Being Locked Up Quotes & Sayings

As a rule, from what I've observed, the American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a captain of industry again. — P.G. Wodehouse

When I think about that first DeBarge album, I remember being so green ... just pristine. Nothing mattered to me but writing songs. I remember staying locked up in a room with my piano and just singing and writing songs all day long. I remember being a perfectionist about it ... wanting to change this and fix that. — El DeBarge

In the cramped confines of the toilet I had trouble getting out of my wet trousers, which clung to my legs like a drowning man. The new ones were quite complicated too in that they had more legs than a spider; either that or they didn't have enough legs to get mine into. The numbers failed to add up. Always there was one trouser leg too many or one of my legs was left over. From the outside it may have looked like a simple toilet, but once you were locked in here the most basic rules of arithmetic no longer held true. — Geoff Dyer

The gods demand entertainment. They demand trial and contest. We could not be allowed to defeat our own daemons, for that would be boring, and boredom is the only thing the eternals fear. We are being lined up, one by one, to tear at each other's throats. I do not think they wish to see a victor. I think they wish us to fight forever, locked in madness until the universe's end — Chris Wraight

Though I can't change what happened, I can choose how to react. And I don't want to spend the rest of my life being bitter and locked up. — Tori Amos

That much he understood now - the compulsion born of secrecy, how silence was its own sort of prison. The relief that came with being able to tell someone, anyone, all those things you were supposed to keep locked up. — Kit Rocha

Sure, I get angry. I get very, very angry and indignant. I don't like being locked up for something I didn't do, and I don't like my liberty taken away, and I don't like being treated like
an animal, and I don't like people walking around and ogling me like I'm some sort of weirdo, because I'm not. — Ted Bundy

I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. — Henry David Thoreau

Claudia's eyes grew ten sizes when she saw Parker was armed once again. Great! Now she was being locked up with an eerily calm lunatic and an attack dog loyal to the lunatic. — T.B. Markinson

No one can ever use his heart to listen or touch or feel or see or smell. It's just a lump of muscle pumping mechanically inside your ribs. It has no will and no ability to do anything but go on pumping until it gives up and withers away or is choked by some disease. Your spinal cord, on the other hand, feels. The central nervous system pours out from the spinal cord, and with it one feels pain. Pain is the most trustworthy sensation a human being can know because it teaches us what hurts. With the spinal cord, one can hear what will hurt, smell the sting of suffering, taste it, feel it, and see the world with new eyes. I learned a long time ago not to follow my heart, the hunk of meat flexing in the chest. I trust the tube locked up in a column of bone, the tube that shows me what pain is. — Joshua S. Porter

down with Bart for a few hours and sleep as best I could. Chapter 12 I was as tired as I could ever remember being as I pulled the station wagon up the narrow driveway and came to a stop twenty-five feet from my front door. I liked my simple house with two bedrooms and an attic a hobbit couldn't fit in. My front porch light was on a timer and illuminated the pathway, but the inside was pitch-black. That wasn't good. I always left one light on in my kitchen. Normally, I could see it through the front window, and it cast a little light across the whole house. I didn't want Bart walking into a wall in the dark. Someone had turned it off. The only defense I had was my Navy knife, which I dug out of my front pocket and flipped open. I use it as a tool, but its original purpose was as a weapon. The door was still locked, and I wondered if — James Patterson

When you arrive in your driveway and turn off the car, you remain behind the wheel another ten minutes. You fear the night is being locked in and coded on a cellular level and want time to function as a power wash. Sitting there staring at the closed garage door you are reminded that a friend once told you there exists the medical term - John Henryism - for people exposed to stresses stemming from racism. They achieve themselves to death trying to dodge the buildup of erasure. Sherman James, the researcher who came up with the term, claimed the physiological costs were high. You hope by sitting in silence you are bucking the trend. — Claudia Rankine

You feel like a steel door has been locked; you're banging, but they just can't hear you. And being unheard is the ground floor of giving up, and giving up is the ground floor of doing yourself in. — Mitch Albom

