Being Taken Quotes & Sayings

I got a number of very thoughtful responses to the email I sent out last night, most of which I don't have time to respond to right now. Thanks everyone for the encouragement, questions, criticism. Daniel's response was particularly inspiring to me and deserves to be shared. The resistance of Israeli Jewish people to the occupation and the enormous risk taken by those refusing to serve in the Israeli military offers an example, especially for those of us living in the United States, of how to behave when you discover that atrocities are being commited in your name. Thank you. — Rachel Corrie

I love being recognized, I love people liking me, I love the fact that people scream when I go out. I think I'll miss all that when it's taken away. — Shah Rukh Khan

I remembered some people who lived across the street from our home as we were being taken away. When I was a teenager, I had many after-dinner conversations with my father about our internment. He told me that after we were taken away, they came to our house and took everything. We were literally stripped clean. — George Takei

Caratacus suffered the double indignity of being taken to Rome in chains and having an opera written about him by Elgar. — Ben Aaronovitch

My art is just an effort to express the truth of my being in gesture and movement. It has taken me long years to find even one absolutely true movement. — Isadora Duncan

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

A third variety of drama ... begins as tragedy with scraps of fun in it ... and ends in comedy without mirth in it, the place of mirth being taken by a more or less bitter and critical irony. — George Bernard Shaw

The cause, then, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and negative, taken together; the whole of the contingencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent invariably follows. — John Stuart Mill

Successful living does not mean accumulating material things, it means inner peace of mind; it means that gift of being able to adjust oneself to everyone else; it also means that all your needs for daily living will be taken care of by God. — Albert E Cliffe

From her outfit, no one would ever guess she liked being called a filthy whore while sucking a taken man's cock. — Pepper Winters

The sooner being gay is completely normalized, the sooner homophobic prohibitions against touch will be taken off straight men. As much as gay men have faced the brunt of homophobic violence, straight men have been banished to a desert of physical isolation by these same homophobic fanatics who police lesbians and gays in our society. The result has been a generation of American men who do not hug each other, do not hold hands and cannot sit close together without the homophobic litmus test kicking in. — Mark Greene

On some levels, you can also have this feeling that we are being duped, somehow. And that the world is at play for something you would understand more if it were pure ideology. It is a very strange time and also basic things are being taken away. — Edwidge Danticat

Whenever anyone has called me a bitch, I have taken it as a compliment. To me, a bitch is assertive, unapologetic, demanding, intimidating, intelligent, fiercely protective, in control - all very positive attributes. But it's not supposed to be a compliment, because there's that stupid double standard: When men are aggressive and dominant, they are admired, but when a woman possesses those same qualities, she is dismissed and called a bitch.
These days, I strive to be a bitch, because not being one sucks. Not being a bitch means not having your voice heard. Not being a bitch means you agree with all the bullshit. Not being a bitch means you don't appreciate all the other bitches who have come before you. Not being a bitch means since Eve ate that apple, we will forever have to pay for her bitchiness with complacence, obedience, acceptance, closed eyes, and open legs. — Margaret Cho

Today, our challenge is not so much atheism as the need to respond adequately to many people's thirst for God, lest they try to satisfy it with alienating solutions or with a disembodied Jesus who demands nothing of us with regard to others. Unless these people find in the Church a spirituality which can offer healing and liberation, and fill them with life and peace, while at the same time summoning them to fraternal communion and missionary fruitfulness, they will end up being taken in by solutions which neither make life truly human nor give glory to God (89 — Anonymous

What I complain of is that life is not like a novel where there are hard-hearted fathers, and goblins and trolls to fight with, enchanted princesses to free. What are all such enemies taken together compared to the pallid, bloodless, glutinous nocturnal shapes with which I fight and to which I myself give life and being. — Soren Kierkegaard

My son has taken liking for sports and is most of the time playing cricket and football. It is so much fun being with them, as I'm enjoying every phase of motherhood. — Karisma Kapoor

