Quotes & Sayings About Being Refused

I'm a reader of Chinese literature, I like their films, but also: I've had great difficulty getting my work published in China; very little of it has been published there. The first two attempts to have all of my work published, for instance, were refused without any reason ever being given. — Salman Rushdie

I got fired from a movie that ended up being called 'Windows,' which Gordon Willis, the cinematographer, directed. I got fired because he refused to cast Meryl Streep, who at the time was at Yale. I told him I thought he was an idiot, and he fired me. — Scott Rudin

He hated not being heard, having to shout at the insides of himself, having to live in his dreams the way he lived in one of his rented rooms, being opposed, denied, neglected, refused. Kicked out. — William H Gass

Philostratus, in his Life of Apollonius Tyaneus represents the latter as informing King Phraotes that the Oneiropolists, or Interpreters of Visions, are wont never to interpret any vision till they have first enquired the time at which it befell; for, if it were early, and of the morning sleep, they then thought that they might make a good interpretation thereof ... in that the soul was then fitted for divination, and disincumbered. But if in the first sleep, or near midnight, while the soul was as yet clouded and drowned in libations, they, being wise, refused to give any interpretation. — Anna Kingsford

That Hegelian dialectics should provide a wonderful instrument for always being right, because they permit the interpretations of all defeats as the beginning of victory, is obvious. One of the most beautiful examples of this kind of sophistry occurred after 1933 when the German Communists for nearly two years refused to recognize that Hitler's victory had been a defeat for the German Communist Party. — Hannah Arendt

Because we know ourselves. Because others obey us as though we were gods, and we know we're not. We see the fragility of our own power, and through it we see the fragility of every other link. What if the Spectrum suddenly refused my orders? Not hard to imagine, when you consider the scheming and lust for power it takes to become a Color. What if a general suddenly refuses his satrap's orders? What if a son refuses his father's orders? What if that first link in the Great Chain of being - Orholam Himself - is as empty as every other link before him? Seeing the weakness of each link, we think the Great Chain itself is fragile: surely at any moment it will burst if we don't do everything in our power to hold it together. — Brent Weeks

Though under great pressure to conform to a culture of brutality, a few guards refused to participate in the violence. In one incident, a captive was clubbed so savagely that he was certain he was going to be killed. In the middle of the assault, the attacking guard was called away, and a guard knows as Hirose was ordered to finish the beating. Out of sight of other guards, Hirose told the captive to cry out as if he were being struck, then pounded his club harmlessly against the floor. The two acted out their parts until it seemed enough "beating" had been done. The captive believed that Hirose may have saved his life. — Laura Hillenbrand

Did he ever ask you . . . or suggest to you . . . that he might want to pull some kind of dirty trick on Senator Smalls?" "Oh, no, he would never have done that," Fey said. "I mean, he might have tried to pull a dirty trick, but he wouldn't have spoken to me about it. I like Senator Smalls and Robert knew that. The senator and I have common interests. He likes classical piano and he likes Postimpressionist art. If Robert had asked me to do a dirty trick on Senator Smalls, I would have refused and I would have told Senator Smalls. Robert teased me about that. About me being loyal. — John Sandford

I remember being at school during morning meeting and looking around at everybody, 350 kids, saying a prayer. We're all very young and no one knows what it means, and I remember feeling strange that people were just repeating words that they didn't understand. I refused to participate. For some reason I always rejected it, but respectfully. — Sean Durkin

Everything and all of them were being rattled around like peas inside an enormous rattle that was being rattled by a mad giant who refused to stop. — Roald Dahl

Through being fired I was given the perfect circumstances to finally answer my calling and live my dream, and I remain grateful to this day for that television network firing me. Without them, I would have refused the call to follow my dream, and I would have missed living the most exciting and fulfilling journey of my life. — Rhonda Byrne

I often feel I am being burned at the stake just because I have always refused to give up that wonderful strange power I have inside me that becomes manifested when I am in harmonious communication with some other inspired being. — Leonora Carrington

