Can't Get Up Quotes & Sayings

When you get home after being gone for a month or two, time moves on without you. You're scrambling to catch up with the people. Some friends and family understand, but then there are others who just think that you can't find enough time in your life for them. — Sharon Van Etten

I don't like desperate people. They tend to do desperate things. Desperate people should be placated until you can get as far away from them as humanly possible, because desperate people had a bad tendency of blowing up and taking you with them. I — Donna Augustine

I was compiling a list in my head titled 'Reasons to Get Up: You Don't Have to Leave, but You Can't Pee Here. — Sloane Crosley

By the Lady's never-sucked teats!"
"Elas Sil!"
"Oh shut up! I'm a woman, I can curse about things like that. Wait, it's not as dark up ahead. Come on, and hasn't that baby of yours been asleep a long time? You sure it's not dead?"
"Wel, it peed on me halfway down that last corridor, and last I looked it was smiling."
"Huh. It ever amazes me women get talked into motherhood. — Steven Erikson

You can't live off potential for the rest of your life. So get up, get out and go get you some! — Eric Thomas

Trouble fell like rain from the heavens, and we just couldn't get enough of it. We went around picking up the stuff and cramming our pockets full of it. Even now I can't figure out why we persisted in doing that. Maybe we mistook it for something else. — Haruki Murakami

There are uses to adversity, and they don't reveal themselves until tested. Whether it's serious illness, financial hardship, or the simple constraint of parents who speak limited English, difficulty can tap unsuspected strengths. It doesn't always, of course: I've seen life beat people down until they can't get up. But I have never had to face anything that could overwhelm the native optimism and stubborn perseverance I was blessed with. — Sonia Sotomayor

Here's one of the things I learned that morning: if you cross a line and nothing happens, the line loses meaning. It's like that old riddle about a tree falling in a forest, and whether it makes a sound if there's no one around to hear it.
You keep drawing a line farther and farther away, crossing it every time. That's how people end up stepping off the edge of the earth. You'd be surprised at how easy it is to bust out of orbit, to spin out to a place where no one can touch you. To lose yourself
to get lost.
Or maybe you wouldn't be surprised. Maybe some of you already know.
To those people, I can only say: I'm sorry. — Lauren Oliver

Things come to the poor that can't get in at the door of the rich. Their money somehow blocks it up. It is a great privilege to be poor
one that no man covets, and brat a very few have sought to retain, but one that yet many have learned to prize. — George MacDonald

They say desire is this endless loop. You can't get out of it even when you get what you desire."
"Why is that?"
"Because as soon as you get what you want, you're going to want it again, or want more. And since you can never really be satisfied, you suffer. Or if you use up what you desired, you suffer even more. — Peter Gould

Dustin Wax says it well: No matter how organized you are, how together your system is, how careful you are about processing your inbox, making a task list, and working your calendar, if you don't stop every now and again to look at the "big picture," you're going to get overwhelmed. You end up simply responding to what's thrown at you, instead of proactively creating the conditions of your life.16 Find a time for your weekly review, add it to your calendar, and commit to doing it every week. I really can't over-emphasize the importance of this discipline. — Tim Challies

Can't choose where you come from, Seth. My boys and you know that better than anyone. But you can choose where you end up, and how you get there. — Nora Roberts

When the bureaucratic details were handled, they broke up. Del, Shrake, and Jenkins followed him back to his office, where they talked some more about the surveillance aspects. A tech would put a tracking bug on Carver's vehicle, and Del would try to get one on Dannon's, if he could do it without being seen. "The big question is: Is he gonna talk, or is he gonna stonewall, or is he gonna shoot, or is he gonna run?" Jenkins said. "That's four questions," Shrake said. "It irritates me that you can't count. — John Sandford

I do believe any hero is a person that can be knocked down. A failure isn't a person who gets knocked down; a failure is a person who stays down, and to me, the great heroes take the beating, get knocked down and stand back up again. Perseus is defined as one of the great heroes in literature, so you gotta take that on board. — Sam Worthington

