Block How Quotes & Sayings

We are all insane. But how do you distinguish sanity from insanity, how do you diagnose abnormality in this new world? — Francesca Lia Block

How many times have we brought in an outsider to tell us what we already knew? — Peter Block

I could see the veins through your skin like a map to inside you. how could skin be that thin? i was so afraid you might drop and break. i stopped breathing so you wouldn't. — Francesca Lia Block

How about I call? We'll do lunch." he blew a kiss toward Miss Lynn's increasingly purple face and jumped off onto the next row.
Miss lynn shoved past me, running to block the exit. "Guard the gym door!" she shouted,eyes blazing as she took up her position and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
But jack was long gone,having eluded both Miss lynn and any repercussions for his idiotic actions. — Kiersten White

He is free who knows how to keep in his own hands the power to decide at each step, the course of his life, and who lives in a society which does not block the exercise of that power. — Salvador De Madariaga

You are so intense. Like a storm. It's shocking how intense you are. — Francesca Lia Block

I was staring to learn how to forget the things that made me sad. It was like a charm you followed step-by-step, collecting and blending the ingredients, placing everything in its proper place, reciting the incantation. It was the magic of forgetting. — Francesca Lia Block

Don't think about how your characters sound, but how they see. Watch the world through their eyes - study the extraordinary and the mundane through their particular perspective. Walk around the block with them, stroll the rooms they live in, figure out what objects on the cluttered dining room table they would inevitably stare at the longest, and then learn why. — Dinaw Mengestu

No matter how bad things get, you can always see the beauty in them. The worse things get, the more you have to make yourself see the magic in order to survive. — Francesca Lia Block

There is no better way to learn how to write than by writing a novel. — Lawrence Block

Brothers and sisters, as good as our previous experience may be, if we stop asking questions, stop thinking, stop pondering, we can thwart the revelations of the Spirit. Remember, it was the questions young Joseph asked that opened the door for the restoration of all things. We can block the growth and knowledge our Heavenly Father intends for us. How often has the Holy Spirit tried to tell us something we needed to know but couldn't get past the massive iron gate of what we thought we already knew? — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

I am a bohemian person. I don't speak German, and I live in a foreign country where all the signs are in German. I did that deliberately. I'm like a ghost. Look at how much media and advertising you're subjected to, this mindless chatter of advertising. I just block it out so effortlessly because it's all a foreign language to me. It's really a good thing for my head, living in Berlin. — Anton Newcombe

I grew up in Harlem. My grandmother was one of the best cooks around, but the first thing she did on Sunday mornings when she started cooking a daylong meal was to take a big block of lard from the back of the refrigerator and throw it into the pan. I know how Hispanics buy their food, and it is not always nutritious. — Richard Carmona

I see a really good tag on a building, a man passed out in the middle of the street, a couple hugging, a cop arresting a panhandler. I'm interested in how all these things are happening in one block. — Barry McGee

How can you stand touching her?" my sister blurted, staring at our clasped hands. "Doesn't that hurt?"
I seized on the change of topic. "These gloves are specialized rubber. They block the current."
Gretchen's gaze traveled over Vlad, disbelief still stamped on her features. "Yeah, but how do you two do anything else, unless he has a special, currentrepelling
glove for his - "
"Gretchen!" my father cut her off.
My cheeks felt hot. Don't say a word, I thought to Vlad, seeing his chest tremble with suppressed laughter.
"He has a natural immunity," I gritted out. — Jeaniene Frost

I don't have custody. Wayne is just - We're on good terms about our son. It's not an issue." "Got a number where we can reach him?" "Yes, but he's on a plane right now. He visited for the Fourth. He's headed back this evening." "You sure about that? How do you know he boarded the plane?" "I'm sure he had nothing to do with this, if that's what you're asking. We're not fighting over our son. My ex is the most harmless and easygoing man you've ever met." "Oh, I don't know. I've met some pretty easygoing fellas. I know a guy up in Maine who leads a Buddhist-themed therapy group, teaches people about managing their temper and addictions through Transcendental Meditation. The only time this guy ever lost his composure was the day his wife served him with a restraining order. First he lost his Zen, then he lost two bullets in the back of her head. But that Buddhist-themed therapy group he runs sure is popular on his cell block in Shawshank. Lotta guys with anger-management issues in there. — Joe Hill

