Quotes & Sayings About Cracking

His voice was like the cracking of ice on a winter lake, and the words were mocking — George R R Martin

seen Sitterson knew what was happening: in the mechanism older than Man, a small metal hammer struck a glass vial, cracking it from top to bottom and releasing the blood retained inside. The blood ran into a brass funnel that extended into a long, long pipe, running even deeper through rock and dark spaces, emerging eventually into a place deeper still. Here, the — Tim Lebbon

I don't have any kids, so I'm not as worried about my heirs as the rest of you, but still: I think the youth of tomorrow might be better off if they knew the physical sensation of cracking a spine and turning the page. — Lisa Lutz

Nothing grows among its pinnacles; there is no shade except under great toadstools of sandstone whose bases have been eaten to the shape of wine glasses by the wind. Everything is flaking, cracking, disintegrating, wearing away in the long, inperceptible weather of time. The ash of ancient volcanic outbursts still sterilizes its soil, and its colors in that waste are the colors that flame in the lonely sunsets on dead planets. — Loren Eiseley

There's so much history amongst ourselve that reminds us of something, and we start cracking up. — Nikki Sixx

The lake hadn't been frozen long and of all them had been expressly forbidden to go out on it, but Norman Pye, who was older than the rest of them, said that it would be safe if they slid out on their bellies. So they did. "We thought it was exciting as all get out," Miss Vernon said. "We could hear the ice cracking but it didn't give, and we slid across it like seals. Oh, it was tremendous fun. The ice was clear as glass and you could see right to the bottom. All the stones lying there, brighter and more colourful than they ever are when you look through the water. You could even see fish swimming about. And then all at once there was this loud crack and the whole sheet gave way, and there we were in the water. — Mary Lawson

Hana?" Lena says softly. "Are you okay?"
That single stupid question breaks me. All the metal fingers relax me at once, and the tears they've been holding back come surging up at once. Suddenly I am sobbing and telling her everything: about the raid, and the dogs, and the sounds of skulls cracking underneath regulator's nightsticks. Thinking about it again makes me feel like I might puke. At a certain point, Lena puts her arms around me and starts murmuring things into my hair. I don't even know what she's saying, and I don't care. JUst having her here - solid, real, on my side - makes me feel better than I have in weeks. Slowly I manage to stop crying, swallowing back the hiccups and sobs that are still running through me. I try to tell her that I've missed her, and that I've been stupid and wrong, but my voice is muffled and thick — Lauren Oliver

The crowd were totally behind him and it spurred him on, I was right in the heat of battle. There was only one to win; I dug deep and summoned up every bit of strength, I had in me to put in to one punch to see if I could hit the jackpot. I drew him to the ropes and put everything in to a cracking right uppercut and just missed, bastard! — Stephen Richards

At a certain point, we saw the police cracking down on the Occupy Wall Street activists. I won't call the actions of police appropriate or inappropriate. — Vladimir Putin

I write this in the moonlight, straining my ears to hear beyond the cold mechanical clock to the warm biological noises of the night, but my being is attuned only to one thing, the relentless rhythm of time.
If I could only smash the clock and stop time from advancing! Crush the infernal machine! Shatter its bland face and rip those cursed hands from their torturous axis of circumscription! I can almost feel the sturdy metal body crumpling beneath my hands, the glass fracturing, the case cracking open, my fingers digging into the guts, spilling springs and delicate gearing. But now, there is now use, now way of stopping time. — Ruth Ozeki

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't make it either. I'm sorry I had to sit there in that church--which, by the way, had a broken air conditioner--sweating, watching all those people march down the aisle to look in my mother's casket and whisper to themselves all this mess about how much she looked like herself, even though she didn't. I'm sorry you weren't there to hear the lame choir drag out, song after song. I'm sorry you weren't there to see my dad try his best to be upbeat, cracking bad jokes in his speech, choking on his words. I'm sorry you weren't there to watch me totally lose it and explode into tears. I'm sorry you weren't there for me, but it doesn't matter, because even if you were, you wouldn't be able to feel what I feel. Nobody can. Even the preacher said so. — Jason Reynolds

