Boxed In Quotes & Sayings

I had a bonding problem when I went off and boxed for five years. I was over in Europe and Asia fighting because I wanted to do something different; I was tired of acting. But the thing is, when I was done doing that, I couldn't get a job. — Mickey Rourke

Every step of the way we walk the line
Your days are numbered, so are mine
Time is pilin' up, we struggle and we scrape
We're all boxed in, nowhere to escape — Bob Dylan

The West found an excuse for every incident and boxed and labeled it under the context of the country in which it took place. They attributed Iran's conflict and the victory of Ayatollah Ruholla Khomeini to an inner conflict within Iran. They considered the Lebanese war a civil war among factions. They considered the overall Arab-Israeli conflict a Palestinian-versus-Israeli conflict over land. Yet in all these conflicts radical Islam was the driving force or lingered just under the surface. — Brigitte Gabriel

In those days, when you got boxed, that was it. A lot of old people were there because somebody wanted the farm. It was about property. People are treated like property. — Kate Millett

In effect, the apartment block was a small vertical city, its two thousand inhabitants boxed up into the sky.j.g. — J.G. Ballard

Arms wrapped around me, I looked over the past boxed up and piled haphazardly about, like memories in a person's brain. It was only a matter of knowing where a thought was and dusting it off. — Kim Harrison

I'm a storyteller, and there's some genres I like. I don't think I'm ever going to do science fiction, but I want to do a musical one day. I want to tell stories, I don't really try to get boxed in by a specific genre. — Spike Lee

In my younger days, I used to visit record shops and covet boxed sets of Beethoven symphonies, Wagner operas, Bach cantatas, Mozart piano concertos. Only rarely was I able to find the money for such luxuries. — Michael Dirda

We are boxed in by the boundary conditions of our thinking — Albert Einstein

[Boxed] Multiple bouncing balls in a box are a metaphor for community. Notice how the escaping balls explode. This is what happens to people who move from Perl to Ruby . — Larry Wall

Plan B
plan Battered and Broken
plan Boxed in
plan Bailed on and Back from the dead
plan Better luck next time
plan Balled up
plan Backtracked
plan Backhanded
plan Backward steps
plan Blackballed, Black-marked, and Blacklisted
plan B-side, Bye Bye Baby
plan Belly up and Beat down
plan Bad days ahead and Best are far Behind — Sarah Ockler

In studio films, everything has to be boxed in, everybody needs to know beforehand - this is comedy, this is sci-fi, this is drama - and what's the point of independent film if you don't get to experiment? — Famke Janssen

Three heavy blows boxed him low in the back. He saw a splash of red hit the door and had time to think, 'We should have remembered the body armor.' Then he crumpled, still holding onto the knob with one hand as the world rushed away from him. Everything he was and everything he'd ever known diminished to a single burning-bright point of light. Then it went out. His hand slipped off the knob. He died on his knees, leaning against the door. — Stephen King

So, are you two shagging yet?' He stuck two fingers up at her. 'Did you have to rip a strip off Robertson and Weatherford in front of everyone? Poor sods are doing their best.' 'Come on, I saw her checking you out all through the briefing. Yesterday she thought you were a two-foot wide skidmark on the hand-towel of life, now she's throwing you meaningful glances like they're on buy-one-get-one-free.' Steel grinned. 'You shagged her, didn't you?' 'She's my sister. OK?' 'You shagged your sister? You're disgusting. Told Susan we shouldn't have got you that boxed set of Game of Thrones.' He stood. 'You know what? I'm glad your ribs hurt. Serves you right.' Snow-covered — Stuart MacBride

I hung up the phone and tapped it lightly against my chin, then wrapped myself tighter in my giant woolen cardigan and poured another glass of boxed wine - the official drink of emotionally confused women on a budget. — Heather Cocks

By following what they believe are stick orders from the top, many typical managers tend to concentrate on working within budget and resource constraint --- thereby developing a boxed-in, "can't do" mindset. — Sumantra Ghoshal