I was asked to memorise what I did not understand; and, my memory being so good, it refused to be insulted in that manner. — Aleister Crowley

She knew her nature. She would recognize it if she came face-to-face with it. It would be a blue-eyed green-eyed monster, wolflike and snarling. A vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger, a killer that offered itself as a vessel of the king's fury.
But then it was a strange monster, for beneath its exterior it was frightened and sickened by its own violence. It chastised itself for its savagery. And sometimes it had no heart for violence and rebelled against it utterly.
A monster that refused, sometimes, to behave like a monster. When a monster stopped behaving like a monster , did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?
Perhaps she wouldn't recognize her own nature after all. — Kristin Cashore

Well, you are awfully pale." I exhaled slowly. Refused to look up. He reached for my bare foot and squeezed my toes. "And cold." I pulled my feet away. "Bad circulation." "You could always bite me, just to test.I hate you, too, by the way. Just so you know." "Oh, I do. I would suggest make-up sex, but ... " "Too bad you have scruples," I said. "Now you're just being cruel." "I like pushing your buttons." "You'd enjoy it more if you undid them first." Save me. "I think I should go and help Daniel." "With what?" "Anything." Noah stood. There was a mischievous smile on his lips as he left. — Michelle Hodkin

I had one nanny who made me sit in front of a bowl of porridge for three or four days running when I refused to eat it. I remember being very unhappy about that. — Anjelica Huston

Someday we may look back on this era as a time when rational compromises might have enhanced both security and liberty, but those compromises were refused because each side was so busy self-righteously being right. — David Brin

Must do like one who, being poor, comes last to the fair, and can find no other way of providing himself than by taking all the things already seen by other buyers, and not taken but refused by reason of their lesser value. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Ants - the pious insect, Randolph called them: they fill me with oh so much admiration and ah oh so much gloom: such puritan spirit in their mindless march of Godly industry, but can so anti-individual a government admit the poetry of what is past understanding? Certainly the man who refused to carry his crumb would find assassins on his trail, and doom in every smile. As for me, I prefer the solitary mole: he is no rose dependent upon thorn and root, nor ant whose time of being is organized by the analterable herd: sightless, he goes his separate way, knowing truth and freedom are attitudes of the spirit. — Truman Capote

Johnny Carson was a mean-spirited human being. And there are people that he has hurt that people will never know about. And for some reason, at some point, he decided to turn that kind of negative attention toward me. And I refused to have it. — Wayne Newton

Reaching up, he began using the exercise bar to do chin-ups. The repetitive act helped focus his mind as it multitasked. One thing was certain - he refused to never again experience the intimacy of being with Brenna. It wasn't the sex, though that had been the most amazing experience of his life. It was the way he'd made her laugh, made her smile, made her complain and then cuddle. All because she'd felt safe, reassured by the strength of their emotional connection.
He would not steal that feeling from her. And he most definitely was not going to surrender her to another male who could give her what she needed. The idea made him want to break something. — Nalini Singh

However, while it may be true that the open-air stalls did help get the economy going again to some degree and feed some of the hungry masses (government rationing being so inadequate that a Tokyo District Court judge who refused to eat anything purchased illegally died of malnutrition), the men who ran them were anything but altruistic. — Robert Whiting

He once begged alms of a statue, and, when asked why he did so, replied, To get practice in being refused. — Diogenes

We can understand this conclusion to be the necessary result of a heterosexualized and masculine observational point of view that takes lesbian sexuality to be a refusal of sexuality per se only because sexuality is presumed to be heterosexual, and the observer, here constructed as the heterosexual male, is clearly being refused. — Judith Butler

As we look over the list of the early leaders of the republic, Washington, John Adams, Hamilton, and others, we discern that they were all men who insisted upon being themselves and who refused to truckle to the people. With each succeeding generation, the growing demand of the people that its elective officials shall not lead but merely register the popular will has steadily undermined the independence of those who derive their power from popular election. The persistent refusal of the Adamses to sacrifice the integrity of their own intellectual and moral standards and values for the sake of winning public office or popular favor is another of the measuring rods by which we may measure the divergence of American life from its starting point. — James Truslow Adams