We [Notekillers] are in no way super-earnest about what we do and if you see us live, you see we are cracking up during songs and saying pretty ridiculous things in-between. We're having fun. — David First

Voclain needs an heir." "As she lacks the anatomical structures to lay an egg, my human issue will have to inherit." "Voclain is a Bloodkin legacy, one of the oldest - " "Then, mother, I suggest you get cracking and give me a brother. He can have Voclain. I'm going to be happy. — Erin Kellison

Women who are not living ought to spend all their time cracking jokes. In a rotten society women grow witty; making a heaven while they wait. — Dorothy Richardson

When he looked up she was smiling, that flagstone-cracking beam of a smile that had always made her look twenty years younger. Agnes's smile wasn't the kind of smile that the regular world would associate with the word "nun." It was a smile that had always contained a touch of mischief, and also a terrible rage, kept in check until it was needed. This was what had enabled her to sustain the Home, and her many other projects, in the face of opposition from the Vatican on down. The smile and the rage. — Terry Pratchett

The nation was cracking under the weight of bloated modernity and all the patches pasted onto its excessive and malfunctioning hypercomplexity, and people were bewildered by the strange glitches, failures and shortages. Going forward, nothing would really work anymore as it was designed to, yet the hope and expectation that it would all magically recover dominated the chatter in the rare moments when people could step back from their frantic lives and share a meal or a drink. — James Howard Kunstler

I'm really cracking. No, I'm beyond cracking. I'm shattered. I'm lost. I'm fragmented. — Beatrice Sparks

What's gonna happen to the arms industry when we realize we're all One? ... You can see why the government's cracking down. — Bill Hicks

As the seed buried in the earth cannot imagine itself as an orchid or hyacinth, neither can a heart packed with hurt imagine itself loved or at peace. The courage of the seed is that once cracking, it cracks all the way. — Mark Nepo

Getting up from her seat, she walked over to him and - Slap. As Beth followed through with her palm, the sharp cracking sound faded in the room and her beloved mate shut up. Staring at him calmly, she said, And now that I have your attention and you're not ranting and raving like a lunatic, I'd appreciate your telling me where I can find whatever they sent us. — J.R. Ward

In Soviet thinking the concept of economy of force has little place. Whereas to an Englishman the taking of a sledgehammer to crack a nut is a wrong decision and a sign of mental immaturity ... in Russian eyes the cracking of nuts is clearly what sledgehammers are for. — Max Hastings

Nutshells close and encapsulate, shelter and protect, reduce and simplify, while everything in deconstruction is turned toward opening, exposure, expansion, and complexification, toward releasing unheard of, undreamt of possibilities to come, toward cracking nutshells wherever they appear. — John D. Caputo

When you go to the movie theater and the opening of this movie and you see the kids just cracking up with a character you are giving your voice to, you get goose bumps. It's so beautiful. — Antonio Banderas

The continual cracking of your feet on the road makes a certain quantity of road come up into you. When a man dies they say he returns to clay but too much walking fills you up with clay far sooner (or buries bits of you along the road) and brings your death half-way to meet you. It is not easy to know what is the best way to move yourself from one place to another. — Flann O'Brien

Steady there," he says. His brow is furrowed. His eyes are deep-set and sad. "You can ride with me. All you have to do is sit and hold on. Okay?"
Hallelujah nods. And then what he's saying actually sinks in. They'll be riding away from Jonah and Rachel. She can't do that. She can't. Her breath starts coming faster. "We have to go back," she says, her voice cracking. "I can't leave. I have to go get them. I promised." Breath in, out, in, out, in, out. "I promised!"
Charlie has her by both shoulders. "Hallelujah. Calm down. It's gonna be all right."
"We have to go back!" Hallelujah repeats, almost sobbing now. "Please! — Kathryn Holmes

I zipped myself all the way into the sleeping bag of myself, not because I was hurt, and not because I had broken something, but because they were cracking up. — Jonathan Safran Foer