I Don't Even Like Him - How Can I Pray for Him? Have you ever been so mad at your husband that the last thing you wanted to do was pray for him? So have I. It's hard to pray for someone when you're angry or he's hurt you. But that's exactly what God wants us to do. If He asks us to pray for our enemies, how much more should we be praying for the person with whom we have become one and are supposed to love? But how do we get past the unforgiveness and critical attitude? The first thing to do is be completely honest with God. In order to break down the walls in our hearts and smash the barriers that stop communication, we have to be totally up-front with the Lord about our feelings. We don't have to "pretty it up" for Him. He already knows the truth. He just wants to see if we're willing to admit it and confess it as disobedience to His ways. If so, He — Stormie O'martian

Exemplar, n.
It's always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done.
You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath. — David Levithan

He's a very, very sensitive guy. That's one of the things that makes his antisocial behavior, his rudeness, so unconscionable. I can understand why people who are thick-skinned and unfeeling can be rude, but not sensitive people. I once asked him why he gets so mad about stuff. He said, "But I don't stay mad." He has this very childish ability to get really worked up about something, and it doesn't stay with him at all. But there are other times, I think honestly, when he's very frustrated, and his way to achieve catharsis is to hurt somebody. And I think he feels he has a liberty and a license to do that. The normal rules of social engagement, he feels, don't apply to him. Because of how very sensitive he is, he knows exactly how to efficiently and effectively hurt someone. And he does do that. — Walter Isaacson

Admitting that this job isn't always easy doesn't make somebody a bad mother. At least, it shouldn't. We're all on this ride together. We are not the first ones to ever accidentally tell our children to shut up, or wonder - just for a moment - what it would be like if we'd never had children. We aren't the first mothers to feel overwhelmed and challenged and not entirely fulfilled by motherhood. And we certainly won't be the last. Nothing can be lost by admitting our weaknesses and imperfections to one another. In fact, quite the opposite is true. We will be better mothers, better wives, and better women if we are able to finally drop the act and get real. Who are we pretending for, anyway? — Jill Smokler

Omit and substitute! That's how recipes should be written. Please don't ever get so hung up on published recipes that you forget that you can omit and substitute. — Jeff Smith

But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can still get up an play now. — Billy Bragg

There are times in every person's life when they feel lonely, isolated, like maybe they don't belong. For adoptees, this is often exacerbated by the circumstances. Because you were given up, you have a built-in scapegoat; you can blame everything that you feel on the fact that you were adopted. But, I want you to know that this is a fallacy. Finding your biological parents will not fill in the void that you feel. You will get answers to your questions, but no one can fill in the missing pieces except for you. Before you go on a search, take the time to get to know yourself very well. Heal the hurts you've experienced. Acknowledge the past and how it has affected you. Become a whole person who is seeking roots, not a damaged person who is seeking fulfillment. — Janet Louise Stephenson

Or is there something that you "should" be doing but are not doing it? Get up and do it now. Alternatively, completely accept your inactivity, laziness, or passivity at this moment, if that is your choice. Go into it fully. Enjoy it. Be as lazy or inactive as you can. If you go into it fully and consciously, you will soon come out of it. Or maybe you won't. Either way, there is no inner conflict, no resistance, no negativity. — Eckhart Tolle

I'm on the edge, Neblin, I'm off the edge - I'm over the edge and falling into hell on the other side.'
'Calm down, John,' he said. 'We can work through this. Just tell me where you are.'
'I'm down in the cracks of the sidewalks,' I said, 'in the dirt and in the blood, and the ants are looking up and we're damning you all, Neblin. I'm down in the cracks and I can't get out. — Dan Wells

Someone's killed 100,000 people. We're almost going, "Well done! You killed 100,000 people? You must get up very early in the morning! I can't even get down the gym. Your diary must look odd: 'Get up in the morning, death, death, death, death, death, death, death - lunch - death, death, death - afternoon tea - death, death, death - quick shower ... ' " — Eddie Izzard

Don't worry, Sean. You're still hot even in the hospital gown," Sandra said.

