Can't Be Me Quotes & Sayings

I mean I don't think it got me interested in acting. I think it might be what makes it so that I can have the idea of the variety of people in the world, different incomes. That helps. When you're going to play someone it's interesting and nice to see experiences that aren't like yours. But there's always the remarkable similarity of all people. — Peter Sarsgaard

He looked at the mud. "If I pull you free, will you promise to bed me for my pains?"

"Here's what I'll promise, Logan MacKenzie. If you don't get me free, I will come back from the grave and haunt you. Relentlessly."

"For a timid English bluestocking, you can be quite fierce when you choose to be. I rather like it."

She hugged herself to keep her hands out of the creeping mud. "Logan, please. I be you, stop teasing and get me out of this. I'm cold. And I'm frightened."

"Look at me."
She looked at him.
His gaze held hers, blue and unwavering.

All teasing went out his voice. "I'm not leaving. Ten years in the British Army, and I've never left a man behind. I'm not leaving you. I'll have you out of this. Understand? — Tessa Dare

I wish I were a poet. I've never confessed that to anyone, and I'm confessing it to you, because you've given me reason to feel that I can trust you. I've spent my life observing the universe, mostly in my mind's eye. It's been a tremendously rewarding life, a wonderful life. I've been able to explore the origins of time and space with some of the great living thinkers. But I wish I were a poet.
Albert Einstein, a hero of mine, once wrote, 'Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open.'
I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the vast majority of the universe is composed of dark matter. The fragile balance depends on things we'll never be able to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Life itself depends on them. What's real? What isn't real? Maybe those aren't the right questions to be asking. What does life depend on?
I wish I had made things for life to depend on. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Evolution can't be predicted, Julian used to tell me; it's a scattershot business; it fires, but it doesn't aim. — Robert Charles Wilson

There's sex, and there's ... this." He met my eyes. "Just being with someone like this. This isn't something that can be bought or sold, and I couldn't manufacture it for someone no matter how much they tried to pay me for it." He ran the backs of his fingers down my cheek. "That's why I'm here tonight. Because I needed this. And here, with you, is the only place I can get it." He swallowed hard. "Or give it. — Lauren Gallagher

She talks. People talk easily to me. They think a bald albino hunchback can't hide anything. My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession, so they try to set me at ease by revealing our equality, by dragging out their apparent deformities. That's how it starts. But I am like a stranger on the bus and they get hooked on having a listener. They go too far because I am one listener who is in no position to judge or find fault. They stretch out their dampest secrets because a creature like me has no values or morals. If I am "good" (and they assume that I am), it's obviously for lack of opportunity to be otherwise. And I listen. I listen eagerly, warmly, because I care. They tell me everything eventually. — Katherine Dunn

It makes me sick, the way sadness is addicting. The way I can't stop. Sadness is familiar. It's comfortable and it's easy in a sense that it comes naturally to me. But everything else about it is hard. The way my body aches with self-hatred. The way my mind spins and spins with hopeless thoughts. The way it poisons everything I do, every relationship I have. Yet it's addicting, because I know sadness, and I know it very well. And there's a sort of comfort in that, like being home after a trip or sleeping in your own bed after being away. There's just a sense that this is where I belong. This is how it's supposed to be. — Marianna Paige

After I left here on Saturday, I decided never to see you again."
He was sliding the frittata under the broiler, so she could only see his profile, but damn if he didn't appear to be smirking.
"I know that, darling. It wounds my pride you won't go out with me, but I can console myself with the knowledge that when you do see me, you can't keep your knickers on for ten minutes running."
She threw her cookie at him, feigning indignation. "You bastard! Are you calling me easy?"
"I like you easy. Besides, you're not to blame. Who'd want to wear wet knickers? — Ruthie Knox

I can't bring myself to trust you. But even if you were to betray me, and even if you were to become my enemy ... would it be okay for me to love? Could you ... let me love you? — Ryohgo Narita

Singing for stage, if you don't hear yourself, that's when you push, and that's when you can hurt your voice sometimes. So if I can hear myself in my ear, it really helps me to find that balance of how loud I needed to be singing. — Aaron Tveit

I am attracted only to music which I consider to be better than it can be performed. Therefore I feel (rightly or wrongly) that unless a piece of music presents a problem to me, a never-ending problem, it doesn't interest me too much. — Artur Schnabel

The story of my life can be told in silver: in chocolate mills, serving spoons, and services for twelve. The story of my life has nothing to do with me. The story of my life is things. Things that aren't mine, that won't ever be mine. It's all I've ever known.
I wish it wasn't. — Elizabeth Scott