Laughter is, above all, a corrective. Being intended to humiliate, it must make a painful impression on the person against whom it is directed. By laughter, society avenges itself for the liberties taken with it. It would fail in its object if it bore the stamp of sympathy or kindness. — Henri Bergson

Tommy was persuaded that the murder charge was buttressed by that antagonism, which, from the prosecution's viewpoint, was probably ninety percent of their case. The bloodstains, being absent from the bunk room on the night of the murder, the discovery of the knife - all these things when taken together painted a compelling portrait. It was only upon examining each separately that the supposition unraveled somewhat. — John Katzenbach

Suicide attempts at the Empire State Building are rare, but the same unfortunately cannot be said about the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, the most popular such site in the United States. (The Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge in China is widely regarded as the world's most popular suicide bridge, and the Golden Gate Bridge is number two.) We don't know, officially, how many people have taken their lives there because when the number hit 997, authorities stopped counting to avoid giving anyone the incentive of being jumper number 1,000. Whatever the number is, it could have been much higher. In 1994, California Highway Patrol Sergeant Kevin Briggs was assigned to patrol the bridge. Since then, he's managed to talk an estimated 200 people out of jumping. — Dan Lewis

It's very important that people realize: the air is being taken away, the oceans are being taken away, the room is being taken away, but we're so worried about gas prices that we don't even see this stuff. — Bootsy Collins

In our rough and rugged individualism, we think of gentleness as weakness, being soft and virtually spineless. Not so! Gentleness includes such enviable qualities as having strength under control, being calm and peaceful when surrounded by a heated atmosphere, emitting a soothing effect on those who may be angry or otherwise beside themselves, and possessing tact and gracious courtesy that causes others to retain their self-esteem and dignity. Instead of losing, the gentle gain. Instead of being ripped off and taken advantage of, they come out ahead! — Charles R. Swindoll

Black Cat
A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:
just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I could beat my mike stand into the stage, but I was still in pain. Maybe fans liked it, but sometimes people forget you're a person and they're more into the entertainment value. It's taken a long time to turn that around and give a strong show without it being a kamikaze show. — Axl Rose

Through real-life stories, Kristin Kaufman illustrates the core idea of being present in the moment and opening oneself up to new ideas in order to become an authentic leader in life. — Stephen R. Covey

The catch is that for most people the New Testament is taken as proof for the conventional picture of Christian origins, and the conventional picture is taken as proof for the way in which the New Testament was written. . . . For this reason the New Testament is commonly viewed and treated as a charter document that came into being much like the Constitution of the United States. According to this view, the authors of the New Testament were all present at the historic beginnings of the new religion and collectively wrote their gospels and letters for the purpose of founding the Christian church that Jesus came to inaugurate. Unfortunately for this view, that is not the way it happened. — Burton L. Mack

The allowance vanished absolutely; and in its place there came into being an arrangement. By this, his lordship was to have whatever money he wished, but he must ask for it, and state why it was needed. If the request were reasonable, the cash would be forthcoming; if preposterous, it would not. The flaw in the scheme, from his lordship's point of view, was the difference of opinion that can exist in the minds of two men as to what the words reasonable and preposterous may be taken to mean. Twenty pounds, for instance, would, in the lexicon of Sir Thomas Blunt, be perfectly reasonable for the current expenses of a man engaged to Molly McEachern, but preposterous for one to whom she had declined to remain engaged. It is these subtle shades of meaning that make the English language so full of pitfalls for the foreigner. — P.G. Wodehouse

I've evolved as a human being, and I've taken more risks. I've let go of judgment. I don't know when the best stuff is coming - I sink into the process in a different way. I paint more, and my vision is stronger, but I don't think my music is better, because nothing is ever better than your first material. — Sophie B. Hawkins