I was no better at reading people than I had been ten seconds ago, but in that moment, I suddenly gained a flash of understanding into the mystery that was Adrian Ivashkov. People didn't believe in him very often. They had low expectations of him, so he did as well. Even Eddie had sort of written him off: 'He's Adrian'. As though there was nothing to be done for it.
I also suddenly realized that, as unlikely as it seemed, Adrian and I had a lot in common. Both of us were constantly boxed in by others' expectations. It didn't matter that people expected everything of me and nothing of him. We were still the same, both of us constantly trying to break out of the lines that others had defined for us and be our own person. Adrian Ivashkov - flippant, vampire party boy - was more like me than anyone else knew. — Richelle Mead

I never boxed until 17 and a half, I was in the Olympics at 19, and I was world champion when I was 20. I never watched a boxing match life in my life. The only boxer I had ever heard of was Muhammad Ali. — Jeff Fenech

and there was a birthday present waiting to be read, a boxed set of the Narnia books, which I took upstairs. I lay on the bed and lost myself in the stories. I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway. My — Neil Gaiman

In a sense, these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape. — J.G. Ballard

Hanging a banner from the front of the Bureau of Indian Affairs building that proclaimed it to be the "Native American Embassy," hundreds of protesters hailing from seventy-five Indigenous nations entered the building to sit in. BIA personnel, at the time largely non-Indigenous, fled, and the capitol police chain-locked the doors announcing that the Indigenous protesters were illegally occupying the building. The protesters stayed for six days, enough time for them to read damning federal documents that revealed gross mismanagement of the federal trust responsibility, which they boxed up and took with them. The Trail of Broken Treaties solidified Indigenous alliances, and the "20-Point Position Paper,"14 the work mainly of Hank Adams, provided a template for the affinity of hundreds of Native organizations. Five years later, in 1977, the document would be presented to the United Nations, forming the basis for the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Insomniacs should not be forced to exist in a realm with reflective glass. From the first look I'm boxed in a prism, rainbows charming the other dark-circled self into sharing my prison. One eye turns on the other, each accusing the other of being responsible for an appearance oddly elfin, before exiting head and bouncing like lottery balls through the mirror walls and then drifting up and out the open and unguarded Well of the Wyrd. There, everyone with mirrors and mushrooms is waiting for me, faded and dissolved into giggles. — Amanda Sledz

Be radical! The reason you feel so miserable is because you put spirituality in a form. You boxed it, franchised it. You decided spirituality was a certain way but then you got stuck in the way. — Frederick Lenz

I also suddenly realized that, as unlikely as it seemed, Adrian and I had a lot in common. Both of us were constantly boxed in by others' expectations. It didn't matter that people expected everything of me and nothing of him. We were still the same, both of us constantly trying to break out of the lines that others had defined for us and be our own person. Adrian Ivashkov - flippant, vampire party boy - was more like me than anyone else I knew. — Richelle Mead

I don't ever want to get boxed in, playing the same characters, over and over again. That's why I prefer features over television. — Taraji P. Henson

Barcelona is now in the past. I was sick and boxed in, and that's understandable why I lost. — Noureddine Morceli

I did get to keep the wedding dresses from 'Runaway Bride'. They're all boxed up in my garage. I've never opened them. It'll be fun one day when Hazel is taller. She can play dress-up with her friends. — Julia Roberts

We have The Idylls of the King in English class this term. I like some things in them, but I detest Tennyson's Arthur. If I had been Guinevere I'd have boxed his ears - but I wouldn't have been unfaithful to him for Lancelot, who was just as odious in a different way. As for Geraint, if I had been Enid I'd have bitten him. These 'patient Griseldas' deserve all they get. — L.M. Montgomery

If you have ever opened a can of worms, boxed yourself into a corner, ended up in hot water, or found yourself in a pretty pickle, you already know that life is rarely (if ever) just a bowl of cherries. — Maryrose Wood

WOMEN SERIAL KILLERS THROUGH TIME Boxed Set (4 in 1) (WOMEN — Guy Hadleigh

We're in the age of the series, trilogy, boxed sets. — Glen Duncan

I was very frustrated, in a physical sense, by people seeing me in a way that I wasn't. And I was beginning to find myself boxed into a corner. Hopefully things have loosed up a bit, and I've gotten better and become more relaxed as an actor. — Rufus Sewell