"Don't lie out of pity, Sandy. No one can look hot in these," Flora scolded. A gleam came to life in her hazel eyes. "Wait, are these the type that opens in the back? In that case would you get up and close the blinds over there for us? — Rainbowbrook

I often would think about how we have built our society, and when you describe it out loud, it sounds rather insane. The idea of being funnelled through a conventional life progression of education, work, career, marriage, kids, divorce, retirement and then death doesn't seem that inspiring to me.
Then we're told we have to struggle to make a living, sacrifice enjoyment to have a family, delay our happiness until we're retired, fight the next person for a job, climb the ladder of success to get an even more stressful job,
spend more money than we earn, go into debt, live in fear of being blown up by some terrorist and then have TV passed off as the only way to escape it all. And when all of this gets too much and you can't keep up, you get prescribed antidepressants and made to feel like you've failed. — Josh Langley

I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can't handle these so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind. — Howard Thurman

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

It's an invention, a fairy tale devoid of any sense, like all the legends in which good spirits and fortune tellers fulfill wishes. Stories like that are made up by poor simpletons, who can't even dream of fulfilling their wishes and desires themselves. I'm pleased you're not one of them, Geralt of Rivia. It makes you closer in spirit to me. If I want something, I don't dream of it - I act. And I always get what I want. — Andrzej Sapkowski

If you're poor and ignorant, with a child, you're a slave. Meaning that you're never going to get out of it. These women are in bondage to a kind of slavery that the 13th Amendment just didn't deal with. The old master provided food, clothing and health care to the slaves because he wanted them to get up and go to work in the morning. And so on welfare: you get food, clothing and shelter
you get survival, but you can't really do anything else. You can't control your life. — Joycelyn Elders

I think the more that I can find myself getting out of the way - like you said yourself - trying to get out of thinking too much, and sometimes something truly special can happen. That's the beautiful mystery of song writing - that you really don't know where these songs come from exactly, and you don't know how you came up with them - and god bless it that you should have the gift of channeling that. — Kimbra

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

The vampire blood running around in their systems isn't natural, so whenever Henry or Grace get a cut, no matter how minor, their bodies can't produce more blood. It's up to Madeline to come replenish it from her own supply, another process that I'm told is (ha-ha) draining. — M.L. Brennan

No! I can't let you do that. That would be so lazy of me." "That is lazy of you, but you're my wife and I love you and I want you to have what you want." He starts to get up. — Taylor Jenkins Reid

Auri took it, and peered inside the small leather sack. "Why this is lovely, Kvothe. What lives in the salt?" Trace minerals, I thought. Chromium, bassal, malium, iodine ... everything your body needs but probably can't get from apples and bread and whatever you manage to scrounge up when I can't find you. "The dreams of fish," I said. "And sailor's songs. — Patrick Rothfuss

If a ship has been sunk, I can't bring it up. If it is going to be sunk, I can't stop it. I can use my time much better working on tomorrow's problem than by fretting about yesterday's. Besides, if I let those things get me, I wouldn't last long. — Ernest King

He steps away from her, going to a little side table and removing a cloth that's lying on top. Underneath are severale shiny bits of metal. Mr. Hammar picks one up.
"And now for the second part of our interview", he says, approaching the woman.
Who starts to scream.
"That was," Davy says, pacing around as we wait outside but it's all he can get out. "That was." He turns to me. "Holy crap, Todd."
I don't say nothing, just take the apple I've been saving outta my pocket. "Apple," I whisper to Angharrad, my head close to hers. — Patrick Ness

When you're finally up at the moon looking back on earth,all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can't we live together like decent people? — Frank Borman

If it makes you feel any better, he's been all sad doll lately too."
"What are you talking about, Chels?"
Chelsea stopped walking and stared at Violet.
"Jay. I'm talking about Jay, Vi. I thought you might want to know that you're not the only one who's hurting. He's been moping around school, making it hard to even look at him. He's messed up ... bad." Just like the other night in Violet's bedroom, something close to ... sympathy crossed Chelsea's face.
Violet wasn't sure how to respond.
Fortunately sympathetic Chelsea didn't stick around for long. She seemed to get a grip on herself, and like a switch had been flipped, the awkward moment was over and her friend was back, Chelsea-style: "I swear, every time I see him, I'm halfway afraid he's gonna start crying like a girl or ask to borrow a tampon or something. Seriously, Violet, it's disgusting. Really. Only you can make it stop. Please make it stop. — Kimberly Derting