The desire to make the horse happy and the cabman happy, had reached the point of a bizarre longing to take them to bed with him. And that, he knew, was impossible. For Stevie was not mad. It was, as it were, a symbolic longing; and at the same time it was very distinct, because springing from experience, the mother of wisdom. Thus when as a child he cowered in a dark corner scared, wretched, sore, and miserable with the black, black misery of the soul, his sister Winnie used to come along, and carry him off to bed with her, as into a heaven of consoling peace. Stevie, though apt to forget mere facts, such as his name and address for instance, had a faithful memory of sensations. To be taken into a bed of compassion was the supreme remedy, with the only one disadvantage of being difficult of application on a large scale. And looking at the cabman, Stevie perceived this clearly, because he was reasonable. — Joseph Conrad

When he had first met her, Royal had taken for granted her absolute self-confidence, but in fact the reverse was true - far from being sure of herself, Anne needed constantly to re-establish her position on the top rung of the ladder. By comparison, the professional people around her, who had achieved everything as a result of their own talents, were models of self-assurance — J.G. Ballard

I've been to unpretty places with the roles I've played, and I'm attracted to reckless abandon. I like being taken to the edge of my own abyss. — Rhys Ifans

My funeral," the Blue Man said. "Look at the mourners. Some did not even know me well, yet they came. Why? Did you ever wonder? Why people gather when others die? Why people feel they should?
"It is because the human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed.
"You say you should have died instead of me. But during my time on earth, people died instead of me, too. It happens every day. When lightning strikes a minute after you are gone, or an airplane crashes that you might have been on. When your colleague falls ill and you do not. We think such things are random. But there is a balance to it all. One withers, another grows. Birth and death are part of a whole.
"It is why we are drawn to babies ... " He turned to the mourners. "And to funerals. — Mitch Albom

I would say my being disheartened has more to do with American culture than anything else. We are becoming a very shallow culture. My goodness, the celebrity ethos has taken over completely. Turn on the television and you see that over and over. There's very little substance. And so, everything gets shorter. Everything is entertainment oriented. Our churches reflect that. A thirty-five minute sermon without a Power Point or video clips is rare these days. That's not true in other countries so much. — Philip Yancey

A particularly poignant moment for me today was after being given two quotes which caused me to spend time reflecting on the path that my own life has taken so far, and might take in the future: "Whatever does not make your heart sing was not meant for you in this life" "Whatever you lose time doing, you should be doing in life — Rachel Stainer

I have no interest in being a celebrity. I wouldn't go to anything that I wasn't involved in just for the sake of wearing a nice frock and having my picture taken. That part of the business doesn't make me feel very comfortable. — Michelle Gomez

I'm just starting to scratch the surface of what really makes me happy and it's taken me a while to admit that acting like a little child and being a jerk and a punk is fun. — Leonardo DiCaprio

How much better life seemed to me now that it seemed susceptible of being illuminated, taken out of the shadows, restored from our ceaseless falsification of it to the truth of what it was, in short, realized in a book! How happy the writer of a book like that would be, I thought, what a labour awaited him! — Marcel Proust

It wasn't necessarily that I wasn't a fan of fairies. Really. It wasn't that. It was that I wasn't a fan of being taken hostage by a group of fairies. — C.M. Stunich

I think now I'm being taken a little more seriously. That's pure conjecture on my part. — Tom Wopat

Without light, how can you keep the sight of the eyes? Without a future, how can you preserve the government? [ ... ] We could have a most dilligent Home Secretary of Lunchtime. We could have an excellent Prime Minister of the Quietest Part of the Late Afternoon. But when twilight comes -do you see?- our world disappears. It cannot see beyond the day because you have taken tomorrow. And because you have tomorrow in front of your eyes, you cannot see what is being done today. — Chris Cleave

I frequently feel I'm being taken advantage of merely because I'm asked to do the work I'm paid to do. — Joseph Heller

("Becoming cultured" and "being adjusted to the social group" are taken almost as synonymous.) Either way, it follows that you can teach people anything; you can adapt them to anything if you use the right techniques of "socializing" or "communicating." The essence of "human nature" is to be pretty indefinitely malleable. "Man," as C. Wright Mills suggests, is what suits a particular type of society in a particular historical stage. This — Paul Goodman

If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will. — Albert Einstein

The mass media stereotype of an MPD patient is a woman harboring an internal collection of delightfully different people ranging from wide-eyed little kids to kung fu masters and nuclear physicists. Skeptics tend to focus concretely on the impossibility of there being 10 or 20 or 100 separate people inside that woman's body (e.g., Sarbin, 1995). By and large, this stereotype will not go away.

