Can't Read Mind Quotes & Sayings

What is actually happening inside readers as they read? Each reader has a unique emotional response to a story. It's unpredictable, but it's real. Readers read under the influence of their own temperaments, histories, biases, morality, likes, dislikes, and peeves. They make judgments that don't agree with yours. So how can a writer predict, never mind control, what readers feel? Psychological — Donald Maass

When a phone call competes for attention with a real-world conversation, it wins. Everyone knows the distinctive high-and-dry feeling of being abandoned for a phone call, and of having to compensate - with quite elaborate behaviours = for the sudden half-disappearance of the person we were just speaking to. 'Go ahead!' we say. 'Don't mind us! Oh look, here's a magazine I can read!' When the call is over, other rituals come into play, to minimise the disruption caused and to restore good feeling. — Lynne Truss

I certainly don't believe that people can read other people's minds. — Robert Barry

I think the reason why I don't read so much, is because as I have observed, whole books all boil down to a drop of essence. You can read a book full of ten thousand words and at the end, sum it up in one sentence; I am more for the one sentence. I am more for the essence. It's like how you need a truckload of roses to extract one drop of rose oil; I don't want to bother with the truckload of roses because I would rather walk away with the drop of rose oil. So in my mind, I have written two hundred books. Why? Because I have with me two hundred vials with one drop of essence in each! — C. JoyBell C.

I think every book I read changes my life in some way. It still blows my mind that I can sit down and go inside another world that came from someone else's imagination, meet a whole cast of characters and live their lives beside them, in a way that TV and movies can't, and I love TV and movies. The fact that something so powerful can sit inside something so unassuming is too much for my tiny mind to handle. — Lindsey Kelk

I'm a Russian and all I know of Russia is what I've read. I yearn for the broad fields of golden corn and the forests of silver beech that I've read of in books and though I try and try, I can't see them with my mind's eye. I know Moscow from what I've seen of it at the cinema. I sometimes rack my brain to picture to myself a Russian village, the straggling village of log houses with their thatched roofs that you read about in Chekov, and it's no good, I know that what I see isn't that at all. I'm a Russian and I speak my native language worse than I speak English and French. When I read Tolstoi and Dostoievsky it is easier for me to read them in a translation. I'm just as much a foreigner to my own people as I am to the English and French. You who've got a home and a country, people who love you, people whose ways are your ways, whom you understand without knowing them - how can you tell what it is to belong nowhere? — W. Somerset Maugham

Some tips for life: 1.Don't be afraid to follow your dreams, unless your dreams are stupid. 2.Be kind to people. 3.Don't get too excited when you read the Fountainhead 4.In times of recession, it is time for invention. 5.Things can kill you, so keep that in mind, you fearless know it alls. — Eugene Mirman

I love the way he's staring at me. It makes me feel more than just beautiful. I feel like I'm his. Like no one else could possibly compare to me. He doesn't even have to say the words. I see it in his eyes. I can practically read it in his mind. — Krista Ritchie

The Holy Spirit can't remind you of something you never read which is why it's important to memorize scripture. When you have Bible verses inscribed in your mind, you're carrying a concealed weapon to use against the enemy in battle. Find a passage today and begin laying up His words in your heart and in doing so you will be prepared for any trials that will come. — David Jeremiah

One third of the $15 trillion of mortgages in existence in 2008 are owned, or securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae, the Federal Housing and the Veterans Administration. Wall Street buyers of repackaged loans didn't mind buying risky paper because they assumed that they would be guaranteed by the federal government: read bailout from the taxpayers. Today's housing mess can be laid directly at the feet of Congress and the White House. — Walter E. Williams

He can't even be at a casual read and not be creating the whole thing in his mind. I remember feeling very awed about how much he still seems to be so in love with it, and so dedicated to making everything really real and really spontaneous. — Amanda Peet

He looked at me in a way that felt like being touched, like a blind man seeing with his fingers, mapping my bones and skin in his mind. I felt weirdly exposed. Seen.
"It's not what you think," he said.
"What do I think?"
"I'm not that good. I can't read minds."
Then read my body, I thought, but he only smiled.
"Tell me something." He leaned closer, his voice raspy at the edges, charred. "If you hate human connection so much, why come with us?"
Because I don't hate it. I hate how much I need it.
Because you're the ones I was waiting for. — Leah Raeder

Damn, pity I can't bottle him, because I'd make a fortune - after I'd enjoyed him first of course. Her dirty thoughts made her blush even deeper, and she thanked the Dark Lord that the man couldn't read her mind even if her body seemed unable to stop betraying her. — Eve Langlais

