Crash Course Quotes & Sayings

We have a bad habit of seeing books as sort of cheaply made movies where the words do nothing but create visual narratives in our heads.
So too often what passes for literary criticism is "I couldn't picture that guy", or "I liked that part", or "this part shouldn't have happened." That is, we've left language so far behind that sometimes we judge quality solely based on a story's actions.
So we can appreciate a novel that constructs its conflicts primarily through plot - the layered ambiguity of a fatal car accident caused by a vehicle owned by Gatsby but driven by someone else, for instance. But in this image-drenched world, sometimes we struggle to appreciate and celebrate books where the quality arises not exclusively from plot but also from the language itself. — John Green

Rulon motioned to me to help him up. I'd never imagined that my wedding night would involve a crash course in geriatric care, but my new husband was older than my grandpa Wall. Rulon was very tall, and it took all of my strength to get him up. — Rebecca Musser

So, a crash course for the amnesiac," Leo said, in a helpful tone that made Jason think this was not going to be helpful. "We go to the 'Wilderness School'" - Leo made air quotes with his fingers. "Which means we're 'bad kids.' Your family, or the court, or whoever, decided you were too much trouble, so they shipped you off to this lovely prison - sorry, 'boarding school' - in Armpit, Nevada, where you learn valuable nature skills like running ten miles a day through the cacti and weaving daisies into hats! And for a special treat we go on 'educational' field trips with Coach Hedge, who keeps order with a baseball bat. — Rick Riordan

My creativity isn't rooted in confidence. It grows from many things, no doubt, but chief among them is a deep, rebellious, and indeed almost hostile stance toward complacency- about anything. It feels like the enemy. And certainty? It closes doors. Ends discussions. Shuts other people out. — Robin Black

We just gotta fly
I can take you thru the center of the dark
We gonna fly
On a collision course to crash into my heart
I will be your, I will be your rocket — Def Leppard

They're on a crash course to nowhere. But you, my lady friend, you're a black hole. You've sucked me in, and now there's no escape ... — Amanda Howells

I hit Crash's button and we heard the phone inside start to ring.
After four, he answered. "Hey, PsyPig." His voice was husky. "I'd normally tell you not to call me at this ungodly hour, but evidently someone's running a cockfghting ring in the hall, so I wasn't actually asleep ... "
"It's me. Open up."
He was actually silent for a second. "Aren't /you/ butch?"
"Don't fuck around. I need to see Miss Mattie."
"Okay, okay, don't get your handcuffs in a twist. I can't find my pants."
I wondered if he could say the word "pants" without making something dirty out of it.
"Unless, of course, this visit is clothing-optional."
And there it was. I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn't see me since the door was still shut. — Jordan Castillo Price

The wordlessness of depression is a galling experience. You can't phone your friends, writing an e-mail is beyond you, you can't put pen to paper. The disease is a crash course in meaninglessness, lack of structure, the collapse of form. — Gwyneth Lewis

Let things take their natural course, they will generate their own momentum, that if you try to interfere with will only result in a crash. Physics knows what it is doing, it applies to everyday life, emotion, feeling, desire, and every thought in our tiny little minds, as much as it does to thermodynamics, gravity, nuclear force, and space & time. Don't try too hard looking for answers, you don't need to understand the wavelengths of light and refraction to awe at the beauty of a rainbow. — Graham Mitchell

Somewhere in the universe two black holes collide - as heavy as stars, as small as cities, literally black (the complete absence of light) holes (empty hollows). Tethered by gravity, in their final seconds together the black holes course through thousands of revolutions about their eventual point of contact, churning up space and time until they crash and merge into one bigger black hole, an event more powerful than any since the origin of the universe, outputting more than a trillion times the power of a billion Suns. The black holes collide in complete darkness. None of the energy exploding from the collision comes out as light. No telescope will ever see the event. — Janna Levin

Rain is the last thing you want when you're chasing someone in Miami. They drive shitty enough as it is, but on top of that, snow is a foreign concept, which means they never got the crash course in traction judgment for when pavement slickness turns less than ideal. And because of the land-sea temperature differential, Florida has regular afternoon rain showers. Nothing big, over in a jiff. But minutes later, all major intersections in Miami-Dade are clogged with debris from spectacular smash-ups. In Northern states, snow teaches drivers real fast about the Newtonian physics of large moving objects. I haven't seen snow either, but I drink coffee, so the calculus of tire-grip ratio is intuitive to my body. — Tim Dorsey

