Couldn't Manage Quotes & Sayings

After the second Die Hard , Bruce Willis stated he would never do another. He should have stayed firm in his resolve. If quality is any indication (and it may be, with all the available blockbusters), box office returns will be disappointing this time around and, if nothing else, that will do to John McClane what dozens of assorted bad guys couldn't manage: kill him. — James Berardinelli

I want the honest truth about something. Could you really fight with someone who did as much damage to you as my father has done to me? (Urian)
I subjected myself to the goddess who drugged me to the point I couldn't protect my sister and nephew the night they were brutally slaughtered, and they were the only two people in the universe who'd ever given two shits about me. Later that same day, she stood back and let her twin brother butcher me on the floor like an animal, yet within hours after that I sold myself to her to protect mankind. For the sake of the Dark-Hunters, I subjected myself to her cruel whims for eleven thousand years. So, yeah, Urian, I think I could manage to suck it up for an hour to protect the rest of the world. (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

To be a full-blooded hillbilly was to be a living koan. Half of you wanted to be dignified and half of you couldn't tolerate any restraint. You could see it in the regional art and hear it in the music. Wood carving with chainsaws. Cloggers who danced up a storm with the lower half of their bodies, but held the upper half perfectly still and stared off into the distance stone-faced. Or a group of bluegrass musicians who'd be playing the most raucous tunes imaginable, looking around at each other with bemused expressions that seemed to say where's all that racket comin from?
Phoebe believed that nearly all the adult males everywhere were pretty much the same way. Most of them could manage to keep the top half of themselves under a semblance of control, but the bottom half tended to run wild. As she continued to descend the trail she couldn't help but think that most men were mentally ill below the waist. — Carolyn Jourdan

But acting is my main profession so it's about finding the right balance. I don't know how, if I went any further with the music, I would manage to do both - I would have to take time off from acting because I couldn't do both at same time. I could do six months on and six months off perhaps. But I'm really proud of the record. I've worked on it for a while and I'm really glad to finally get the album out, having done three EPs prior to its release. — Iwan Rheon

As Sloan approached the door, Paul Lyons lifted his eyes to watch her leave. He found himself wondering why after all these years they couldn't manage to get along for a lousy twenty minutes. Perhaps it was the result of their inability to compromise - to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Or maybe they'd both simply lost the ability to trust another human being and believe anything good could come of this world. — Kaylin McFarren

Laila remembered how Mammy had dropped to the ground, how she'd screamed, torn at her hair. But Laila couldn't even manage that. She could hardly move. She could hardly move a muscle.
She sat on the chair instead, hands limp in her lap, eyes staring at nothing, and let her mind fly on. She let it fly on until it found the place, the good and safe place, where the barley fields were green, where the water ran clear and the cottonwood seeds danced by the thousands in the air; where Babi was reading a book beneath an acacia and Tariq was napping with his hands laced across his chest, and where she could dip her feet in the stream and dream good dreams beneath the watchful gaze of gods of ancient, sun-bleached rock. — Khaled Hosseini

Beauty made you love, love made you beautiful ...
She pulled her wrap closer round her with a gesture of defence, of keeping out and off. She didn't want to grow sentimental. Difficult not to, here; the marvelous night stole in through all one's chinks, and brought in with it, whether one wanted them or not, enormous feelings
feelings one couldn't manage, great things about death and time and waste; glorious and devastating things, magnificent and bleak, at once rapture and terror and immense, heart-cleaving longing. She felt small and dreadfully alone. She felt uncovered and defenceless. Instinctively she pulled her wrap closer. With this thing of chiffon she tried to protect herself from the eternities. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

It's a mistake to assume that Islamists always come from the slums. Indeed, many come from affluent families but for some reason just couldn't manage to integrate into Western society, even though they had good opportunities for advancement. — Otto Schily

Some people manage to perfect the disappearing act well into adulthood. I went out with a girl once, years ago, who would disappear whenever there was conflict. Anytime there was tension she'd just go missing, and when I'd run into her again, or when I'd go over to her house to see what was going on, she'd be all chipper and act like everything was fine. Finally, one night when she was able to be vulnerable, she explained whenever she felt like she'd messed up she could close off that part of her mind and feel an inner peace that was completely disconnected from reality. She drove everybody else crazy because she couldn't resolve conflict, yet inside the false world of her mind everything was calm. — Donald Miller

