Clippings Quotes & Sayings

In the middle to late 1970s, when Putin joined the KGB, the secret police, like all Soviet institutions, was undergoing a phase of extreme bloating. Its growing number of directorates and departments were producing mountains of information that had no clear purpose, application, or meaning. An entire army of men and a few women spent their lives compiling newspaper clippings, transcripts of tapped telephone conversations, reports of people followed and trivia learned, and all of this made its way to the top of the KGB pyramid, and then to the leadership of the Communist Party, largely unprocessed and virtually unanalyzed. — Masha Gessen

You should never fall in love with your own press clippings, because it is very much the nature of the beast that the same journalists who build you up between Monday and Friday tear you down for weekend fun ... My family's habit of living in the past seems to me pathological, even dangerous. If all greatness lies in the past, what is the point of the future? — Stephen L. Carter

They believed that if a mouse found your hair clippings and built a nest with them you got a headache. If the nest was big enough, you might go mad. — Jeanette Winterson

Together and separately, we as speakers disproved another description used to disqualify feminists: that we were all "whitemiddleclass," a phrase used by the media then (and academics who believe those media clippings now) as if it were a single adjective to describe the women's movement. In fact, the first-ever nationwide poll of women's opinions on issues of gender equality showed that African American women were twice as likely as white women to support them.8 If the poll had included Latinas, Asian Americans, Native Americans, — Gloria Steinem

Perhaps that is what made me sick with weary nausea. Here was no principle good or bad, no direction. These blowzy women, with their little hats and their clippings, hungered for attention. They wanted to be admired. They simpered in happy, almost innocent triumph when they were applauded. Theirs was the demented cruelty of egocentric children, and somehow this made their insensate beastliness much more heart-breaking. These were not mothers, not even women. They were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience. The — John Steinbeck

When you write non-fiction, you sit down at your desk with a pile of notebooks, newspaper clippings, and books and you research and put a book together the way you would a jigsaw puzzle. — Janine Di Giovanni

Now, as husbands go, I have to admit I did all right. Joe is unquestionably handsome, doesn't leave ragged toenail clippings scattered about the house, and has never once, in nearly five thousand days of togetherness, left the toilet seat up. — Jenna McCarthy

I have watched enough cheesy detective television shows in my young life to know that when one is presented with an inexplicable mystery, the first order of business (after procuring good donuts and coffee - check) is to create a wall of clues with photos of suspects and article clippings, preferably in an artistic yet seemingly random fashion. — J. Lincoln Fenn

Since my adolescence I have read two and sometimes three newspapers a day, frequently clipping an article that for obscure and soon forgotten reasons attracts me. I usually toss the clippings into a desk drawer, and later, often years later, I'll find myself reading through the clippings, throwing most of them out. It fills me with a strange sadness, a kind of grief for my lost self, as if I were reading and throwing out old diaries. — Russell Banks

A lot of people are like, 'Don't read your news clippings.' I read them every day. Anything negative somebody said about me, I find it and use it as fuel. — Richard Sherman

Stem cells are like toenail clippings with a better career plan. — Scott Adams

I don't watch myself on TV, I don't read the news clippings about me, so when people come up and say, 'What about that story last week?' I go, 'I didn't even know there was.' — Jay Kay

If you need to know history, the real story of those before you, then you should go to the library and read newspaper clippings of someone like Muhammad Ali every day, then it might giver you some understanding of the man. — Alex Haley

Writing is a habit, an addiction, as powerful and overmastering an urge as putting a bottle to your lips or a spike in your arm. Call it the impulse to make something out of nothing, call it an obsessive-compulsive disorder, call it logorrhea. Have you been in a bookstore lately? Have you seen what these authors are doing, the mountainous piles of the flakes of themselves they're leaving behind, like the neatly labeled jars of shit, piss, and toenail clippings one of John Barth's characters bequeathed to his wife, the ultimate expression of his deepest self? — T.C. Boyle

