Concocting Quotes & Sayings

Two ingredients most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo
... Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage. — M.R. James

It's like you have a special skill when it comes to finding condoms. Seriously. They must fall out of the sky whenever you're around. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

To survive in most arenas of power you must first understand that everyone lies, everyone cheats, and no one is your friend. The paradox is that not everyone lies, and not everyone cheats, and some people are your friends. The problem lies in the fact that one smiling face and handshake looks much like another, and when you're surrounded by consummate liars, how to tell the truth from the lie, friend from foe? Better to treat everyone professionally, pleasantly, smile, nod, be friendly, but never be friends. Because there is no way to tell who is on your side, not really. — Laurell K. Hamilton

Sydney, I rather despair of making myself intelligible to you, because you are such an insensible dog." "And you," returned Sydney, busy concocting the punch, "are such a sensitive and poetical spirit - — Charles Dickens

Did you have a good time with Win?" Natty asked.
"I'll tell you about it tomorrow." I lowered my voice. "He's still here."
"Annie!" Her eyes grew wide and delighted.
'It's a long story and probably a lot less exciting than the one I suspect you're concocting, Natty. He's only using our couch. — Gabrielle Zevin

The next time you feel yourself giving in to the sometimes overwhelming urge to panic about the fate of literature in the digital age, follow this simple remedy: remember that you dream. For that is ironclad proof ... that literature - that narrative art in whatever form - will never die. Humans, strange creatures that we are, make sense of our lives by telling stories. In the space between each day and the next, we refresh our minds by concocting the most fantastic and elaborate fictions. We spend roughly a third of our lives thus, re-arranging our scattered experiences into stories. That we do it at all is bizarre and inexplicable. But as long as we do it, we will crave stories - human stories, stories that speak to us - in our waking life. The Internet, powerful as it is, cannot change that. — Adam Hammond

Concocting a statement that you have trouble believing in the first place (such as "A herring is a mammal"), and then negating it, requires two bouts of cognitive heavy lifting rather than one. — Steven Pinker

Concocting a good guest list is like seasoning a gourmet sauce. Too many similar ingredients and it's bland. Too much variety in the seasoning and the result may be overpowering. — Sheila Ostrander

They were not battling a trained warrior - this was a politician. Pity stirred, then recoiled from her rising wrath. This was the sort of beast that killed with calculations, concocting war and disease and wiping out millions from the safety of a council meeting. She — Hugh Howey

Llamas? Really, Lex? For their manure?" Airiana asked as Lexi headed toward the door. "You weren't kidding, were you?"
"There are studies done about concocting a sort of tea with their manure and using it on the plants . . ."
Airiana held up her hand. "Don't use 'tea' and 'manure' in the same sentence or I'll have to pound you into the ground."
"You're such a baby," Lexi said. "It's science. You're supposed to love science."
"I draw the line at foul-smelling llama-manure tea."

-Airiana & Lexi — Christine Feehan

I have in the past acquired a reputation for concocting non-existent writers and unwritten volumes. — Jim Crace

I'd love to go back to Europe in the '20s and '30s, for the beginning of the Psychoanalytic Movement, and Freud and Jung, and all that was going on with discoveries in quantum physics. The whole nature of reality was changing and being challenged. — Michael Sheen

The only pleasurable part of taking the subway, as everyone will agree, is concocting elaborate fantasies about what it would be like to be married to the most interesting strangers you see there. — Russell Smith

The Statist has an insatiable appetite for control. His sights are set on his next meal even before he has fully digested his last. He is constantly agitating for government action. And in furtherance of that purpose, the Statist speaks in the tongue of the demagogue, concocting one pretext and grievance after another to manipulate public perceptions and build popular momentum for the divestiture of liberty and property from its rightful possessors. — Mark Levin

Reckless of my mortality,
Strengthen me to behold a face,
To know the spirit of a beloved one
Yet to endure, yet to dare! — Edgar Lee Masters

I spent nine hard, exasperating, concentrated months on the first chapter of Liars' Club alone, which was essentially time developing that voice - a watchmaker's minuscule efforts, noodling with syntax and diction. Were I to add on the time I spent trying to recount that book's events in poetry and a novel, I could argue that concocting that mode of speech actually occupied some thirteen years (seventeen, if you count the requisite years in therapy getting the nerve up). What was I doing during those nine months? Mostly I just shoved words around the page. I'd get up at four or five when my son was asleep, then work. I'd try telling something one way, then another. If a paragraph seemed half decent, I'd cut it out and tape it to the wall. — Mary Karr

It wasn't that I was tired of life, really - just my own. Other people's lives seemed perfectly worthwhile, and only the logistical difficultly of assuming them and the likelihood of being caught kept me from concocting some sort of swap. — James Lileks

In life, everybody faces choices between doing what's popular, easy, and wrong vs. doing what's lonely, difficult, and right. These decisions intensify when you run a company, because the consequences get magnified 1,000 fold. As in life, the excuses for CEOs making the wrong choice are always plentiful. — Ben Horowitz

The amygdala plays a crucial role in processing fear, and minus her two amygdalae, S.M. became unflappable. Studies of her are actually a hoot to read, since they basically consist of scientists concocting ever-more-elaborate ways of trying to scare her. — Sam Kean

While it would have been straightforward, and perfectly legal, to allow Irish banks or the Greek state to default to their private creditors (so as to respect the no-bailout clause), the authorities' guilty desire to bail out the German and French banks (without telling taxpayers that this was what they were doing) led to the need to violate the no-bailout rule by concocting another rule: the no-default rule, which was never part of Europe's original set of rules. (...) Both the freshly minted no-default rule and the original no-bailout clause were political whims of the strong disguised as legal constraints upon the weak. In reality, the strong break their rules at will and concoct new rules whenever they think it suits them. — Yanis Varoufakis

So. Are we concocting some elaborate scheme where we pretend to be twins to get your parents back together? — Melissa Keil

Yet if you had a desire for good or beautiful things
and your tongue were not concocting some evil to say
shame would not hold down your eyes
but rather you would speak about what is just — Sappho

Why tinker with the plain truth that we hurry the darker races to their graves in order to take their land & its riches? Wolves don't sit in their caves, concocting crapulous theories of race to justify devouring a flock of sheep! "Intellectual courage"? True "intellectual courage" is to dispense with these fig leaves & admit all peoples are predatory, but White predators, with our deadly duet of disease dust & firearms, are examplars of predacity par excellence, & what of it? — David Mitchell

Welcome to RAW is Jericho! And I was just listening to your list of problems and grievances that you have with all my Jerichoholics, and I have a solution - and that solution is to SHUT THE HELL UP. But finally, Al Snow, tomorrow people WILL be acknowledging you - they WILL be talking about the greatest moment of '99 - they'll be talking about the night that Al Snow was brutally beaten by the Ayatollah of Rock n Rolla. — Chris Jericho

Four months ago you refused to believe a place like Croak even existed, and now look at you. All jazzed up and concocting crackpot theories that probably involve a hidden flock of unicorns."
"Or dinosaurs," Lex said with a grin. "Let's not prematurely dismiss a Jurassic Park scenario. — Gina Damico

If you decide to go on a Buddhist path, you have to be careful if you start mixing a lot of different traditions you are not totally familiar with - mixing this kind of meditation with that kind of practice or this kind of visualization with that kind of mantra. Then you really are concocting your own thing, and you have no idea what is going to happen. — Sakyong Mipham