I'm not going to tell a person how to think, don't believe in that. What I want to do, when I write these books, is just to say don't be so sure of yourself. Let me pull the carpet out from underneath you, and let's see if you can still find the footing. — Jodi Picoult

"You're wearing your Seduction Hat. Why am I not surprised?"
He offers a pirate's smile. "Did you notice ... I've a new embellishment?" He makes a show of adjusting an owl's tail feather in the band.
I bite back a giggle. "Vegetarian barn owl, I presume?"
"Won't be bothering me again for some time."
"I can guarantee it's not the only one out there."
He loops my arm through his. "Good. I'm always up for a worthy chase." — A.G. Howard

But a lot of my training can be done in Aston - a lot of the hard work, so to speak. But a new atmosphere, a new place, and it's good for me because I didn't want to get stuck in one spot, so coming home is good, back and forth, you know, where my roots are. — Elvis Stojko

When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it? — Joss Whedon

Don't you dare ever hope for more. There's no such thing as living happily ever after or pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. The world is how it is and there always has to be bottom-feeders. People like you and me, we're it, and the world might want us to believe we can have more, but the moment we try to break out of the water they'll shove us down into the mud. It's better to know the truth. It hurts less if you accept society's crappy rules. — Katie McGarry

And I don't believe you dead. How can you be dead if I still feel you? Maybe, like God, you changed into something different that I'll have to speak to in a different way, but you not dead to me Nettie. And never will you be. — Alice Walker

Yesterday he told me he thought I would have to pretend to be weak, but he was wrong. I am weak already. I brace myself against the wall and press my forehead to my hands. It's difficult to take deep breaths, so I take short, shallow ones. I can't let this happen. They attacked me to make me feel weak. I can pretend they succeeded to protect myself, but I can't let it become true. — Veronica Roth

You let me be who I am. So many people ask me why I need to take pictures all the time. Why I'm staring at something they can't see. It's like I have to apologize for having eyes. But you've never rushed me. I'm at my best around you. You're my nova. You light me up. — Katie Kacvinsky

He pulls away slowly, resting his forehead against mine, noses touching while his hand slips down to my ass. "This isn't going to be easy," he says softly.
"I know."
"Don't forget about me." He kisses me on the forehead.
"Don't stop being an asshole," I remind him. "Or people will think something's up."
He grins at me and smacks my ass. "That can be arranged. I'll see you, Freckles. — Karina Halle

Reading all my old love letters was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can't TOUCH those feelings. Its like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don't even know. I'm aware, in an intellectual way. That I felt all those things about him, but this emotions are far away now.
What's so strange to me is that I can't even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who WAS I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now? — Bill Shapiro

In 1995, each cast at The Second City was made up of four men and two women. When it was suggested that they switch one of the companies to three men and three women, the producers and directors had the same panicked reaction. 'You can't do that. There won't be enough parts to go around. There won't be enough for the girls.' This made no sense to me, probably because I speak English and have never had a head injury. We weren't doing _Death of a Salesman._ _We were making up the show ourselves. How could there not be enough parts?_ If everyone had something to contribute, there would be enough. The insulting implication, of course, was that the women wouldn't have any ideas. — Tina Fey

I endorse only products I actually use. Like Wheaties keeps offering me money, but I don't eat Wheaties, so I can't do it. Now, if Rice Krispies or Frosted Flakes offered me a deal, I'd take it right away. Apple Jacks, I'd be on the box in a heartbeat. Apple Shaqs. Yeah. — Shaquille O'Neal

My mother said, "Arturo, stop that. Your sister's tired."

"Oh Holy Ghost, Oh Holy inflated triple ego, get us out of the depression. Elect Roosevelt. Keep us on the gold standard. Take France off, but for Christ's sake keep us on!"

"Arturo, stop that"

"Oh Jehovah, in your infinite mutability see if you can't scrape up some coin for the Bandini family."

My mother said, "Shame, Arturo. Shame."

I got up on the divan and yelled, "I reject the hypothesis of God! Down with the decadence of a fraudulent Christianity! Religion is the opium of the people! All that we are or ever hope to be we owe to the devil and his bootleg apples!"

