Being In The Middle Quotes & Sayings

Truth was, I didn't really want to die today. I was in the middle of a really good book, and being alive had always worked out for me ... — Jessica Fortunato

And the PRCS [Palestinian Red Crescent Society] had not lost just one hospital: thirteen clinics and nine hospitals all over Lebanon had been destroyed in this way. Only Gaza Hospital, for a reason I was to discover three years later, was still standing. At the height of the air raids, when the Palestinians found out that every single PRCS hospital and clinic was a bomb target, they put three Israeli soldiers captured in south Lebanon on the upper floors of Gaza Hospital, and radioed a message to the Israeli Army saying that any further military action on Gaza Hospital would result in Israeli lives being lost. That saved Gaza Hospital from further destruction. — Ang Swee Chai

Two diametrically opposed points of view concerning religion in the West are to bee seen among Muslims. Some consider all Westerners to be Christians, with the small Jewish minority being of course an exception, and often refer to Westerners as "those Christians" as if the West were of the Middle Ages when the Crusades were carried out and when Western civilization lived in what has been called the Age of Faith. Another group of Muslims hold the opposite view that all Westerners are materialists or agnostics and skeptics and in fact there is no religion among the Westerners. Now it is essential to insist that both of these views are false. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

Hip-hop - it's the safari: it allows people who aren't under those circumstances to come closer to inner-city life, to explore it without actually being in danger. It's something kids in middle America indulge in to be rebellious. — Curtis Jackson

Hey," he says.
I feel foolish for being out of breath and standing over him. The moonlight cuts a line down my chest. "Hey," I say.
"Checking on me?"
"I couldn't sleep. Scottie. She's in the bathroom." I stop talking.
"Yeah?" he says and sits up.
"She's playacting." I don't know how to say it. I don't need to say it. "She's kissing the mirror."
"Oh," he says. "I used to do some messed-up things as a kid. Still do."
I feel wide awake, which always makes me angry in the middle of the night. I'm useless without sleep. I can't get myself to go back to my own room. I sit on the end of the bed by his feet. "I'm worried about my daughters," I say. "I'm worried there's something wrong with them."
Sid rubs his eyes.
"Forget it," I say. "Sorry for waking you up."
"It's going to get worse," he says. "After your wife dies." He holds the blanket up to his chin. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

We're being attacked, Britain is being attacked, our allies are being attacked because we've installed and backed and implemented a set of policies in the Middle East for the last years or more. — Michael Scheuer

You have told yourself that you have found your knight in shining armor, my brother Rick. Isn't that the truth? You met him and he fit the bill, so you have told yourself a wonderful story and, stubborn brat that you are, you have been clinging to it ever since. After all, what could be more appropriate than for Francesca Cahill, reformer extraordinaire, to fall in love with my reform-minded Republican brother? But wait! Being as this is a love story, there has to be an unhappy middle and the perfect hero isn't quite so perfect after all. For he is married. Oh, wait! It isn't that bad, after all, for as it turns out he is a man of virtue, and he really loves you, while he despises his wife! And did I forget to mention that she is vile and evil? So the story can limp along, and true love might survive after all! Does this sound at all familiar, Francesca?"
"I almost hate you," she whispered. And she felt a tear sliding down her cheek. — Brenda Joyce

When standing in the middle of the marvelous mountains and deep forests, in the earthy smell of all beginnings and endings, I often find myself asking what I have if all my possessions were taken away. Without money, car, house; or power and fame, if there are any, who am I?
In that very moment, being away from the external voices and left alone in nature, I find my answer. — Zi Nguyen

It is one thing to be a man's wife - quite another to be the mother of his children. In fact, once you become a mother, being a wife seems like a game you once played or a self-help book you were overly impressed with as a teenager that on second reading is puffy with common ideas. This was one of the many things I had learned since crossing over into the middle place - that sliver of time when childhood and parenthood overlap. — Kelly Corrigan