Alter personalities are real. They do exist - not as separate, individuals, but as discrete dissociative states of consciousness. When considered from this perspective, they are not nearly so amazing to behold or so difficult to accept. A fair reading of the MPD literature shows that authorities have long subscribed to this thesis: "Only when taken together can all of the personality states be considered a whole personality" (Coons, 1984, p. 53). Paradoxically, it is the critics who implicitly accept the view that the alter personalities are separate people. — Frank W. Putnam

You know what this is?" Lula said. "This here's plane rage."
Plane rage isn't allowed. It got taken off the allowed activities list along with eating. If you make a scene they'll hual you off in leg irons." Stephanie said.
I'm tired of being stapped in here, too," Lula said. "This seat belt's too tight and it's giving me gas."
Anything else?"
There's no movie. — Janet Evanovich

She flashed me a quick black glance and then her dark eyelashes swept down on her cheeks. 'Not me,' she said 'I make my own plans. I don't risk being taken up and dropped again.'
'You told me to risk it.' I reminded her.
'That was for you,' she said 'I would not live my life as you live yours. You would always do as you were bid. I am not like you. I make my own way. — Philippa Gregory

All of a sudden it seemed as if I could smell the brain, and not in a oh-how-gross way, but as if someone had taken the lid off a pot of gumbo to let the aroma fill the room. And I knew it was the brain that smelled so utterly enticing - knew it with every single cell of my being.
What the hell was wrong with me? — Diana Rowland

A text makes the word more specific. It really kind of defines it within the context in which it is being used. If it is just taken out of a context and presented as a sort of object, which is what - you know, which is a contemporary art idea, you know. It is like an old surrealist idea or an old cubist idea to take something out of context and put it in a completely different context. And it sort of gives it a different meaning and creates another world, another kind of world in which we enter. — Robert Barry

I wrote a lot of stuff quickly: pages and pages of notes that seemed pretty incoherent at first. Most of it was taken from the radio because -suddenly being a parent- I'd be confronted by the radio giving a news report every hour of the day. — Thom Yorke

There is nothing final about a mistake, except its being taken as final. — Phyllis Bottome

I do not mean that there is anything intellectually contemptible in being formally "godless"
that is, in rejecting all religious dogmas and in refusing to believe in the God those dogmas describe.
One might very well conclude, for instance, that the world contains far too much misery for the pious idea of a good, loving, and just God to be taken very seriously, and that any alleged creator of the universe in which children suffer and die hardly deserves our devotion.
It is an affective
not a strictly logical
position to hold, but it is an intelligible one, with a certain sublime moral purity to it; I myself find it deeply compelling; and it is entirely up to each person to judge whether he or she finds any particular religion's answer to the "problem of evil" either adequate or credible. — David Bentley Hart

I spoke to you all of the Wheel," he said quietly. "The Wheel turns and unless we are alert an opportunity is snatched or taken, for us or against us. In a place, which you shall see, the Nine have preserved for centuries a truth - knowledge of a truth, that is; for truth is like skill, unless used constantly it disappears. The time will come, but is not yet, when that truth may be given to the world with safety. Those in whose hands the ancient secrets are, being human, have made mistakes. Knowledge in the hands of criminals and fools is worse than ignorance. — Talbot Mundy

being asked by Criton how he would be buried, "I have taken a great deal of pains," saith he, "my friends, to no purpose, for I have not convinced our Criton that I shall fly from hence, and leave no part of me behind. Notwithstanding, Criton, if you can overtake me, wheresoever you get hold of me, bury me as you please: but — Marcus Tullius Cicero