Because." He turns his face back up to the stars. "The sky is always beautiful. Even when it's dark or rainy or cloudy, it's still beautiful to look at. It's my favorite thing because I know if I ever get lost or lonely or scared, I just have to look up and it'll be there no matter what...and I know it'll always be beautiful. It's what you can think about when your daddy is making you sad, so you don't have to think about him. — Colleen Hoover

It's astonishing how folks can get so worked up over something that doesn't exist. — Margaret Atwood

It was closing in on midnight, the kind of midnight you only get on Uranus after a three day bender. Ultramarine fog reeking of ethanol and neon and some passing whore's rosewater. Snow piled up like bodies in tbhe street. Twenty-seven moons lighting up what ought to be a respectable witching hour so you can't help but see yourself staring back in every slick glowpink skyscraper. — Catherynne M Valente

When I was teaching basketball, I urged my players to try their hardest to improve on that very day, to make that practice a masterpiece.
Too often we get distracted by what is outside our control. You can't do anything about yesterday. The door to the past has been shut and the key thrown away. You can do nothing about tomorrow. It is yet to come. However, tomorrow is in large part determined by what you do today. So make today a masterpiece. You have control over that.
This rule is even more important in life than basketball. You have to apply yourself each day to become a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better. Only then will you will be able to approach being the best you can be. It begins by trying to make each day count and knowing you can never make up for a lost day. — John Wooden

If I do three interviews in a day, I can be exhausted, because the process of hearing everyone requires that I empty out myself. While I'm listening, my own judgments and prejudices certainly come up. But I know I won't get anything unless I get those things out of the way. — Anna Deavere Smith

I've always thought sleep was a wonderful invention. Not that being awake isn't nice too, of course. But when I get up in the morning, I think, boy, only fourteen more hours and I can be back to sleep again ... And I never dream, because it distracts my mind from pure sleeping ... — Anne Tyler

Hovering over me was the Chihuly chandelier. Chihulys are the pigeons of Seattle. They're everywhere and even if they don't get in your way, you can't help but build up a kind of antipathy toward them. — Maria Semple

I try to be prepared for the moment, through understanding, and being warmed up, knowing all about chords and scales, so I don't even have to think and I can get right to what it is I want to say. — Pat Metheny

It seems as if we can't go right, or do right, or be righted,' said Toby. 'I hadn't much schooling, myself, when I was young; and I can't make out whether we have any business on the face of the earth, or not. Sometimes I think we must have a little; and sometimes I think we must be intruding. I get so puzzled sometimes that I am not even able to make up my mind whether there is any good at all in us, or whether we are born bad. We seem to do dreadful things; we seem to give a deal of trouble; we are always being complained of and guarded against. One way or another, we fill the papers. Talk of a New Year!' said Toby, mournfully. — Charles Dickens

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it shows?"
Before Jude could answer, Brenna was up, pacing, knocking the heels of her hands against the sides of her, moaning out curses. "I'll have to move away, leave my family. I can go to the west counties. I have some people, on my mother's side, in Galway. No, no, that's not far enough. I'll have to leave the country entirely. I'll go to Chicago and stay with your granny until I get on me feet. She'll take me in, won't she? — Nora Roberts

Even when I'm just sitting at my desk, I have to get up every twenty minutes or so and walk around, walk around, walk around, and then I can go back to the page. I can't just sit there for hours at a time. Language comes out of the body as much as the mind. — Paul Auster

You always own the option of having no opinion. There is never any need to get worked up or to trouble your soul about things you can't control. These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone. — Marcus Aurelius

If we actually love what we're doing and we go and do what we love, and every day we get up because we're really happy to get up and go and do what we do, you can't actually do that without expression, and art forms part of that mix of expression that makes the whole package of life so enjoyable to be in. — Kerry Stokes