You mean all the dead women looked like Mr. Hauptman's ex-wife? That's . . . that's right out of a profiler's book." Jenny snorted her coffee, wiped her nose, and gave her assistant a quelling look. "You might curb your enthusiasm over the deaths of seven women, Andrea. It isn't really appropriate." "Poor things," said Andrea obediently. "But this is like being in the middle of an episode of Criminal Minds." She paused. "Okay. That's dorky. — Patricia Briggs

The Buddha's insight into the middle way is not simply about a balance between extremes. This conventional understanding misses the deeper revelation of the middle way as being the very nature of unexcelled enlightenment. The middle way is an invitation to leap beyond nirvana and samsara and to realize the unborn Buddha mind right in the middle of everywhere. — Adyashanti

A man, who needs you, will not come to visit you in the middle of the night. If he is there, definitely wants to stop you from being helpful. — M.F. Moonzajer

...And indeed it did take me a long time for me to find someone I wanted to marry. But I'm so glad I waited. What I know about Pete and me is that the flame will never go out. I do not look up from tossing the salad and think, Oh, God, how the hell did I ever get here? I do not look a the back of his head and think, I don't know you at all. I wake up with my pal, and go to sleep with my lover. He still thrills me, not only sexually but because of the way he regards the life that unfolds around him. I am interested in what he says about me and the children and our respective jobs, but I am also interested in what he says about the Middle East and the migratory patterns of monarchs and the amount of nutmeg that should be grated into the mashed potatoes and the impact that being a thwarted artist had on the life of Hitler. I believe he is a truly honest and awake and kind individual. If we live more than once, I want to find him again. — Elizabeth Berg

I'm not saying parenting cured my narcissism, but it changed me and continues to change me every day. I am now a teeny tiny bit less of a narcissist. Being a parent is a selfless adventure. The worldview of "Take care of yourself first" is no longer logical to a sane person if your baby wakes up hungry in the middle of the night. You can't be like, "What's that? The baby is starving? Eh, forget her, I've got to get some sleep." For me, parenting was literally a wake-up call from my own simple selfishness. In other words, I'm not quite as horrible as I used to be. — Jim Gaffigan

It is always interesting to observe what people are wearing in the middle of the night, although there are more pleasant ways to make such observations without being accused of murder. — Lemony Snicket

Should an anthropologist or a sociologist be looking for a bizarre society to study, I would suggest he come to Ulster. It is one of Europe's oddest countries. Here, in the middle of the twentieth century, with modern technology transforming everybody's lives, you find a medieval mentality that is being dragged painfully into the eighteenth century by some forward-looking people. — Bernadette Devlin

And it would be a bit out of character. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have started out as a reformer, but he really enjoys being seen as a larger-than-life tough-guy figure. He doesn't go on photographed hunting expeditions, for instance. But he does have hero moments, such as when his convoy stopped in the middle of the Bosphorus Bridge and he allegedly talked down a jumper, prevented him from committing suicide. — Peter Kenyon

Mediocrity is my biggest fear. I'm not afraid of total failure because I don't think that will happen. I'm not afraid of success because that beats the hell out of failure. It's being in the middle that scares me. — Robert Downey Jr.

I usually find myself hiking in a place that not a lot of people go hiking, just trying to find some solitude. I like being out in the middle of nowhere. Not always, but it's a good place to go to just reflect and think, and it's something I really enjoy. — Rami Malek

I was beating Amanda Lim to death with the tire iron, I accidently hit her in the finger. It was a fake tire iron, but it was run through with metal in the middle and when she looked up after the take, she was crying and it really hurt her and so I felt pretty terrible about that, but they got back at me when I had my big fight with Casey at the end and she just beat the bejesus out of me, being the amazing stuntwoman that she is. — David Hayter

So it is that supernatural horror is the product of a profoundly divided species of being. It is not the pastime of even our closest relations in the wholly natural world: we gained it, as part of our gloomy inheritance, when we became what we are. Once awareness of the human predicament was achieved, we immediately took off in two directions, splitting ourselves down the middle. One half became dedicated to apologetics, even celebration, of our new toy of consciousness. The other half condemned and occasionally launched direct assaults on this gift. — Thomas Ligotti