My mother came after me with the broom. — John Fante

DECEMBER 21 Peace in the House Fill up and complete my joy by living in harmony and being of the same mind and one in purpose, having the same love, being in full accord and of one harmonious mind and intention. PHILIPPIANS 2:2 When Jesus sent the disciples out two by two to do miracles, signs, and wonders, in essence He said to them, "Go and find a house and say, 'Peace be unto you.' And if your peace settles on that house, you can stay there. If it doesn't, shake the dust off your feet and go on" (see Mark 6:7-11). One day God showed me what Jesus was really saying to them: "I want you to go out with the anointing, but to do that you need to have peace in the house." You need to do whatever you can to maintain peace in your home because it dramatically affects the anointing and power of God that rests on your life. Keep the strife out of your life! No peace, no power! Know peace, know power! — Joyce Meyer

I'm staring at Anna's house again. The logical part of my brain tells me that it's just a house. That it's what's inside that makes it horrifying, that makes it dangerous, that it can't possibly be tilting toward me like it's hunting me through the overgrowth of weeds. It can't possibly be trying to jerk free of its foundation and swallow me whole. But that's what it looks like it's doing. — Kendare Blake

Reed, I should've protected myself against you, but I didn't and now you live here, inside of me," I say, pointing to my heart. "I won't ever be able to run from the love I have for you. Your name is written on my heart. I can't hide from it and it will wreck me if something happens to you - — Amy A. Bartol

I've been living off rats mostly. Can't steal too much food from Hogsmeade; I'd draw attention to myself."
He grinned up at Harry, but Harry returned the grin only reluctantly.
"What're you doing here, Sirius?" he said,
"Fulfilling my duty as godfather," said Sirius, gnawing on the chicken bone in a very dog-like way. "Don't worry about me, I'm pretending to be a loveable stray."
He was still grinning, but seeing the anxiety in Harry's face, said more seriously, "I want to be on the spot. Your last letter... well, let's just say things are getting fishier. — J.K. Rowling

Something happens to me when someone says, 'You can't.' I'm generally not very competitive; unless someone tells me I can't do something that should be done. — Jim DeMint

I don't want to be a kitten anymore. Give me my honorary claws so I can become a lion. — Kayla Krantz

What freaking year were you born in? You can't be much younger than me. They had all of those shows about Amazon chicks and Greek gods, gladiators ... "
"You watched shows about Amazons and Greek gods." It was more of a flat statement than a question.
"Screw you. Them bitches were fierce."
"You're a bizarre person."
"Says the guy in the bodysuit."
Mr. Greek's mouth sunk at the sides. "It's protective armor."
"Like I fucking said. — Santino Hassell

If you've got hips, you can't be a gymnast or dancer. That ruled me out. — Mia Hamm

Finding A Way

I'd like you for a friend.
I'd like to find the way
of asking you to be my friend.
I don't know what to say.

What would you like to hear?
What is it I can do?
There has to be some word, some look
Connecting me to you. — Myra Cohn Livingston

When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out. But some ghost of an event may stay in your head. Then, like the smudge of a bad word quickly wiped off a school blackboard, this ghost can call undue attention to itself by its very vagueness. You keep studying the dim shape of it, as if the original form will magically emerge. This blank spot in my past, then, spoke most loudly to me by being blank. It was a hole in my life that I both feared and kept coming back to because I couldn't quite fill it in. — Mary Karr

There are certain aspects of me that can be bad-ass sometimes, but being able to push it to the extreme is something I'd love to play. You don't get those roles, as a female, and especially as an indigenous female. There aren't those roles out there, so I want that. I want women to see a strong, sexy female without showing her body too much. — Tinsel Korey

All of a sudden it hit me - If there was such a thing as composing music, there could be such a thing as composing motion. After all, there are melodic figures, why can't there be figures of motion? — Len Lye

I never thought of it like that. I always thought of you as a part of me, like my own eyes or my own hands. You don't go around thinking 'I love my eyes, I love my hands', do you? But think what it would be like to live without your eyes or your hands. To be mad, or to be blind. I can't talk about it. It's how I feel. — Elizabeth Marie Pope

I can't fuck up his whole life and take away everything that means something to him just because I think I've found my soul mate.' 'Yeah, but ... ' 'Yeah, but. I know. Having found my soul mate, how cruel is it for me to stay with Bob, pretending I feel more for him than I do and preventing him from going out and finding someone who loves him the way I love Mark?' 'You can't be responsible for other people's feelings, — Scarlett Thomas

Read your work aloud, if you can, if you aren't too embarrassed by the sound of your voice ringing out when you are alone in a room. Chances are that the sentence you can hardly pronounce without stumbling is a sentence that needs to be reworked to make it smoother and more fluent. A poet once told me that he was reading a draft of a new poem aloud to himself when a thief broke into his Manhattan loft. Instantly surmising that he had entered the dwelling of a madman, the thief turned and ran without taking anything, and without harming the poet. So it maybe that reading your work aloud will not only improve its quality but save your life in the process. — Francine Prose