I was crying and laughing, snuffing tears and blood, bumping at him with my bound hands, trying awkwardly to thrust them at him so that he could cut the rope. He quit grappling, and clutched me so hard against him that I yelped in pain as my face was pressed against his plaid. He was saying something else, urgently, but I couldn't manage to translate it. Energy pulsed through him, hot and violent, like the current in a live wire, and I vaguely realized that he was still almost berserk; he had no English. — Diana Gabaldon

got a different table on the other side of the restaurant with her back facing us. She couldn't fool me. She was videotaping us with her phone. What she thought we would try in a restaurant, I have no idea. When I began to flip through the small, padded menu, Ray said, "Order anything you like. I'm paying." "You don't have to," I said automatically. He looked at me through his fake glasses, and his smile was weird. Too emotional to be Ray, but that kind of was Ray, so much thinking behind a mask of laughter, breaking out in bursts of caring beyond anything I could manage. He reached — Richard Roberts

Most of the women correspondents couldn't make a marriage last. We'd tasted too much of life on our own terms and you didn't find men who could manage with that. — Phyllis Edgerly Ring

... the girl he loved, but wished he didn't love, because he didn't want to love someone who was just like him, imperfect, with faults and failings, another self-sacrificing, pathetic slave to love, who obediently read people's lips but never spoke herself, who subordinated herself and found her reward in that. But at the same time, he couldn't manage not to love her. She was everything he wished he didn't want. She was his own humiliation. And the best, the most human, the most beautiful thing he knew. — Jo Nesbo

He needed her so badly, to reassure himself of his
own existence, that he never comprehended the desperation in her dazzling, permanent smile, the terror in the brightness with which she faced the world, or the reasons why she hid when she couldn't manage to beam ... every moment she
spent in the world was full of panic, so she smiled and smiled and maybe once a week she locked the door and shook and felt like a husk, like an empty peanut-shell, a monkey without a nut. — Salman Rushdie

It occurred to me that some people couldn't handle too much love. That everyone loves as they're able, but more, they are loved as they're able. Some are indomitable and open, like an ocean, but others aren't made to tread those waves, cannot stay afloat those waters. We embrace the kind of love we can manage. Less can be the right measure. But when it isn't, we must learn we cannot squeeze a mountain into a room with a glass ceiling. Or everything shatters. — Jennifer DeLucy

And it was funny. The silence of him had a bizarre effect on her. Normally, she was the quiet one in situations, preferring to keep her own council and not share her thoughts on anything. But with John's mute presence, she felt curiously compelled to talk.
"I'm stuffed," she said, lying back against the pillows. As he cocked a brow and lifted the last Danish, she shook her head.
"God ... no. I couldn't manage another thing."
And it was only then that he began to eat.
"You waited for me ?" she said, frowning. When he ducked her gaze and shrugged, she cursed softly.
" You didn't have to."
Another shrug. As she watched him, she murmured, "You have beautiful table manners."
His blush was the color of Valentine's Day and she had to tell her heart to calm the fuck down as it started to beat fast. — J.R. Ward

Sebastian opened his mouth to argue, but as he saw Evie drawing closer something changed in his face. It was a response to the anxiety that she couldn't manage to hide. For some reason her concern gently undermined his hostility, and softened him. Looking from one to the other, Cam observed the subtle interplay with astute interest.
"Have you been hurt?" Evie asked, looking over him closely. To her relief, Sebastian appeared disheveled and riled, but free of significant damage.
He shook his head, holding still as she reached up to push back a few damp amber locks that were nearly hanging in his eyes. "I'm fine," he muttered. "Compared to the drubbing I received from Westcliff, this was nothing. — Lisa Kleypas

No, Rodion Romanovitch, Nikolay doesn't come in! This is a fantastic, gloomy business, a modern case, an incident of to-day when the heart of man is troubled, when the phrase is quoted that blood 'renews,' when comfort is preached as the aim of life. Here we have bookish dreams, a heart unhinged by theories. Here we see resolution in the first stage, but resolution of a special kind: he resolved to do it like jumping over a precipice or from a bell tower and his legs shook as he went to the crime. He forgot to shut the door after him, and murdered two people for a theory. He committed the murder and couldn't take the money, and what he did manage to snatch up he hid under a stone. It wasn't enough for him to suffer agony behind the door while they battered at the door and rung the bell, no, he had to go to the empty lodging, half delirious, to recall the bell-ringing, — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

He held out the bottle. Clarice's hand was steady as she took it from him. It is poison, she thought distantly. It will kill her. She tried to be horrified at the thought, but she couldn't manage it. — Mercedes Lackey