It was kind of soothing, these sounds of lives being lived all around me, for better or for worse. And there I was, in the middle of them all, newly reborn and still waiting for mine to begin. — Sarah Dessen

You are an incredible child of God having a dream that you are a human being on a tiny planet in the middle of nowhere. — Drunvalo Melchizedek

Homosexuality and trance were considered abnormalities now, while in the Middle Ages people had been made saints for their trances, which were considered the highest state of being, and in Ancient Greece, as Plato makes clear, homosexuality was 'a major means to the good life. — Lily King

Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It's like being possessed. You try to go to sleep, but the song won't let you. So you have to get up and make it into something, and then you're allowed to sleep. It's always in the middle of the night, or you're half-awake or tired, when your critical faculties are switched off. So letting go is what the whole game is. Every time you try to put your finger on it, it slips away. You turn on the lights and the cockroaches run away. You can never grasp them ... — John Lennon

Exactly what she was doing - tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and wove crooked paths down her cheeks. How could she have been so insensitive to her own sister? Chapter 24 All week Cassie had worked feverishly to put Steve out of her mind, but it hadn't worked. She couldn't wait to see him, and a week had never dragged on for so long. Nothing felt the same without him at the construction site, running the project. Saturday morning, Cassie was up early. The Hoedown was being held in an airport hangar, and a lot of work had to be done in order to get the space ready. Several other volunteers arrived to work off their hours by putting up long folding tables and chairs, placing red-and-white checkered plastic tablecloths across the tables, and then setting the tables, lining each place setting up perfectly. To the front of the hangar was a mechanical bull quartered off with stacks of hay. In the middle of the room were tables displaying — Debbie Macomber

If you read the literature of the great religions, time and time again you come across descriptions of what is usually referred to as "spiritual experience." You will find that in all the various traditions this modality of spiritual experience seems to be the same, whether it occurs in the Christian West, the Islamic Middle East, the Hindu world of Asia, or the Buddhist world. In each culture, it is quite definitely the same experience, and it is characterized by the transcendence of individuality and by a sensation of being one with the total energy of the universe. — Alan W. Watts

she loved to stand in the middle of a market square, or a park, or a beach and take in the smells and the sounds of a world that was completely new to her. she loved being an anonymous extra in a crowd scene, like some real-life where's waldo - a tiny face, wide-eyed with wonder, in a vast, ever-changing picture. — Elizabeth Noble

And girls always want to change the rules in the middle of the game. You can't change the rules and think everyone else is just going to keep playing. I know what her hair smells like, but I can't get close enough to press my face into it. I know how soft her skin is on every part of her body, but I can't touch it. I know what she tastes like, but I can't kiss her, I'm not allowed anymore. So why should I torture myself with being around her, just so I can say we're still friends? — Katja Millay

Extreme intelligence is accused of being as foolish as extreme lack of it; only moderation is good. The majority have laid this down and attack anyone who deviates from it towards any extreme whatever. I am not going to be awkward, I readily consent to being put in the middle and refuse to be at the bottom end, not because it is the bottom but because it is the end, for I should refuse just as much to be put at the top. It is deserting humanity to desert the middle way.
The greatness of the human soul lies in knowing how to keep this course; greatness does not mean going outside it, but rather keeping within it. — Blaise Pascal

One result of this productive system is that the middle class has grown from being about 15 percent of the population in 1920 to being 86 percent of the population in 2011. While some of the population always seem to live at the poverty line, the vast majority of Americans today are affluent compared to their grandparents. They have the money to buy the products produced by American industry. In the process, the definition of poverty has changed. The majority of Americans who are classified by the government as living at the poverty level have indoor plumbing, color television sets, cell phones, air-conditioning, washers and dryers, microwaves, automobiles, and access to free health care. They are also a significant buying group. — Arthur Hughes

If the public can't see justice being done, or afford the costs of justice, then the entire system becomes little more than a cozy club solely for the benefit of judges, lawyers and their lackeys, a sort of care in the community for the upper middle classes. — Heather Brooke