Junction nineteen! Una, she came off at Junction nineteen! You've added an hour to your journey before you even started. Come on, let's get you a drink. How's your love life, anyway?"
Oh GOD. Why can't married people understand that this is no longer a polite question to ask? We wouldn't rush up to THEM and roar, "How's your marriage going? Still having sex?" Everyone knows that dating in your thirties is not the happy-go-lucky free-for-it-all it was when you were twenty-two and that the honest answer is more likely to be, "Actually, last night my married lover appeared wearing suspenders and a darling little Angora crop-top, told me he was gay/a sex addict/a narcotic addict/a commitment phobic and beat me up with a dildo," than, "Super, thanks. — Helen Fielding

Only Puerto Rican girl on the earth who wouldn't give up the ass for any reason. I can't, she said. I can't make any mistakes ... Paloma was convinced that if she made any mistakes in the next two years, any mistakes at all, she would be stuck in that family of hers forever. That was her nightmare. Imagine if I don't get in anywhere, she said. You'd still have me, you tried to reassure her, but Paloma looked at you like the apocalypse would be preferable. — Junot Diaz

The people who say: 'You are what you eat' have always seemed addled to me. In my opinion, you are what you think, and if you don't think, you can eat all the meat in Kansas City and still be nothing but a vegetable. — Russell Baker

Jesus, Dean. I don't know why you have me around with her watching your back"
"You're just jealous. But don't worry. One day you too will have your very own little Amazon."
"I'll just settle for a woman."
"If you're lonely, you can have the inflatable sex doll Blue gave me for my birthday. I don't want the two
of you to miss out on an opportunity for love."
"You didn't like her?"
"I wasn't man enough to satisfy her cravings. I'm sure you'll be different. — Marjorie M. Liu

As much as I want you and want to be with you and part of you, I can't tear myself away from the realness of my responsibilities. If you force me, physically or mentally, to go with you, as I said earlier, I cannot fight that. I don't have the strength, given my feelings for you. In spite of what I said about not taking the road away from you, I'd go because of my own selfish wanting of you. But please don't make me. Don't make me give this up, my responsibilities. I cannot do that and live with the thought of it. If I did leave now, those thoughts would turn me into something other than the woman you have come to love — Robert James Waller

No mistake about it. Ice is cold; roses are red; I'm in love. And this love is about to carry me off somewhere. The current's too overpowering; I don't have any choice. It may very well be a special place, some place I've never seen before. Danger may be lurking there, something that may end up wounding me deeply, fatally. I might end up losing everything. But there's no turning back. I can only go with the flow. Even if it means I'll be burned up, gone forever. — Haruki Murakami

I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in this fence was a white smooth wooden gate, two holes bored round and low together so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman that I would love that not even the dog could have heard.
I don't know where you are, but you're living right now, somewhere on this earth. And one day you and I are going to touch this gate where I'm touching it now. Your hand will touch this very wood, here! Then we'll walk through and we'll be full of a future and of a past and we'll be to each other like no one else has ever been. We can't meet now, I don't know why. But some day our questions will be answers and we'll be caught in something so bright ... and every step I take is one step closer on a bridge we must cross to meet. — Richard Bach

wouldn't have agreed if we'd known your mom was there." "Pain in the ass, let me tell ya." "You don't need to tell me," I say. "I know all about what a pain she can be." Dee laughs. "She's like a weapons-grade pain in the ass. We figured out to sic her on the bad guys, and she became a huge asset. — Susan Ee

Every once in a while, I get the urge. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? The urge for destruction. The urge to hurt, maim, kill.
It's quite a thing, to experience that urge, to let it wash over you, to give in to it. It's addictive. It's all-consuming. You lose yourself to it. It's quite, quite wonderful. I can feel it, even as I speak, tapping around the edges of my mind, trying to prise me open, slip its fingers in. And it would be so easy to let it happen.
But we're all like that, aren't we? We're all barbarians at our core. We're all savage, murderous beasts. I know I am. I'm sure you are. The only difference between us, Mr Prave, is how loudly we roar. I know I roar very loudly indeed. How about you? Do you think you can match me? — Derek Landy

That's what I want, a mental evidence I can feel. I don't want physical evidence, proof you have to go out and drag in. I want evidence that you can carry in your mind and always touch and smell and feel. But there's no way to do that. In order to believe in a thing you've got to carry it with you. You can't carry the Earth, or a man, in your pocket. I want a way to do that, carry things with me always, so I can believe in them. How clumsy to have to go to all the trouble of going out and bringing in something terribly physical to prove something. I hate physical things because they can be left behind and become impossible to believe in them. — Ray Bradbury