Why don't we actually fight for a woman's right even to complain about being beaten up. That is more important than driving. If a woman is beaten, they are told to go back to their homes - their fathers, husbands, brothers - to be beaten up again and locked up in the house. — Basmah Bint Saud

They weren't crazy. They were tired of being locked up. Even I could see that. — Kate Millett

I remember being little and wondering if I smoothed this line away would I be able to see inside you, like it was a door or some kind of opening to your insides. Dumb, huh?"
"Sweet," he said, softly. "Little girl sweet. Never dumb."
Her eyes traveled up to his and locked there.
"When I got older I wondered what it would be like to kiss it. — Peggy Jaeger

My personality has two sides: a very social side and a reclusive side. I love writing fiction, although I can't imagine ever being locked up in a room writing all the time. — John Searles

The law of attraction is synonymous to the law of sacrifice, in which you get in return what you are decisively choose to give up. The universe in all her infinity beauty generously opens up gates that you had no idea existed when you close others, but she requires you to walk through the gates solely on your own will and strength, with the other doors that you have left behind often times being forever locked and eternally inaccessible. — Forrest Curran

No one likes to admit it, but Hollywood is the only place you don't get locked up for being crazy. — D.W. Buffa

I know what you're thinking," Grandma said into the silence. "Do I have anymore bullets in this here gun? Well, with all the confusion, what with being locked up in a refrigerator, I plumb forgot what was in here to start with. But being that this is a 45 magnum, the most powerful handgun in existence, and it could blow your head clean off, you just got to ask yourself one question. Do you feel lucky today? Well, do you, punk?"
Christ," Spiro whispered. "She thinks she's f**king Clint Eastwood. — Janet Evanovich

I'm keeping a lot of things from you."
My insides took a steep dive. "Like?"
"Like the way I feel about being locked up in here with you." Patch braced one hand against the mirror behind me, his weight tipping toward me. "You have no idea what you do to me. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Rage swept over her at being young, young and little, as if some evil fairy had put that spell on her. Why must you be locked up in this dreadful cage of childhood for twenty or a hundred years? Nothing in life was possible unless you were old and rich, until then you were only small and futile before your tormentors, desperately waiting for the release that only years could bring. — Dawn Powell

So, look, you can't leave," Doug said, sitting straight up and turning towards her. "if you do, Miller's gonna revert and Caleb and Ian are gonna ride roughshod and Sean'll go back to being ghost brother and Finn ... "
Megan's heart slipped. "Finn what?"
"Finn will be destroyed," Doug said, looking her in the eye. "You got that dude all up in a twist, you know that, right?"
"What does that even mean?" Megan asked.
"All's I know is, he found out you left and he locked himself in the shed and barricaded the door. No one's seen him since," Doug said. "When I bolted, Sean and Evan were trying to boost Caleb up onto the roof so he could look through the skylight and make sure the kid wasn't dead or something."
Megan swallowed hard. "Wow. — Kate Brian

People don't dream all their lives of escaping the hellish countries they live in and pay their life savings to underworld types for the privilege of being locked up in a freezing, filthy, stinking container ship and hauled like cargo for weeks until they finally arrive in Moscow or Beijing or Baghdad or Kabul. People risk their lives to come here
to New York. The greatest city in the world, where dreams become reality. — Sean Hannity

I wish a camera had been trained on me, because it would show what it looks like for a woman to be awakened to the truth. The truth? My lies and exaggerations would be responsible for a mother being locked up. — Maria Semple

As I paddle along, I slowly become aware that it's been fear keeping me out of this pool for so many years. I never came here before because I was afraid I'd make a fool of myself by not having the endurance to complete a lap. The swimming wasn't what scared me; failure was. My fear locked me in a state of arrested development for so many years. Fear kept me from tackling my weight, which I understand has simply been symptomatic of my greater fear, growing up. I glide down the lane on my back and reflect on how good I feel right now. It's not because I've lost more than thirty pounds. I feel incredible because I've stopped being afraid. — Jen Lancaster

Because your character is always full of ambition, the news of my being locked up must have been much harder on you than it was on me. When I was arrested, it was almost a relief to know that I could now experience what you were experiencing yourself. I am so afraid that they are breaking your spirit. — Diet Eman