Funny how things change when you got a liquor in ya:
You're quicker with the tongue, givin' me rhythm now.
Block the music and the people out to admire the love,
The nerve of us ... impervious to the entire club.
And like marijuana shotguns, let's blow this joint,
It's pointless to stay here, so let me anoint. — Pharoahe Monch

There are things one reads that make you aware that you have lived nothing, felt nothing, experienced nothing up to that time. How can i begin to feel - to feel? I want to fall in love in such a way that the mere sight of a man, even a block away from me, will shake and pierce me. — Anais Nin

So I feared not just the violence of this world but the rules designed to protect you from it, the rules that would have you contort your body to address the block, and contort again to be taken seriously by colleagues, and contort again so as not to give the police a reason. All my life I'd heard people tell their black boys and black girls to "be twice as good," which is to say "accept half as much." These words would be spoken with a veneer of religious nobility, as though they evidenced some unspoken quality, some undetected courage, when in fact all they evidenced was the gun to our head and the hand in our pocket. This is how we lose our softness. This is how they steal our right to smile. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I'd say that what I do is like a crack in the mirror. If you go back over the books from Carrie on up, what you see is an observation of ordinary middle-class American life as it's lived at the time that particular book was written. In every life you get to a point where you have to deal with something that's inexplicable to you, whether it's the doctor saying you have cancer or a prank phone call. So whether you talk about ghosts or vampires or Nazi war criminals living down the block, we're still talking about the same thing, which is an intrusion of the extraordinary into ordinary life and how we deal with it. What that shows about our character and our interactions with others and the society we live in interests me a lot more than monsters and vampires and ghouls and ghosts. — Stephen King

Many have given up. They stay home and watch the TV screen, living on the earnings of their parents, cousins, bothers, or uncles, and only leave the house to go to the movies or to the nearest bar. "How're you making it?" on may ask, running into them along the block, or in the bar. "Oh, I'm TV-ing it"; with the saddest, sweetest, most shamefaced of smiles, and from a great distance. This distance one is compelled to respect; anyone who has traveled so far will not easily be dragged again into the world. There are further retreats, of course, than the TV screen or the bar. There are those who are simply sitting on their stoops, "stoned," animated for a moment only, and hideously, by the approach of someone who may lend them the money for a "fix." Or by the approach of someone from whom they can purchase it, one of the shrewd ones, on the way to prison or just coming out. — James Baldwin

Fiji, I'm betting you don't drink a lot," he said, trying to suppress a smile.
"I don't," she confessed. "How did you know?"
"Just a lucky guess."
"You think he'd like my phone number?"
"Feej, that guy is tough as nails, and he's not only been around the block, he's run a marathon. He could eat you for breakfast," Olivia said, half smiling.
"And wouldn't that be a great way to wake up?" Fiji said, with a broad wink. Manfred laughed; he couldn't help it. — Charlaine Harris

Hornig put the block of wood down on the desk, and placed the knife he'd just recently planted into his long time best friend and colleague's throat beside it. "God hates sin, and sinners, but he made us in his image. So He must be a sinner, too, yes? That means He's self loathing and nothing is as dangerous as a man who hates himself. Because if He hates Himself, how could He possibly give a shit about you? — T.W. Grim

I dialed it now, and the machine picked up. I listened to a dead man's voice. I hung up, wondering how long it would be before someone unplugged the machine, how long before the telephone company cut off the phone service.
You don't die all at once. Not anymore. These days you die a little at a time. — Lawrence Block

That taught us how to block a sword with two knives. But what if an ax man's coming at me?"
Gilan looked suspicious. "An ax man? I don't recommend trying to block an ax with two knives."
But Will wouldn't take no for an answer. "But what if he's charging at me?" Horace walked over.
Gilan looked away. "Uh ... shoot him."
Horace intervened. "Can't, his bowstring's broken."
Gilan gritted his teeth. "Run and hide."
Will kept on him. "There's a sheer cliff behind me."
Horace caught on. "There's a sheer cliff behind him, and his bowstring's broken. What should he do?"
Gilan thought for a moment. "Jump off the cliff, it'll be less messy that way. — John Flanagan