I believe in operating in the big middle of the electorate and not being to the far right or the far left. I think you get so much more done. — Sam Reed

The fact that the Bush administration, and those in Europe who have followed its 9/11-inspired agenda, somehow believe that the future of the world is being played out in the Middle East and Central Asia rather than East Asia has only served to accelerate China's rise and the U.S.'s decline. — Martin Jacques

Struggles among Roman patricians, plebeians, and slaves produced a version of the chordal triad universalized around a notion of libertas. Different notes of the chord were dominant from the Republic to the Empire. The slave's point of view was made prominent in the figure of Epictetus, one of the few major Roman theorists born a slave. By the Middle Ages, freedom had attained a spiritual dimension but was still linked to the political. With medieval Christendom came the triumph of the sovereignal conception of freedom. That triumph coincided with theocratic societal decadence, the doctrine of heresy, the transformation of mass slavery into the political language of serfdom, and the introduction of the root word Slav to refer to serfs across Europe. Heretics privileged their personal freedom over sovereign orthodoxy. Being burned at the stake was a consequence. — Neil Roberts

This is what it means to be in the middle of love, I thought. Being in the middle of love is like being in the middle of a war zone. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

I hit my knees every morning and every night to give thanks for being alive and all the blessings I have. And in the middle of chaos, it's been suggested to me to stop and truly look around, notice the sky, the trees, the grass, and realize you're part of it all, which is hard when you really want to focus on what you think is bothering you. However, one of the smartest things I do is check in with my awesome wife, who is really good at screwing my head back on when needed. — Patrick Fabian

For some hippies, this vision could only be realised by rejecting scientific progress as a false God and returning to nature. Others, in contrast, believed that technological progress would inevitably turn their libertarian principles into social fact. Crucially, influenced by the theories of Marshall McLuhan, these technophiliacs thought that the convergence of media, computing and telecommunications would inevitably create the electronic agora - a virtual place where everyone would be able to express their opinions without fear of censorship. Despite being a middle-aged English professor, McLuhan preached the radical message that the power of big business and big government would be imminently overthrown by the intrinsically empowering effects of new technology on individuals. — Richard Barbrook

My parents both renounced their material lives and were living as monks at an ashram in L.A. when they met each other. So we were always raised in this environment and when we moved to the ashram in Florida it was just like, "Oh, wow, now all of a sudden there's more people like us," because we were growing up in the middle of Texas with our parents, always being the weirdos. — Taraka Larson

When I use people I know, all of my instincts seem to go dead, and if I'm getting anywhere near myself then I can't do it. It's actually a real weakness! I hate writing personal essays, I don't think I'm especially good at it. I like just encountering [my characters], discovering them. I love the escape of just being surrounded by all these people who are nothing like people I know. But I don't find it hard to be in the middle of a different life, with a different set of habits and way of thinking and talking. That seems to come easily to me. — Jennifer Egan

For three centuries the life of the Hebrews was like the life of a man who insists upon living in the middle of a busy thoroughfare, and is consequently being run over constantly by omnibuses and motor-lorries. Pul — H.G.Wells

According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people.
In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types : male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half. — Haruki Murakami

Just once, I would like there to be something special about being the kid stuck in the middle. — Karen Tayleur

Something snatched onto Crickets' left leg, and it was rapidly pulling her into the depths away from the wharf. Air-bubbles restricted her view in the pre-stirred water, as she kicked furiously against the high strength of her unknown assailant. Being from Louisiana, Cricket's first instinct told her she was going down to a certain-death by Alligator! — Darwun St. James

But being in the middle of it, it wasn't that obvious. — Lev Grossman

Not being changed by prayer is sort of life standing in the middle of a spring rain without getting wet. It's hard to stand in the center of God's acceptance and love without getting it all over you. — Steve Brown

You ever notice how sometimes, in the middle of July, right downtown, you'll see a flower poking up through a crack in the asphalt. And you think, What a stupid place to set down roots. It'll get run over, or it'll dry up and blow away. But it hangs on, and it grows, and it blooms. Somehow, against the odds, it finds what it needs and it makes that place better for being there. — Cinda Williams Chima