The so-called intellectual consumes himself in what he considers pathbreaking work and in the end has only succeeded in making himself ridiculous, whether he's called Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, it doesn't matter, even if he was Kleist or Voltaire we still see a pitiful being who has misused his head and finally driven himself into nonsense. Who's been rolled over and passed over by history. We've locked up the great thinkers in our bookcases, from which they keep staring at us, sentenced to eternal ridicule, he said, I — Thomas Bernhard

Mac's heart thumped against her gold, initaled locked. In fact fact, her heart hadn't beated that quickly since she was thirty seconds away from being the top bidder for vintage YSL lace-up heels on eBay. This was a coup. — Zoey Dean

You will. I promise. There's a lockup. Each apartment has one. Like a big storage cage. Come with me."
An image of me being locked in a cage in some kind of creepy cellar came into my head. I didn't even know Toby. Not really. And he said himself he was jealous of me. Maybe he would lock me in this basement and nobody in the world would ever guess where I was.
Toby's shoulders drooped, and he cocked his head to one side and said, "Please," in the most pathetic voice ever. Then he perked back up. "Look, truly, June. You won't be sorry."
I thought about it for a few seconds and came to the conclusion that a real psycho wouldn't have mentioned the cage. A real psycho would have lured me down there by telling me there was a puppy or something. — Carol Rifka Brunt

Many a man is saved from being a thief by finding everything locked up. — E.W. Howe

Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like. — David Sedaris

She did not know yet how sometimes people keep parts of themselves hidden and secret, sometimes wicked and unkind parts, but often brave or wild or colorful parts, cunning or powerful or even marvelous, beautiful parts, just locked up away at the bottom of their hearts. They do this because they are afraid of the world and of being stared at, or relied upon to do feats of bravery or boldness. And all of those brave and wild and cunning and marvelous and beautiful parts they hid away and left in the dark to grow strange mushrooms - and yes, sometimes those wicked and unkind parts, too - end up in their shadow. — Catherynne M Valente

There are certain books that should be taken away from young writers; that should be prised out of their clutching fingers and locked away until they are all grown up and ready to read them without being smitten. — Anne Enright

I know a lot of people who are weak, who are in a perpetual cycle of poverty and being locked up. There are guys from my neighborhood who are in jail or who are dead. It does take a certain strength to know your environment and say, 'I can grow beyond it.' — Mekhi Phifer

I have to admit I've found myself doing the same things that a lot of other rock stars do or are forced to do. Which is not being able to respond to mail, not being able to keep up on current music, and I'm pretty much locked away a lot. The outside world is pretty foreign to me. — Kurt Cobain

Supposing an emperor was persuaded to wear a new suit of clothes whose material was so fine that, to the common eye, the clothes weren't there. And suppose a little boy pointed out this fact in a loud, clear voice ...
Then you have The Story of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes.
But if you knew a bit more, it would be The Story of the Boy Who Got a Well-Deserved Thrashing from His Dad for Being Rude to Royalty, and Was Locked Up.
Or The Story of the Whole Crowd Who Were Rounded Up by the Guards and Told 'This Didn't Happen, OK? Does Anyone Want to Argue?'
Or it could be a story of how a whole kingdom suddenly saw the benefit of the 'new clothes', and developed an enthusiasm for healthy sports in a lively and refreshing atmosphere which got many new adherents every year, and led to a recession caused by the collapse of the conventional clothing industry.
It could even be a story about The Great Pneumonia Epidemic of '09.
It all depends on how much you know. — Terry Pratchett

You made him stay shut up in that house and he hated it, that's why he wanted to get out last night -"
"I was trying to keep Sirius alive," said Dumbledore quietly.
"People don't like being locked up!" Harry said furiously, rounding on him. "You did it to me all last summer - — J.K. Rowling