I go to the window, I spot a fly under the curtain, I corner it in a muslin trap and move a murderous forefinger toward it. This moment is not in the program, it's something apart, timeless, incomparable, motionless, nothing will come of it this evening or later ... Mankind is asleep ... Alone and without a future in a stagnant moment, a child is asking murder for strong sensations. Since I'm refused a man's destiny, I'll be the destiny of a fly. I don't rush matters, I'm letting it have time enough to become aware of the giant bending over it. I move my finger forward, the fly bursts, I'm foiled! Good God, I shouldn't have killed it! It was the only being in all creation that feared me; I no longer mean anything to anyone. I, the insecticide, take the victim's place and become an insect myself. I'm a fly, I've always been one. This time I've touched bottom. — Jean-Paul Sartre

When they returned to Filigree Street, Mori refused even to go upstairs. Instead he hid under a quilt in the parlour with Thaniel's never-read copy of Anna Karenina. The Russians, he said, knew how to write genuinely boring novels, and he would only stop being afraid when he was bored enough. They were all the more boring because he could remember reading the end in the recent future. — Natasha Pulley

Finally, Christians were accused of being subversive, for they refused to worship the emperor and thus destroyed the very fiber of society. The apologists answered that it was true that they refused to worship the emperor or any other creature, but that in spite of this they were loyal subjects of the empire. What the emperor needs - they said - is not to be worshiped, but to be served; and those who serve him best are those who pray for him and for the empire to the only true God. — Justo L. Gonzalez

Until then I had rejected him, refused him his own reality. He had been quite right to say that he, the only person on Gethen who trusted him, was the only Gethenian I distrusted. For he was the only one who had entirely accepted me as a human being: who had liked me personally and given met entire personal loyalty: and who therefore had demanded of me an equal degree of recognition, of acceptance. I had not been willing to give it. I had been afraid to give it. I had not wanted to give my trust, my friendship to a man who was a woman, a woman who was a man. — Ursula K. Le Guin

In my own terms, I am being punished for what happened ... I am sunk into a state of disgrace from which it will not be easy to lift myself. It is not a punishment I have refused. I do not murmur against it. On the contrary, I am living it out from day to day, trying to accept disgrace as my state of being. Is it enough for God, do you think, that I live in disgrace without term? — J.M. Coetzee

Because I'm tired of Wessex," I said, "tired of priests, tired of being told what your god's will is, tired of being told that I'm a sinner, tired of your endless damned nonsense, tired of that nailed tyrant you call god who only wants us to be miserable. And I refused to give the oath because my ambition is to go back north, to Bebbanburg, and to kill the men who hold it, and I cannot do that if I am sworn to Edward and he wants something different of me. — Bernard Cornwell

Right and wrong, good and bad, he regarded as qualities solely of conduct - of acts and omissions; there being no feeling which may not lead, and does not frequently lead, either to good or to bad actions: conscience itself, the very desire to act right, often leading people to act wrong. Consistently carrying out the doctrine, that the object of praise and blame should be the discouragement of wrong conduct and the encouragement of right, he refused to let his praise or blame be influenced by the motive of the agent. — Christopher Hitchens

Why is this painful journey so indispensable to the acquisition of true wisdom? ... It is as if the mind were a squeamish organ that refused to entertain difficult truths unless encouraged to do so by difficult events. "Happiness is good for the body," Proust tells us, "but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind." These griefs put us through a form of mental gymnastics which we would have avoided in happier times. Indeed, if a genuine priority is the development of our mental capacities, the implication is that we would be better off being unhappy than content, better off pursuing tormented love affairs than reading Plato or Spinoza. (Proust writes) A woman whom we need and who makes us suffer elicits from us a whole gamut of feelings far more profound and more vital than does a man of genius who interests us. — Alain De Botton

He who least likes courting favour, ought also least to think of resenting neglect; to feel wounded at being refused a distinction can only arise from an overweening appetite to have it. — Plutarch