When you have two people who love each other, are happy and gay and really good work is being done by one or both of them, people are drawn to them as surely as migrating birds are drawn at night to a powerful beacon. If the two people were as solidly constructed as the beacon there would be little damage except to the birds. Those who attract people by their happiness and their performance are usually inexperienced. They do not know how not to be overrun and how to go away. They do not always learn about the good, the attractive, the charming, the soon-beloved, the generous, the understanding rich who have no bad qualities and who give each day the quality of a festival and who, when they have passed and taken the nourishment they needed, leave everything deader than the roots of any grass Attila's horses' hooves have ever scoured. — Ernest Hemingway,

Yea, even so he shall be led, crucified, and slain, the flesh becoming subject even unto death, the will of the Son being swallowed up in the will of the Father. 8 And thus God breaketh the bands of death, having gained the victory over death; giving the Son power to make intercession for the children of men - 9 Having ascended into heaven, having the bowels of mercy; being filled with compassion towards the children of men; standing betwixt them and justice; having broken the bands of death, taken upon himself their iniquity and their transgressions, having redeemed them, and satisfied the demands of justice. — Joseph Smith Jr.

I probably get a deeper satisfaction of having taken a very good photograph than of having written something very good, a very good story. Maybe it's because the element of magic is so present in a good photograph - luck and magic, but also hard work and being ready and all that. — Teju Cole

Imagine," she said, her face turning serious for a moment, "imagine if something happened to one of us and there was no Easter egg hunt next year, imagine if everything stopped being perfect - you would wish so hard that you'd taken part today . . . — Lisa Jewell

To love is to risk, not being loved in return. to hope is to risk pain. to try is to risk failure. but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in my life is to risk nothing. — Leo Buscaglia

We had to learn that we're beautiful. We had to relearn something forcefully taken from us. We had to learn about Black power. People have power if we unite. We learned the importance of coming together and being active — Assata Shakur

We're so used to being edited, so infected with the sleight of hand of the media, that we're more aware of what's been added than of what has been taken away. — Michael Marshall

In the night he awoke and held her tight as though she were all of life and it was being taken away from him. — Ernest Hemingway,

When the mind has a tendency to dream, it is a mistake to keep dreams away from it, to ration its dreams. So long as you distract your mind from its dreams, it will not know them for what they are; you will always be being taken in by the appearance of things, because you will not have grasped their true nature. If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time. One must have a thorough understanding of one — Marcel Proust

In the midst of this utopia, which only your fellow lone voyagers would perceive, you used to transgress society's rules unknowingly, and no one would hold you accountable for it. You would mistakenly enter private residences, go to concerts to which you had not been invited, eat at community banquets where you could only guess the community's identity when they started giving speeches. Had you behaved like this in your own country, you would have been taken for a liar or a fool. But the improbable ways of a foreigner are accepted. Far from your home, you used to taste the pleasure of being mad without being alienated, of being an imbecile without renouncing your intelligence, of being an impostor without culpability. — Edouard Leve

Our many Jewish friends and acquaintances are being taken away in droves. The Gestapo is treating them very roughly and transporting them in cattle cars to Westerbork, the big camp in Drenthe to which they're sending all the Jews ... If it's that bad in Holland, what must it be like in those faraway and uncivilized places where the Germans are sending them? We assume that most of them are being murdered. The English radio says they're being gassed. — Anne Frank

A poor woman from Manchester, on being taken to the seaside, is said to have expressed her delight on seeing for the first time something of which there was enough for everybody. — John Lubbock

The next morning, Louie was taken to an airfield to be flown to Okinawa, where many POWs were being collected before being sent home. Seeing a table stacked with K rations, he began cramming the boxes under his shirt, brushing off an attendant who tried to assure him that he didn't have to hoard them, as no one was going to starve him anymore. Looking extremely pregnant, Louie boarded the plane. — Laura Hillenbrand