Twas the night before Christmas - well, the late afternoon, in fact, but who could tell at the North Pole in the middle of winter - and Matthias the werewolf was knee-deep in reindeer guts. Really, it was the deer's own fault for having that glowing red nose that had made it ever so easy to pick him out in the gloom. There it had been, like a neon sign saying FAST FOOD and Matt being like Yellow Dog Dingo - always hungry - had taken the opportunity for a quick snack. — Kat Richardson

When top executives get huge pay hikes at the same time as middle-level and hourly workers lose their jobs and retirement savings, or have to accept negligible pay raises and cuts in health and pension benefits, company morale plummets. I hear it all the time from employees: This company, they say, is being run only for the benefit of the people at the top. So why should we put in extra effort, commit extra hours, take on extra responsibilities? We'll do the minimum, even cut corners. This is often the death knell of a company. — Robert Reich

The two biggest threats to international security in 2013 are Iran getting a nuclear weapon, and Iran being bombed to stop it getting a nuclear weapon. Both would precipitate a long and dangerous conflict in an already unstable Middle East. Both would be a disaster. — David Miliband

To be honest, I was unaware of the huge frat-rap scene that was taking over the blogosphere until I found myself right in the middle of it. But there are really a ton of talented dudes out there doing this, and I'm just having a great time making music and being a part of it all. — Mike Stud

It's surprisingly nice out here, peaceful and pretty-strange to be standing in the middle of a little garden while enclosed by the massive stone walls of the prison, like being at the exact center of a hurricane, and finding peace and silence in the middle of so much shrieking damage. — Lauren Oliver

I was fed up with the situation I found myself in in the 1960s. I didn't like being a barrister's wife and going out to dinner with other professional people and dealing with middle class life. It seemed claustrophobic. — Caryl Churchill

I've got three sons, and two of them would absolutely hate being on the stage and never liked appearing in their school plays or musicals, but the middle one absolutely loves it and never shows any sign of nerves or pressure and really gets a kick out of performing. I think it depends entirely on the child. And that applies to anything whether it's sport or entertainment or music or film. — Piers Morgan

He was fascinated by the mid-western/middle American phenomenon of recombinant cuisine. Rice Krispie Treats being a prototypical example in that they were made by repurposing other foods that had already been prepared (to wit, breakfast cereal and marshmallows). And of course, any recipe that called for a can of cream of mushroom soup fell into the same category. The unifying principle behind all recombinant cuisine seemed to be indifference, if not outright hostility, to the use of anything that a coastal foodie would define as an ingredient. — Neal Stephenson

Every woman who has ever approached me about being in my circle of lovers knows that I'm a bachelor with no plans to get married. Thanks to New York's tabloids, it's practically common knowledge. And, to avoid any possibility of doubt or misunderstanding, I very clearly told her from the start what I tell every potential lover: I don't date anyone exclusively. Ever. — Zack Love

I talk about beepers going off in the middle of a concert and people being late and not apologizing, and people not RSVP-ing, and adult children going back to live with their parents, which we didn't have in the '60s and '70s. — Letitia Baldrige

In order to see, you have to stop being in the middle of the picture — Sri Aurobindo

Being doped is a pleasure you pay for. There was always opium there for the people
in the end it tainted their whole faith. If the Church had not always stood so watchfully behind the ruling powers, there would not have been such attacks against everything it stood for
although of course it may have been competing with them for the first place among the rulers, as in the Middle Ages. Whenever it was a question of keeping the serfs, and then the paid slaves down, the dope-dealers came unfailingly to the help of the oppressors. — Ernst Bloch

Thinking about him requires so little effort that she can do it while performing mindless activities. Soaping the dishes, replaiting Clare Kelley's hair, drying the dishes. The part of her brain that plays his ongoing reel is unconnected to the neurons and synapses that control things like conscious thought and logic. Ben turning to her at a party. Ben turning to her. Ben turning. What human being deserves to be the nucleus of such high esteem? Certainly not Benjamin, middle name Hal, last name Allen. Five-nine in boots. Who has a car that doesn't start on cold mornings, an unfinished screenplay, a law degree he doesn't use, a romantic's tendency to save movie stubs, and a mannered, unsmiling wife. — Marie-Helene Bertino