Having escaped the Dark Ages in which animals were mere stimulus-response machines, we are free to contemplate their mental lives. It is a great leap forward, the one that Griffin fought for. But now that animal cognition is an increasingly popular topic, we are still facing the mindset that animal cognition can be only a poor substitute of what we humans have. It can't be truly deep and amazing. Toward the end of a long career, many a scholar cannot resist shining a light on human talents by listing all the things we are capable of and animals not. From the human perspective, these conjectures may make a satisfactory read, but for anyone interested, as I am, in the full spectrum of cognitions on our planet, they come across as a colossal waste of time. What a bizarre animal we are that the only question we can ask in relation to our place in nature is "Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest of them all? — Frans De Waal

The reader! You, dogged, uninsultable, print-oriented bastard, it's you I'm addressing, who else, from inside this monstrous fiction. You've read me this far, then? Even this far? For what discreditable motive? How is it you don't go to a movie, watch TV, stare at a wall, play tennis with a friend, make amorous advances to the person who comes to your mind when I speak of amorous advances? Can nothing surfeit, saturate you, turn you off? Where's your shame? — John Barth

[...] what else motivated him to spend hour after hour with me, telling all the details of his story? I quote at length his answer.

"I suffered so much and for so long. Maybe if people read this they will realize that if I can make it,they can make it. Many people suffer only because of what happens in their head; I was also physically being tortured. I had no food. No water. If I can make it so can you. If one depressed person avoids committing suicide then the book is a success.

Be strong. Think positive. If you start to think to the contrary, you are headed to failure. Your mind has to be relaxed as you think about survival. Don't think about death. If you think you are going to die, you will die. You have to survive and think about the future of your life, that life is beautiful! How can you imagine taking your own life? There are challenges and punishment in life but you have to fight! — Jonathan Franklin

Taken together, it's almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right? That's because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD-you're impulsive, can't sit still in the classroom. That's your battlefield reflexes. In a real fight, they'd keep you alive. As for the attention problems, that's because you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal's. — Rick Riordan

The truth is, the one you love isn't a wizard. Just a regular person who can't read your mind at all. — Arini Putri

I often wonder why women have careers,' said Shredded Napkin suddenly, showing his teeth. I don't think he can possibly be saying what I think he's saying. He isn't, of course. Never mind. I'll stand this because Reality is dishing it out and I suppose I ought to learn to adjust to it. Besides, he may be sincere. There is a human being in there. At least he isn't telling me about something he read in the paper on women's liberation and then laughing at it. — Joanna Russ

Wow ... At least I can rest assured that you definitely can't read my mind," I remarked. "Clearly you know nothing about me ... because the surest way to keep me from doing something is to tell me I have no other choice. — M.A. George

You can get lost in you own mind, like you gone to another country. All you thoughts in another language and you can't read the signs even though they everywhere all around you. — Nicola Yoon

The boys still sang their horrible song about Linda. Sometimes, too, they laughed at him for being so ragged. When he tore his clothes, Linda did not know how to mend them. In the Other Place, she told him, people threw away clothes with holes in them and got new ones. "Rags, rags!" the boys used to shout at him. "But I can read," he said to himself, "and they can't. They don't even know what reading is." It was fairly easy, if he thought hard enough about the reading, to pretend that he didn't mind when they made fun of him. He asked Linda to give him the book again.
The more the boys pointed and sang, the harder he read. — Aldous Huxley

Do you see why I avoid humans, ma cherie? They are silly, exasperating creatures.
You like him.You can't hide it from me, even if you try to hide it from yourself. Invite him home.
Not for all the trees on this earth.
I want to meet him.
Savannah. She was up to no good, he was certain of it. Gregori's hand went to the back of his neck, massaging deeply. What I should do is scare the holy hell out of him so he will get over this nonsense.
"So,are you?" Gary asked.
"Am I what?" Gregori was distracted. Why had he ever talked to this fool in the first place? Because Savannah was making him crazy. Savannah had made him do something dumb. He had read Gary's mind and found him to be an interesting, likeable person.
Don't blame me. She sounded innocent. — Christine Feehan

This small encounter had a disproportionately large effect on me. I saw myself in relief, separate and distinct from the others in the class, and even though he didn't speak to me in that way for a long time, I began to regard Professor Rose as a secret ally. This transformation took place gradually, and I can't say whether it existed solely in my mind or whether he was responsible for it. I know that I started to look forward to seeing him on Tuesdays, that his face was pleasing, his severity undercut by humor, and that I read the assigned books with new zeal. — Siri Hustvedt