This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be a
long process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time. — Haruki Murakami

Look, you're here to see me, and I can't go on until my dealer is here, and he's waiting to be paid, so give me some money so I can fix up, and then you'll get your show. — Iggy Pop

Trouble has set up housekeeping with me, and I can't get rid of it. — Elaine Hussey

Don't cry, Booboo. Remember the flag only halfway up the pole?
Booboo, there are two ways to lower a flag to half-mast. Are you
listening? Because no shit I really have to sleep here in a second. So
listen - one way to lower the flag to half mast is just to lower the
flag. There's another way though. You can also just raise the pole.
You can raise the pole to like twice its original height. You get me?
You understand what I mean, Mario? — David Foster Wallace

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

I can get a great look at a t-bone steak by shoving my head up a bull's ass but I'd rather take the butchers word for it. — Chris Farley

You're too good for me."
He laughed. "Are we talking about the same person? The selfish fucker who curses and yells, blows up cars and beats up people, because he has a temper he can't control? You know, the one who drinks like a fish and fries his brain with drugs? That person is too good for you?"
She shook her head. "I'm talking about the boy who shared his chocolate bar with me when he probably never shared anything before, who gave me his mama's favourite book, because he thought I deserved to read. The one who seems to be constantly fixing me up when I get hurt. I'm talking about the boy who treats me like I'm a regular girl, the one who desperately needs his bedroom cleaned and laundry washed but chooses to live in a mess and wear dirty clothes, because he's too polite to ask the girl he kisses for help."
"Wow," Carmine said. "I'd like to meet that motherfucker. — J.M. Darhower

She pressed the controls to lower the ramp. "All right, Syn. One cubbyhole coming up. Just remember you have to bear my choice with the same grace and even-tempered temerity I've shown with yours." He snorted. "Good. I get to whine and bitch. Can't wait."
-Shahara & Syn — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I'm not having much of a life. It's not awful, just ordinary. I am trying to accommodate the memories of the life I had with the life I am now living, and I just can't do it. After being behind the wheel of a Lamborghini going 140 down Sunset Drive at four a.m., it's hard to get up and put on a polyester shirt and sell books at Barnes and Noble. But I'm not ashamed of it. — Robert Goolrick

How can non-existence get sick of itself?
Everytime you wake up, you appear again out of nowhere. And so does everything else. Death just means the replacement of the usual morning waking with something else, something quite impossible even to think about. We don't even have the instrument to do it, because our mind & our world are the same thing. — Victor Pelevin

If you haven't guessed yet, my family is made up of ultra-nerds. This is not necessarily a bad thing. We play games like Scrabble and watch documentaries together. I have always known that I am going to college. Yet, there are times when it can get a little embarrassing. As Mom admits, "Re-enacting is the final step before Star Trek conventions." In a couple of years, my family will probably be doing that, too. — Maya Van Wagenen

If you dread tomorrow it's because you don't know how to build the present, and when you don't know how to build the present, you tell yourself you can deal with it tomorrow, and it's a lost cause anyway because tomorrow always ends up being today don't you see ... We have to live with the certainty that we'll get old and that it won't look nice or be good or feel happy. And tell ourselves that it's now that matters: to build something now at any price using all our strength. Always remember that there's a retirement home waiting somewhere and so we have to surpass ourselves every day, make every day undying. Climb our own personal Everest and do it in such a way that every step is a little bit of eternity. That's what the future is for: to build the present with real plans made by living people. — Muriel Barbery

I think the biggest faults that bands tend to have in terms of drama or breaking up is bands don't learn people's personalities. When you spend as much time with people obviously it's going to rub off, and you are going to get to know the way people are. You can make sure day to day people are accommodated to and people feel positive about the experience, then you can stay together as a band, at least that is my opinion. — Andy Biersack