Ottoman provinces were re-formed and cobbled together into states. The region was carved up with little regard to ethnic, religious, or territorial concerns. The flawed and cavalier treaties of World War I explain to a large degree why the Middle East remains unstable and angry today. Every Muslim schoolchild is taught this arc of history and resents it: Islam's golden era of the Arab caliphate, the Crusades, the Mongol devastation, the rise of the Ottomans, World War I, the carving up of the Middle East by Europe, and the poverty, weakness, and wars in the Muslim world of the last century. This is the basic and sad narrative taught at every mosque, and it has the benefit of being broadly accurate. — Richard Engel

And the first historical form of sexlove as a passion, as an attribute of every human being (at least of the ruling classes), the specific character of the highest form of the sexual impulse, this first form, the love of the knights in the middle ages, was by no means matrimonial love, but quite the contrary. — Friedrich Engels

Fighting for social justice is not about leaving the mainstream. It is about being right in the middle of it. — Michael Skolnik

This is the thing, I think often, that never occurs to you when you consider what it would be like to lose someone you love. That you would miss not just the flowers and kisses, but the totality of the experience. You miss the failures and little evils with as much desperation as you miss being held in the middle of the night. I wish he were here now, and I was kissing him. I wish he were here now, and I was betraying him. Either would be fine, so fine, as long as he was here. — Cody McFadyen

Unpleasant questions are being raised about Mother's Day. Is this day necessary? ... Isn't it bad public policy? ... No politician with half his senses, which a majority of politicians have, is likely to vote for its abolition, however. As a class, mothers are tender and loving, but as a voting bloc they would not hesitate for an instant to pull the seat out from under any Congressman who suggests that Mother is not entitled to a box of chocolates each year in the middle of May. — Russell Baker

Multiculturalism is only in the West. We are absorbing a large number of Muslims in the west and at the same time the Christians and the Jews and other minorities are fleeing the Middle East, churches are being burnt, nobody is talking about it. Where are the religious freedom of the minorities. — Mark Durie

In the fifteenth century, Marsilio Ficino put it as simply as possible. The mind, he said, tends to go off on its own so that it seems to have no relevance to the physical world. At the same time, the materialistic life can be so absorbing that we get caught in it and forget about spirituality. What we need, he said, is soul, in the middle, holding together mind and body, ideas and life, spirituality and the world. — Thomas Moore

Because we are all poets or babies in the middle of the night, struggling with being. — Martin Amis

Was it really that fucking great to be gay? Ever since he got too fucked up to drive home and he'd crashed at Day and God's place after their cookout this summer. Green was in Miami testifying in a Federal case, so he didn't have his usual designated driver. Shit. He'd heard his lieutenants going at it in the middle of the night. It was so loud and violent, but wildly erotic. He didn't know if they forgot he was downstairs or if they just didn't give a fuck. He remembered being hard as goddamn stone lying there, and feeling like a pervert for listening. But since then, he hadn't been able to get the sounds out of his head. The sounds of furious passion and uninhibited ecstasy. The way God roared his lover's name when he ca - " "Time — A.E. Via

She could have made a much better thing of that, if she had not been afraid of giving herself away. What hampered her was this sense of being in the middle of things, too close to things, pressed upon and bullied by reality. If she could succeed in standing aside from herself she would achieve self-confidence and a better control. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. — C.S. Lewis

I don't like my wrestling or entertainment in general to be too clean or predictable for me as a fan. When I say clean, I'm not talking about dirty jokes, middle fingers and stuff like that. I'm actually not even a big fan of that. A lot of people talk about the attitude era being so great but a lot of it was terrible crap, sex jokes and over-the-top terrible bad comedy. It was Jerry Springer-like. They made a joke about a woman's breasts. Hilarious, but where's the wrestling? I look back on a lot of stuff now, and I'm like where's the wrestling? It's just a lot of crappy jokes. — Dean Ambrose

I'm just so grateful for the 10 years that I had in Sri Lanka when it was in the middle of a war and I was getting shot at, because now and again I remember glimpses of those times, and I just go, 'Wow, I'll never, ever see that again in my life. And I'm never gonna feel that, and I'm never gonna feel for a human being like that.' — M.I.A.