What the meat industry figured out is that you don't need healthy animals to make a profit. Sick animals are more profitable ...
Factory farms calculate how close to death they can keep animals without killing them. That's the business model. How quickly they can be made to grow, how tightly they can be packed, how much or how little can they eat, how sick they can get without dying ... We live in a world in which it's conventional to treat an animal like a block of wood. — Jonathan Safran Foer

The Elm Log
By Alexander Solzhenitsyn
We were sawing firewood when we picked up an elm log and gave a cry of amazement. It was a full year since we had chopped down the trunk, dragged it along behind a tractor and sawn it up into logs, which we had then thrown on to barges and wagons, rolled into stacks and piled up on the ground - and yet this elm log had still not given up! A fresh green shoot had sprouted from it with a promise of a thick, leafy branch, or even a whole new elm tree.
We placed the log on the sawing-horse, as though on an executioner's block, but we could not bring ourselves to bite into it with our saw. How could we? That log cherished life as dearly as we did; indeed, its urge to live was even stronger than ours. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I would say that the Pentagon Papers case of 1971 - in which the government tried to block the The New York Times and The Washington Post that they obtained from a secret study of how we got involved in the war in Vietnam - that is probably the most important case. — Floyd Abrams

Tech could be so sweetly oblivious sometimes. He loved his team so much he couldn't even tell that the guys were fucking with Steele by trying to cock block him. They all knew how much he wanted Tech. Like hell, he was letting this happen. Tech's — A.E. Via

Look at that," he said. "How the ink bleeds." He loved the way it looked, to write on a thick pillow of the pad, the way the thicker width of paper underneath was softer and allowed for a more cushiony interface between pen and surface, which meant more time the two would be in contact for any given point, allowing the fiber of the paper to pull, through capillary action, more ink from the pen, more ink, which meant more evenness of ink, a thicker, more even line, a line with character, with solidity. The pad, all those ninety-nine sheets underneath him, the hundred, the even number, ten to the second power, the exponent, the clean block of planes, the space-time, really, represented by that pad, all of the possible drawings, graphs, curves, relationships, all of the answers, questions, mysteries, all of the problems solvable in that space, in those sheets, in those squares. — Charles Yu

Here's the million-dollar question: how are you going to write this book if you're afraid to start writing? Give your friend Doubt a name, and then block his calls. — Kami Garcia

Someone once asked Michelangelo how he was able to create the amazing statue of David. He replied, "I didn't create David. He was there all along, in that massive block of marble. I just had to chip away to find him. — Lori Nelson Spielman

I left walking backwards so I wouldn't miss a moment of her. I hated the idea of going back to Marvel's, so I walked around the block, feeling Olivia's arms around me, my nose full of perfume and the smell of her skin, my head swirling with what I had seen and heard in the house so much like ours, and yet not at all. And I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty separate worlds. Nobody every really knew what was going on just next door. — Janet Fitch

When I went back to look for it again I could never find it. It was as if someone had put some kind of glamour, some kind of spell, on that ground, and I felt as if I was walking in circles around it again and again, never able to see what was in front of my eyes.
That was how I felt about what happened to me when I turned thirteen. I felt as if I was always circling around my own brain trying to understand. — Francesca Lia Block

I knew how to block out my issues in a sprint, but in marathons I ran out of gas. Consistency became a critical problem. On days that I was inspired, I was unstoppable. But other days I would play bad chess. The time had come for me to learn the science of long-term, healthy, self-sustaining peak performance. — Josh Waitzkin

The difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone is how high you raise your foot. — Benny Lewis

I embrace everybody, but you work everybody and each song at a time to who it is for. I believe that's how you build a palace. You build a palace one block at a time and then you'll have what you want. That's how it goes. — B.J. The Chicago Kid

