean that I think we're being too intimate. I guess I do. Roar, sometimes it's really hard to get used to this.
Roar flashed a grin. "Aria, this isn't intimate. If I were being intimate with you, trust me, you'd know."
She rolled her eyes. Next time you say something like that, you should toss a red rose and then leave with a swish of your cape. — Veronica Rossi

Sit comfortably, in a relaxed way, and close your eyes. As much as possible, let go of analysis and expectation. For ten to fifteen minutes, call to mind something you have done or said that you feel was a kind or good action - a time you were generous, or caring, or contributed to someone's well-being. If something comes to mind, allow the happiness that may come with the remembrance. If nothing comes to mind, gently turn your attention to a quality you like about yourself. — Sharon Salzberg

The Greens have not been providing you with the full information about where their money comes from or what it's about. I think the Greens in this upcoming state election should resign if they're being funded by an offshore political power. It's tantamount to treason and something needs to be done about it. — Clive Palmer

It is hard to watch myself. I'm hypercritical, and it's difficult to watch a performance when I may end up being at odds with it - wishing I'd done something differently or that they had edited it a certain way. — Jack Falahee

To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do - to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst - is, by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed — Frederick Buechner

Isadore? If you don't quit being this way with me, I'm going to remove your sheet and do things that will make you scream and I won't stop until I'm done. I don't even know what I'd do, but something tells me I'd take all the time in the world to figure that out until it's entirely and perfectly done. — Lucian Bane

If we are sowing lots of thoughts about shoes, cars, clothes, computer games, shopping, guns, and very few thoughts about things of the Lord, we will not reap spiritual maturity, spiritual priorities, greater desire for the Lord, or a closer relationship with the Lord. We will reap vanity, shallowness, and even greater spiritual disinterest and distance from the Lord. If we struggle with being uninterested in the things of the Lord, we need to consider that this is something we have actually done to ourselves. If we sow a desire to charm, amuse, or impress our friends, we will not reap relationships based on a selfless, sacrificial, Christ-like interest in our friend's spiritual welfare. We will reap self-serving, exploitive relationships that can actually drag our friends down. This is a life and death matter: what you are sowing in every little conversation that you have. Are you building up, edifying your friends? — Botkin

Happy we were then, for we had a good house, and good food, and good work. There was nothing to do outside at night, except chapel, or choir, or penny-readings, sometimes. But even so, we always found plenty to do until bedtime, for if we were not studying or reading, then we were making something out back, or over the mountain singing somewhere. I can remember no time when there was not plenty to be done.
I wonder what has happened in fifty years to change it all ... But when people stop being friends with their mother and fathers, and itching to be out of the house, and going mad for other things to do, I cannot think. It is like an asthma, that comes on a man quickly. He has no notion how he had it, but there it is, and nothing can cure it. — Richard Llewellyn

I really didn't write it with any intention of being published. If I'd known that was going to happen, I would have written something more sensible, because now I have to dress up as a pirate for book signings ... I would have done a novel about a man who hangs around with a gaggle of models. — Gideon Defoe

I trust no one, and only rarely myself. I struggle most mornings, afternoons, and evenings with what is right an what is wrong. I do not understand if I am being punished for something I have done wrong, something I don't remember, or if this happens to everyone, and I am just too stupid to understand it. — Jennifer Lynch

I don't think most people realize - and there's no reason they should - the amount of demeaning garbage you have to take if you want a career in the arts. I mean, going off to med school is something you can say with your head high. Or being a banker or going into insurance or the family business - no problem. But the conversations I had with grown-ups after college ... "So you're done with school now, Bill." "That's right." "So what's next on the agenda?" Pause. Finally I would say it: "I want to be a writer." And then they would pause. "A writer." "I'd like to try." Third and final pause. And then one of two inevitable replies: either "What are you going to do next?" or "What are you really going to do?" That dread double litany ... What are you going to do next? ... What are you really going to do? ... What are you going to do next? ... What are you really going to do ... ? — William Goldman

Lincoln replied that he was more than willing to die, but that he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived, and that to connect his name with the events transpiring in his day and generation and so impress himself upon them as to link his name with something that would redound to the interest of his fellow man was what he desired to live for. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

If we were taught to cook as we are taught to walk, encouraged first to feel for pebbles with our toes, then to wobble forward and fall, then had our hands firmly tugged on so we would try again, we would learn that being good at it relies on something deeply rooted, akin to walking, to get good at which we need only guidance, senses, and a little faith. We aren't often taught to cook like that, so when we watch people cook naturally, in what looks like an agreement between cook and cooked, we think that they were born with an ability to simply know that an egg is done, that the fish needs flipping, and that the soup needs salt. Instinct, whether on the ground or in the kitchen, is not a destination but a path. — Tamar Adler

Whatever the country or the venue, whoever I find myself with, I strongly believe that whenever you agree to pay for something, you vote for it. I personally try to be in coherence with my core values (as much as possible) so, since I do not want to vote for animal exploitation in any form or under any circumstance, I do not derogate from my chosen alimentation. I do not un-veganize myself for the time of a meal. Even if it implies eating only bread and drinking only water... And being made fun of by workmates in a convention (be there, done that, got the t-shirt). — Martin Blais

When the persecution of an individual who has exposed an evil is pursued so ruthlessly and yet the evil itself is studiedly ignored, all of us know that there is something very wrong with the way that our society is conducting itself. And if we do not protest in the strongest terms about what is being done in our name, then we become complicit. — Alan Moore