At difficult times of my life, books have been an incredible comfort. When I was 12, I changed schools and my parents split up. It was then that I became addicted to reading. A great writer can attach themselves to your mind and heart, and you feel you understand the world better. As long as you have the capacity to read, you needn't be alone any more. I remember thinking as a child, "If I could give one person the comfort I keep getting from books, then I want to write." — Elliot Perlman

Listen closely. There's a remote possibility that you might learn something: First, I don't give a damn if my work is commercial or not ... I'm the writer. If what I write is good, then people will read it. That's why literature exists. An author puts his heart and guts on the page. For your information, a good novel can change the world. Keep that in mind before you attempt to sit down at a typewriter. Never waste time on something you don't believe in yourself. — John Fante

Why should I have to ask you? You're a grown man! You should just know!
And there it is, kiddies. The Famous Female Mind Fuck.
That's short for: If you can't read their minds? You're fucked — Emma Chase

Sometimes touring can warp reality because you're never in one place long enough to get a feel for it. You don't interact with people long enough to know what real life is. That's why a lot of artists write songs about longing and missing people when they're on the road. I do my best to keep my mind open and I read a lot when I'm on tour, so I hope I have good things to write about. I'm constantly in the songwriting process. — Jason Mraz

The deep-read is when you get gut-hooked and dragged overboard down and down through the maze of print and find, to your amazement, you can breathe down there after all and there's a whole other world. I'm talking about the kind of reading when you realize that books are indeed interactive ... I'm talking about the kind of deep-read where it isn't just the plot or the characters that matter, but the words and the way they fit together and the meandering evanescent thoughts you think between the lines: the kind of reading where you are fleetingly aware of your own mind at work. — Tim Wynne-Jones

Describing good relatedness to someone, no matter how precisely or how often, does not inscribe it into the neural networks that inspire love. Self-help books are like car repair manuals: you can read them all day, but doing so doesn't fix a thing. Working on a car means rolling up your sleeves and getting under the hood, and you have to be willing to get dirt on your hands and grease beneath your fingernails. Overhauling emotional knowledge is no spectator sport; it demands the messy experience of yanking and tinkering that comes from a limbic bond. If someone's relationship today bear a troubled imprint, they do so because an influential relationship left its mark on a child's mind. When a limbic connection has established a neural pattern, it takes a limbic connection to revise it. (177) — Thomas Lewis

But I can't make up my mind yet which to marry," wrote Phil. "I do wish you had come with me to decide for me. Some one will have to. When I saw Alec my heart gave a great thump and I thought, 'He might be the right one.' And then, when Alonzo came, thump went my heart again. So that's no guide, though it should be, according to all the novels I've ever read. Now, Anne, YOUR heart wouldn't thump for anybody but the genuine Prince Charming, would it? There must be something radically wrong with mine. But I'm having a perfectly gorgeous time. How I wish you were here! — L.M. Montgomery

You can be someone's friend and have sex with them. The trick is you have to want their emotional and physical well-being more than you want to fuck them. If you cross that line and want sex more than their happiness, then you aren't their friend. — Laurell K. Hamilton

I half believe him, but I can't risk being wrong based on a gut feeling. [ ... ]
"What do you want me to do?" Jack throws up his hands. "If I could crack open my skull and let you read my brain like a book, I would!"
My breath catches in my throat. Because I ... I could read his brain like a book. — Beth Revis

People say that you can't change people's minds with a movie or book, but how do they get formed in the first place? They get formed by what we see and read. In a certain way, movies are ahead of their times. People make them and don't really know if the audience will respond to them. Once in a while, they do. — Thom Andersen

One evening, after he'd read a piece about yet another savagery in Bosnia, I saw there were tears in his eyes. 'Don't it ever stop?' he said. 'I can mind Father telling that there'd be no more wars, not after his one. It shames me. It shames all of us. What's the good in reading, if that's all there is to read about? — Michael Morpurgo

[I]t is easy to regard the mind and the body as two slaves trained to obey the imperial soul ... [I]n this trinity of soul, mind, and body, it is sometimes hard to tell which of the three is at work; and the personality of each of the three parties interferes a good deal with that of each of the others. But if you who read will remember that you are an infinite child of God, and can partake of his nature, and that you have given to you the management and direction of your mind and your body, you will be saved many failures. — Edward Everett Hale

North Koreans have two stories running in their heads at all times, like trains on parallel tracks. One is what you are taught to believe; the other is what you see with your own eyes. It wasn't until I escaped to South Korea and read a translation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four that I found a word for this peculiar condition: doublethink. This is the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in your mind at the same time - and somehow not go crazy. This "doublethink" is how you can shout slogans denouncing capitalism in the morning, then browse through the market in the afternoon to buy smuggled South Korean cosmetics. It — Yeonmi Park