As a beat reporter covering the CIA and intelligence world after the terrorist attacks of 2001, I could sense that many things I couldn't see or understand were changing, expanding, getting so big they were difficult to manage. — Dana Priest

A chuckle comes from the back doors and Blake is standing there, arms crossed over his chest. "That was brutal, brah. You so deserved it."
With my head hanging, I manage to say, "Stay away or I'll kill you."
"You couldn't pay me to come near you right now."
I sigh and try to breathe. Blake laughs a bit more at my expense before leaving me alone in my misery. — Wendy Higgins

For years, I took notes.
I pored over her work incessantly.
I quoted or mentioned Charlotte in several of my novels.
I tried to write this book so many times.
But how?
Should I be present?
Should I fictionalize her story?
What form should my obsession take?
I began, I tried, then I gave up.
I couldn't manage to string two sentences together.
At every point, I felt blocked.
Impossible to go on.
It was a physical sensation, an oppression.
I felt the need to move to the next line in order to breathe.

So, I realized that I had to write it like this. — David Foenkinos

Thundering hooves beat the frozen ground, faster and faster as the rider whipped the horse. Snow and mud lay thick on the earth, and rogue snowflakes drifted through the night sky.
Celaena ran - swifter than her young legs could manage. Everything hurt, Trees ripped at her dress and hair; stones sliced her feet. She scrambled through the woods, breathing so hard she couldn't muster the air to cry for help. She must reach the bridge. It couldn't cross the bridge.
Behind her, a sword shrieked as it was drawn from its sheath.
She fell, slamming into mud and rock. The sound of the approaching demon filled the air as she struggled to rise. But the mud held fast, and she could not run.
Reaching for a bush, her small hands bleeding, the horse now close behind, she - — Sarah J. Maas

Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men,we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society. — Lame Deer

For two months after Christmas vacation we limped around campus with muscles too tigh and sore to walk properly, yet we had no good idea of our goal. Without knowing what a real race was like, I couldn't judge whether it was worth all the preparation, but having put in so much time already, how could we back out? Quite a few Freshman did manage to back out. After Christmas several, when freed from faily practice, decided that they liked not feeling tired all the time. Most of them vanished without a word. — Stefan Kieszling

Everything I told him was technically true, more or less, and I got the job done," Jack said stubbornly. "Look, sir, if I were perfect, I wouldn't be working here in the first place. Now, would I?"
And then he hung up. On speakerphone. On a freaking archangel.
I couldn't help it. I let out a rolling belly laugh. "I just got suckered into doing this by ... Stars and stones, you didn't even know that he ... Big bad angel boy, and you get the wool pulled over your eyes by ... " I stopped trying to talk and just laughed.
Uriel eyed the phone, then me, and then tucked the little device away again, clearly nonplussed. "It doesn't matter how well I believe I know your kind, Harry. They always manage to find some way to try my patience. — Jim Butcher

The only black people you found were occasional characters or characters who were so feeble-witted that they couldn't manage anything, anyway. I wrote myself in, since I'm me and I'm here and I'm writing. — Octavia Butler

Don't worry. He's out there, and we're in here. If he couldn't manage to get through those bars in all the months they held him trapped on this side, he's not going to manage to get back through them before Racso's next visit, now is he? I'd barely got the words out before Mr. Cough drew in another gurgling breath as if he were drowning in whatever filth was filling his lungs. — Mark Lawrence

God was never about making me spiffy; God was about making me new.
New doesn't always look perfect. Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don't actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I'm right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn't live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing we never saw coming- never even hoped for- but ends up being what we needed all along. — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Put it out," said Dimitri. "Put it out or she dies."
Lissa finally found her voice, even with her air cut off. "Don't listen to him," she gasped out." He's going to kill us anyway."
But behind her, the heat died out. Shadows fell across Dimitri's face once again. Christian wouldn't risk her, even though she was right. It hardly seemed to matter.
"Actually," said Dimitri, voice peasant amid and grim scene, "I'd rather you two stay alive. At least for a little while longer."
I felt Lissa's face move to a frown. I wouldn't have been surprised if Christian's did too, judging from the confusion in his voice. He couldn't even manage a snarky comment. He could only ask the obvious: "Why?"
Dimitri's eyes gleamed. "Because I need you to be bait for Rose. — Richelle Mead