Ah'll clean 'em, you fry 'em and let's eat,' he said with the assurance of not being refused. They went out into the kitchen and fixed up the hot fish and corn muffins and ate. Then Tea Cake went to the piano without so much as asking and began playing blues and singing, and throwing grins over his shoulder. The sounds lulled Janie to soft slumber and she woke up with Tea Cake combing her hair and scratching the dandruff from her scalp. It made her more comfortable and drowsy. — Zora Neale Hurston

My dad [Johnny Cash] went to the [Richard] Nixon White House and refused to sing "Welfare Cadillac" (instead performing the anti-war songs "The Ballad of Ira Hayes" and "Man in Black"). He protested the Vietnam War, but he went to perform for the troops with bombs dropping all around him. He had that kind of genius: a true artist's capacity for holding two opposing thoughts at once while being large enough to encompass all realities. — Rosanne Cash

For a long time, I refused to wear jeans. I liked high-waisted pants, but jeans made me feel like I wasn't being unique. Even now, I won't wear the skinny-jeans style, because most people wear those - they have to be baggier, boyfriend-looking, or sort of like a mom jean. I'm real funny that way. — Elle Fanning

I refused to fight them-to beat up on them or potentially kill them if things got out of hand. It was like being in a real, albeit messed-up, version of "The Hunger Games".
"The Hunger Games" for alien hybrids. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

[Steve Jobs] chafed at not being in control, and he sometimes hallucinated or became angry. Even when he was barely conscious, his strong personality came through. At one point the pulmonologist tried to put a mask over his face when he was deeply sedated. Jobs ripped it off and mumbled that he hated the design and refused to wear it. Though barely able to speak, he ordered them to bring five different options for the mask and he would pick a design he liked. — Walter Isaacson

A story is told of one of the most revered abbots of fourth-century Egypt, Pachomius the Great, who refused to see his sister Maria when she came to visit him. The explanation was his own urgent need to avoid someone who might entangle him in the bonds of family feeling, and he was even praised for his self-control in being able to forgo the pleasure of her visit. It is not surprising that women sometimes found the self-involvement of male ascetics irritating. — Kate Cooper

Witnessing the blind fury of this mob and seeing them kill before my eyes the Jews who refused to be converted (some out of faith, and others from that pride which can sometimes be perilous), I answered that I would rather be converted than killed, since, in spite of everything, the temporary agony of being is more valuable than the ultimate void of nothingness. — Danilo Kis

The one to whom nothing was refused, whose tears were always wiped away by an anxious mother, will not abide being offended.
- De Ira 2.21.6 — Seneca.

No point in getting emotional about anything. Being emotional didn't help with survival. What mattered was to learn everything, analyze the situation, choose a course of action, and then move boldly. Know, think, choose, do. There was no place in that list for "feel." Not that Bean didn't have feelings. He simply refused to think about them or dwell on them or let them influence his decisions, when anything important was at stake. — Orson Scott Card

It is told of Faraday that he refused to be called a physicist; he very much disliked the new name as being too special and particular and insisted on the old one, philosopher, in all its spacious generality: we may suppose that this was his way of saying that he had not over-ridden the limiting conditions of class only to submit to the limitation of a profession. — Lionel Trilling

A 1967 New York Times editorial declared Milwaukee "America's most segregated city." A supermajority in both houses had helped President Johnson pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but legislators backed by real estate lobbies refused to get behind his open housing law, which would have criminalized housing discrimination. It took Martin Luther King Jr. being murdered on a Memphis balcony, and the riots that ensued, for Congress to include a real open housing measure later that year in the 1968 Civil Rights Act, commonly called the Fair Housing Act. — Matthew Desmond