If you can't fall asleep, learn how to meditate. I would recommend you listen to a beautiful tape called Spiritual Power, Spiritual Practice [Energy Evaluation Meditations For Morning and Evening, 1998]. It was the one that got me out of my writer's block when I was writing Caramelo. It's by Carolyn Myss. — Sandra Cisneros

Ugh, writer's block. The best thing to do is to forget about everything you're trying to do. Get away from your writing station, kick your feet up and relax. Then allow your mind to just wander. Don't stop it. Just let yourself think of anything, no mater how silly the thoughts seem. Remember, not to judge these thoughts. This will open up your creative receptors. You'll begin to think outside the box. Then the good stuff will start racing through you. That's when you start writing! — La Tisha Honor

It is this kindness of his that unsettles me most. I can dodge a blow or block a knife. I am impervious to poison and know a dozen ways to escape a chokehold or garrote wire. But kindness? I do not know how to defend against that. — R.L. LaFevers

I wrote poetry from the time I could write. That was the only way I could begin to express who I was but the poems didn't make sense to my teachers. They didn't rhyme. They were about the wind sounds, the planets' motions, never about who I was or how I felt. I didn't think I felt anything. I was this mind more than a body or a heart. My mind photographing the stars, hearing the wind. — Francesca Lia Block

In the end it will not matter how we have told our story, but only how God sees it. — Daniel I. Block

Hendrix was back there with a few of the others who were like my training wheels ... hearing him as a teenager taught me to look at the guitar in a different way - and how to tap into that thing inside of me that was already leaning toward improvisation. You learn other players' licks at first; then you take off the training wheels and start using the licks as building blocks to make your own thing. That's how influences work. somewhere in whatever I do, there's a little bit of Hendrix - plus about a hundred others — Junior Brown

If only feelings and ideas and stories and history really could be contained in a block of marble - if only there could be a gathering up of permanence - how reassuring it would be, how comforting to think that something you loved could be held in place, moored and everlasting, rather than bobbing along on the slippery sea of reminiscence, where it could always drift out of reach. — Susan Orlean

He blocked me. " What'd you do, Chloe?"
I sidestepped. He sidesteped.
"You like him, don't you?" he said.
"Yes, I like him. Just not..."
"Not what?"
"Talk to Simon. He's the one who thinks..."
"Thinks what?"
Step. Block.
"Thinks what?"
"That there's someone else," I blurted before I could stop myself. I took a deep, shuddering breath. "He thinks there's someone else."
"Who?"
I was going to say I don't know. Some guy from school, I guess. But Derek's expression already knew the answer. The look on his face...It'd been humiliating before, having Simon accuse me of liking Derek, but that was nothing compared to how I felt when I saw Derek's look. Not just surprise, but shock. Shock and horror.
"Me?" he said. "Simon said he thinks you and I are-"
"No, not that. He knows we aren't-"
"Good. So what does he think?"
"That I like you." Again, the words flew out before I could stop them. — Kelley Armstrong

I was starting to learn how to forget the things that made me sad. It was like a charm you followed step-by-step, collecting and blending the ingredients, placing everything in its proper place. It was the magic of forgetting. — Francesca Lia Block

Dear Angel Juan,
You used to guard my sleep like a panther biting back my pain with the edge of your teeth. You carried me into the dark dream jungle, loping past the hungry vines, crossing the shiny fish-scale river. We left my tears behind in a chiming silver pool. We left my sorrow in the muddy hollows. When I woke up you were next to me, damp and matted, your eyes hazy, trying to remember the way I clung to you, how far down we went.
Was the journey too far, Angel Juan? Did we go too far? — Francesca Lia Block

I absolutely love my daily driver Ford Raptor, especially since I live out here in the mountains of Park City, so to build out this mountain assault vehicle with a Raptor as the base platform made total sense to me. It's an absolute beast of a machine and I'm stoked with how it's turned out. Next up is for me to take it deep into the backcountry ASAP to help me and some friends slay some powder on our snowboards for a video project due out later this year. — Ken Block

Having writers block sucks more than my actual writing. And my writing would be astonishing if I could write how I feel. — Ally Spina

Studies are one thing, but then there's just the way bonobos make you feel. They're so "almost-human" on so many levels that science doesn't even know how to test yet. Just look into any bonobo's big brown eyes, and you may well feel like you're connecting with a living version of the Missing Link. — Susan Block