I don't have time for the news clippings. I got my own mission. — Nas

When I was racing, I had learned that you can't set stock in public adoration or your press clippings. By the time I was 26, I'd heard crowds of 100,000 scream my name, but a week later they couldn't remember who I was. You're a hero today and a bum tomorrow - hero to zero, I sometimes say. — Eddie Rickenbacker

Before the 21st century, stories became popular because people talked about them in other publications or shared magazine and newspaper clippings with friends. — Annalee Newitz

They exchanged notes, like children. My grandfather made his out of newspaper clippings and dropped them in her woven baskets, into which he knew only she would dare stick a hand. Meet me under the wooden bridge and I will show you things you have never, ever seen. The "M" was taken from the army that would take his mother's life: GERMAN FRONT ADVANCES ON SOVIET BORDER; the "eet" from their approaching warships: NAZI FLEET DEFEATS FRENCH AT LESACS; the "me" from the peninsula they were blue-eyeing: GERMANS SURROUND CRIMEA; the "und" from too little, too late: AMERICAN WAR FUNDS REACH ENGLAND; the "er" from the dog of dogs: HITLER RENDERS NONAGGRESSION PACT INOPERATIVE ... and so on, and so on, each note a collage of love that could never be, and a war that could — Jonathan Safran Foer

Unload your perishable and empty boxes. Give away old clothes and broken cookware. Crush the empty cans and load them with the yellow newspapers. Shred the sensitive documents. Discard fingernail clippings. Get rid of those photograph and letters. Offload the old enemies. A lighter life, at any price. — Amelia Gray

What level of personal are we talking about?" she mumbled. "I don't mind discussing my periods in graphic detail, but I'm probably going to stay quiet about the jar of fingernail clippings I carry with me at all times. — Darcy Coates

I saw them in the dark, the girls, the women yet to be found. I counted their faces, gave them names and said the names, as if calling a class register. Here's what I learnt from the clippings: that there is a pattern. These women had requested assistance. They'd told people: Someone is watching me, has been following me, has beaten me up before, has promised me he will kill me. They'd pointed their murderers out, and they had been told "It won't happen," or that nothing could be done, because of this and that, etc. I was jumpy in those days, expecting something terrible to happen to me at any moment, without knowing where it would happen to me, or why, or who would do it. — Helen Oyeyemi

The words written down are dirty, carefully and selectedly filthy. But there was something far worse here than dirt, a kind of frightening witches' Sabbath. Here was no spontaneous cry of anger, of insane rage. Perhaps that is what made me sick with weary nausea. Here was no principle good or bad, no direction. These blowzy women, with their little hats and their clippings, hungered for attention. They wanted to be admired. They simpered in happy, almost innocent triumph when they were applauded. Theirs was the demented cruelty of egocentric children, and somehow this made their insensate beastliness much more heart-breaking. These were not mothers, not even women. They were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience. — John Steinbeck

He thought of how convincingly he could describe this scene to friends and make them envy the fullness of his contentment. Why couldn't he convince himself? He had everything he'd ever wanted. He had wanted superiority
and for the last year he had been the undisputed leader of his profession. He had wanted fame
and he had five thick albums of clippings. He had wanted wealth
and he had enough to insure luxury for the rest of his life. He had everything anyone ever wanted. How many people struggled and suffered to achieve what he had achieved? How many dreamed and bled and died for this, without reaching it? — Ayn Rand

Vol picks up the cup of tea in both hands and takes a long sip. Mm, grass-clippings. Her favourite. — Nenia Campbell

However small your garden, you must provide for two of the serious gardener's necessities, a tool shed and a compost heap. A wire bin takes up negligible space and can be concealed by shrubs, or you can make a small pit into which you sweep leaves and clippings, but try not to fall into it. — Ann Scott

I said, "Who are you really? Why are you giving people money?"
"Everybody wants money," she said, as if it were self-evident. "It makes them happy. It will make you happy, if you let it." We had come out by the heap of grass clippings, behind the circle of green grass that we called the fairy ring: sometimes, when the weather was wet, it filled with vivid yellow toadstools. — Neil Gaiman