I was breaking down, wanting to fade away and cry, yet I feared ever being invisible again. My head lowered to conceal my humiliation behind a curtain of hair where I trembled as if sobbing.
"Hey, Gwen, it's okay. It's okay. Calm down."
I yearned to feel Daniel's soft touch meet my temple and then trace along my ear, brushing back the hairs from my face. What I wanted was the comfort his caress always afforded me. He moved as if he would grant my wish, realizing at the last moment that neither of us possessed the power to touch the other.
"Your hair, Gwen."
I refused to do what he wanted. I didn't care for him to see the shame plainly visible in my features. But the next thing I knew, his blue eyes were staring up at me from the ground, a glare reflecting off his glasses. The guy had dropped his books to fall over for a clear view of my face. His desperation made me laugh.
"It's going to be okay, Gwen, I promise."
- from "Phantom's Veil — Richelle E. Goodrich

Why is it so hard to be human being? I wonder. Why do we have to surrender? And to what? What if you refused to believe in a higher power? What if you thought you were the only trustworthy higher power? I have done that all my life and I know it doesn't work. You are not enough. Your will is not enough. But God? God is a pagan dream, conjured out of neediness. — Erica Jong

I don't deny that impulse drew us together, but while physical gratification began and ended it for you, in making love, dumbo here - - ' she jerked a thumb at her chest ' - was also demonstrating that she cared.'
His tongue moistened his lips. 'You're very up-front, aren't you?'
'You mean none of your other rejects have ever looked you in the eye and complained?' Sian queried. She might have made things easy last night, but she refused to make anything easy for him now. 'I suppose you'd prefer it if I shrugged my shoulders, muttered something about it being nice while it lasted, and filed the experience away under lessons learned? Well, sorry, but for me, and for most women if they're honest, going to bed with someone is a darn sight more complicated than that! — Elizabeth Oldfield

He pressed the blade of his sword into the ground. As he pulled his arm over his head for a stretch, a bead of sweat trickled down his neck and over a row of muscles on his stomach. I swallowed hard. The window's edge dug into my skin but I refused to move an inch. The tiny droplet disappeared into the waistband of his shorts. I had seen plenty of guys in gym class with their shirts off, but none of them looked like...that. He was physical perfection - a living work of art.

I sat on my knees with my chin relaxed on my crossed arms, unable to look away.

"Enjoying the view?" he said, eyes suddenly on me. His chiseled face wore an overly confident grin. Clearly he was used to being admired.

My cheeks burned.

I stood, pretending to check out the scenery. "Not much to see."

He raised an eyebrow, letting me know he knew I was full of crap. — Stacey O'Neale

Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them. Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities - a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one. — Charlie Chaplin

I had to admit that I had a strong tendency to date jokers. I couldn't say no to them. I would sit across from someone I was dating and try to imagine who in the entire world would date this nimrod other than me. But I always had to have a boyfriend. They distracted me from being sad. They baffled me with their stupidity. I refused to believe that finding love was difficult. — Heather O'Neill

It had not been a very cheerful journey, not the least for the western excursion into Outlander territory, where a stubborn and pompous old man had refused to listen to the truth; but Corlath had expected what he found and-she thought-saw no use in being discouraged. — Robin McKinley

[...] nobody anywhere seemed to be willing to ponder for a moment the possibility that a human being who refused to participate, who refused to speak or listen, who failed to 'interact with his peer group', might not be all that crazy, and might even have arrived at an understandable response to the world in which we lived. — Craig Harrison

Do what he will, he [the profane man] is an inheritor. He cannot utterly abolish his past, since he himself is a product of his past. He forms himself by a series of denials and refusals, but he continues to be haunted by the realities that he has refused and denied. To acquire a world of his own, he has desacralized the world in which his ancestors lived; but to do so he has been obliged to adopt an earlier type of behavior, and that behavior is still emotionally present in him, in one form or another, ready to be reactualized in his deepest being. — Mircea Eliade

But surely Adam cannot be excused; Her fault though great, yet he was most to blame; What weakness offered, strength might have refused, Being lord of all, the greater was the shame. — Emilia Lanier

Too bad Justice refused to let him toss live grenades to the side of the course. That would add motivation. He knew from personal experience. His personal best time for a quarter-mile run had been in Africa - while being chased by an angry rhino. Imminent death made for a great workout. — Susan Mallery