Ultimately, success is not measured by first-place prizes. It's measured by the road you have traveled: how you have dealt with the challenge and the stumbling blocks you've encountered along the way. — Nicole Haislett

The same thing happened to me that, according to legend, happened to Parmeniscus, who in the Trophonean cave lost the ability to laugh but acquired it again on the island of Delos upon seeing a shapeless block that was said to be the image of the goddess Leto. When I was very young, I forgot in the Trophonean cave how to laugh; when I became an adult, when I opened my eyes and saw actuality, then I started to laugh and have never stopped laughing since that time. I saw that the meaning of life was to make a living, its goal to be- come a councilor, that the rich delight oflove was to acquire a well-to-do girl, that the blessedness of friendship was to help each other in financial difficulties, that wisdom was whatever the majority assumed it to be, that enthusiasm was to give a speech, that courage was to risk being fined ten dollars, that cordiality was to say "May it do you good" after a meal, that piety was to go to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed. — Soren Kierkegaard

She meant you have to live a story for a time.'
'And?'
'And then you can write it, in time. What have you lived?'
'Kind of a personal question for Twitterland.'
'Kind of the perfect question to answer in fiction. — L.L. Barkat

Wards," said Oromis, "rely upon the strength of your body. If that strength is exceeded, you die. No matter how many wards you have, you will only be able to block attacks so long as your body can sustain the output of energy. — Christopher Paolini

If you think of memory not just as looking back but as being aware of time and how it passes and what the passage of it feels like, then there is something about being in motion that does cause it. Through some sleight of mind, physical forward motion makes time seem visible. Which causes me to think that maybe the unnatural speed of cars and jets actually creates nostalgia. Because the simplest way to block out the strangeness of time passing before your eyes is to fix it in place, to edit it down to monuments or potted plants. Like, — Adam Haslett

Pretty much everyone hates high school. It's a measure of your humanity, I suspect. If you enjoyed high school, you were probably a psychopath or a cheerleader. Or possibly both. Those things aren't mutually exclusive, you know. I've tried to block out the memory of my high school years, but no matter how hard you try, it's always with you, like an unwanted hitchhiker. Or herpes. I assume ... — Jenny Lawson

I have discovered the secrets of the pyramids, and have found out how the Egyptians and the ancient builders in Peru, Yucatan and Asia, with only primitive tools, raised and set in place blocks of stone weighing many tons! — Edward Leedskalnin

I seized on the change of topic. "These gloves are specialized rubber. They block the current."
Gretchen's gaze traveled over Vlad, disbelief still stamped on her features. "Yeah, but how do you two do anything else, unless he has a special, current-repelling glove for his
"
"Gretchen!" my father cut her off.
My cheeks felt hot. Don't say a word, I thought to Vlad, seeing his chest tremble with suppressed laughter. — Jeaniene Frost

We don't really want to know what soldiers go through in combat. We do not really want to know how many children are being molested and abused in our own society or how many couples - almost a third, as it turns out - engage in violence at some point during their relationship. We want to think of families as safe havens in a heartless world and of our own country as populated by enlightened, civilized people. We prefer to believe that cruelty occurs only in faraway places like Darfur or the Congo. It is hard enough for observers to bear witness to pain. Is it any wonder, then, that the traumatized individuals themselves cannot tolerate remembering it and that they often resort to using drugs, alcohol, or self-mutilation to block out their unbearable knowledge? — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

And I squinted hard trying to see Nikki's face and even from a block away I could tell she was smiling the whole time and was so very happy , and some how that was enough for me to officially end apart time and roll the credits of my movie without even confronting Nikki . — Matthew Quick

Most of the time I liked school and got good grades. In junior high, though, I hit a stumbling block with math - I used to come home and cry because of how frustrated I was! But after a few good teachers and a lot of perseverance, I ended up loving math and even choosing it as a major when I got to college. — Danica McKellar