He (Tom Riley) gestured toward the canvases in the main room. "What are they, really? I mean, no bullshit. Because - I wouldn't say this to very many people - they remind me of the way life was inside my head when I wasn't taking my pills."
"They're just make-believe," I (Edgar) said. "Shadows."
"I know about shadows," he said. "You just want to be careful they don't grow teeth. Because they can. Then, sometimes when you reach for the light-switch to make them go away, you discover the power's out. — Stephen King

Are you mad?" I ask.
"I was." He glances at the ceiling then back at me. "Or confused, anyway. The whole thing threw me through for a loop. I thought I'd finally met a guy at Underwood I could relate to, and it turns out he wasn't a guy at all."
I swallow. "I can see how that would be weird."
"In a way though, I was relieved."
"Relieved?" I echo. "Why?"
He looks around embarrased. "Let's just say you had me questioning my sexual orientation. — Jody Gehrman

I've got a really great team around me. They're the ones that are in the restaurants on a day to day basis. Anyone that's good can't be stifled in any way. I don't baby people. — Todd English

I don't want to be a star. If you have to label me anything, I'm an actor - I guess. A journeyman actor. I think 'star' is what you call actors who can't act. — Paul Muni

Why?" His question was almost buried by my heavy breathing.
I think I understood the question now. I could only hope I had the right answer. If there was one.
"Because I want to trust, be trusted. I want someone I can count on, someone who can count on me. I want somewhere safe. I want a home. But that can only happen if I'm with you."
"I'm never going to be like other men, Grant."
I wasn't sure what he meant until I turned enough to see his expression. The knowledge in his eyes spoke of those places he looked into. The windows or portals he disappeared into when he followed the light.
"I can give you what I have, but I can never give you everything." It wasn't Morgan didn't want to, he couldn't. I could see that too. He could never give me all of himself because he didn't control everything he had.
Could I live with that? — Adrienne Wilder

Kaylee, this means something to me." His hands trailed down my arms to cup my elbows, and his gaze held mine. "With any
luck, we're going to have millions of moments over the course of eternity, and I plan to love every one of them. But we'll never
have this moment again, and this is very important to me." The twists of blue in his eyes coiled so tightly the color was almost gone,
lost among pale shades of a need so deep it couldn't possibly be captured in a kiss, or a touch. "I need to know that this is important
to you, too. I need to know that this isn't like last time. That you're not doing this just so you can say you've done it. Because that's
not good enough for me. That's not good enough for us. — Rachel Vincent

Sobbing, Sam took another step. This is the last one, the very last, I can't go on, I can't. But his feet moved again. One and then the other. They took a step, and then another, and he thought, They're not my feet, they're someone else's, someone else is walking, it can't be me. — George R R Martin

But when you kiss me there's a spark, and I can't remember I'm only food to be consumed like an apple and not loved like a woman. — Phar West Nagle

To most observers, innovation is a solitary process that requires creativity and genius, perhaps even greatness. It can't, in their view, be managed or predicted, just hoped for and, perhaps, facilitated. But for me innovation was and still is more than that. It was a battle in the marketplace between innovators or attackers trying to make money by changing the order of things, and defenders protecting their cash flow. — Richard J. Foster

You can't drown when you know how to float."
Chris says nothing for a few minutes. "Maybe. But the water is pretty calm today. There could always be a storm." He rubs my shoulders. He breathes against me. He waits. "It's hard to float in a storm. — Jessica Park

Well, you know. Some people are like wolves and some are like bears. And bears and wolves don't go together. You don't see me trying to convince you to be a wolf? So, why are you trying to convince me to be a bear?"
I could hear him blinking on the other side of the line. "Can you translate that into English?"
"Wolves mate for life. Bears hit and run. — Candice Raquel Lee

Mirror that lies, mirror that lies, that can't be me in the gorilla disguise. — Jimmy Buffett

Simon: You're in a dangerous line of work, Jayne. Odds are you'll be under my knife again, often. So I want you to understand one thing very clearly: No matter what you do or say or plot, no matter how you come down on us, I will never, ever harm you. You're on this table, you're safe ... 'cause I'm your medic. And however little we may like or trust each other, we're on the same crew. Got the same troubles, same enemies, and more than enough of both. Now, we could circle each other and growl, sleep with one eye open, but that thought wearies me. I don't care what you've done, I don't know what you're planning on doing, but I'm trusting you. I think you should do the same. 'Cause I don't see this working any other way.
River: Also, I can kill you with my brain. — Ben Edlund