Before the coming of Jesus Christ, men fled away from God and, being attached to the earth, refused to unite themselves to their Creator. But the loving God has drawn them to Himself by the bonds of love, as He promised by the prophet Osee [Hosea]: "I will draw them with the cords of Adam, with the bonds of love" (11:4). These bonds are the benefits, the lights, the calls to His love, the promises of Paradise which He makes to us, but above all, the gift which He has bestowed upon us of Jesus Christ in the Sacrifice of the Cross and in the Sacrament of the Altar ... — Alphonsus Liguori

I return one last time to the places of death all around us, the places of slaughter to which, in a huge communal effort, we close our hearts. Each day a fresh holocaust, yet, as far as I can see, our moral being is untouched. We do not feel tainted. We can do anything, it seems, and come away clean.
We point to the Germans and Poles and Ukrainians who did and did not know of the atrocities around them. We like to think they were inwardly marked by the after-effects of that special form of ignorance. We like to think that in their nightmares the ones whose suffering they had refused to enter came back to haunt them. We like to think they woke up haggard in the mornings and died of gnawing cancers. But probably it was not so. The evidence points in the opposite direction: that we can do anything and get away with it; that there is no punishment. — J.M. Coetzee

While the President [Barack Obama] did a good thing when he said he personally supported equal marriage, he then quickly backed away and said that he wasn't going to do anything about it - that it was a state matter, and that he wasn't going to interfere, as opposed to being than being a real advocate for equality across the board in marriage. He also, I think two weeks prior to that statement, refused to sign an executive order to establish equal rights in the workplace for the LGBT community. — Jill Stein

They didn't tell Miles what their destination was. He only knew they traveled south, and he'd as soon have done so on a mode of transportation other than the camel.
The creatures bore heavy inanimate burdens calmly enough. But his showed a marked aversion to being ridden. The camel made insulting noises as Miles circled it, looking for a place to get on. The animal complained loudly and cursed him bitterly in camel language when he was finally seated. It snarled and growled and turned around to give him venomous looks. Then, as you'd expect, it flatly refused to obey him. When Miles tried to turn its head, it tried to bite his feet. When he snapped at the animal to behave, it promptly lay down. When at last the humor seized it to get up, it made sure to throw Miles back and forth violently in the process. — Loretta Chase

The final exercise (according to documents obtained by WikiLeaks - Haggis refused to talk about it) was "Go out to a park, train station or other busy area. Practice placing an intention into individuals until you can successfully and easily place an intention into or on a Being and/or a body. — Lawrence Wright

I had grown accustomed to life being interesting and adventure ridden and, rather childishly, I refused to believe that this must necessarily come to an end and that the rest of my life should be a sort of penance for all the reckless, irresponsible, and immensely fun things I'd done before. — J. Maarten Troost

When Jesus drives something home to you through His Word, don't try to evade it. If you do, you will become a religious impostor. Examine the things you tend simply to shrug your shoulders about, and where you have refused to be obedient, and you will know why you are not growing spiritually. As Jesus said, "First ... go ... " Even at the risk of being thought of as fanatical, you must obey what God tells you. — Oswald Chambers

A sharp ringing of a bell suddenly split the air, signaling that the quadrille was soon to begin. Realizing that the ladies shielding her from view were going to have to take their seats, Wilhelmina began backing as quickly as she could underneath the chair behind her, her only thought being to make an escape as quietly as possible. She'd gotten halfway underneath the chair before her bustle, dratted contraption that it was, snagged on the underside of the chair. Before she could get herself free, a loud clearing of a throat sent a sense of dread flowing through her veins. Lifting her head, she refused a sigh when her gaze was caught and held by none other than the gentleman she'd been hoping to avoid. Mr. Edgar Wanamaker. — Jen Turano

Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave four-score sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them, thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak. — Plutarch

At the sessions after I was indicted for an upholder and maintainer of unlawful assemblies and conventicles, and for not conforming to the national worship of the church of England; and after some conference there with the justices, they taking my plain dealing with them for a confession, as they termed it, of the indictment, did sentence me to a perpetual banishment, because I refused to conform. So being again delivered up to the jailer's hands, I was had home to prison, and there have lain now complete twelve years, waiting to see what God would suffer these men to do with me. — John Bunyan