Plunge a sponge into Lake Erie. Did you absorb every drop? Take a deep breath. Did you suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere? Pluck a pine needle from a tree in Yosemite. Did you deplete the forest of foliage? Watch an ocean wave crash against the beach. Will there never be another one? Of course there will. No sooner will one wave crash into the sand than another appears. Then another, then another. This is a picture of God's sufficient grace. Grace is simply another word for God's tumbling, rumbling reservoir of strength and protection. It comes at us not occasionally or miserly but constantly and aggressively, wave upon wave. We've barely regained our balance from one breaker, and then, bam, here comes another. — Max Lucado

The only reason that 5 billion people have any food is that we've displaced vast numbers of species and we're eating fossil fuel. The nitrogen for this food is being manufactured from gas and oil, and we are on a crash course with reality. — Anonymous

This preternatural love of rules almost for their own sake punctuates German finance as it does German life. As it happens, a story had just broken that a German reinsurance company called Munich Re, back in June 2007, or just before the crash, had sponsored a party for its best producers that offered not just chicken dinners and nearest-to-the-pin golf competitions but a blowout with prostitutes in a public bath. In finance, high or low, this sort of thing is of course not unusual. What was striking was how organized the German event was. The company tied white and yellow and red ribbons to the prostitutes to indicate which ones were available to which men. After each sexual encounter the prostitute received a stamp on her arm to indicate how often she had been used. The Germans didn't just want hookers: they wanted hookers with rules. — Michael Lewis

My training in martial arts was kind of a crash course in how to look like a black belt. I know the moves of a black belt - my kicks, and my stretches, and my punches and all that. — William Zabka

I'm some sort of guinea pig in a home economics crash course for werewolves. — Kat Kruger

Prison is a crash course in the darker side of life. Few survive it without becoming a different person: more cynical, jaded, fearful, angry. Its hard to trust again, hard to believe, easy to hate a system that destroyed your life behind the pompous pretense of saving you from yourself, for your own good. — Peter McWilliams

Felicia nodded. "Sometimes I have that problem. I know nearly everything you can learn in a book and very little that you learn in life. Like my fear of spiders. It's silly, really. I've studied arachnids in an effort to get over my ridiculous overreaction, but still, every time I see one ... " She shuddered. "It's not pretty. I simply can't control myself. A flaw - one of many." "If you're not perfect, then you came to the right place," Charlie told her. "Fool's Gold is a lively town with plenty of characters. You'll get a crash course in how the little people live." "I hope I can fit in." Patience saw the concern in Felicia's eyes and touched her arm. "You're going to do just fine. — Susan Mallery

When you have the catalog of work, it doesn't feel like you've got one shot to get it right; it's just like, you're making a new document of something at the present time, and it's a living thing, and it changes. It's been cool to help other people make their records, to produce. You get a crash course in things that you don't get as the artist. — Blake Mills

I wasn't prepared for death. Nobody is. You lose someone you love more than you love yourself, and you get a crash course in mortality. You lie awake night after night, wondering if you really believe in heaven and hell and finding all kinds of reasons to cling to faith, because you can't bear to believe they aren't out there somewhere, a few whispered words of a prayer away. — Karen Marie Moning

I think participating in GISHWHES is a crash course in facing our fears: people go to crowded shopping malls wearing scuba gear, order from a fast food restaurant in Shakespearean verse or jump out of airplanes among many other tasks. — Misha Collins

I have had a pretty hardcore crash course on living out of a suitcase. Some people take consistency in their lives for granted. When you have little to none, you discover it's kind of a nice thing. — Chet Faker

There is a spirit in us that makes our brass to blare and our cymbals crash-all, of course, supported by the practicalities of trained lung power, throat, heart, guts. — Laurence Olivier

You just can't take a crash course to be a tango dancer in a movie. — Robert Duvall

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It didn't take me long out there, in the landscapes my father had painted, to realize that as much as I loved my country [Australia], I barely knew it. I'd spent so many years studying the art of our immigrant cultures, and barely any time at all on the one that had been here all along ... So I set myself a crash course and became a pioneer in a new field: desperation conservation. My job became the documentation and preservation of ancient Aboriginal rock art, before the uranium and bauxite companies had a chance to blast it into rubble (pp. 345-346) — Geraldine Brooks