I finally made friends with my father when I entered my twenties. We had so little in common when I was a boy, and I am certain I had been a disappointment to him. He did not ask for a child with a book, off in its own world. He wanted a son who did what he had done; swam and boxed and played rugby, and drove cars at speed with abandon and joy, but that was not what he wound up with. — Neil Gaiman

It's amazing how lies grow. You start with a small one that seems easy to cover, then you get boxed in and tell another one. Then another. People believe you at first, then they act upon your lies, and you catch yourself wishing you'd simply told the truth. — John Grisham

Ralph Reed is deeply ambitious and always was so. There was a time when he ... in one of my interviews, he said he pondered running the Ross Perot campaign, and he wasn't sure he wanted to do the Christian Right thing; he was worried that it boxed him into a corner. — Nina Easton

Still, sometimes they leave behind a small memento, like Haida and the boxed set of Years of Pilgrimage. He probably didn't simply forget it, but intentionally left it behind in Tsukuru's apartment. And Tsukuru loved that music, for it connected him to Haida, and to Shiro. It was the vein that connected these three scattered people. A fragile, thin vein, but one that still had living, red blood coursing through it. The power of music made it possible. Whenever he listened to that music, particularly "Le mal du pays," vivid memories of the two of them swept over him. At times it even felt like they were right beside him, quietly breathing. — Haruki Murakami

I love changing. I hate it when people try to box me in to a relationship or in a work context. Any situation where I feel boxed in freaks me out. And I feel the need to reinvent myself or I'll get bored. — Stephen Daldry

Most people create a destiny of minutiae, of the mundane. They create their own limitations. When the moment comes for them to stretch and leap, they find themselves boxed in, locked down by their own fears. — Bill Blais

The idea of being a rock and roll musician sort of suited my talents and mentality. The freedom was great, but then I found out I wasn't free. I'd got boxed in ... The whole Beatle thing is just beyond comprehension ... subconsciously I was crying for help. — John Lennon

I have the largest collection of Hulk memorabilia in the world - everything from toilet paper, wallpaper, bicycles - all boxed up at my house in Northern California. I've had it for so long, I think it might be time to sell it. — Lou Ferrigno

I don't think people understand the model-minority stereotype is negative. You are boxed in. You have to untangle that to find your own path. — Eddie Huang

I boxed in Golden Gloves at Oxford and still know how to throw a straight left jab. — Kris Kristofferson

We're boxed in and labeled before we're ever able to speak who we believe we are or who we dream we'll become. — Andrea Gibson

The lights of Wayward Pines glowed against the cliffs that boxed it in, and for the first time, those steep mountain walls seemed inviting. Fortifications — Blake Crouch

In my own life I studied music, not creative writing; I see a novel as music - an opening as an overture, themes and subplots as lines in a fugue. The chance to write a novel about a musician boxed in by all kinds of limitations but who plays out his ultimate struggle for freedom at the piano was irresistible. — Nicole Mones

We put limitations on the way that we think about things, on ourselves, think about all the boxes we live in, male or female, you're this age, that age, this is your job, this is not your job, everything is about getting boxed in. — Brit Marling

When I look back on my life I come to one simple conclusion: there exists an intelligent, loving Presence in the Cosmos that will ultimately have its desire for relationship with us fulfilled; even our arrogant dismissal of its existence will not stop it in its tracks. The Enlightenment's god, the great idol of free will, lies smashed in pieces in its wake. The jealous Presence patiently draws us homeward like some gigantic electromagnetic beam. The Death Star in reverse. This divinity is, I believe, the 'Abba' of Jesus, a transcendence that will not be boxed in by religious misrepresentation... — Dylan Morrison

There's a vast difference between having a carload of miscellaneous facts sloshing around loose in your head and getting all mixed up in transit, and carrying the same assortment properly boxed and crated for convenient handling and immediate delivery. — George Horace Lorimer

But what if the great secret insider-trading truth is that you don't ever get over the biggest losses in your life? Is that good news, bad news, or both? ... The pain does grow less acute, but the insidious palace lie that we will get over crushing losses means that our emotional GPS can never find true north, as it is based on maps that no longer mention the most important places we have been to. Pretending that things are nicely boxed up and put away robs us of great riches. — Anne Lamott