The proud man counts his newspaper clippings, the humble man his blessings. — Fulton J. Sheen

I feel like she could drown me in a spoonful of water or crush me with her fingernail clippings. I realize I have no chance. — Zoe Trope

This was probably my biggest mistake: to think that the truth could be captured externally and simply with one's eyes, to imagine a truth exists which can be grasped at once and thereafter remain still and at peace, just like a statue, a truth which contracts and expands depending on the temperature, a truth which eventually erodes, not only modifying the surrounding space but subtly altering thhe composition of the ground on which it stands, shedding minute particles of marble, just as we shed hairs, nail clippings, saliva and the words we speak. — Jose Saramago

The delay in the application of the policy to books has several explanations. For one thing, Blackshirts were not, nor have they yet become, bookworms; and the intellectual bread of Mussolini himself is made, usually, of clippings. They did not care too much about things which they could not hate since they usually did not know them ... — Giuseppe Borgese

These reviews of David's performances come from my father's collection of David's clippings, which he certainly never burned as is depicted in Shine. After he died Leslie kept the clippings, and then passed them on to David. I made myself some copies years later. — Margaret Helfgott

You said nothing to me of the newspaper clippings."
"No, because you were displaying ... snippiness yesterday."
"Snippiness?" he asked.
"It's a word."
"I think not."
"I'll ask Books when we get back. — Lindsay Buroker

Putin and his colleagues were reduced mainly to collecting press clippings, thus contributing to the growing mountains of useless information produced by the KGB. — Masha Gessen

We straighten , bu our snickering is barely contained as we attempt to focus our attention on a picture of a discarded Coke can. "This guy's lady love is kind of a slob, don't you think?" he whispers.
I cover my mouth with my hands again.
"A reaaaaaaaal litterbug."
"Stop it," I hiss. My eyes are watering. "Ohmygod look at this one! How did he get her toenail clippings?"
"If you were my girl," he whispers, "I'd take creepy pictures of your trash when I knew you weren't looking."
"If you were my girl," I whisper back," I"d put the creepy pictures in a foreign museum so you wouldn't know that I take creepy pictures. — Stephanie Perkins

If I've learnt one thing, it's that I need to surround myself with people who want to know the real Pete Wentz, not some myth they've concocted from a bunch of press clippings. I can open the door a centimetre wide, and some people think I'm showing them the whole room. But all they're getting is a glimpse. That's all I want to show most people. — Pete Wentz

We Navajos believe in witchcraft. Cut hair and fingernail clippings should be gathered and hidden or burned. Such things could be used to invoke bad medicine against their owner. People should not leave parts of themselves scattered around to be picked up by someone else. Even the smallest children knew that. — Chester Nez

Years ago, my mother and I fell in love with Busybee's voice, its calm, even tone, and a smile which was always audible in the language. My father, meanwhile, is clipping his nails fastidiously, letting them fall on to an old, spread-out copy of the Times of India, till he sneezes explosively, as he customarily does, sending the crescent-shaped nail-clippings flying into the universe. — Amit Chaudhuri

I love plants. For the longest time I thought that they died without pain. But of course after I had argued with Mary she showed me clippings on how plants went into shock when pulled up by their roots, and even uttered something indescribable, like panic, a drawn-out vowel only registered on special instruments. Still, I love their habit of constant return. I don't like cut flowers. Only the ones that grow in the ground. — Louise Erdrich

The rural children who could, usually brought clippings from what they called The Grit Paper, a publication spurious in the eyes of Miss Gates, our teacher. Why she frowned when a child recited from The Grit Paper I never knew, but in some way it was associated with liking fiddling, eating syrupy biscuits for lunch, being a holy-roller, singing Sweetly Sings the Donkey and pronouncing it dunkey, all of which the state paid teachers to discourage. Even — Harper Lee

I get a lot of letters. Not only from children but from adults, too. Almost every week, every month, clippings come in from some part of the world where ducks are crossing the street. — Robert McCloskey

Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in. — Larry Wall

My job now, as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is to take this process forward, and that I'm determined to do, whatever old clippings you dig out and whatever old quotes you put before me. — Peter Hain