In the twilight of dawn, when his ears are still fresh to the day's first sounds, he can hear clearer than at any other time of day. He turns his head back and forth, cocking his ears to each direction. Sometimes, he closes his eyes to listen better. He hears the branches cracking from the frost, the groan of the snow beneath his feet, the rumbling of the lake ice, the timber in the house shrinking and shifting, sometimes he thinks he can even hear the clouds sliding across the sky. — Shandi Mitchell

He was like one of those pictures full of small errors, the kind you could only pick out by searching the image from every angle, and even then, a few always slipped by. On the surface, Eli seemed perfectly normal, but now and then Victor would catch a crack, a sideways glance, a moment when his roommate's face and his words, his look and his meaning, would not line up. Those fleeting slices fascinated Victor. It was like watching two people, one hiding in the other's skin. And their skin was always too dry, on the verge of cracking and showing the color of the thing beneath. — Victoria Schwab

I love the process of cracking the spine for the first time and slowly sinking into a book. That will soon seem old-fashioned, I'm sure, like the time of illuminated manuscripts. — Edwidge Danticat

Even his sleep was full of dreams. He dreamt as he had not dreamt since the old days at Three Mile Cross - of hares starting from the long grass; of pheasants rocketing up with long tails streaming, of partridges rising with a whirr from the stubble. He dreamt that he was hunting, that he was chasing some spotted spaniel, who fled, who escaped him. He was in Spain; he was in Wales; he was in Berkshire; he was flying before park-keepers' truncheons in Regent's Park. Then he opened his eyes. There were no hares, and no partridges; no whips cracking and no black men crying "Span! Span!"

There was only Mr. Browning in the armchair talking to Miss Barrett on the sofa. — Virginia Woolf

For everyday diners in Manhattan, cracking the waiting list at Nobu is said to be harder than getting courtside tickets for the Knicks. — David Chang

This was the time when the rush for the spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches. The appetites let loose were satisfied at last, shamelessly, amid the sound of crumbling neighbourhoods and fortunes made in six months. The city had become an orgy of gold and women. — Emile Zola

Burris answered with an obscenity, and suddenly he lunged at me. I saw him move a split second too late. He slammed me against the side of a building, cracking my head hard against the brick. With his right hand, he clamped my throat just below the Adam's apple and pincered hard. He was strong, even stronger than I expected, and he put his whole overdeveloped body into it. At the same time, he pinioned my left arm with his right shoulder and grabbed my right hand, just above the wrist, and jammed his right knee into the inside of my leg. Now I knew for sure he'd really been a Navy SEAL. He was doing everything by the book. Which was good, actually. — Joseph Finder

Ladies first." I couldn't wait for this game to be over so I could teach her how to break properly. Images of her body pressed against mine, bending over the table, caused my jeans to get tighter.
"Your funeral," she sang and my lips turned up at her flash of confidence. Echo twirled her pool cue like a warrior going into battle, never once taking her eyes off the cue ball. She leaned over the table. I focused on her tight ass. My siren ate me alive with every movement. As she took aim, she no longer resembled the fragile girl at school, but a sniper.
The quick and thunderous cracking of balls caught me off guard. The balls fell into the pockets in such rapid succession, I lost count. Echo rounded the table, once again twirling the cue, studying the remaining balls like a four-star general would a map.
Damn - the girl knew how to play. — Katie McGarry

If someone cracks up, what does that mean? At what point does a person about to fall to pieces say: I'm cracking up? And if I were to crack up, what form would it take? — Doris Lessing

One can only keep this type of life up for so long without cracking all over, like a broken car window, as you are still clinging to some adherence of your old shape, but you are shattered just the same. — Eliza Player

I hated cracking the whip, and these juries turn into political things. — Patricia Highsmith

How odd to smile during Richard's funeral. He was dead and I was smiling to myself. Grief does that. Laughter lies close in with despair, numbness near by acuity and memory with forgetfulness. I would have got used to it, but I didn't know this at the time. All I knew, was that memory had given pleasure first, then cracking pain. — Kay Redfield Jamison