My letters seeking a job, though truthful, diminished the full truth. Face would blanch if the facts had been complete: "Dear Sir," I thought. "Do you have a position for a journeyman burglar, con man, forger and car thief; also with experience as armed robber, pimp, card cheat and several other things. I smoked marijuana at twelve (in the 40's) and shot heroin at sixteen. I have no experience with LSD and methedrine. They came to popularity since my imprisonment. I've buggered pretty young boys and feminine homosexuals (but only when locked up away from women). In the idiom of jails, prisons and gutters (some plush gutters) I'm a motherfucker! Not literally, for I don't remember my mother. In my world the term, used as I used it, is a boast of being hell on wheels, outrageously unpredictable, a virtuoso of crime. Of course by being a motherfucker in that world I'm a piece of garbage in yours. Do you have a job? — Edward Bunker

Most folks got Id and Ego living on different floors in their head's house, in different rooms, and they've locked all the doors between them, and nailed sheets of plywood over that, because they think they're, like, sworn enemies that can't hang together.
Ro thought the whole subconscious/conscious issue had something to do with why I am the way I am. She said I have the neurological condition synesthesia out the ass, with all kinds of cross regions of my brain talking to each other. Old witch was always psychoanalyzing me (as in she was the psycho and I was being analyzed). She said my Id and Ego are best buds, they don't just live on the same floor, they share a bed.
I'm cool with that. Frees up space for other stuff.
I take off, tune out, and do what I do best.
Kill. — Karen Marie Moning

The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. — Aaron Swartz

We are turning into a nation of whimpering slaves to Fear - fear of war, fear of poverty, fear of random terrorism, fear of getting down-sized or fired because of the plunging economy, fear of getting evicted for bad debts or suddenly getting locked up in a military detention camp on vague charges of being a Terrorist sympathizer. — Hunter S. Thompson

I've been locked up for 264 days.
1 window. 4 walls. 144 square feet of space. 26 letters in an alphabet I haven't spoken in 264 days of isolation.
6.336 hours since I've touched another human being. — Tahereh Mafi

Winter solstice: the darkest time of the year. No sooner has he woken up in the morning than he feels the day beginning to slip away from him. There is no light to sink his teeth into, no sense of time unfolding. Rather, a feeling of doors being shut, of locks being turned. It is a hermetic season, a long moment of inwardness. The outer world, the tangible world of materials and bodies, has come to seem no more than an emanation of his mind. He feels himself sliding through events, hovering like a ghost around his own presence, as if he were living somewhere to the side of himself - not really here, but not anywhere else either. A feeling of having been locked up, and at the same time of being able to walk through walls. He notes somewhere in the margins of a thought: a darkness in the bones. — Paul Auster

I was living in different accommodation and it was never in a place where I could set up my drums and play, so my drums would end up back in their cases and then in the garage. In the end I got used to the drums being locked up, I went a good eight years without touching drums. — Eric Hernandez

Between what is going on in Iraq and Mumia being locked up unjustly, things going on in Israel, Palestine, we don't really have anyone right now like Gandhi. We don't have anyone like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X anymore. It's really a reference to a vision of hope, like someone like Gandhi. — Vinnie Paz

But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You'll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier. — Aaron Swartz

What do you know about being a person?"
She sniffed primly. "We have a lot to discuss. This would all be much easier if you'd cooperate. Wouldn't you rather be useful, make a difference to humanity, than be locked up in this cell for the rest of your life?"
I laughed. "Don't talk to me about humanity. I know a pair of freaking seals that have more humanity in their flippers than you do in your whole organization. — Kiersten White

Are you keeping anything else from me?"
"I'm keeping a lot of things from you."
"Like?"
"Like the way I feel about being locked up in here with you. You have no idea what you do to me. — Becca Fitzpatrick

The two of us locked up our own little secrets from the real world. We had experienced countless sleepless nights when we would share our fears, our worries, and our passions; when we would gossip about the school and the other girls. We had played too many pranks and snuck out more than enough times to be expelled if the teachers ever found out. We were professionals at the art of being discreet; however, we had never found sneaking out of a residence necessary, especially when the reason was not to play a prank. — Erica Sehyun Song