You don't just have people who wake up in the morning and say, "What evil things can I do today, because I'm Mr. Evil?" People do things for what they think are justified reasons. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and you have to keep that in mind. If you read a lot of history, as I do, even the worst and most monstrous people thought they were the good guys. We're all very tangled knots. — George R R Martin

I don't see the use of reading the same thing over and over again,' said Phillip. 'That's only a laborious form of idleness.'
But are you under the impression that you have so great a mind that you can understand the most profound writer at a first reading?'
I don't want to understand him, I'm not a critic. I'm not interested in him for his sake but for mine.'
Why do you read then?'
Partly for pleasure, because it's a habit and I'm just as uncomfortable if I don't read as if I don't smoke, and partly to know myself. When I read a book I seem to read it with my eyes only, but now and then I come across a passage, perhaps only a phrase, which has a meaning for me, and it becomes part of me; I've got out of the book all that's any use to me and I can't get anythning more if I read it a dozen times ... — W. Somerset Maugham

I'm convinced women actually think they can read minds. Like when a woman goes, "I can tell you don't want to hang out with me today." And you're like, "What are you talking about? I actually do!" — Steve Zahn

I'm a human being and I've got thoughts and secrets and bloody life inside me that he doesn't know is there, and he'll never know what's there because he's stupid. I suppose you'll laugh at this, me saying the governor's a stupid bastard when I know hardly how to write and he can read and write and add-up like a professor. But what I say is true right enough. He's stupid, and I'm not, because I can see further into the likes of him than he can see into the likes of me. — Alan Sillitoe

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I've heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures' myths, and maybe that was true. I don't know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.
Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others - even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it's human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight. — N.K. Jemisin

If you're frustrated because you're not getting what you want, stop for a second: Have you actually flat-out asked for it? If you haven't, stop complaining. You can't expect the world to read your mind. You have to put it out there, and sometimes putting it out there is as simple as just saying, Hey, can I have that? — Sophia Amoruso

Too fast?" she asked. Had he read her mind, or did he share her concerns?
"Can't tell. It moves like it moves. The trick is to make the in-between time quick, but draw out every moment like this"
he leaned down, kissed her again, proving the point by keeping the kiss going long enough she was breathless when he was done
"so it feels like the kind of forever you want. Then you have no regrets. — Joey W. Hill

But knowing the difficulties didn't make Tuesday's lack of focus easier for me. When Tuesday was distracted, I felt unsure. In the years ahead, I learned to read his reactions. I knew when his mind was wandering, when he was merely interested in something (Squirrel! Urine-smelling tree!), and when he was alert to possible danger. Knowing Tuesday's mood calmed my mind, because I could trust his vigilance. Today, I can walk down the street distracted and carefree because I have faith Tuesday will alert me to danger. In those early months, before I'd learn to trust his instincts, Tuesday's greatest contribution was his presence. He was my point man, walking slightly ahead of me, symbolically leading the way. He was a buffer against the world, but also a diversion. If they were going to look at me, most people looked at Tuesday first, and that was a relief. — Luis Carlos Montalvan

I read because one life isn't enough, and in the page of a book I can be anybody;
I read because the words that build the story become mine, to build my life;
I read not for happy endings but for new beginnings; I'm just beginning myself, and I wouldn't mind a map;
I read because I have friends who don't, and young though they are, they're beginning to run out of material;
I read because every journey begins at the library, and it's time for me to start packing;
I read because one of these days I'm going to get out of this town, and I'm going to go everywhere and meet everybody, and I want to be ready. — Richard Peck

Really? Well, you'd definitely be interested in the fact that I just read To Kill A Mockingbird."
I smiled and elbowed him. "Everyone's read that."
I've read it five times."
Nu-uh."
Yep. I can even quote parts of it."
That's bullpoopie."
And then Stark, my big, bad, macho Warrior raised his voice, put on a little girl's Southern drawl, and said, "'Uncle Jack? What's a whore-lady?'"
I do not think that's the most important quote from that book," I said, but laughed anyway.
Okay, how about: 'Ain't no snot-nosed slut of a schoolteacher ever born c'n make me do nothin.!' That one's really my favorite."
You got a twisted mind, James Stark. — Kristin Cast

I Couldn't Look Straight In HER Eyes As I Already Know SHE Can Read My Eyes Without Reading My Lips ... — Muhammad Imran Hasan

Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust. — Italo Calvino

And this, even more wonderful and mysterious, is also true: when I read it, when I read what Julie's written, she is instantly alive again, whole and undamaged. With her words in my mind while I'm reading, she is as real as I am. Gloriously daft, drop-dead charming, full of bookish nonsense and foul language, brave and generous. She's right here. Afraid and exhausted, alone, but fighting. Flying in silver moonlight in a plane that can't be landed, stuck in the climb - alive, alive, ALIVE. — Elizabeth Wein

If this is how it's going to be -you getting all broody and distracted every time you fall in lust with somebody -well, I haven't the stomach for it. I won't put up with it, not for a dukedom. Not for three dukedoms. I deserve better than the role of a quietly accepting wife. I'm an interesting woman. I read. I have opinions. I appreciate poetry. I have a sense of humor."
"I know all that. I've always known."
"I deserve to be loved, truly loved -mind, body and soul. And in case you haven't noticed, there's a line of men ready to give me all that. Why on earth should I settle for a man who can't give me anything but friendship. Why should I settle for you? — Loretta Chase

So, Azalee - " When he turned to her, she stared daggers back - almost as though she had read his mind. Can Chertzes do that? he wondered in a wild moment of panic.

"What?" bit Azalee when he didn't continue.

Mighty Zeus, could he go five minutes without offending a woman? — Deidre Huesmann

You'll get in," Quince assures me, proving once again that he can read my mind, even without a magical bond. "And if you don't," he adds, slinging an arm around my shoulders, "you can always take over for me at the lumberyard."
"Ha ha," I reply, sending a sharp elbow into his ribs.
"Lighten up, princess. — Tera Lynn Childs

And I can't read your mind either, just your face. — Kim Harrison

Perhaps, just perhaps, we can't read singular verses or chapters in a vacuum; perhaps we can't read letters written to specific people with specific situations in mind in a specific context and then apply them, broad-brush, to the whole of humanity or the church or even our own small selves. Perhaps we need wisdom, insight. We need the Holy Spirit. Perhaps we need Jesus as our best and clearest lens; we need all of Scripture, too. After all, Jesus is the Word of God incarnate. — Sarah Bessey

Dinosaurs are the jumper cables to the human mind. Kids can't curb their enthusiasm when they're in a hall of dinosaurs and mammoths and mammoth hunters and trilobites and giant fish that could chomp up a shark. These natural objects in motion and context make kids want to read; you can't stop them from reading and thinking. — Robert T. Bakker

Alice likes to swing as high as she can. At the schoolyard on the big swings there, I think maybe she's going to go all the way over the top. I can read her mind when she swings. I know she's thinking about jumping out and flying away when she swings that high. Flying to California. She doesn't say anything about it. — Jan Strnad

Isn't it hard to maintain an argument when you can read each other's mind? — Jonathan Stroud

As if he could read her mind, Chad chose that very moment to look up from his What to Expect book.
"Says here some women get really horny when they're pregnant," he said, waggling his eyebrows with a shit-eating grin.
"It does not!" Jennie said, feeling two hot spots form on her cheeks.
How does he know?
"Does too. They don't phrase it that way, but that's essentially it. Anything you need help with, Jennie? Any cravings I can take care of for you?" Chad laughed as he leaned in suggestively.
"Gah! — Lori Ryan

If only you'd remember before ever you sit down to write that you've been a reader long before you were ever a writer. You simply fix that fact in your mind, then sit very still and ask yourself, as a reader, what piece of writing in all the world Buddy Glass would most want to read if he had his heart's choice. The next step is terrible, but so simple I can hardly believe it as I write it. You just sit down shamelessly and write the thing yourself. I won't even underline that. It's too important to be underlined. — J.D. Salinger

What, you can read Lucifer's mind now?" I asked. "No, he sent me a message on Facebook," Beezle said. "I don't even want to know what Lucifer is doing on Facebook," I said. "Reposting pictures, like everyone else," he said. — Christina Henry

No one can command over the images of your mind but an Author can and if you won't believe on me then read my book. — Prakhar Srivastav

The truth is that I've never cared anything about sports. In PE, I do my best to get hit with the dodgeball on the first throw so I can sit out and read instead of play. I'd rather eat a hot dog at a baseball game than play baseball. I'd rather paint a soccer ball than kick one. I don't mind running, but only if I'm running towards something wonderful. i don't see the point in running away from anything, ever. -Felicity Pickle — Natalie Lloyd

Remember ...
Keystrokes are hammer taps. Get words on paper. Don't worry about connections, character or plot. Work for an hour. Promise yourself an hour. Do nothing else but move your fingers. Make coarse shapes. Follow any emotion that pops up but never impose emotion, never fake it, and don't make up your mind or your heart ahead of time. Understand you don't know what you're doing. That's why you're here. Rough it out. Anything goes. You can decide later what any piece of text looks like, what it might mean. Don't stop. Don't question. Don't quit. Don't stop to read what you wrote. Move your fingers. You mind will have no other option but to keep up. Remember that writer's block is merely the cold marble waiting for the chisel to heat up. — Bob Thurber