I remember only a day
that was perhaps never intended for me,
it was an incessant day,
without origins, Thursday.
I was a man transported by chance
with a woman vaguely found,
we undressed
as if to die or swim or grow old
and we thrust ourselves one inside the other,
she surrounding me like a hole,
I cracking her like a bell,
for she was the sound that wounded me
and the hard dome determined to tremble. — Pablo Neruda

A man like me isn't capable of being your fucking white knight. ...
I felt the anger boil up inside me. "I'm not looking for a hero!"
He flinched at the emotion cracking my words.
"I never asked for that ... I just wanted you, because despite what you might think, I see you. And no, you're no fucking white knight, but you're what I want. — Samantha Young

Jack has been cracking the whip. Er ... I mean ... " I flush and fall silent.
Christian says nothing for a moment.
"Cracking the whip, eh? Well, there was a time when I would have called him a lucky man." His voice is full of dry humor. "Don't let him get on top of you, baby."
"Christian! — E.L. James

Our masks, always in peril of smearing or cracking,
In need of continuous check in the mirror or silverware,
Keep us in thrall to ourselves, concerned with our surfaces.
[ ... ]
So primp, preen, prink, pluck, and prize your flesh,
All posturings! All ravishment! All sensibility!
Meanwhile, have you used your mind today? — Carolyn Kizer

Einstein was wrong! IM the speed of like CRACKING through shivery rainbows and GOD the sky whirls and withers like a melting RAINBOW! — Grant Morrison

The images were gone, but Calvin was there, was with her, was part of her. She had moved beyond knowing him in sensory images to that place which is beyond images. Now she was kything Calvin, not red hair, or freckles, or eager blue eyes, or the glowing smile; nor was she hearing the deep voice with the occasional treble cracking; not any of this, but -
Calvin.
She was with Calvin, kything with every atom of her being, returning to him all the fortitude and endurance and hope which he had given her. — Madeleine L'Engle

As we chatted, cracking the expected jokes at Danita's expense, I thought about how Danita let her search for
the real her take a physical shape while mine seemed to be taking a more internal shape. At least with my exploration, I didn't have to worry about how I'm going to pay for it, since just like cosmetic surgery isn't covered by most insurance plans,neither is searching for your true sexuality. — LaToya Hankins

And we are so fragile,and our cracking nones make noise, and we are just breakable, breable, breakable girls — Ingrid Michaelson

And there it was, a snap in his chest, the audible noise of his best intentions cracking in half and cracking again, a chain reaction of thick cracks causing hairline cracks, causing the whole goddamned works, the whole vast machinery of his human willpower, to crumble downward into his abdominal cavity, where it lay pretty much useless. — Beatriz Williams

I should also point out that there is a secret code in each chapter and if you figure it out it unlocks the next level and you get better weapons to fight the zombie quarterbacks on the Pegasus Bridge. So get cracking, you task-oriented monkey brains. — Amy Poehler

I am officially turning him over to you. He's your problem now. You'll have to watch out for him and that won't be easy. He's naive, gullible, immature, horribly unsophisticated, ignorant about anything worth knowing, and idealistic to a fault." He paused to make a show of thinking harder. "He's also indecisive, pathetically honest, a horrible liar, and too virtuous for words. He gets up twice each night to relieve himself, wads his clothes rather than folds them, chews with his mouth open, and talks with his mouth full. He has a nasty habit of cracking his knuckles every morning at breakfast, and, of course, he snores. To remedy that, just put a rock under his blanket. — Michael J. Sullivan

We all got into it, cracking walnut shells with our shoes, pulling the sweet white meat from inside while a crowd of our Chinese hosts eyed us with bemused perplexity. "Americans," I imagined them saying, afterward. "The poor sons of bitches have everything in the world, but they've never tasted fresh walnuts. — Jennifer Egan

Towards the end of 'Dark Shadows,' the sets are cracking and bleeding, but so is Angelique. The fact that she breaks apart physically as well as mentally lends an added dimension, and I just loved playing that. — Eva Green

Actors, you kind of have these ebbs and flows. These moments where you're in your glory - where you're really cracking - and moments where you're not. — Mark Ruffalo

A HOW-TO ON DISAPPEARING

No one understands the way we break.
Not jagged. Not knife sliding between ribs.
Not the spine, cracking.