The Romans may be known for many things, but humor isn't one of them. As usual, this interpretation relies on a prima facie reading of Jesus as a man with no political ambitions whatsoever. That is nonsense. All criminals sentenced to execution received a titulus so that everyone know the crime for which they were being punished and thus be deterred from taking part in similar activity. That the wording on Jesus's titulus was likely genuine is demonstrated by Joseph A. Fitzmeyer, who notes that "if [the titulus] were invented by Christians, they would have used Christos, for early Christians would scarcely have called their Lord 'King of the Jews'."[..] the notion that a no-name Jewish peasant would have received a personal audience with the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, who had probably signed a dozen execution orders that day alone, is so outlandish that it cannot be taken seriously. — Reza Aslan

In 'The Hunger Games,' in most people's idea, in terms of rebellion or a civil-war situation, that would meet the criteria for a necessary war. These people are oppressed, their children are being taken off and put in gladiator games. They're impoverished, they're starving, they're brutalized. — Suzanne Collins

Medical research has revealed that in about one-tenth of the population, the liver processes alcohol differently, releasing a chemical messenger that creates the craving for another drink; once that second drink is taken, the desire is doubled. But the real problem of the alcoholic is actually centered in the mind, because we can't remember why it was such a bad idea to pick up that first drink. Once we start, we can't stop; and when we stop, we can't remember why we shouldn't start again. It is a form of mental illness, like a manic-depressive who, after being stabilized on medication for a while, suddenly decides she is fine and no longer needs her pills. — Kaylie Jones

The family only represents one aspect, however important an aspect, of a human being's functions and activities. A life is beautiful and ideal or the reverse, only when we have taken into our consideration the social as well as the family relationship. — Havelock Ellis

I'm so blessed to have been a working actor. If they still would like to make me a superstar, I'm available, but so far, being a working actor has been great. It's taken me everywhere. — Patrick Fabian

There is a great deal of illusion in a work of art; one could go farther and say that it is illusory in and of itself, as a "work." Its ambition is to make others believe that it was not made but rather simply arose, burst forth from Jupiter's head like Pallas Athena fully adorned in enchased armor. But that is only a pretense. No work has ever come into being that way. It is indeed work, artistic labor for the purpose of illusion-and now the question arises whether, given the current state of our consciousness, our comprehension, and our sense of truth, the game is still permissible, still intellectually possible, can still be taken seriously; whether the work as such, as a self-sufficient and harmonically self-contained structure, still stands in a legitimate relation to our problematical social condition, with its total insecurity and lack of harmony; whether all illusion, even the most beautiful, and especially the most beautiful, has not become a lie today. — Thomas Mann

The Ten Commandments being taken out of the public schools. I want them back. — Kinky Friedman

When you stop giving attention to someone that takes you for granted, they will notice...trust! — April Mae Monterrosa

I've taken Saturdays to be the day I pull back completely. I do things that are more creative, and I've actually found that helps me when I get back into work to be more thoughtful, and I truly believe that feeding your creative soul is really important to being more analytical. — Padmasree Warrior

Trying to attract another underserved audience group - females - brought Super Princess Peach, a game where Peach finally avoids being princess-napped. Bowser kidnaps Mario and Luigi instead, and it's up to her for once to save them. The second-wave feminism lasts as long as it takes Peach to acquire a magical talking parasol. Peach's powers manifest through her emotional states. When she is calm she can heal herself, when she is happy she can fly, when glum she can water plants with her tears, and when angry she literally catches on fire. Using emotions as part of basic game play is a daring concept, and feel free to sub in "insulting" or "outrageous" or "awesome" for "daring." The concept might have been taken more seriously if not for touches like the pink umbrella, and Peach having unlimited lives - core gamers hate being unable to die. — Jeff Ryan