If you are thinking, you can't understand Zen. Anything that can be written in a book, anything that can be said - all this is thinking ... but if you read with a mind that has cut off all thinking, then Zen books, sutras and Bibles are all the truth. So is the barking of a dog or the crowing of a rooster. All things are teaching you at every moment, and these sounds are even better teaching than Zen books. — Seungsahn

Because you don't learn anything unless you can find the patience to read. TV takes that away from you. It robs you from your mind. — Markus Zusak

And spare me the jokes about scoring."
"Dammit, woman, you read my mind," he said. "Is there no filthy wordplay you can't forsee?"
"It's my special magical power. I can read your mind when you're thinking dirty thoughts."
"So, ninety-five percent of the time. — Cassandra Clare

Marriage is a pretty amazing thing when you think about it. For two people to live together for so long under the same roof is a big accomplishment. Fifty-year anniversaries are becoming extinct, yet again proving that long marriages deserve awards and praise. Sometimes I see old people in restaurants sitting together eating their meals and I watch them. Sometimes it makes me sad. They don't even talk. Is it because they have nothing else to say, or can they simply read each other's mind by now? — Jenny McCarthy

Oh, he's not like that," said Favonius.
Jason flinched. "You can read my mind?"
"I don't need to." Favonius tossed his bronze hoop in the air. "Everyone has the wrong impression of Cupid ... until they meet him. — Rick Riordan

Ugh! Why can't you just read my mind already? It's so inconvenient to be a mental mute! ~Bella — Stephenie Meyer

Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him. — Robert A. Heinlein

I don't need my heart anymore, you can have it. Cut it out, put it in a box, bury it in the hard ground, next to you. My eyes are useless too. They only show me a world without you. Color blind, color absent, colorless. And my mind screams, Not fair! Not right. Not what I was promised on the swing set as you pushed me toward the sun. None of the stories you read me schooled me for this. I didn't learn this lesson in the moon, or on the train, or as a thing to be curious about. So I don't need my heart anymore, you can have it. Let it be buried, in the hard ground, next to you. — Catherine McKenzie

I don't know where dreams come from. Sometimes I wonder if they're genetic memories, or messages from something divine. Warnings perhaps. Maybe we do come with an instruction booklet but we're too dense to read it, because we've dismissed it as the irrational waste product of the 'rational' mind. Sometimes I think all the answers we need are buried in our slumbering subconscious, int he dreaming. The booklet right there, and ever night when we lay our heads down on the pillow it flips open. The wise read it, heed it. The rest of us try as hard as we can upon awakening to forget any disturbing revelations we might have found there. — Karen Marie Moning

I can read a newspaper article, and it might trigger something else in my mind. I often like to choose in historical fiction things or subject matter I don't feel have been given a fair shake in history. — Kathryn Lasky

Newsflash, ladies: We can't read your thoughts. And frankly, I'm not entirely sure I'd want to. The female mind is a scary place to be. — Emma Chase

You have no reason to be sorry for anything, ma petite."
Her clenched fist lay over his heart, the three diamonds in her palm. "You think I can't read your body? Feel the heaviness in your mind as you try to shield me? I can't change who I am, not even for you. I know I'm failing you, causing you discomfort."
A slow smile curved his mouth. Discomfort. Now,there was a word for it. His hand crushed her hair, ran it through his fingers. "I have never asked you to change, nor would I want you to. You seem to forget that I know you better than anyone. I can handle you."
She turned her head so that he could see the silver stars flashing in her blue eyes, a smoldering warning. "You are so arrogant,Gregori, it makes me want to throw things.Do you hear yourself? Handle me? Ha! I try to say I'm sorry for failing you, and you act the lord of the manor. Being born centuries ago when women were chattel does not give you an excuse. — Christine Feehan

You fall in love with someone not because he's nice to you or can read your mind but because, when he kisses you, your knees weaken, or because you can't stop looking at his skin or at the way his legs, inside his jeans, shape the fabric. — Charles Baxter

She smiled. "I don't know. I wonder sometimes, too. Then you touch my face with your scarred hand and read my mind. Your eyes know me. That's why I keep following you all over the realm, barefoot or half-frozen, cursing the sun or the wind, or myself because I have no more sense than to love a man who does not even possess a bed I can crawl into at night. And sometimes I curse you because you have spoken my name in a way that no other man in the realm will speak it, and I will listen for that until I die. So," she added, as he gazed down at her mutely, "how can I leave you?" He — Patricia A. McKillip