That would be too easy.

That would be being able to know that
you're broken. That would be X-rays
showing the gaps, the fissures.
Clean breaks are easier to heal.
We do not break cleanly.

We break without breaking.
Not a crack, but a fog.
We dissipate.
Body here one moment and
not here the next.

Hands working one moment and
a dead weight the next.

We watch ourselves turn
colourless. Watch ourselves
become invisible / invincible.

This way, at least the pain is our own.
That's what I wanted all along, I guess. — Darshana Suresh

When the longhorns could be gathered up and driven, it was theorized that the heat from the herd's mass attracted lightning. (Such was the radiant heat from a large herd that a cowboy's face would be blistered on whichever side of the herd he'd ridden by the day's end.) Their great horns also seemed to attract electricity, so that lightning and ground-electricity would bounce around from horn to horn throughout the herd - a phantasmagoric burning blue circuitry. The cracking of the cowboy's whips and the twitching of the cattle's tails also emitted sparkling snakes of fire. — Rick Bass

Worldly riches are like nuts; many a tooth is broke in cracking them, but never is the stomach filled with eating them. — Nachman Of Breslov

Hey Cara," Crispin Calaway says. "Just wanted to drop these off for you. You need to get cracking on your chemistry studying if you want to understand the class." He sets a notebook down in front of me.
I pull it toward me with one finger, as if it's diseased. "Who says I want to understand the class?" I mutter.
"That's the spirit," he tells me pleasantly. — Haley Fisher

This is what it felt like to have a broken heart. It felt less like a cracking down the middle and more like she had swallowed it whole and it sat bruised and bleeding in the pit of her stomach. — Wendy Wunder

I captured her cheeks, pulling her back to my hungry mouth. Man, I couldn't get enough of her taste, of how she gave it right back to me on all fronts. Her hands went to the button on my jeans.
There was a cracking sound in the house. Most likely something had just went up in flames. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Hey, ass-hats!"

We bolt to our feet when Coach Jensen's commanding voice snaps toward the bleachers. Our fearless leader - the only Briar faculty member who can get away with calling students "ass-hats" - glares at us from the ice.

"Is there a reason your lazy asses are up in those seats when you should all be in the weight room?" he booms. "Quit stalking my practice!" Then he turns to scowl at the trio of freshmen who are snickering behind their gloves. "What're you ladies laughing at? Hustle!"

The players speed forward as if the ice behind them is cracking to pieces.

Up in the stands, the guys and I hustle just as fast. — Elle Kennedy

All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter's ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age. — Herman Melville

There is only one lifemate. She obviously belongs with Jacques."
"We do not know that. If he were not your brother ... " Byron began.
A low snarl stopped him. "I see no reason for you to question my judgment in this matter, Byron. I have had more than one brother, and I have never let fraternity stand in the way of what is just or right."
"It was Gregori who hunted your other brother," Byron pointed out.
Mikhail turned his head slowly, black eyes catching the whip of lightning cracking across the sky. "At my order. — Christine Feehan

I can remember neing in high school, walking through Central Park on a chilly day, and the sound of stamping on the crispness of autumn leaves would make me think of the sensation of my head cracking open. And I would get really scared and run all the way home, running for cover. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Heights don't bother me ... It's falling and cracking my skull that freaks me out. — Jason Marsden

If you were the first person ever to design an application for the iPhone and you patented it, you would be very, very better off than we are right now, you know? But you've got to be the first one to do it. So I figured that Led Zeppelin or the Stones were going to do it unless we just got on to it. So I got cracking with the guys from Apple. — Dhani Harrison