I am encouraged as I look at some of those who have listened to their "different drum": Einstein was hopeless at school math and commented wryly on his inadequacy in human relations. Winston Churchill was an abysmal failure in his early school years. Byron, that revolutionary student, had to compensate for a club foot; Demosthenes for a stutter; and Homer was blind. Socrates couldn't manage his wife, and infuriated his countrymen. And what about Jesus, if we need an ultimate example of failure with one's peers? Or an ultimate example of love? — Madeleine L'Engle

He never comprehended the desperation in her dazzling, permanent smile, the terror in the brightness with which she faced the world, or the reasons why she hid when she couldn't manage to beam. — Salman Rushdie

Destiny

The chicken I bought last night,
Frozen,
Returned to life,
Laid the biggest egg in the world,
And was awarded the Nobel Prize.

The phenomenal egg
Was passed from hand to hand,
In a few weeks had gone all round the earth,
And round the sun
In 365 days.

The hen received who knows how much hard currency,
Assessed in buckets of grain
Which she couldn't manage to eat

Because she was invited everywhere,
Gave lectures, granted interviews,
Was photographed.

Very often reporters insisted
That I too should pose
Beside her.
And so, having served art
Throughout my life,
All of a sudden I've attained to fame
As a poultry breeder. — Marin Sorescu

It's okay babe," I say softly, and he immediately relaxes and hugs me tight in a crushing hold.
"Thank god," he mutters. "I couldn't bear it if we destroyed us Mabes. I don't know what I'd do without you."
I make myself move back slightly. "I'm sure you'd manage," I try to say lightly, and he grimaces.
"I wouldn't," he says thickly. "You're everything to me. — Lily Morton

What people don't appreciate, when they picture Terminator-style automatons striding triumphantly across a mountain of human skulls, is how hard it is to keep your footing on something as unstable as a mountain of human skulls. Most humans probably couldn't manage it, and they've had a lifetime of practice at walking without falling over. — Randall Munroe

What was the Sapiens' secret of success? How did we manage to settle so rapidly in so many distant and ecologically different habitats? How did we push all other human species into oblivion? Why couldn't even the strong, brainy, cold-proof Neanderthals survive our onslaught? The debate continues to rage. The most likely answer is the very thing that makes the debate possible: Homo sapiens conquered the world thanks above all to its unique language. — Yuval Noah Harari

Are you that afraid of being wrong? One would assume you'd be accustomed to it by now."
He grunted. "Be careful, girl. You wouldn't want to accidentally insult a man."
"The last thing I'd want to do is accidentally insult you, Vathah," Shallan said. "To think that I
couldn't manage it on purpose if I wanted! — Brandon Sanderson

I just
I know my own heart and I love you, Turner. And if you have even the tiniest shred of decency, you'll say something because I've said everything I possibly can, and I can't bear the silence, and
oh for heaven's sake! Will you at least blink?
He couldn't even manage that. — Julia Quinn

Stirlings of old had been so damned besotted with their newfound earldom that they couldn't think to put any other name on anything ... It was a wonder he didn't drink Kilmartin Tea and sit on a Kilmartin-style chair. In fact, he probably would be doing just that if his grandmother had found a way to manage it without actually taking the family into trade. — Julia Quinn

I was happy in the dream; but when I woke up it was with a feeling that I was falling apart, that I was cracking up from the inside and slowly falling to pieces. My heart was jumping and grating like a cold engine that doesn't want to start. My skin was crawling, and I couldn't manage a single clear thought. It was as if all my thoughts were crushed to bits just as they began to take shape. I didn't get much done that day. — Ninni Holmqvist

I'm very lucky. I have a really supportive husband in Henry, and there's my mum, too. I couldn't have a career and manage the kids' routines and household thing single-handedly. I'd just go crazy. — Sophie Kinsella

Conversely, every moderate seems to believe that his interpretation and selective reading of scripture is more accurate than God's literal words. Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft. It really isn't hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery - you just put in a few lines like "Don't take sex slaves!" and "When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don't rape any of them!" And yet God couldn't seem to manage it. This is why the approach of a group like the Islamic State holds a certain intellectual appeal (which, admittedly, sounds strange to say) because the most straightforward reading of scripture suggests that Allah advises jihadists to take sex slaves from among the conquered, decapitate their enemies, and so forth. — Sam Harris

She'd always been comforted by how many words there were in the English language -- more than a million. With so many words surely anything could be said, everything could be understood.
But what did the volume of words matter in any language when she couldn't even manage to ask the simplest questions? Will you tell me your story? Will you let me in to my own family? Isn't it my story, too? — Fiona Wood