Being a little bit of a movie buff, the fact that I'm working in the middle of movie history is incredible. — Betsy Beers

I love the 6 Nations rugby. I feel very Scottish then. I feel very Scottish now, sitting in the middle of Chelsea. But that's part of our heritage - being part of Britain, part of Europe. I love being European. — Rory Bremner

We were in the middle of a sandbar in the middle of the ocean with no one around, and still someone was following me from New York, and was hiding in some bushes like a mile away with a long lens, so he still got pictures. It was really an eye opener to how you really have to be careful about being followed everywhere. I was trying to go to the most remote place in the world, I was out on a sandbar in the middle of the ocean, and they still found me. It was definitely a very new experience. — Ronda Rousey

A quantified family would be upper middle class. Likely working in big tech," said Theodore. "Their employers would have required it." Piece by piece, the projectors filled in the available data on the house, including on the kitchen wall, a large screen of blurred graphs, smudged letters and numbers, all in motion. "This is the hearth," he said. "The data flickering at the heart of the family. Location, activity, well-being." He squinted at the screen. "Can you bring this into resolution? — Matthew De Abaitua

There is not a big difference between life and taking pictures ... You're in the middle of life, you're living, making love, eating, sleeping - and photography is part of it. And I don't say this because I'm being romantic. I say this because that's just the way it happens to be. — Anders Petersen

Freedom from stress, freedom from anxiety, freedom from depression; freedom is autonomy from all that stagnates growth in this ever complex and noisy world. By the fear of being in the unknown, we often overlook and forget the serene view of being on the raft: the glowing virgin stars, the gentle ways that the waves moves, and the endless possibilities that exist under the sun. The fundamental principle of freedom is to be lost and our state of mind never differs too far from this analogy of being stranded in the middle of the ocean. — Forrest Curran

God then makes people whom he puts right in the middle of all this loaded creation. Commanding them to care for creation, to manage it, to lovingly use it, to creatively order it ... They are environmentalists. Being deeply connected with their environment is who they are. For them to be anything else or to deny their divine responsibility to care for all that God has made would be to deny something that is at the core of their existence. This is why litter and pollution are spiritual issues. — Rob Bell

The problem in this case was you can't be a middle-aged virgin in America without something being wrong with you. People can't conceive of a virtue in someone else that they can't conceive in themselves. Instead of believing you're stronger, it's so much easier to imagine you're weaker. — Chuck Palahniuk

I stopped right in the middle of the road. There was no traffic. Before heading back towards my flat to get the number I paused for a while, I don't know how long, and stood in what had been the marksmen's sightlines. I turned the palms of my hands outwards, closed my eyes and thought about that memory of just before the accident, being buffeted by wind. Remembering it sent a tingling from the top of my legs to my shoulders and right up into my neck. It lasted for just a moment-but while it did it felt not-neutral. I felt different, intense: both intense and serene at the same time. I remember feeling this way very well: standing there, passive, with my palms turned outwards, feeling intense and serene. — Tom McCarthy

If in the earlier part of the century, middle-class children suffered from overattentive mothers, from being "mother's only accomplishment," today's children may suffer from an underestimation of their needs. Our idea of what a child needs in each case reflects what parents need. The child's needs are thus a cultural football in an economic and marital game. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The main discomfort in being a middle-of-the-roader is that you get sideswiped by partisans going in both directions. — Sydney J. Harris

Poor people and most of the middle class are not willing to be uncomfortable. Remember, being comfortable is their biggest priority in life ... The only time you can actually grow is when you are outside your comfort zone. — T. Harv Eker