In that instant, your billboard careened ashore on a wall of water, cracking the back of my head. I reached for balance and touched what I thought was a puppy. Then you grabbed my finger. My God, I thought. It's a baby. I fainted dead away. That's how Macon found us the next day - me unconscious on half a billboard, you nestled in my arms, nursing on the pocket of my uniform. The half billboard said: " ... Cafe ... Proprietor." Our path seemed clear.
I will always love your mother for letting you go, Soldier, and I will always love you for holding on.
Love, the Colonel.
PS: I apologize for naming you Moses. I didn't know you were a girl until it was too late. — Sheila Turnage

Did you just make a joke, Tris? We should have you on painkillers more often if your going to start cracking jokes. — Veronica Roth

It was as if a volcano were cracking open, yet the people at the foot of the mountain ignored the sudden fissures, the black fumes, the boiling trickles, and went on believing that their only danger was to acknowledge the reality of these signs. — Ayn Rand

His chief failing was a habit of cracking heavy pedantic jokes; he was unable to let a good idea drop, and remarked several times during the course of the film that the heroine looked like she ought to be playing the horse. The comment had some truth in it, in that the heroine did have an equine cast of feature, but he made it too often, and with too little variation; however, she was willing to forgive him, in view of his evident tolerance of her social errors, such as an inability to say whether or not she wanted an ice cream. — Margaret Drabble

When you considered this world
people winched up and lowered down into the earth in steel cages and speed-fed through the tunnels, with doors cracking everywhere, and arctic winds mingling with dusty gaps of fire from the planet's core
it was hard to believe how delicate life was, how breakable things were. — Martin Amis

My parents traveled a lot, so my grandparents practically raised me. My grandmother and I really bonded in the kitchen. She's this amazing southern cook, and I would always help her - whether it was cracking eggs or stirring the green beans. It takes me back there. — Hillary Scott

Unsophisticated'," he said, cracking himself up again, " 'but nubile'. Jesus, where do they get that
stuff? Nubile."
"Try to contain your hilarity." Sophia sat behind the desk in her office in the villa and continued to
study the models Kris had chosen for the ads. "And I'd appreciate it if you'd warn me the next time
you decide to add a mystery vintage to the selection."
"Last-minute candidate. And it was in the name of science. — Nora Roberts

For a wolf, no," said Tabaqui, "but for so mean a person as myself a dry bone is a good feast. Who are we, the Gidur-log [the jackal people], to pick and choose?" He scuttled to the back of the cave, where he found the bone of a buck with some meat on it, and sat cracking the end merrily. — Rudyard Kipling

It's more impressive," I said out loud. "From a distance, I mean. You can't see the wear on things, you know? You can't see the rust or the weeds or the paint cracking. You see the place as someone once imagined it. — John Green

My body is cracking from the pain I have swallowed so Many times, heaving with sobs I can no longer suppress, my dignity dissolving in my tears, the agony of these past few days ripping my skin to shreds. — Tahereh Mafi

Y'know, there's a very interesting state of Anarchy up there. Everything's cracking up. That lot of tycoons; they don't believe in anything. They remind me of the white people in Central Africa. They used to say, 'Well, of course the blacks will drive us into the sea in fifty years time'. They used to say it cheerfully. In other words, 'We know that what we're doing is wrong. — Doris Lessing

Last Christmas they sat beside the hearths
Secure, together, cracking roast chestnuts

Or stale jokes about holies and ivies
As red wines cooled down another hot year

Today, even the vines threaten to stream
The streets with banners of another fire. — Jack Mapanje

I have a lot of people in my life who are truly ridiculous characters, and they're very, very funny people, but they don't really try to be. They're not cracking jokes. — Emile Hirsch

Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart - poisoned as it is with pride and pain - and replacing it with his own. — Max Lucado

By cracking down on wage theft, we can make sure workers and taxpayers are not getting ripped off by crooked employers. — Eric Schneiderman

I'm cracking up in this fucking Fishbinder Problem Box. A terrible seizure is coming on, I can feel its sinister pulsation creeping up my spine as I gnaw my tail apprehensively, grinding my teeth with anxiety, wishing I had some DDT to drown these rats in misery, repetitive cycles of poetry, symptoms of psychotic activity, rhyming of lines endlessly, results in Mazes D and E, dervish spinning round me vis-a-vis, Poole, Broome, Helvicki, help me, please, somebody, take a look at my pedigree, Albino Number 243, Doctor of Psychology, rashes, warts, and a small goatee, expert in lobotomy, performed six times on a chimpanzee, sweet land of liberty, Jesus this is agony, poisonous snake subfamily, here he comes after me! — William Kotzwinkle

Full sun.
Starlings flock,
nasturtiums burst into blossom.