Fear transforms your body like an inept sculptor does a perfect block of stone...It's just that you're chipped away at from within, and no one sees how many splinters and layers have been taken off you. You become ever thinner and more brittle inside, until eve the slightest emotion bowls you over. One hug, and you think you're going to shatter and be lost. — Nina George

We block our conscious wants with beliefs. It's important to find them, with a psychologist, tarot, a book, whatever. That's how you define quality in any of these choices, if they give you want you need. — Robin Sacredfire

Minutes after Eve stepped into her office to coordinate her next move, Peabody rushed in.
"I've got the initial sweeper's report on the room the Lombards vacated - nothing," Peabody said hurriedly. "Canvassing cops found the bar - one block east, two south of the hotel. Door was unlocked. Zana's purse was inside on the floor. I have a team heading there now."
"You've been busy," Eve said. "How did you manage to fit in sex?"
"Sex? I don't know what you're talking about. I bet you want coffee." She darted to the AutoChef, then whirled back. "How do you know I had sex? Do you have sex radar?"
"Your shirt's not buttoned right, and you've got a fresh hickey on your neck."
"Damn it." Peabody slapped a hand to the side of her neck. "How bad is it? Why don't you have a mirror in here?"
"Because, let's see, could it be because it's an office? — J.D. Robb

Shadows are created all around us whenever something blocks the light. And so it is with the shadow of doubt. When we focus on how inadequate we feel, or what others are thinking about us, we cast a shadow of doubt in our minds by blocking the light of God's truth in our hearts. Yet we were not designed to block the light or to be the light. We were created to live in the light, by finding our confidence in what God thinks about us. — Renee Swope

People always say that digital cameras are much more stable than film cameras, but the truth is that digital cameras, or any kind of digital technology, is one of the most unstable things in the world. A film camera can last decades if you know how to look after it, but digital things can break down instantly. A violent storm, a nuclear bomb, even something as minor as a cracked screen or the releasing of newer models, can make a digital product just a block of useless metal. — Rebecca McNutt

Pulling back, he gave her a little space and grinned as she found her balance again.
"Do you think that will ever get old?" Harper asked with an embarrassed blush.
"Christ, I hope not. Just remember how you feel right now because you might be really mad at me in about one minute."
"Uh-oh. I don't think I like the sound of that." Harper raised an eyebrow at him.
He took her hand and led her toward the studio before pulling her in front of him, her back to his chest. It was the safest position to avoid a kick in the nuts and the best position to block a fast escape.
He felt Harper's quick intake of breath as she turned to face him with a hand over her mouth.
"What did you do?" she said through her fingers.
"Happy birthday, sweetheart." He pushed her through the door as everyone inside shouted, "Surprise! — Scarlett Cole

Being with Jody and Mark and Cal was beginning to weigh on my nerves, like a dull wooden block on the strings of a piano. I was afraid that at any moment my control would snap, and I would start babbling about how I couldn't read and couldn't write and how I must be just about the only person who had stayed awake for a solid month without dropping dead of exhaustion. — Sylvia Plath

When a person pauses in mid-sentence to choose a word, that's the best time to jump in and change the subject! It's like an interception in football! You grab the others guy's idea and run the opposite way with it! The more sentences you complete, the higher your score! The idea is to block the other guy's thoughts and express your own! That's how you win!

Conversations aren't contests!

Ok, a point for you, but I'm still ahead. — Bill Watterson

Fallujah was a Guernica with no Picasso. A city of 300,000 was deprived of water, electricity, and food, emptied of most of its inhabitants who ended up parked in camps. Then came the methodical bombing and recapture of the city block by block. When soldiers occupied the hospital, The New York Times managed to justify this act on grounds that the hospital served as an enemy propaganda center by exaggerating the number of casualties. And by the way, just how many casualties were there? Nobody knows, there is no body count for Iraqis. When estimates are published, even by reputable scientific reviews, they are denounced as exaggerated. Finally, the inhabitants were allowed to return to their devastated city, by way of military checkpoints, and start to sift through the rubble, under the watchful eye of soldiers and biometric controls. — Jean Bricmont