Hey, hold up!" I drop the pickax to the ground and jog after K.T. I pull a roundish piece of amethyst about half the size of my palm out of my pocket and hold it out. "Would you give this to her?"
K.T. tilts her head to the side as she takes the stone and examines it. "Pretty. Is it amethyst?"
"Yeah."
"Why don't you give it to her yourself?"
I shove my hands in my pockets and shrug. There's no answer I can give that wouldn't either sound crazy or be an outright lie. K.T. smiles and slips the stone into her pocket.
"All right, Romeo. I'll go see if I can get Juliet to come to the ball tonight."
K.T. winks and walks around to the front of the house. — Erica Cameron

Sometimes we don't want to be tethered to yesterday. It's nicer to forget. Maybe the gaps in our memory are there for a reason, evolutionary perhaps, to give us the space to grow, to get away from childishness or childish things. Or maybe it's so we have the chance to invent, or at least include, some magic in our yesterdays, surely the consolation of getting older, of moving away from youth, is that we can shape our past to our fantasies. So, even if the present isn't going the way we want it, we can stand and remember our earlier selves as exciting and funny and daring — Sue Perkins

That's what it felt like. Passed through is the only way I can express it. Like my body had passed clean through a stone wall. At what exact point I felt like I'd made it through, I can't recall, but suddenly I noticed I was already on the other side. I was convinced I'd made it through. I don't know about the logic or the process or the method involved - I was simply convinced of the reality that I'd passed through.
After that, I didn't have to think anymore. Or, more precisely, there wasn't the need to try to consciously think about not thinking. All I had to do was go with the flow and I'd get there automatically. If I gave myself up to it, some sort of power would naturally push me forward. — Haruki Murakami

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

Jazz is so difficult. A lot of people think once they've learned these licks they can get up and play them for the rest of their life. But that's not being truthful to the music 'cause it's not developing. Cats you hear that don't make no mistakes? They ain't trying to do nothing. everything they hear is on the mark, but they've played it so many times ... I've built a whole career out of making mistakes! — Lester Bowie

I got bigger problems than that life hasn't turned out the way you hoped. You can harp on the past all you please, Dow, like some old woman upset cause her tits used to stay up by themselves, or you can shut your fucking hole and help me get on with things. — Joe Abercrombie

In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.
In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.
I liked the Irish way better. — C.E. Murphy

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

Every time you get angry with yourself for where you are in your process of growth, it's the equivalent of chopping off the head of the rose because it hasn't bloomed yet. Now you have to go through that part of the process again. Anger will set you back every time and slow down your growth. However, self-compassion and self-encouragement are like water and sunshine; they help the growth process happen faster and easier. It's up to you how you want to proceed, but if you can break the habit of getting angry with yourself and replace it with some compassion and encouragement, then you will bloom like you have never bloomed before. — Emily Maroutian

When you're finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you're going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people? — Frank Borman

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

Identifying a potential threat feels curiously good. You're like a gazelle that smells a lion and can't relax until it sees where the lion is. Seeing a lion feels good when the alternative is worse. We seek evidence of threats to feel safe, and we get a dopamine boost when we find what we seek. You can also get a serotonin boost from the feeling of being right, and an oxytocin boost from bonding with those who sense the same threat. This is why people seem oddly pleased to find evidence of doom and gloom. But the pleasure doesn't last because the "do something" feeling commands your attention again. You can end up feeling bad a lot even if you're successful in your survival efforts. — Loretta Graziano Breuning

Now I know that there's no such thing as the truth. That people are constantly misquoted. That news organizations are full of conspiracy (and that, in any case, ineptness is a kind of conspiracy). That emotional detachment and cynicism get you only so far. But for many years I was in love with journalism. I loved the city room. I loved the pack. I loved smoking and drinking scotch and playing dollar poker. I didn't know much about anything, and I was in a profession where you didn't have to. I loved the speed. I loved the deadlines. I loved that you wrapped the fish. You can't make this stuff up, I used to say. — Nora Ephron

You need to up your vocabulary, boy. You can't walk around letting people think you're stupid. Expand your horizons. Besides, it's fun to call people names they have to look up to realize they've been insulted. (Mark)
Yeah, that's a twofer there. You get away with it and then they're twice as mad when they realize how bad you really insulted them. Especially if they mistake it for a compliment when you say it and thank you for it. (Bubba) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Don't care how big they are, boys; they can't do anything if you get 'em up off the ground. — Craig Johnson