The simultaneous scream sounded from teh twins. Borth clasped their hands over their mouths, their eyes wide with horror. Azalea followed their gaze.
There, in patches of light, scratched-up Fairweller held a weeping clover in his arms, cradling her head against his shoulder. He murmured into her ear.
Delphinium screamed.
"Oh, Clover, how could you?" said Eve.
"Is he a good kisser?" said Hollyhock.
The King had no words as he strode to them. In an instant he had torn Fairweller away from Clover, wound up, and boxed Fairweller straight in the face.
Fairweller stumbled backward and fell to the floor, glass crunching beneath him.
"You may fill out your resignation paperwork tomorrow," said the King. "ExPrime Minister Fairweller! — Heather Dixon

For a moment, perhaps an hour, they would wait, wait for something, and when that waiting was over, it was simply dismissed, goodbyes stated, reading materials closed, a momentary pause in the day that did not hold up to whatever came next.
Waiting was often a resented gift, imparted to those who accepted it grudgingly in the hopes that something better would come along when the gift was tossed aside, boxed away for the next recipient. — Gina Marinello-Sweeney

Let's stop being so damn judgemental & crucifying everyone who doesn't fit into our boxed-in perceptions of what is right. — Gillian Anderson

I didn't want to do a costume drama. It's a great thing to do, but I've done them, and I didn't want to do the same thing again. Of course, costume dramas can be from all different eras, but at the time, I just felt very sure that I didn't want to be boxed in as an English actress. I wanted to be an actress, rather than an English actress. — Carey Mulligan

Communication
Was never big in my house.
We sat together over
dinner, but the only sound
you'd hear was crunching
and chewing and the little
ones asking for more, please.
We lived, all boxed up in
invisible containers. We
hardly knew the people
we called sister or father.
Jackie and I were the
exceptions to that rule. — Ellen Hopkins

Not to be boxed in, to be able to transcend boundaries: for an artist, it's essential. — Shahzia Sikander

I'm trying to keep you safe."
Safe as a porcelain bowl wrapped in cotton linen and boxed up. It would be a lie to say she didn't want to feel safe, or that Nolan's worry didn't leave her feeling warm and even a bit precious. But it also left her feeling trapped, like an ornamental bird kept in a cage, its wings clipped. — Page Morgan

Phoenix was square and straight, boxy and boxed in, and above all, fake. — Jeannette Walls

In the very early stages of working in sports, I was sick of being referred to as "the Barbie doll" because I had long, blond, fake hair. So I went and bought a boxed hair color, dyed my hair black, and put on glasses. And I looked ridiculous. I looked like a completely different person. I was trying to get away from the stereotype but what I realized in doing that is that what I say and how I conduct myself in what I do will speak for itself, and I don't need to apologize for being a woman in that space. — Charissa Thompson

My worrying, for instance, was a scene in which I looked at myself while I had the sensation of being boxed in. I call that worrying, It has happened to me a number of times after that first time. — Carlos Castaneda

You can easily become boxed in and be only identified with musicals or plays. — Jill Paice

It was nearly eight before he returned to the office. This was the hour when he found London most lovable; the working day over, her pub windows were warm and jewel-like, her streets thrummed with life, and the indefatigable permanence of her aged buildings, softened by the street lights, became strangely reassuring. We have seen plenty like you, they seemed to murmur soothingly, as he limped along Oxford Street carrying a boxed-up camp bed. Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his. Walking wearily past closing shops, while the heavens turned indigo above him, Strike found solace in vastness and anonymity. — Robert Galbraith

I went after him and picked him off with a right, like a predator and was all over him like a rash! I was in to him with a right hand lead and out to inflict pain, but it wasn't all one-sided! This guy was on a wing and a prayer when he threw a chopping right hand that whizzed past me with him on the other end of it ... I was blessed, or something!
I had to turn it on and step it up, because if he connected with one of those shots then I was chicken fodder! I could see that his wasted efforts were tiring him by the second. I boxed him from range and kept tying him up, I was now in to a rhythm, I swung lefts and rights, all of them smashing in to his head with an unrelenting ferocity.
By now his face was covered in blood and he was about to go down when the ref stepped in and stopped it. I won; I had defeated Goliath. — Stephen Richards