So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs. — H.G.Wells

In Star Wars, there was monetary confusion and competition. Despite being backed by metals, credits were refused by planets during periods of uncertainty, such as the Clone Wars. The credit was later known as the "Imperial Credit" and was used by Luke Skywalker to pay Han Solo for transport to the planet Alderaan. Yet smugglers avoided using state-sanctioned money and opted for precious metals like platinum. Those in the Ferengi Alliance traded gold-pressed latinum, a material that could not — Kabir Sehgal

He felt his presence on earth being denied, even as he stood there. He was forbidden access; the past refused to admit him. It only reminded him that this arbitrary place, where he'd landed and made his life, was not his, — Jhumpa Lahiri

The being we call god is merely a pawn working for a powerful and rational force in some far-off galaxy. This force is trying to weed out people who are irrational by seeing who would be stupid enough to believe in his god illusion so easily. Those that believe in this illusion, he will send to eternal damnation and he will deliver the rational beings, those who stoically refused to believe in a god, to heaven. — Nick Yee

What if I don't want to be friends with you?" he challenged, grinning again, staring directly into my eyes. Obviously taking me seriously was an impossibility for Evan.
Despite not being able to breathe, I connected with his taunting gaze and refused to look away. "Then we won't be friends," I said flatly.
"What if I want to be more than friends? — Rebecca Donovan

It is ironic-rouse the limpest adjective-that a government as spontaneously tyrannous and callous as ours should, over the years, have come yo care so much about our health as it endlessly tests and retests commercial drugs available in other lands while arresting those who take "hard" drugs on the potential ground that they are bad for the user's health. One is touched by their concern- touched and dubious. After all, these same compassionate guardians of our well-being have sternly, year in and year out, refused to allow us to have what every other First World country simply takes for granted, a national health service. — Gore Vidal

I fought for years to free myself of all my cultural, economic and political chains, to be free of owning or being owned. I refused. God, how hard it is to refuse sometimes. Especially during times of hardship, refusal requires willpower. And each refusal expands the boundaries of one's loneliness. You know how it goes," I said, running out of breath. "I did not belong to my town. I had no regular city or country address, no regular job, no steady lover, husband, child or family. I was infinitely independent and unfettered. I was hungry but free. — Buket Uzuner

Not so long ago, I visited relatives in Italy.

I took a daytime stroll to the famous (infamous) Roman Coliseum, and marveled at the engineering feat to build such a magnificent structure.

Being a Christian, I was suddenly thunderstruck at the thought of how many Christians perished in some of the most cruel way possible, some torn limb to limb by starved lions, simply because they refused to denounce Jesus Christ as their savior.
Yet here in America, a land blessed by God ( a ragtime army of patriots defeat one of the most powerful standing armies in the world) and founded on religious freedom, we allow them to remove prayer from the schools, remove nativity scenes from our cities and towns and abort millions of children.
Where's the outrage?
What has happened to us?
Jim Balzotti — Jim Balzotti

This "manna from heaven" was being squandered because of the laziness and stupidity of the savages who refused to work as harvesters of latex and obliged the planters to go to the tribes and take them by force. Which meant a great loss of time and money for the enterprises. "Well, — Mario Vargas-Llosa

On the ride back to the hotel, they lost the sense of being in a hostile environment, although hostile wasn't the word, an environment whose language they refused to recognize, an environment that existed on some parallel plane where they couldn't make their presence felt, imprint themselves, unless they raised their voices, unless they argued, something they had no intention of doing. — Roberto Bolano

What I do know, is that I refused to compromise with the system and I was obsessed with preventing my work from being manipulated for their propaganda. Even stories about the Holocaust could have been promoted as anti-fascist stories, which they were in a way, but I didn't want them to be taken only as such. I remember I had a reading in Berlin in the '80s and a man in the audience, asked me: 'Sir, I read your book, I read the stories, you didn't say who the oppressors were nor who are the people who are suffering.' And I said, 'No, I didn't.' It was important to me that a Vietnamese reader reading a story about a young boy who is in a camp, can recognize himself, without me saying: the boy is a Jew, the oppressor is a Romanian, or a Nazi, and so on. I wanted to have a more universal approach. — Norman Manea