I see myself beneath her.
Being taken and made love to.
I feel her.
I know her.
Taste her champagne mouth.
Ignore the ugly teeth.
Just shut my eyes and taste her. — Markus Zusak

He tested the knots, as though he gave a shit. "Is it too tight?" Ian asked, his voice quiet and serious. She stayed silent, not willing to give him anything. He'd taken her world away and then expected her to submit? "Charlie, baby, talk to me. I can't stand this. I hate that I shut you down. I don't want to. I want to be cold. I want to not care. I can't. I can't let you go." "You're taking away my options." "Because I gave them all to you last time and you fucking didn't choose me. You chose everyone but me. I'll fix this. I'll save you. Choose me, Charlie. Choose us. Trust me. Give me the option of being your hero. — Lexi Blake

I've always rejected being understood. To be understood is to prostitute oneself. I prefer to be taken seriously for what I'm not, remaining humanly unknown, with naturalness and all due respect — Fernando Pessoa

We never know how strongly we cling to objects until they are taken away, and he who thinks htat he is attached to nothing, is frequently grandly mistaken, being bound to a thousand things, unknown to himself. — Jeanne Marie Bouvier De La Motte Guyon

Every existence above a certain rank has its singular points; the higher the rank the more of them. At these points, influences whose physical magnitude is too small to be taken account of by a finite being may produce results of the greatest importance. — James C. Maxwell

I thought about Stockhausen. What had prompted him to call the attacks a work of art? For him, I thought, it was not a matter of finding death beautiful, but rather seeing that someone had taken liberties in reality that an artist could only dream of. That was both the virtue and the vice of art. In art, you can kill with impunity - destroy the world, perpetrate a holocaust, whip up the apocalypse. But it's only art. You can blow up five million people in an opera and not have anywhere near the impact of blowing up five thousand in reality. Stockhausen seemed to realize this, since the terrorism caused him to feel that being a composer was nothing. In that sense, his words were a moral statement about the limits of art, not an immoral statement about aestheticizing destruction. — Supervert

She had abruptly flipped from the southern belle and was now putting on the extremely businesslike air of those perfectionist women who'd only worked in the professional world for two or three years before stopping to have children and were now terrified of not being taken seriously. — Rebecca Makkai

We need to look to our laurels a bit with television in this country. I don't think enough risks are being taken in drama television in the U.K., and I think a lot of programme makers are underestimating the intelligence of the viewing public, basing it all on ratings. — Charles Dance

For me, nothing has ever taken precedence over being a mother and having a family and a home. — Jessica Lange

Being on the frontier, as I've said, required doing rather than imagining: clearing land, building shelter, obtaining food supplies. Frontiers test ideologies like nothing else. There is no time for the theoretical. That, ultimately, is why America has not been friendly to communism, fascism, or other, more benign forms of utopianism. Idealized concepts have rarely taken firm root in America, and so intellectuals have had to look to Europe for inspiration. People here are too busy making money - an extension, of course, of the frontier ethos, with its emphasis on practical initiative. — Robert D. Kaplan

Another big difference about not being in college: In college, you're on the team, you're competing for the NCAA - luckily I had a full scholarship and I was taken care of - then all of a sudden you're a pro and you've got to take care of yourself. I'm gonna keep doing the same thing, keep training, and hopefully everything works out. — Jonathan Horton

I've had a really bad day," she said to Jack. "Your party sucked. I think my boyfriend and I are breaking up. I got taken hostage by a serial killer. I have spiders in my hair. And you're being a pig-headed asshole. I'm telling you," she added, with a glance over her shoulder at Razor Burn, "if someone points a gun at me again, or threatens me in any way, I'm going to lose it. — Chelsea Cain