Jane: Missy was not so subtly reminding me that she had done something nice for me and here i was being rude when all she was asking me to do was attend a nice party. This was the way southern women worked all peaches & cream laced with arsenic. — Molly Harper

Each of the ladies, being after the fashion of their sex, highly trained in promoting men's talk without listening to it, could think - about the education of children, about the use of fog sirens in an opera - without betraying herself. Only it struck Helen that Rachel was perhaps too still for a hostess, and that she might have done something with her hands. — Virginia Woolf

I feel like I've been successful after being done with the film is when I see it, if I'm embarrassed, if I'm slightly mortified, and if I feel super-vulnerable, I think I did something. — Tavis Smiley

You've done a good job of saying everything but how you feel," she said. "Sadness isn't something you get to get out of by being smart. You don't get to outwit this. You will have to deal with the pain at some point. — David Stuart MacLean

Being near Tom and Doug at night kept me from having to say to myself I am not afraid whenever I heard a branch snap in the dark or the wind shook so fiercely it seemed something bad was about to happen. But I wasn't out here to keep myself from having to say I am not afraid. I'd come, I'd realized, to stare that fear down, to stare everything down, really
all that I'd done to myself and all that had been done to me. I couldn't do that while tagging along with someone else. — Cheryl Strayed

It ain't bragging if you've done it. There's nothing wrong with being proud of doing something well. In fact, if you intend to do something creative for a living, it's absolutely essential.
[check for wording] Proper pride says, "I'm good at this." Improper pride says, "I'm better than you. — James A. Owen

Start with the assumption that the best way to do something is not the way it's being done right now. — Aaron Levie

There are two types of spirits. One makes the transition to the spirit realm and goes on to whatever comes next. They can still come back to connect with people who are alive, but it's like dropping by for a visit, and then they go back to whatever it is they were happily doing in the next life. On the other hand, earthbound spirits - ghosts - are folks who pass but still have unfinished business. They feel like they're going to be judged for something they did wrong; or they don't know they are dead; or they are angry about being dead and not getting to finish something. They have been cheated out of life. They stay on a plane that's closer to the plane of earth, and that's why they're always at the corners of our vision and the edges of our dreams. Once they complete the process and resign themselves to the fact that their time on earth is finished and they've done what they can do, they can move to the next level. — Jodi Picoult

Church begins with Jesus: who He is and what He has done. It is all about Jesus, and if it begins
to be about something else, then it stops being the church as Jesus meant it to be. — Neil Cole

You want to do something for the Lord ... do it. Whatever you feel needs to be done, even though youre shaking in your boots, youre scared to death
take the first step forward. The grace comes with that one step and you get the grace as you step. Being afraid is not a problem; its doing nothing when you feel afraid. — Mother Angelica

Nature puts us all in our places. Being made to feel small isn't something we welcome when it's done to us by another person, but to be apprised of our essential nothingness by something so much greater than ourselves is in no sense humiliating. Our egos, exhaustingly aware of every slight they receive and prone relentlessly to compare their advantages with those enjoyed by others, may even be relieved to find themselves finally humbled by forces so much more powerful than any human being could ever muster. — Alain De Botton

The great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and makes something of his own. — Ernest Hemingway,

Instructions for freedom:
1. Life's metaphors are God's instructions.
2. You have just climbed up and above the roof, there is nothing between you and the Infinite; now, let go.
3. The day is ending, it's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.
4. Your wish for resolution was a prayer. You are being here is God's response, let go and watch the stars came out, in the inside and in the outside.
5. With all your heart ask for Grace and let go.
6. With all your heart forgive him, forgive yourself and let him go.
7. Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering then, let go.
8. Watch the heat of day pass into the cold night, let go.
9. When the Karma of a relationship is done, only Love remains. It's safe, let go.
10. When the past has past from you at last, let go.. then, climb down and begin the rest of your life with great joy. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Home. the word always had air quotes around it in her mind. She'd done what she could to make her flat cozy, filling it with art, books, ornate lanterns, and a Persian carpet as soft as lynx fur. And of course there were her angel wings taking up one whole wall. But there was no help for the real emptiness; its close air was stirred by no breath but her own. When she was alone, the empty place within her, the missingness, as she thought of it, seemed to swell. Even being with Kaz had done something to keep it at bay, though not enough. Never enough. — Laini Taylor

The feeling that I've done something wrong, that I really don't know what it is, that there's something terribly wrong with my very being, leads to a sense of utter hopelessness. This hopelessness is the deepest cut of the mystified state. It means there is no possibility for me as I am; there is no way I can matter or be worthy of anyone's love as long as I remain myself. I must find a way to be someone else--someone who is lovable. Someone who is not me. — Bell Hooks

Lacking strength beauty hates the understanding for asking of her what it cannot do but the life of spirit is not the life that shrinks from death and keeps itself untouched by devastation, but rather the life that endures it and maintains itself in it. It wins its truth only when, in utter dismemberment, it finds itself. It is this power, not as something positive, which closes its eyes to the negative as when we say of something that it is nothing or is false, and then having done with it, turn away and pass on to something else; on the contrary, spirit is this power only by looking the negative in the face, and tarrying with it. This tarrying with the negative is the magical power that converts it into being. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

You can't go back', she told him bluntly. Her voice was neither kind nor unkind. 'That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is 'supposed to be'. — Robin Hobb

There's something to be said for going right into people's living rooms. I think actors have always loved that medium - you're right in there with people in their homes. A lot of very audacious work is being done on television. — Sigourney Weaver