Almost wherever Chinese communities went, they were accused of vice, violence and mutiny, of being a secretive, alien, xenophobic community that refused to integrate with Anglo-Saxon society. — Julia Lovell

It was dusk when I drove back into downtown Detroit. I was annoyed by how much traffic there was at that hour of the day. Being a guy with two good legs who doesn't mind ankling, I hadn't realized the car situation had gotten so bad in the city. I almost had two smack-ups with people who refused to yield to me. Then I bumped someone from behind, intentionally, at the new flashing traffic light on Jefferson. The guy in the car had refused to move - he just sat there waiting because the light was red. After I bumped him (not that hard), the squirt hopped out of his car red in the face, and I must admit the sight of him gave me my first laugh in two days. He said, "Can't you see it's a red light?" I told him a red light is just a suggestion. Then I pressed the gas lightly and started pushing his car further out into the intersection whilst he stood there in disbelief. "Better get back in, your car is leaving without you," I said. — W.K. Berger

I could feel Monika nudging me furiously at this point, but I refused to look at her. I wasn't feeling particularly reverent about my mother's deadness, or about the vicar, but I do despise that ghastly, 'You've got to laugh, haven't you?' approach to religious occasions. As a young man, I often goaded my believing friends with crudely logical questions about God. But as the years have passed, I have found myself hankering more and more for a little cosy voodoo in my life. Increasingly, I regard my atheism as a regrettable limitation. It seems to me that my lack of faith is not, as I once thought, a triumph of the rational mind, but rather, a failure of the imagination - an inability to tolerate mystery: a species, in fact, of neurosis. There is no chance of my being converted, of course - it is far too late for that. But I wish it wasn't. — Zoe Heller

Her passion is hard to forget. I still remember one dinner at my grandfather's house. The whole extended family was there, and Marti, at the time, refused to eat at the same table where flesh was being served. Half the family was fine with that. But the other half wanted chicken. The solution? We had to set up two separate tables in the dining room
a meat table and a nonmeat table. My diplomatic grandparents didn't want to take sides, so they sat at a third table in the middle, a dietary DMZ/ — A. J. Jacobs

And Miriam also refused to be approached. She was afraid of being set at nought, as by her own brothers. The girl was romantic in her soul. Everywhere was a Walter Scott heroine being loved by men with helmets or with plumes in their caps. She herself was something of a princess turned into a swine-girl in her own imagination. And she was afraid lest this boy, who, nevertheless, looked something like a Walter Scott hero, who could paint and speak French, and knew what algebra meant, and who went by train to Nottingham every day, might consider her simply as the swine-girl, unable to perceive the princess beneath; so she held aloof. — D.H. Lawrence

father owned the building where your brother and his family rented a flat. When my father passed away a few years ago, he left the building to me. I became your brother's landlord. We've known the family for years. But when rumors of the Nazi invasion began several weeks ago, we made preparations to flee. We begged Philippe and Muriel to come with us. They are, I must say, our dearest Gentile friends. But they did not think Hitler would really do it. We pleaded with them, 'Come with us. There is no more time.' But they refused. I'm afraid we could not wait any longer. Last Tuesday we fled the city. It broke our hearts to leave our friends and our home, but we simply couldn't take a chance on being captured by the Germans. We hear they are sending Jews to work camps all over Europe. — Joel C. Rosenberg

Throughout history, humankind has been resistant to change and to the acceptance of new ideas ... When Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, the astronomers of that time refused to accept or even to look at these satellites because the existence of these moons conflicted with their accepted beliefs. So it is now with psychiatrists and other therapists, who refuse to examine and evaluate the considerable evidence being gathered about survival after bodily death and about past life memories. Their eyes are tightly shut. — Brian Weiss