I do revel slightly in the fact that I am what I am - an English, middle-class, public-school-educated bloke. There is a reputation with that of being slightly stiff, but whoever gets to know me will see some other element - whether it be vulnerable or silly or camp. — Elliot Cowan

But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete. — Sarah Dessen

Returning the Pencil to Its Tray Everything is fine - the first bits of sun are on the yellow flowers behind the low wall, people in cars are on their way to work, and I will never have to write again. Just looking around will suffice from here on in. Who said I had to always play the secretary of the interior? And I am getting good at being blank, staring at all the zeroes in the air. It must have been all the time spent in the kayak this summer that brought this out, the yellow one which went nicely with the pale blue life jacket - the sudden, tippy buoyancy of the launch, then the exertion, striking into the wind against the short waves, but the best was drifting back, the paddle resting athwart the craft, and me mindless in the middle of time. Not even that dark cormorant perched on the No Wake sign, his narrow head raised as if he were looking over something, not even that inquisitive little fellow could bring me to write another word. — Billy Collins

A little group of thatched cottages in the middle of the village had an orchard attached; and I remember well the peculiar purity of the blue sky seen through the white clusters of apple blossom in spring. I remember being moonstruck looking at it one morning early on my way to school. It meant something for me; what, I couldn't say. It gave me such an unease at heart, some reaching out towards perfection such as impels men into religion, some sense of the transcendence of things, of the fragility of our hold on life. — A. L. Rowse

There are three big things going for The Scorpio Races: first, it is set on a beautiful but wild island in the middle of the cold Atlantic Ocean. That would've seduced me as a teen reader. Second, It is full of beautiful but killer horses being trained for a dangerous race. Actually, that would've seduced me as a teen reader as well. At third it involves a very repressed love story with a very Mr. Darcy-like love interest. — Maggie Stiefvater

Among our people, theres not any question about women being strong
even stronger than men
they work in the fields right along with the men. When your survival is at stake, you dont have these questions about yourself like middle
class women do. — Dolores Huerta

Love is like being on a small boat in the middle of the sea with no compass and no one to rely on except each other. — Chloe Thurlow

I like the idea of being a novelist. I picture myself on the coast, the wind in my hair, horses galloping around me as I sit at my typewriter in the middle of a field ... — Sara Cox

We have inherited a fear of memories of slavery. It is as if to remember and acknowledge slavery would amount to our being consumed by it. As a matter of fact, in the popular black imagination, it is easier for us to construct ourselves as children of Africa, as the sons and daughters of kings and queens, and thereby ignore the Middle Passage and centuries of enforced servitude in the Americas. Although some of us might indeed be the descendants of African royalty, most of us are probably descendants of their subjects, the daughters and sons of African peasants or workers. — Angela Y. Davis

In the middle of life, death comes to take your measurements. The visit is forgotten and life goes on. But the suit is being sewn on the sly. — Tomas Transtromer

Despite my mum being from a small village in the middle of a forest, I'm not a country person. I don't like my bacon sandwich to be curiously snuffling at my fingers. But sometimes being police means holding your breath and fondling a pig. — Ben Aaronovitch

Being in Nirvana was amazing an experience that will never happen again for me. And I look on them as some of the best and worst times of my life. But we're in this band, the Foo Fighters, making music for the love of music. We all came from bands that had disbanded, and we were drawn to each other because we missed playing - we missed getting in the van, loading our equipment, and watching it break down in the middle of a show. And that feeling hasn't gone away. There's nothing I'd rather do than make music. It's the love of my life. — Dave Grohl

My most embarrassing moment was when I was a student at Tufts University and decided to go 'streaking' with a group of girls in the middle of January. Somehow I lost them and ended up being chased by the campus police. — Meredith Vieira

These are not men of great imagination, but one can hardly blame them for not being prepared for this particular contingency, the sight of a tweet-jacketed, tenured, middle-aged, senior professor and department chair in a fake nose and glasses, brandishing a live, terrified goose ... (Richard Russo, Straight Man) — Richard Russo

Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student. — Anonymous