Coyote, who is the creator of all of us, was sitting on his cloud the day after he created Indians. Now, he liked the Indians, liked what they were doing. This is good, he kept saying to himself. But he was bored. He thought and thought about what he should make next in the world. But he couldn't think of anything so he decided to clip his toenails ... He looked around and around his cloud for somewhere to throw away his clippings. But he couldn't find anywhere and he got mad. He started jumping up and down because he was so mad. Then he accidentally dropped his toenail clippings over the side of the cloud and they fell to the earth. They clippings burrowed into teh ground like seeds and grew up to be white man. Coyote, he looked down at his newest creation and said, Oh, shit. — Sherman Alexie

I just thought it made sense to call a book 'Not Garbage,' even though the majority of it was going to be the scraps from people's studios; like newspaper clippings, weird drawings and stuff they might not necessarily show as artists. — Leo Fitzpatrick

Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder
so you can move faster
you forget you'll need them when you go back to being a woman. That's one career all females have in common whether we like it or not. Being a woman. Sooner or later, we've got to work at it, no matter what other careers we've had or wanted. And in the last analysis nothing is any good unless you can look up just before dinner
or turn around in bed
and there he is. Without that you're not a woman. You're someone with a French provincial office
or a book full of clippings. But you're not a woman. Slow curtain. The end. (from "All About Eve") — Bette Davis

I'd wrestled against the inner voice of my mother, the voice of caution, of duty, of fear of the unknown, the voice that said the world was dangerous and safety was always the first measure and that often confused pleasure with danger, the mother who had, when I'd moved to the city, sent me clippings about young women who were raped and murdered there, who elaborated on obscure perils and injuries that had never happened to her all her life, and who feared mistakes even when the consequences were minor. Why go to Paradise when the dishes aren't done? What if the dirty dishes clamor more loudly than Paradise? — Rebecca Solnit

If you're young and wild, you tend to believe your clippings. One day you're Hemingway. The next day you're nothing. — Peter Benchley

There is no greater power on this earth than story." Will paced the length of the room. "People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense - words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions - words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History." Will grabbed the sheaf of newspaper clippings he kept in a stack on his desk. "This, and these" - he gestured to the library's teeming shelves - "they're a testament to the country's rich supernatural history. — Libba Bray

And also it's an ever-gathering process. If I pick up the Sporting News or some sports publication and there's an article on somebody and I think I might see that player, I will tear it out and put it in a file, and I have a looseleaf book so when we're going to play that particular team I take out all these clippings and things I pulled out, I go through them, highlight them, put them in the book. — Vin Scully

As I enter on the path of happiness, I scatter the dregs and shreds and clippings of the past behind me. I divest myself of all the crapulous years. — William John Locke

The pleasure of the mulch pile is incomprehensible. I wouldn't care if they just hauled the mulch to the landfill somewhere. Obviously, grass clippings are biodegradable, but when they're bunched together at the landfill, they become badly influenced by other garbage. — Paula Poundstone

I included receipts, faxes, newspaper clippings, all sorts of things. I've read novels composed entirely of emails or letters, but not assembled across this kind of mix of materials. I wanted to create the feeling of a detective going through a box of clues. — Brian Pinkerton

No one noticed Witch Baby as she went back inside the cottage, into the room she and Cherokee shared.
Cherokee's side of the room was filled with feathers, crystals, butterfly wings, rocks, shells and dried flowers. there was a small tepee that Coyote had helped Cherokee make. The walls on Witch Baby's side of the room were covered with newspaper clippings - nuclear accidents, violence, poverty and disease. Every night, before she went to bed, Witch Baby cut out three articles or pictures with a pair of toenail scissors and taped them to the wall. they make Cherokee cry.
"Why do you want to have those up there?" Weetzie asked. "You'll both have nightmares. — Francesca Lia Block

I don't ever want to believe my own press clippings, good or bad. — William Clay Ford Jr.

It is unhealthy to marinate in your own press clippings. — Sam Walton