It was all so damn fragile, that was the thing. Obvious, for sure,but for the most part we block - we refuse to think about how easily our lives could be torn asunder, because when we recognize it, we lose our minds. The ones who are fearful all the time, who need to medicate to function? It is because they understand the reality, how thin the line is. It isn't that they can't accept the truth - its that they can't block it. — Harlan Coben

Everything was fine, but Weetzie wanted a baby. "How could you want one?" My Secret Agent Lover Man said. "There are way too many babies. And diseases. And nuclear accidents. And crazy psychos. We cant have a baby," he said. — Francesca Lia Block

I had a lot of negativity growing up, so I understand how to block the negativity out. — Dwight Howard

I've spent years trying to block out how you look. And sound. And feel. And before this show, I'd gotten pretty good at it. But now, here you are, in front of me every day, and it blows my mind that a single touch from you still has the power to ruin me. And whenever it happens, I forget about the choices I've made, and the circus my life's become, and I want you. Consequences be damned. — Leisa Rayven

Steve Jobs made the case to Xerox PARC execs directly that they had great technology but that Apple knew how to make it affordable enough to change the world. This was very open. In the end, Xerox got a large block of Apple stock for sharing the technology. That's not stealing outright. — Steve Wozniak

One of the reasons I grew my hair long last year was that I like how my bangs cover my eyes: it helps me block out the things I don't want to see.
-August thinking — R.J. Palacio

But I couldn't block out the sound of his voice. "Hayden wasn't the son I expected to have," he said. "I'd imagined playing catch in the yard, watching football on the weekends, going fishing. The things I'd done with my dad; the things I do with Ryan. It was the only kind of relationship I knew how to have with a son." His voice cracked. "But my second son didn't enjoy any of those things. He loved music and video games and computers. I didn't know how to talk to him. And now I'll spend the rest of my life wishing I'd learned how." He lowered his head, as if he were trying to hide the fact that he was crying. — Michelle Falkoff

Pianos, unlike people, sing when you give them your every growl. They know how to dive into the pit of your stomach and harmonize with your roars when you've split yourself open. And when they see you, guts shining, brain pulsing, heart right there exposed in a rhythm that beats need need, need need, need need, pianos do not run. And so she plays. — Francesca Lia Block

By exerting its will, Descartes declared, the immaterial human mind could cause the material human machine to move. This bears repeating, for it is an idea that, more than any other, has thrown a stumbling block across the path of philosophers who have attempted to argue that the mind is immaterial: for how could something immaterial act efficaciously on something as fully tangible as a body? Immaterial mental substance is so ontologically different-that is, such a different sort of thing-from the body it affects that getting the twain to meet has been exceedingly difficult. To be sure, Descartes tried. He argued that the mental substance of the mind interacts with the matter of the brain through the pineal gland, the organ he believed was moved directly by the human soul. The interaction allowed the material brain to be physically directed by the immaterial mind through what Descartes called "animal spirits"-basically a kind of hydraulic fluid. — Jeffrey M. Schwartz

The ships tried to block their exit for several heartbeats before they realized just how suicidal Caillen really was. He'd slam into them before he'd yield. In a game of header, he refused to blink or swerve. Fuck them. If he was going to die, so were they. Just as he would have hit them, they veered off sharply, out of the way. Laughing — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Not knowing stuff - like how your story ends before you start writing - is the seed of a lot of writer's block. — Dan Alatorre

Everybody tells me what a timesaver the Internet is, and how they can't believe they ever got along without it. And I know what they mean, but every time I use it I wind up wondering what people did with their spare time before computers came along to suck it all up. — Lawrence Block

There are three barriers that block our total surrender to God: fear, pride, and confusion. We don't realize how much God loves us, we want to control our own lives, and we misunderstand the meaning of surrender. — Rick Warren

The minute you supply a person with the answers, by that very action you block them, once and for all, from the opportunity of inventing those same answers for themselves. If you want to go on an ego trip, to show how smart you are, give the answers. But if what you want is action to be taken, then you must refrain from giving the answers. — Eliyahu M. Goldratt

She is playing a game that she doesn't want to play, but can't seem to quit. As a player she wishes to see how the game concludes, but she also wishes the other player would retreat. She wants to win after-all and she makes for a sore loser, but her combatant uses his moves to keep her off-guard and primed for his advance. Should she block him, outmaneuver him, or just play dead until his back is turned? Isn't the last the way of the female? — Donna Lynn Hope