Different drinks have different metaphorical weight. Wine's heady, gin is poisonous, vodka's cold, and beer is plain boring. In real life, I'm a big fan of boxed white wine, much to the dismay of my more refined friends. — Cate Marvin

I've come to believe that what we need is a republic. People need to be run by people who like them, not boxed into a game they can't win by people who can't lose it. We need a head of state who's been on the run. An interior minister who's had the two o'clock knock and done solitary. A minister of agriculture who's seen a spade fired in anger and done twenty years on the land. A health minister who's had his life saved through swift transportation to a well-staffed, properly equipped hospital. An interior minister dedicated to dismantling the state with its futile bureaucratic waste and saving real money. And a police force that would put an end to the Bowmans of this world. — Derek Raymond

The difficulty, of course, with standing up to women was that it appeared to make little difference. At the end of the day,a man was no match for a woman ... The only thing to do was to try to avoid situations where women might corner you. And that was difficult, because women had a way of ensuring that you were neatly boxed in, which was exactly what had happened to him. He should have been more careful. He should have been on his guard when she offered him cake. That was her technique, he now understood; just as Eve had used an apple to trap Adam, so [she] had used fruit cake. Fruit cake, apples; it made no difference really. Oh foolish, weak men! — Alexander McCall Smith

I try to find out what there is in the character that in a way, you can't put into words. If I could put it into words, then it wouldn't be a performance. And if I do put it into words, as I play it, I start to get boxed in by those words. — Alan Alda

My Uncle Reed is in heaven, and can see all you do and think; and so can papa and mama: they know how you shut me up all day long, and how you wish me dead. Mrs. Reed soon rallied her spirits: she shook me most soundly, she boxed both my ears, and then left me without a word. Bessie supplied the hiatus by a homily of an hour's length, in which she proved beyond a doubt that I was the most wicked and abandoned child ever reared under a roof. I half believed her; for I felt indeed only bad feelings surging in my breast. — Charlotte Bronte

I've never boxed before in my life. I've had one day's training at a boxing gym, and it's an incredibly difficult sport. — Rupert Penry-Jones

And I start to feel once more that the lines that have boxed in my life - between past and present, outside and in - are dissolving. That I may yet myself be delivered. — Garth Risk Hallberg

I prefer assonance and internal rhyme to end rhyme. I mean, the sonnet already looks like a box. Best not to get too boxed in, though. — Anna Journey

I'm not saying you're wrong, Declan," Gansey said. His ear throbbed where it had been boxed. He could feel Ronan's pulse crashing in his arm where he restrained him. His vow to consider his words more carefully came back to him, so he framed the rest of the statement in his head before saying it out loud.
"But you are not Niall Lynch, and you won't ever be. And you'd get ahead a lot faster if you stopped trying."
Gansey released Ronan.
Ronan didn't move, though, and neither did Declan, as if by saying their father's name, Gansey had cast a spell. They wore matching raw expressions. Different wounds inflicted by the same weapon. — Maggie Stiefvater

What never fails to astonish at Skara Brae is the sophistication. These were the dwellings of Neolithic people, but the houses had locking doors, a system of drainage and even, it seems, elemental plumbing with slots in the walls to sluice away wastes. The interiors were capacious. The walls, still standing, were up to ten feet high, so they afforded plenty of headroom, and the floors were paved. Each house has built-in stone dressers, storage alcoves, boxed enclosures presumed to be beds, water tanks, and damp courses that would have kept the interiors snug and dry. The houses are all of one size and built to the same plan, suggesting a kind of genial commune rather than a conventional tribal hierarchy. Covered passageways ran between the houses and led to a paved open area - dubbed "the marketplace" by early archaeologists - where tasks could be done in a social setting. — Bill Bryson

I don't see where Tyson Fury has boxed anybody of Wladimir's [ Klitschko] calibre to be able to get in the ring with Wladimir and do well. — Lennox Lewis

After being boxed in by man and his constructions in Europe and the East, the release into space is exhilarating. The horizon is a huge remote circle, and no hills intervene. — Jacques Barzun

I've never boxed in my life, never been in a military base in my life, never grew up with anyone in the military. — Tyrese Gibson