Kierkegaard gives us some portrait sketches of the styles of denying possibility, or the lies of character-which is the same thing. He is intent on describing what we today call "inauthentic" men, men who avoid developing their own uniqueness; they follow out the styles of automatic and uncritical living in which they were conditioned as children. They are "inauthentic" in that they do not belong to themselves, are not "their own" person, do not act from their own center, do not see reality on its terms; they are the one-dimensional men totally immersed in the fictional games being played in their society, unable to transcend their social conditioning: the corporation men in the West, the bureaucrats in the East, the tribal men locked up in tradition-man everywhere who doesn't understand what it means to think for himself and who, if he did, would shrink back at the idea of such audacity and exposure. — Ernest Becker

Judge's arms was stretched out the entire width of the bed, as if his body were being offered up for sacrifice. His fists clenched the sides of the mattress as his orgasm burst out of hiding, barreling to the surface. His body locked up tight, every muscle flexed and taut. Judge grimaced and groaned at the intense pleasure. "Fuck. I feel you, Judge. Come with me, come with me," Michaels crooned. Rubbing Judge everywhere he could reach. "Your body is so gorgeous." "Austin," Judge whispered shakily, when lightning shot through his balls and the first jet of come made him jerk hard enough to almost knock Michaels off him. Heat spread beneath him, soaking through the sheets and probably into the mattress. He shook violently with each release, his orgasm riding him as hard as Michaels was. "Fuck. — A.E. Via

Your scare tactics are useless on me, Thane. My people have needs of their own, and they don't include being locked up in an underground cavern by a bunch of overgrown mosquitoes. — Suzannah Daniels

Prophet finally breathed when the forceps came off - how long he'd been holding it, he had no idea, but fuck, everything was reduced to the feeling of the piercing, the burning throb in his nipple, and that made it hard to focus on anything else. A long moment later, the ring was locked firmly in place, and Tommy was sinking to his knees in front of him, unzipping his pants and taking his hard cock down his throat. Prophet shot immediately - and Tom had to know that would happen. Prophet knew he'd no doubt have come as he was being pierced . . . if he'd had Tom sucking him while Ray did the piercing. But that was interesting as a fantasy only. Because this wasn't about sharing. Or payback. This was Tom showing him that he understood. That, no matter what, no matter how pissed they got, how much they fucked up . . . Prophet was his. Which was Tom's way of assuring that he wasn't going anywhere. — S.E. Jakes

Who knew it was in my power to make anyone so happy? Or that I could ever be so happy myself? My moods were a slingshot; after being locked-down and anesthetized for years my heart was zinging and slamming itself around like a bee under a glass, everything bright, sharp, confusing, wrong - but it was a clean pain as opposed to the dull misery that had plagued me for years under the drugs like a rotten tooth, the sick dirty ache of something spoiled. The clarity was exhilarating; it was as if I'd removed a pair of smudged-up glasses that fuzzed everything I saw. All summer long I had been practically delirious: tingling, daffy, energized, running on gin and shrimp cocktail and the invigorating whock of tennis balls. And all I could think was Kitsey, Kitsey, Kitsey! — Donna Tartt

Indian misery is when somebody takes your land.
Indian misery is when somebody kills your friends.
Indian misery is when your people turn against you.
Indian misery is being slaves to people.
Indian misery is being locked up in jail.
Indian misery is people killing your food for money.
Indian misery is fighting. Indian misery is no peace.
Indian misery is when you get killed. Indian misery is if you lose the fight.

(Andrew Herman, student) — Timothy P. McLaughlin

The fan was spinning and as the shadows passed over the white ceiling I let my eyes unfocus until all of it looked like a universe being born or a planet unraveling, some creation or catastrophe depending on which way gravity was going and where you were standing. So instead of Elizabeth Taylor I thought about stars and how little I knew about them, and how if I was an explorer and I had to sail a boat across the ocean without rador or an electronic compass I'd be screwed because the only constellations I knew were the Big Dipper and Little Dipper and I always got them confused. And even though I knew I'd never have to sail that boat I still wished I knew more about stars and other things. And I wished I could remember lying in the back yard as a kid with my hands locked behind my head, looking up at the night sky and dreaming. But I couldn't, because it wasn't something I ever did. It would have been a nice memory though — Paul Neilan