Hey, if you don't want to tell me, don't. But I can tell when you lie."
Ok, that was super creepy. "You can?"
He smiled grimly down at the dirty dishwater. "Nope. But see? You fell for it anyway. Careful, or I'll read your mind with my incredible vampire superpowers. — Rachel Caine

Tell me, have you been blessed, and I use the term advisedly, with progeny?'
'Children?'
'Yes.'
'I have-'
'Don't. At our age they're not worth it.'
'I-'
'I'm talking from experience.'
'I don't doubt it,' says Poppy.
'Stone foetuses, all of them.'
And Poppy, astonished, seems to know what this strange woman is talking about. It's what she has too. A fossil of grief that will never go away.
Yes, thinks Ava in return, she knows what I'm on about. We can read each other's mind. — Mark O'Flynn

There are a few books I have read that I've never been the same after, and I think all good writing somehow addresses the concern of and acts as an anodyne against loneliness. We're all terribly, terribly lonely. And there's a way, at least in prose fiction, that can allow you to be intimate with the world and with a mind and with characters that you just can't be in the real world.
I don't know what you're thinking. I don't know that much about you as I don't know that much about my parents or my lover or my sister, but a piece of fiction that's really true allows you to be intimate with ... I don't want to say people, but it allows you to be intimate with a world that resembles our own in enough emotional particulars so that the way different things must feel is carried out with us into the real world.
I think what I would like my stuff to do is make people less lonely. — David Foster Wallace

She thinks: A gift is a gift; you don't get to choose, whether it be a secret kept, a polite falsehood, a book you've already read, or a sweater that does not fit. You open it, you open your mind, you do not think about how you might use it or whether indeed it is any use to you. You understand that the giver is giving you what she can, that she is doing her best.
You say thank you. — Carrie Snyder

You can never get to a person's mind. You cannot know the different deeds and missions of happiness; you can't tell a screm of pleasure from one of pain. Sometimes, we can barely read pain. Neither a barometer nor a guide, pain can mislead us. Even in the body, the laws of chain reactions can be false. This is why people always want a second opinion. — Ibi Kaslik

Today was the absolute worst day ever
And don't try to convince me that
There's something good in every day
Because, when you take a closer look,
This world is a pretty evil place.
Even if
Some goodness does shine through once in a while
Satisfaction and happiness don't last.
And it's not true that
It's all in the mind and heart
Because
True happiness can be obtaind
Only if one's surroundings are good
It's not true that good exists
I'm sure you can agree that
The reality
Creates
My attitude
It's all beyond my control
And you'll never in a million years hear me say that
Today was a good day

(read from bottom up for a different perspective) — Unknown

The bosses can't read your mind, so I think women should tell them what they want out of their careers. — Ainsley Earhardt

Twilight is the first series of books I've ever read. I didn't get into the Harry Potter series, even though I love the movies. Twilight really caught my attention and held it. I'm really excited to see the book adapted to film and excited that our band gets to be a part of the phenomenon. I chose the title "Decode" because the song is about the building tension, awkwardness, anger and confusion between Bella and Edward. Bella's mind is the only one which Edward can't read and I feel like that's a big part of the first book and one of the obstacles for them to overcome. It's one added tension that makes the story even better. — Hayley Williams

only as idiocy! I hope that you will write to tell me along what curves your mind is moving. For my own part I feel that we are on the verge of amazing things. Long ago I fell back on books as the only permanent consolers. They are the one stainless and unimpeachable achievement of the human race. It saddens me to think that I shall have to die with thousands of books unread that would have given me noble and unblemished happiness. I will tell you a secret. I have never read King Lear, and have purposely refrained from doing so. If I were ever very ill I would only need to say to myself "You can't die yet, you haven't read Lear." That would bring me round, I know it would. You — Christopher Morley

You can't come in without an invitation."
He leans a shoulder against Alison's framed photo of a wheat field at harvest. "That so?" His boot heel nudges the door behind him, shutting out the storm and the scent of rain. "Last I checked, I wasn't a vampire," he says, his voice low.
My fists clench tighter, and I step backward onto the line of carpet that borders the edge of the living room. "You sure have a lot in common with one."
"Because I suck?"
"More proof. You just read my mind. — A.G. Howard

How do text messages make you feel existential?
I start thinking about exactly that: how people can edit a thought before sending it out to the world. They can make themselves seem more well spoken than they are, or funnier, smarter. I start thinking that no one in the world is who they say the are, then my mind goes to how I also edit myself, not just online but in real life, except for those rare instances like right now where I'm ranting- even though that's a lie because I've had this train of thought before and damned if I didn't tweak it in my head a few times to make it sound better- and then my mind starts racing so furiously I can't control my thoughts, and I start thinking about robots and wondering if I'm even a real person. — Adi Alsaid