My love wants to change the world
she thinks she has so much to give
not realizing how much she takes from others
my love is loyal until she senses rejection of any kind
then she flies like a bird but has less memory
of where she came from
i would like to protect you from my love — Francesca Lia Block

When we hunt or fish, we deliberately kill a defenseless being who wishes us no harm. This is a direct violation of the First Precept. It is absolutely forbidden to Buddhists. As to eating meat, we know that the only way we can obtain it is for an animal to be killed. Therefore, when we eat meat, it is our intent that an innocent animal should die to satisfy our addiction to flesh. And that underlying intention, no matter how well hidden behind a smokescreen of rationalizations will block the growth of compassion and create negative karma. — Norm Phelps

The biggest lie is the lie we tell ourselves in the distorted visions we have of ourselves, blocking out some sections, enhancing others. What remains are not the cold facts of life, but how we perceive them. That's really who we are. — Kirk Douglas

If you know how to freestyle, you will never have writer's block. — Will.i.am

It would have been unthinkable for anyone on the block not to know the names of the players, their batting averages, and the win-loss record of the pitchers. We knew who they were playing on a given day, where they were playing, who was pitching, and how many games out of first place they might be. We also knew as much information about their personal lives as the baseball cards we flipped and traded provided. Most of our contact with the Dodgers came through the radio and TV play-by-play commentary of Red Barber and Vin Scully, who were as familiar to us as the players. Ebbets — Bernie Sanders

For Scary Movie 2, we had a due date and had to work fast. And though there's a lot of pressure, as artists, we just block it out. So really, the pressure comes from us. That's how the first movie happened. There was no outside pressure: we wanted to hit the audience hard. — Shawn Wayans

There's a story about how the program is organized, there's a story about the context in which the program is expected to operate. And one would hope that there will be something about the program, whether it's block comments at the start of each routine or an overview document that comes separately or just choices of variable names that will somehow convey those stories to you. — Guy Steele

Pulling heads off Barbies, sticking them on the TV antenna and ruining the reception. But thats how witch babies are. — Francesca Lia Block

It hurts to be around life. People don't understand how close death is, right over their shoulders, around the block, at the end of a street. It's everywhere. — Jessica Sorensen

Writers are troubled about finding time to write and writer's block and publicizing books that aren't books yet. They agonize over how to write and what to write and what not to write. — Deb Caletti

Don't you want it?"
"Want what?"
"The engagement ring."
"Oh, is that what's in the box? You threw my engagement ring at me?" Boy, this was such a big transgression I would have to write it in block letters on its own page, and show it to our children when they grew up as an example of how not to do something. — Linda Howard

How do you change the world? One room at a time. Which room? The one you're in. — Peter Block

Understanding the intentions of a play is so key because you can block a guy into the running back if you don't know how the play is supposed to work or where the back is going to come out. — D'Brickashaw Ferguson

She imagined the trade in meanings as a kind of game, in which tokens shaped like mahjong tiles were exchanged and switched. Signs moved from one world to another, clacked together, made new sequences. A man in Bolshevik Russia became virtually Chinese; a world unfolded from a paper envelope. This game existed in the borderless continent of her father's head. She could see how he concentrated: 'cher' in Russian, 'neve' in Italian, 'snow' in English, until he arrived at the sound 'xue', and then the character: the radical symbol for rain, the strokes for frozen, the little block of marks that revealed the transition from alphabets to ideograms. — Gail Jones

There is a larger lesson here, because the book encompasses not just the lives of prisoners in a Soviet prison camp, but every one of us. Shukhov squeezes everything he can out of a mouthful of soup or a bite of bread ... So frozen that he can't even feel his feet, he trowels cement and lays a cinder block wall with care and patience ... Shukhov takes pride in his work. In fact, even though he is starving, he can barely tear himself away at the end of the long day to go eat. He cares about his work and in that way he remains a man. Isn't this kind of pride and gratitude and ironic detachment valuable for all people? — Eric Bogosian