I hate to say anything that may hurt UCLA, but I can't be quiet when I see what the NCAA is doing to Jerry Tarkanian only because he has a reputation for giving a second chance to many black athletes other coaches have branded as troublemakers. The NCAA is working night and day trying to get Jerry, but no one from the NCAA ever questioned me during my four years at UCLA! — Bill Walton

You don't want to be mean to people, but some people are real assholes. And you can't say that on TV - or, you can, but probably, as a celebrity, I can't get away with it. Trust me. Unless you're somebody who can say anything they want, I guess, like Donald Trump. — Jackee Harry

Grandmere says she can't get over the change in me. She says I seem taller. And you know maybe I am. She thinks it's because I'm wearing another one of Sebastiano's original creations, designed just for me,just like the dress that was supposed to make Michael see me as more than just his little sister's best friend ... except that it turned out he already did. But I know that's not it. And it isn't love, either. Well, not entirely. I'll tell you what it is: self-actualization. That and the fact that it turns out I'm really a princess, after all. I must be, because guess what? I'm living happily ever after. — Meg Cabot

If he was paralyzed, we'd have to put in ramps and have things altered for wheelchair access; you can get kitchens refitted; bathrooms altered ... I'd get him a really fast wheelchair. It'd be OK. If he couldn't talk, I'd get him a great computer. Anything can be dealt with, everything can be overcome. Just be alive. Just, please God, I beg you, please, please keep him alive for me. — Mindy Hammond

When I was young, some women told me they loved me for my long eyelashes. I accepted. Later it was for my wit. Then for my power and money. Then for my talent. Then for my mind-deep. OK, I can handle all of it.
The only woman who scares me is the one who loves me for myself alone. I have plans for her. I have poisons and daggers and dark graves in caves to hide her head. She can't be allowed to live. Especially if she's sexually faithful and never lies and always puts me ahead of everything and everyone. — Mario Puzo

I can't take this kind of suspense. Decide now." He untied the ropes around her wrists. "Walk out the door. In a year you'll be free of any entanglements with me. Or stay and be my wife. My real wife. Make your choice."
She looked down at the loosened ropes still wrapped around her, then up at him.
He wore an expression of fierce indifference, but she knew better. This proud man, this noble marquees, had made up his mind he wished to marry her without knowing who she was or what she'd done. She would guess the decision was his first impetuous gesture since the day his mother had disappeared.
Amy couldn't fool herself. For him to go so contrary to his own nature, he must feel an overwhelming emotion for her. — Christina Dodd

Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you can bring me a nonviolent racist, bring me a nonviolent segregationist, then I'll get nonviolent. But don't teach me to be nonviolent until you teach some of those crackers to be nonviolent. — Malcolm X

Don't talk me about religion! Don't talk me about tales for children! Be serious! Trust science, because only the science can save you! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

My emotional range is limited. I can't do grief, but rage is my friend. For instance, I hate death by sickness. It is nothing like Homer, the Old Testament, and Tolkien led me to expect. It is not noble and awe-inspiring. No one delivers a final soliloquy. It is as abrupt and banal as the flicking of a switch. The squiggly line on the monitor straightens out, the defibrillator doesn't even go whomp, the epinephrine is useless, the nurse doing CPR looks up and even before the doctor pronounces the words, you know. This is not what death should be. Death, the reason for religion, the subject of great literature, the certainty we spend our lives warding off, the giant mystery that looms over everything we do, death should be spectacular, not pity-inducing, a bang and not a whimper. A huge ball of fire, a shower of sparks, a final charge into the ranks of your enemies, a terrific explosion, a backward dive into the fiery pit. Not ... this. — Jessica Zafra

It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had the chance.
Pity? It is pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me Gollum has some part to play in this, for good or evil ... (not finished yet) — J.R.R. Tolkien

No one ever said 'no' to me about anything. No one ever told me anything was wrong. Never. No one ever said, 'You can't be a fashion designer.' No one ever said, 'You're a boy and you can't take tap-dancing lessons.' No one ever said, 'You're a boy and you can't have long hair.' — Marc Jacobs

You understand. It's too far. I can't take this body when me. It's too heavy"
I said nothing.
"But it will be like an abandoned shell. There's nothing sad about an old shell ... — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Because misogynists are the best of men." All the poets reacted to these words with hooting. Boccaccio was forced to raise his voice: "Please understand me. Misogynists don't despise women. Misogynists don't like femininity. Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists, or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers or poets revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility, sacred flashes of hysteria, and the divine voice of nature within us, while in misogynists or gynophobes these values inspire a touch of terror. Worshipers revere women's femininity, while misogynists always prefer women to femininity. Don't forget: a woman can be happy only with a misogynist. No woman has ever been happy with any of you! — Milan Kundera