And me, cracking open a pomegranate I think to myself,
"If only the seeds of the heart could be so transparent,"

when the juice spurts out and splashes into my eyes,
vermilion tears trickling down.

My mother bursts out laughing
and Rana too. — Sohrab Sepehri

Hypocrisy is what being a parent is all about," Jon said. "Well done for cracking the books, Jared and Holly. You see how it pays off."
Holly smiled and the light of her smile seemed to spill all over the room, reflections of light refracted all over everywhere.
"It's true reading is a wonderful thing," Rusty observed. "I read a Cosmo a year ago, and I still remember how to keep my nails in perfect condition and also ten top tips on how to dress to accentuate my ass."
Now everybody was staring at Rusty. Unlike Jared, he did not blush.
"Those tips are working," he said. "Don't pretend you haven't all noticed. I know the truth. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Be apprised, though, that the Maine Lobster Festival's democratization of lobster comes with all the massed inconvenience and aesthetic compromise of real democracy. See, for example, the aforementioned Main Eating Tent, for which there is a constant Disneyland-grade queue, and which turns out to be a square quarter mile of awning-shaded cafeteria lines and rows of long institutional tables at which friend and stranger alike sit cheek by jowl, cracking and chewing and dribbling. It's hot, and the sagged roof traps the steam and the smells, which latter are strong and only partly food-related. It is also loud, and a good percentage of the total noise is masticatory. — David Foster Wallace

WE
We feel the heat, and for a moment, We believe! Life is back. But this heat is intense, not gentle. Not submissive but searing. Painful.
We moan, scream, Our face cracking like gunfire ... like a whip. Thirty-five, one hundred. One hundred! ONE HUNDRED!
The fire consumes our wooden host. It burns, breaks, explodes. Releases Our remaining souls to travel to Our final resting places.
Or.
To find new places to hide.
And wait.
Touch me. — Lisa McMann

I hate fucking pussies like that." Felix reached out and shook Hector's hand. "Good for you, man. I would've cracked him too." He turned and pointed at Abel. "Let me know if you need help with that. I'll donate to the cause. We'll call it 'Cracking Down on Future Fucking Douchebag Wife Beaters of the World.' Can't think of a better charity. — Elizabeth Reyes

The thought does cross my mind that I could slip and end up cracking my head on the pavement just short of the pool, but if you're always going to worry about minor drawbacks, then you'll never accomplish anything. — Tim Tharp

Her magic sent him sprawling, and it then hurled into Rhysand again - so hard that his head cracked against the stones and the knife dropped from his splayed fingers. No one made a move to help him, and she struck him once more with her power. The red marble splintered where he hit it, spiderwebbing toward me. With wave after wave she hit him. Rhys groaned.
"Stop," I breathed, blood filling my mouth as I strained a hand to reach her feet. "Please."
Rhys's arms buckled as he fought to rise, and blood dripped from his nose, splattering on the marble. His eyes met mine.
The bond between us went taut. I flashed between my body and his, seeing myself through his eyes, bleeding and broken and sobbing.
I snapped back into my own mind as Amarantha turned to me again. "Stop? Stop? Don't pretend you care, human," she crooned, and curled her finger. I arched my back, my spine straining to the point of cracking, and Rhysand bellowed my name as I lost my grip on the room. — Sarah J. Maas

Places: a cold, bleak, lonely day on the rim at Muley Point, Utah. And the heart-cracking loveliness of the blood-smeared, bitter, incomprehensible slaughterhouse of a world ... — Edward Abbey