Hey, yourself." I beamed at the cheerleading squad's captain and then leaned down to whisper to La La. "What's her name again?"
"Jackie." La La slung her jean satchel on her right shoulder and exhaled noisily. "I can't wait until you get out of your Shapeshifter horny phase."
"The proper name is Season." I drank in Jackie's image as she jumped around, doing a cheer. Those round melons bounced with each movement. "And it usually takes Shifters seven to ten years to mature out of it, so buckle up and enjoy the ride."
La La snorted. — Kenya Wright

When there's evil standing in your way, you got to get around it however you can, Natalie. You got to look it in the eye, let it know you see it and that it can't creep up on you. What's dangerous is pretending it isn't there at all and letting it get closer and closer while you're looking someplace else, until suddenly evil's walking alongside you like you were two friends out for a stroll on Sunday. So you look it in the face. You tell it with your eyes that you know what it is, that it don't have you fooled. You tell it you know what GOOD looks like. — Kate Milford

You can't be afraid to put out a fire if you're a fireman. You can't be afraid to be a police officer and carry a gun if you're afraid to get up and go out there. So you've got to put that fear to the side and go out in faith to overcome that. — Duane Chapman

From the Grapes of Wrath and a woman that would not be moved: 'On'y way you gonna get me to go is whup me.' She moved the jack handle gently again. 'An' I'll shame you, Pa. I won't take no whuppin', cryin' an' a-beggin'. I'll light into you. An' you ain't so sure you can whup me anyways. An' if ya do get me, I swear to God I'll wait till you got your back turned, or you're settin' down, an' I'll knock you belly-up with a bucket. I swear to Holy Jesus' sake I will. — John Steinbeck

Sasha groaned from beside her as he struggled with his belt. "I think I'm going to barf a hairball."
Jess let out a frustrated breath as he tried to loosen himself. "You can't. You're canine."
"Tell that to the hairball in my stomach."
Jess cursed as his hand slipped while he was trying to get loose. "Bet you're glad I made you fasten that seat belt now, aren't you, Mr. I-can-flash-myself-out-if-we-get-hit?"
Sasha groaned. "Shut up, asshole." He glared at Jess. "And I would have flashed out of the car, but because we were rolling, I didn't want to get hit by it. Damn those Rytis laws. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

They got a lot of kids now whose uniforms are so tight, especially the pants, that they cannot bend over to pick up ground balls. And they don't want to bend over in television games because in that way there is no way their face can get on the camera. — Casey Stengel

Yes! Yes. Thank you. I'm on my way right now, so I'll see you later, you know, like, in five minutes. And I'll just wait in the car - you can send them out so we don't take up any more of your time. So say hi to Clark for me, you know, since I might not get a chance to talk to you from the car. But thanks so much for watching the kids for me, and I'll see you later . . . in five."

There was a pause. Then Angela's voice piped up, as enthusiastic as ever.

"Okay, see you later in five!"

Oh great, Becky thought as she jogged back to her car. Now Angela would be using that phrase, convinced it was a real idiom. And it would be all Becky's fault. As if the poor lady didn't have enough communication problems as it was, what with the excessive exclaiming. — Shannon Hale

I don't want to forgive myself. That's why I hate psychoanalysis I think if you're guilty of something you should live with it. Get rid of it - how can you get rid of a real guilt? I think people should live with it, face up to it. — Orson Welles

She's beautiful to look at, she's new, she's clean, and perfectly cut. But then you get up and look closely and see that she's not real. She's a fake. She doesn't glimmer like a natural diamond or hold the beauty and unbreakable strength of a real diamond. She's just a manufactured piece of glass. Not the real deal. And sooner or later, that pig headed owner is gonna realize that fake diamonds can never pass for the real ones, no matter how much you wish they would. — Bink Cummings