Sam Temple was taken by helicopter to a hospital in Los Angeles, where there were specialists there in burn injuries. He wasn't consulted: he was found on his knees, obviously in shock, extensively burned. EMTs took over.
Astrid Ellison was taken to a hospital in Santa Barbara, as was Diana Ladris.
Other kids were shared out among half a dozen hospitals. Some specialized in plastic surgery, others in the effects of starvation.
Over the next week all were seen by psychiatrists once their immediate physical injuries were addressed. Lots of psychiatrists. And when they weren't being seen by psychiatrists, they were being seen by FBI agents, and California Highway Patrol investigators, and lawyers from the district attorney's office.
The consensus seemed to be that a number of the Perdido survivors, as they were now known, would be prosecuted for crimes ranging from simple assault to murder.
First on that list was Sam Temple. — Michael Grant

Be as visibly fucked up as you want to be because being unique is already taken — Jenny Lawson

Only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person - without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not give by the other. — Osho

I'll say it again - mental illness is a physical illness. You wouldn't consider going up to someone suffering from Alzheimers to yell, "Come on, get with it, you remember where you left your keys?" Let us shout it from the rooftops until everyone gets the message; depression has and nothing to do with having a bad day or being sad, it's a killer if not taken seriously. — Ruby Wax

You know, the Chinese don't like to be photographed because they believe that a part of their life is being taken away by the photographer. And in a way, they're right. The photographer is trying to get the prettiest moment of a life in his camera. — Bert Stern

You think a man doesn't fall down, son? A real man falls down nine times and gets up ten. You think real men don't get scared? We do, all the time, especially when the people we love can be taken away from us. The key to manhood is being there, every morning when she wakes up, every night before she goes to bed. That's what a man does. It has nothing to do with how good you are with some shiny knives. And if you let her do this thing alone, then by God - — Ann Aguirre

It's the show jumpers that I find the most interesting to watch. Small kids being taken around low courses by calm, professional ponies. Teenage riders on fit ponies with their show jackets slung over the front of their saddles and their feet dangling out of their stirrups, who call out greetings to Tabby as they ride past. All different shapes and sizes of horses, because all that really matters in show jumping is their ability to clear a jump. Thoroughbreds with weedy necks and tight martingales, clunky Roman-nosed horses that look like they'll never be able to lift themselves off the ground, big Warmbloods being held back in gag bits, their shoulders slick with sweat. — Kate Lattey

Intelligence isn't just about how many levels of math courses you've taken, how fast you can solve an algorithm, or how many vocabulary words you know that are over 6 characters. It's about being able to approach a new problem, recognize its important components, and solve it - then take that knowledge gained and put it towards solving the next, more complex problem. It's about innovation and imagination, and about being able to put that to use to make the world a better place. This is the kind of intelligence that is valuable, and this is the type of intelligence we should be striving for and encouraging. — Andrea Kuszewsk

Being an adult child was an awkward, inevitable position. You went about your business in the world: tooling around, giving orders, being taken seriously, but there were still these two people lurking somewhere who in a split second could reduce you to nothing. In their presence, you were a big-headed baby again, crawling instead of walking. — Meg Wolitzer

I'm reading Our Ecstatic Days, by Steve Erickson. It's an extraordinary journey and the most exciting thing I've found since The Master and Margarita, which I've read about 20 times. I like being taken away somewhere by a book. — Sienna Guillory

I could feel everything. From the tragic cellos, to the tender sounds of the piano giving awe to my touch. My body slowly swayed to the sweet feel of the air sweeping over me. I felt myself being taken away as the hearts of my fans soared with me. — Charles Lee

When you're used to having electricity and then all of a sudden it's taken away, you're basically just one step from being a wild animal. — Jeff Kinney

He wants to know, "Why would you fuck up Tris's Barbies?" and now I'm like, Shit, is this the price of the sacrifice for Caroline passing out unexpectedly early - that Nick has taken over the melancholy stage that usually follows Caroline's inquisitive one? "I have three sisters and I know that's some serious business, messing with another girl's Barbies." Okay, maybe he's not being melancholy because his sarcastic smile lets me know he's back to being standard-issue band-boy irony creature. Damn him that it somewhat makes me wanna jump his bones. — David Levithan