Many Nigerians believe that Babangida 'institutionalized corruption', yet few admit their own complicity in creating the situation where corruption became the norm. The citizenry are simultaneously victims, accomplices and active participants in their own corrupt downfall. Corruption in Nigeria is not just an offshoot of collapsed social and governmental institutions, nor is it the result of a hostile economic environment. The roots go much deeper and are more symptomatic of a residual breakdown of Nigerian societal values and morality. It is the result of a nationwide refusal to condemn dishonesty... While the government must take blame for not cracking down on corruption, the public deserves its share of blame for encouraging it, and letting the government get away with it. — Max Siollun

I felt it [Shakespeare's Coriolanus] is sort of an examination of our dysfunction as a nationalistic, tribal entities. I think the world is rocking and cracking open in weird and worrying places. And I think Coriolanus, the play, reflected that. — Ralph Fiennes

him swinging the baton and knocking out my side teeth and cracking my temple so that I can never hear good out of that ear again and saying let that be a lesson to never take you dutty, stinking, ghetto self uptown again. And I see them and I wait. But — Marlon James

Clearly," Jason said, "you are not doing nothing. You are most definitely doing something. What it looks like you're doing is pouring packets of sugar on Lauren Moffat's head."

Shhh," I said. "It's snowing. But only on Lauren." I shook more sugar out of the packets. "'Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter,'" I called softly down to Lauren in my best Jimmy Stewart imitation. "'Merry Christmas, you old building and Loan.'"

Jason started cracking up, and I had to hush him as Becca saw my sugar supply running low and hastened to hand me more packets.

Stop laughing so loud," I said to Jason. "You'll spoil this beautiful moment for them." I sprinkled more sugar over the side of the balcony. "'Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. — Meg Cabot

Like Honeycrisp, SweeTango has much larger cells than other apples, and when you bite into it, the cells shatter rather than cleaving along the cell walls, as is the case with most popular apples. The bursting of the cells fills your mouth with juice. Chunks of SweeTango snap off in your mouth with a loud cracking sound. — John Seabrook

Sawyer let out a hard, cold laugh. "Really? Well maybe you can sort this shit out for me because I can't seem to do that myself."
Until Sawyer had walked out of that church and found me and Ashton, I'd never heard him curse. Now his mouth was getting as bad as mine. I bit back the smile tugging at my lips. I shouldn't like the fact my perfect cousin was cracking a little ... — Abbi Glines

We're incredibly excited to be launching Communion in America, where not only are there literally thousands of excellent musicians that we want to promote, but it's also a country full of passionate music fans that we want to feel part of the Communion experience. It's a massive deal for us to expand, and we cannot wait to get cracking. — Ben Lovett

What would you think of an engineer who expounded the art of flying without revealing the secrets of the engine and propeller? That's what you do, you engineer of the human soul. Just that. You're a coward. You want the raisins out of my cake but you don't want the thorns of my roses. Haven't you too, little psychiatrist, been cracking silly jokes about me? Haven't you ridiculed me as "the prophet of bigger and better orgasms"? Have you never heard the whimpering of a young wife whose body has been desecrated by an impotent husband? Or the anguished cry of an adolescent bursting with unfulfilled love? Does your security still mean more to you than your patient? How long will you go on valuing your respectability above your medical mission? How long will you refuse to see that your pussyfooting procrastination is costing millions their lives? — Wilhelm Reich

I felt so stupid and young, and at the same time something was cracking open inside me, or maybe it was the world was cracking open to show me something really important underneath. I knew I was only seeing a tiny bit of it, but it was bigger than anything I'd ever seen or felt before. — Ruth Ozeki

Mr. Vitale?"
"Yes," I say. "Who the fuck is this?"
"Detective Jameson," he says.I just want to ... "I just want to notify you that there was an incident this evening - "
"Don't do it," I say, my voice cracking, interrupting him.
Don't you do it.
Don't you say it.
Don't make a notification over the phone ... — J.M. Darhower

Now he [Rattler] was staring at Prairie with an intensity you could light fires with. And she stared back. There was something between them, all right, something cracking with tension and danger, something almost ... alive. — Sophie Littlefield

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