I would never normally approach a woman in this way, but I couldn't help but notice that you have the eyes of a lady I was once desperately in love with. "
"What a shame to love only once," she said, showing her white teeth in a wicked smile. "I've heard some men can manage twice or even more."
I ignored her gibe. "I am only a fool once. Never will I love again. — Patrick Rothfuss

Good night.' Diana summoned all the dignity that she could manage in her bedraggled state and began to move back up the beach. Her dress was soaked and her stockings dotted with sand and her heart couldn't possibly withstand any more. — Anna Godbersen

I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn't have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that - except I couldn't afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering. — David Bowie

I was surprised to learn that there was yet another type of tired. On Seram we'd had physical tired. The type of tired when a thousand muscles are screaming at you to quit walking, sweat's running off you, and only the energy you manage to generate from gritting your teeth helps you take the next step. That type of tired can keep the emotional tired safely at bay-the tired when sadness is a physical weight, a thick smothering, aching thing. That was the dangerous type of tired we couldn't afford on Seram. That's the type of tired that makes you want to sit still and listen to despair. — Lisa McKay

In video games you sometimes run into what they call a side quest, and if you don't manage to figure it out you can usually just go back into the normal world of the game and continue on toward your objective. I felt like I couldn't find my way back to the world now: like I was somebody locked in a meaningless side quest, in a stuck screen. — John Darnielle

New doesn't always look perfect. Like the Easter story itself, new is often messy. New looks like recovering alcoholics. New looks like reconciliation between family members who don't actually deserve it. New looks like every time I manage to admit I was wrong and every time I manage to not mention when I'm right. New looks like every fresh start and every act of forgiveness and every moment of letting go of what we thought we couldn't live without and then somehow living without it anyway. New is the thing we never saw coming - never even hoped for - but ends up being what we needed all along. It — Nadia Bolz-Weber

Before my autism diagnosis I
knew I struggled with life but thought it was
my fault that I found everything
so hard to cope with. I told
myself I must
try harder
to be like
everyone else.
I felt like a failure because I couldn't be like everyone else. Now I know,
I give myself
credit even for the small things I manage everyday.
I know why
I find some things overwhelming. — Tina J. Richardson

She held her finger to his lips. "We have a lifetime to reveal our secrets."
In a bold move, she took his hand and led him to the bed.
Ever so eager to follow, Hugh's mouth suddenly went dry. Hell, he couldn't even manage a swallow. "Are you ready, my love?" he croaked.
Licking those delectable lips, she nodded. "I want you more than the air I breathe. — Amy Jarecki

We're really good at it, Teppic thought. Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid. I — Terry Pratchett

No more humiliation for me, thanks very much. No more swallowing my anger. Honestly, I couldn't manage another mouthful. But it was delicious. Did you make it yourself? — Marian Keyes

Marital discord, she decided, was like some sort of low-grade fever that threw the whole system just slightly out of whack so you couldn't manage to function at full capacity. — J.D. Robb

Call wasn't sure what it meant that he'd gone full Evil Overlord on Jasper but still couldn't manage to impress him. — Holly Black

Did you manage to contact the refugees?" Inej asked, waving Nina over to the table and clearing a place for her to sit.
"Everything went smoothly," said Nina. "Aside from breaking a few windows and nearly getting shot."
Kaz looked up from the table, his interest secured.
"Big trouble in Little Ravka?" asked Jesper.
"Nothing we couldn't handle," Nina said. "Please tell me there's something to eat."
"You're hungry?" said Inej. They all goggled at Nina.
She curtsied. "Yes, yes, Nina Zenik is hungry. Now will someone feed me before I'm forced to cook one of you?"
"Don't be ridiculous," said Jesper. "You don't know how to cook. — Leigh Bardugo

Mere animals couldn't possibly manage to act like this. You need to be a human being to be really stupid. — Terry Pratchett

It really isn't hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery - you just put in a few lines like "Don't take sex slaves!" and "When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don't rape any of them!" And yet God couldn't seem to manage it. — Sam Harris

If I kissed her now, one of two things would happen. We'd either get naked right here on the beach and probably get arrested, or I'd somehow manage to get us up the hill to my house, and then we'd get naked.
But kissing her once, then letting her go. That ... wasn't possible. I couldn't kiss her then go back to my ordinary life. I wasn't Superman.
If I was, though, the girl in my arms was more lethal to me than kryptonite. — Ophelia London