She comes to me when she wants to be fed. And after I feed her
guess what
she's off to wherever she wants to be in the house, until the next time she gets hungry. She's smart enough to know she can't feed herself. She's actually a very smart cat. She gets loved. She gets adoration. She gets petted. She gets fed. And she doesn't have to do anything for it, which is why I say this cat's taught me more about women, than anything my whole life. — Rush Limbaugh

My brothers are idiots.
Anyone can see that under the scars and the attitude, Isabeau is more fragile than she looks. And as a reclusive Hound princess, her first introduction to the royal family shouldn't be a dose of Hypnos and four idiots gawking at her.
If I'd managed not to gawk, they sure as hell could have. She was beautiful, fierce, and utterly unlike anyone I'd ever known.
It was really hard not to gawk.
Much better to pace outside her door with one of our Bouviers sitting at the top of the stairs watching me curiously.
"This sucks, Boudicca," I told her. "I don't think we inherited Dad's diplomacy."
She laid her chin on her paws. I could have sworn she rolled her eyes. — Alyxandra Harvey

I want you to think back to when you were a kid. Remember the day you learned you could burn ants with a magnifying glass? Oh, what a great day that was! You got to be God. You decided who lived, who died. I must've burned ants for an hour, just laughing. Then I saw one on my arm. Let me tell you something, when you burn yourself with a magnifying glass, you're on your own. You can't even tell your mom, because she gives that face, Oh, he is that stupid. — Bill Engvall

For a long moment there was only the sound of her soft, half-gasping little breaths, and the thud of his heart, loud in his ears. He had never felt this ... this liberation, this unfettered contentment. Not with another woman, not after a hard day of accomplishment, not after a brilliant business maneuver, not even after beating his brothers at anything. His body was wrung out with physical satisfaction, his mind fely fogged and sluggish, but his head ...
'If this be madness,' came Francesca's weak voice from behind the shining veil of her hair, 'lead me to Bedlam.'
'Perhpas tomorrow. I don't think I can make it further than the bed. — Caroline Linden

Why don't you give up drinking?"
"Because I don't choose. It doesn't matter what a man does if he's ready to take the consequences. Well, I'm ready to take the consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drinking, but it's the only thing I've got left now. What do you think life would be to me without it? Can you understand the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my soul swimming in ineffable happiness. It disgusts you. You are a puritan and in your heart you despise sensual pleasures. Sensual pleasures are the most violent and the most exquisite. I am a man blessed with vivid senses, and I have indulged them with all my soul. I have to pay the penalty now, and I am ready to pay. — W. Somerset Maugham

Why am I so interested in politics? But if I were to answer you very simply, I would say this: why shouldn't I be interested? That is to say, what blindness, what deafness, what density of ideology would have to weigh me down to prevent me from being interested in what is probably the most crucial subject to our existence, that is to say the society in which we live, the economic relations within which it functions, and the system of power which defines the regular forms and the regular permissions and prohibitions of our conduct. The essence of our life consists, after all, of the political functioning of the society in which we find ourselves.
So I can't answer the question of why I should be interested; I could only answer it by asking why shouldn't I be interested? — Michel Foucault

Give me one reason why we can't be together, and I'll give you a hundred why we can. — Alexandra Bracken

So that's what she was doing with the sports bag. Emptying the flat of pills so that I wouldn't kill myself. I want to laugh. You're so stupid, I want to say. There are kitchen knives, aren't there? Windows that open? Glasses which can be broken? Do you honestly think that by taking away all the pills you will somehow stop me from killing myself?
Then another thought occurs to me. That in her hurt, angry state, Jennah still had the presence of mind to do this. Don't kill yourself, she says to me through the empty drawer. Don't kill yourself over me. — Tabitha Suzuma

I love you, Ink, and I want you-only you. Being strong doesn't mean I don't want you too. You are the only person who knows every part of my life, every part of me in it, the good and the bad and the horrible, and you still love me. You are always with me, even when you're not there. And when you're not there, I can feel it, like an empty space where you ought to be, and I can hardly wait until you're back to fill it again. Neither world feels like it fits, but we belong. — Dawn Metcalf

What is to be done with people who can't read a Sunday paper without messing it all up? ... Show me a Sunday paper which has been left in a condition fit only for kite flying, and I will show you an antisocial and dangerous character who has left it that way. — Robert Benchley