In its silence, a book is a challenge: it can't lull you with surging music or deafen you with screeching laugh tracks or fire gunshots in your living room; you have to listen to it in your head. A book won't move your eyes for you the way images on a screen do. It won't move your mind unless you give it your mind, or your heart unless you put your heart in it ... To read a story well is to follow it, to act it, to feel it, to become it
everything short of writing it, in fact. Reading is not interactive with a set of rules or options, as games are; reading is actual collaboration with the writer's mind. No wonder not everyone is up to it. — Ursula K. Le Guin

[...] He didn't want his wife to read historical romances because it might give her unrealistic expectations. [...] If I had been him, I would have been reading your books every time you laid them down to see how I could improve my skills and please you. Second warning of the night. I bought a couple."
You bought a couple of what?"
Historical romances. I'm three-quarters through the first one." He flashed her a slow grin. "All I can say is, I like the way your mind works."
~Jake Coulter and Molly Wells — Catherine Anderson

You know, when I was little, my dad told me that if I misbehaved, he'd send me to live with a witch who ate children.'

'Really?'

She nods. 'I was so afraid of the witch. Feelings are magnified when you're young, I think, and the fear can stay with you for a long time. I eventually grew out of the fear but even now when I read something with a witch, my mind always traces back to that story. Isn't that weird?'

'How'd you grow out of it?' I ask. 'The fear?'

She takes a long moment to answer. 'I read lots and lots of books about witches. — Stephanie Oakes

You can read minds, and you didn't tell me?" Link stared at me like he just found out I was the Silver Surfer. He rubbed his head nervously. "Hey, man, all that stuff about Lena? I was yankin' your chain." He looked away. "Are you doin' it now? You're doin' it, aren't you? Dude, get out of my head." He backed away from me and into the bookshelf.
"I can't read your mind, you idiot. — Kami Garcia

Remember this: a simple pen is much more swift and much more precise than a camera. That's my advice to both beginning and experienced authors: don't write with a camera. A camera is slow. All these modern writers usually make the same mistake - they write books with a film in mind. When you read their works, you don't hear the voice of a real author, you hear that horribly cheesy Hollywood voice-over. Frankly, that's not a novel, it's a movie script. If you write books, use a pen. A pen is swift, it has tempo, you can kill people with it. You cannot kill people with a camera, you can only perhaps bore them to death with it. — Martijn Benders

They must talk to each other directly, Ender, mind to mind. What one thinks, another can also think; what one remembers, another can also re-member. Why would they ever develop language? Why would they ever learn to read and write? How would they know what reading and writing were if they saw them? Or signals? Or numbers? Or anything that we use to communicate? This isn't just a matter of translating from one language to another. They don't have a language at all. We used every means we could think of to communicate with them, but they don't even have the machinery to know we're signaling. And maybe they've been trying to think to us, and they can't understand why we don't respond. — Orson Scott Card

Dellosso's cleverly plotted second Jed Patrick novel (after 2015's Centralia) finds the Afghan war vet hiding with his wife, Karen, and their eight-year-old daughter, Lilly, in a cabin in the Idaho wilderness. Two months earlier, two CIA agents gave him a thumb drive containing "every damaging piece of information about the Centralia Project," the exposure of which threatens to cause a "scandal that would be talked and read about for decades to come." Then one day Jed returns to the cabin to find Karen in tears. She tells him that three armed men burst into the cabin asking for the thumb drive, but she didn't know where it was. The men took Lilly, and vowed they would return for Karen. More shocks follow. Meanwhile, CIA technician Tiffany Stockton discovers a plot to control Jed's mind in a sophisticated update of The Manchurian Candidate. Can she stop him from becomes an unwilling assassin? Dellosso expertly misdirects readers, but they should be prepared for only serviceable prose. — Publishers Weekly

The truth is that we won't receive the support we need until we ask for it. Just because we can do it all doesn't mean we should. And when we don't speak up about our needs, we're asking our loved ones to read our minds - and then we resent them when they fail our test. By not being open and honest about the support we need, we're selling ourselves short and setting our relationships up for failure. — Jessica Ortner

I can't read Mason & Dixon, since my mind's so shitty, I can't process it! — Glenn Beck

Would you mind getting off that fly paper and giving the flies a chance?"
"Ahhh, you can't trick me! Flies don't read papers! — Groucho Marx

I just can't find the time to write my mind the way I want it to read. — Wilco