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions. You change direction but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn't something that has nothing to do with you, This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand doesn't get in, and walk through it, step by step. There's no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up the sky like pulverized bones. — Haruki Murakami

I was so intimidated by the thought of improvising back in the '80s when I was in Chicago. I think the opportunity only even came up once that I can recall, and I turned down the offer. It was to go improvise in some club in the suburbs or something. Good God, I couldn't think of anything more frightening than to get up there without a plan. — Neil Flynn

Open on three," Minho said. "And guard lady, you try anything or run away, I guarantee one of us will get you. Thomas, you count off." The woman pulled out her key card but said nothing. "One," Thomas began. "Two." He paused, allowed himself a moment to suck in a breath, but before he could yell the last number an alarm started blaring and the lights went out. CHAPTER 14 Thomas blinked rapidly, trying to adjust to the darkness. The alarm rang in shrill, deafening bursts. He sensed Minho stand up, then heard him shuffling about. "The guard's gone!" his friend shouted. "I can't find her! — James Dashner

It's a very easy thing to say, 'Go get a backup quarterback.' Now tell me where to get them. You just can't dial them up. — Bill Parcells

Some girls get swept up in the lifestyle - clubbing and partying with celebrities. You can't live your life like that, though. It's fake. — Gemma Ward

His fingers gouged into my leg harder. "My sister was in that cafeteria," he said. "She saw her friends die, thanks to you and that puke boyfriend of yours. She still has nightmares about it. He got what he deserved, but you got a free pass. That ain't right. You should've died that day, Sister Death. Everyone wishes you would have. Look around. Where is Jessica, if she wants you here so bad? Even the friends you came here with don't want to be with you."
"Let go of me," I said again, pulling on his fingers. But he only pinched tighter.
"Your boyfriend isn't the only one who can get his hands on a gun," he said. Slowly he eased himself up to standing again. He reached into the waistband of his jeans and pulled out something small and dark. He pointed it at me, and when the moonlight hit it, I gasped and pressed myself against the barn wall. — Jennifer Brown

I think, honestly, the film industry is eating up comics characters at such a fast pace, and spewing them out as so much unspeakable, stench-y, crap. I mean, I think people are going to get pretty sick of the comics product of superhero, per se. Super-heroism seems to be so visceral for these times. Nobody needs a big clunky guy to throw cars about. You know, we've got drunks in town here that can do that. We don't need that kind of superhero. What we need is a super-sage. We need a genuine group of wise people. We need to become wise. That's the job of tomorrow; becoming wise, and integrated, and understanding. — Melinda Gebbie

"If it's a outside deal, how will I get my kids back?" Kit asked. "The Cabals have them."
Chloe and Derek's heads both whipped Kit's way.
"You're considering this?" Chloe said.
"I can get them," Dr. Inglis said. "We'll take Corey now, as a gesture of good faith from you. Then I will take Daniel for your son and Maya for your daughter."
"Dad?" Derek said.
Kit didn't answer him. He didn't even look over.
Chloe looked from us to Kit, her blue eyes wide. "Y-you c-can't - "
Derek leaped to his feet. "I won't let you do this, Dad. These kids came to you for help."
I gaped at Derek. Even Chloe looked confused. I might have known the guy for less than twenty-four hours, but short of demonic possession, I couldn't imagine him saying that. — Kelley Armstrong

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

Shut up about Leibniz for a moment, Rudy, because look here: You - Rudy - and I are on a train, as it were, sitting in the dining car, having a nice conversation, and that train is being pulled along at a terrific clip by certain locomotives named The Bertrand Russell and Riemann and Euler and others. And our friend Lawrence is running alongside the train, trying to keep up with us - it's not that we're smarter than he is, necessarily, but that he's a farmer who didn't get a ticket. And I, Rudy, am simply reaching out through the open window here, trying to pull him onto the fucking train with us so that the three of us can have a nice little chat about mathematics without having to listen to him panting and gasping for breath the whole way. — Neal Stephenson

You see, the thing is, if you don't do anything to your face, and you get old, and you can stand up, and you can remember your lines, the work is there. — Judy Parfitt