And I didn't fall in love with the game of basketball just because it was me playing. I fell in love with it Because I got guys like this, Like these guys every single day That push me to be the best player I can be. — Kevin Durant

There'll always be that prep in me that I can't seem to get rid of. — Chloe Sevigny

Permit me to bypass the entire nature vs. nurture "is gender really built-in?" debate with one simple observation: Men and women are made in the image of God as men or as women. "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:27). Now, we know God doesn't have a body, so the uniqueness can't be physical. Gender simply must be at the level of the soul, in the deep and everlasting places within us. God doesn't make generic people; he makes something very distinct - a man or a woman. In other words, there is a masculine heart and a feminine heart, which in their own ways reflect or portray to the world God's heart. — John Eldredge

How do you explain why the sun rises every morning? How do you explain the stars in the sky? How do you understand why no two snowflakes are alike? Some things just are, baby. And this is one of them. I can't give you pretty, dressed-up answers that are so polished they don't even sound sincere. I can only tell you that for me, it's you. It's always going to be you and nobody else. Fuck explaining it. I don't need an explanation. I just need you. — Maya Banks

A ship doesn't look quite the same from inside, does it? A wise sailor,' Robert said, fanning his arms, 'will one time stand upon the shore and watch his ship sail by, that he shall from then on appreciate not being left behind.' He grinned and added, 'Eh?'

George gave him a little grimace. 'Who's that? Melville? Or C.S. Forrester?'

It's me!' Robert complained. "Can't I be profound now and again?'

Hell, no.'

Why not?'

Because you're still alive. Gotta be dead to be profound.'

You're unchivalrous, George. — Diane Carey

He pulled her mirror out of his other pocket. "You left your mirror on my table." He extended it toward her.
"You can keep it," she said quietly. "We have lots of mirrors here."
"I'll keep it, then."
"Good. I'm glad."
He'd never rushed headlong into a battle, but he figured this time, it might be the best approach. "I spent a lot of time studying it. The back is real pretty with all the gold carving. Took me about an hour to gather up the courage to turn it over and look at the other side."
"And what did you see?"
" Aman who loves you more than life itself."
Closing her eyes, she dropped her chin to her chest.
"I wouldn't blame you if you hated me. I haven't held your feelings as precious as I should have."
"I don't hate you," she whispered hoarsely. "I tried to, but I can't."
-Houston and Amelia — Lorraine Heath

I've fallen. I must have slipped. Hit my head on something. I think I'm going to be sick. Everything is red. I can't get up. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl . . . Three for a girl. I'm stuck on three, I just can't get any further. My head is thick with sounds, my mouth thick with blood. Three for a girl. I can hear the magpies - they're laughing, mocking me, a raucous cackling. A tiding. Bad tidings. I can see them now, black against the sun. Not the birds, something else. Someone's coming. Someone is speaking to me. Now look. Now look what you made me do. — Paula Hawkins

When I use people I know, all of my instincts seem to go dead, and if I'm getting anywhere near myself then I can't do it. It's actually a real weakness! I hate writing personal essays, I don't think I'm especially good at it. I like just encountering [my characters], discovering them. I love the escape of just being surrounded by all these people who are nothing like people I know. But I don't find it hard to be in the middle of a different life, with a different set of habits and way of thinking and talking. That seems to come easily to me. — Jennifer Egan

Most people can motivate themselves to do things simply by knowing that those things need to be done. But not me. For me, motivation is this horrible, scary game where I try to make myself do something while I actively avoid doing it. If I win, I have to do something I don't want to do. And if I lose, I'm one step closer to ruining my entire life. And I never know whether I'm going to win or lose until the last second. — Allie Brosh

I can say, I am terribly frightened and fear is terrible and awful and it makes me uncomfortable, so I won't do that because it makes me uncomfortable. Or I could say get used to being uncomfortable. It is uncomfortable doing something that's risky. But so what? Do you want to stagnate and just be comfortable? — Barbra Streisand

You said, 'I'm going to leave him because my love for you makes any other life a lie.' I've hidden those words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one's watching. They haven't faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it's not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which? — Jeanette Winterson

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 was a gymnast when I was younger. My parents put me in gymnastics, and I was actually only good at the floor. I was terrible at everything else, especially beam. Unfortunately, you can't be a gymnast unless you're good at all of the apparatuses, so I became a competitive cheerleader. I was just the main tumbler for my squad. — Josie Loren

My johns adored and worshipped me, therefore they empowered me. When I was 18, 19, and 20, I had a poor self-image and needed attention. It's hard for people who haven't been prostitutes to imagine, but I think it's often true. There can be a very symbiotic relationship happening. — Annie Sprinkle