I've always been into visual effects. It was something I took keen interest in before films happened. Ironically, I am a part of 'Raaz 3,' a film that is shot entirely on 3D. It has encouraged me to pursue my dream. Hopefully, if time permits, I will travel to the United States and attend a crash course in visual graphics and animation. — Emraan Hashmi

Some right-wingers, especially those who think of the entire Islamic religion as a totalitarian death cult, would likewise get a crash-course in reality if they ever bothered to hang out in Iraq and meet actual Muslims. — Michael Totten

I was in front of an ambulance the other day, and I noticed that the word ambulance was spelled in reverse print on the hood of the ambulance. And I thought, Well, isn't that clever. I look in the rear-view mirror; I can read the word ambulance behind me. Of course while you're reading, you don't see where you're going, you crash. You need an ambulance. I think they're trying to drum up some business on the way back from lunch. — Jerry Seinfeld

In the neighborhood around Waseda, there were all these movie theaters, so every morning I left the house and watched movies instead of going to class. The experience of encountering films then is one of my greatest memories. Before that I'd never paid any attention to directors, but there I was taking a crash course in Ozu, Kurosawa, Naruse, Truffaut, Renoir, Fellini. Because I've always been naturally a more introspective person, I was more interested in becoming a screenwriter than a director. — Hirokazu Koreeda

I went down on one knee in front of her. It was melodramatic, I know, but she was a teenager, and I thought she would probably buy it. "Samantha," I said. "All you have to do is just let me try. Do nothing, and I won't try to get you out of here against your will. You have my solemn word of honor." There was no crash of thunder, not even the sound of distant laughter, and in spite of my recent epidemic of unpleasant emotions, I felt no shame. And I believe I did it very convincingly. In fact, I think it was the performance of a lifetime - I didn't mean a word of it, of course, but under the circumstances I would gladly have promised her a ride on my flying saucer if it would get me out of here. And — Jeff Lindsay

Scouting ought to be about building character, not about sex. Period. Precious few parents enroll their boys in the Scouts to get a crash course in sexual orientation. — Rick Perry

Writing a first novel was an arduous crash course. I learned so much in the six years it took me to write it, mostly technical things pertaining to craft. — Rachel Kushner

So let's say my bad luck did crash the plane. What exactly are were you going to do about it?' 'Why is the plane crashing?' He was trying to hide a smile now. 'The piolets are passed out and drunk.' 'Easy. I'd fly the plane.' Of course. I pursed my lips and tried again. 'Both engines have exploded and we're falling in a death spiral towards the earth.' 'I'd wait till we were close enough to the ground, get a good grip on you, kick out the wall, and jump. Then, I'd run you back to the scene of the accident, and we'd stumble around like the two luckiest surviours in history.' I stared at him wordlessly. 'What?' He wispered. - Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, Eclipse — Stephenie Meyer

'The X Factor' was the final push I needed to have the presence and confidence on stage, which I didn't have before. It's a crash course in the music industry. If you can survive the show, you're ready for the industry. — Fleur East

I found motherhood a crash course in existentialism (what is my purpose in life, am I mistress or slave of my destiny, when the hell do I get some sleep?) and [ the book] ROOM was the result. — Emma Donoghue

In a series of experiments, safety officials ran regular people through mock evacuations from planes. The trials weren't nearly as stressful as real evacuations, of course, but it didn't matter. People, especially women, hesitated for a surprisingly long time before jumping onto the slide. That pause slowed the evacuation for everyone. But there was a way to get people to move faster. If a flight attendant stood at the exit and screamed at people to jump, the pause all but disappeared, the researchers found. In fact, if flight attendants did not aggressively direct the evacuation, they might as well have not been there at all. A study by the Cranfield University Aviation Safety Centre found that people moved just as slowly for polite and calm flight attendants as they did when there were no flight attendants present. — Amanda Ripley

The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are confident that Saddam Hussein retains some stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capabilities. Intelligence reports indicate that he is seeking nuclear weapons ... — Robert Byrd

Great people especially must be careful about what they worship. — John Green

Letting go is a central theme in spiritual practice, as we see the preciousness and brevity of life. When letting go is called for, if we have not learned to do so, we suffer greatly, and when we get to the end of our life, we may have what is called a crash course. Sooner or later we have to learn to let go and allow the changing mystery of life to move through us without our fearing it, without holding and grasping. I — Jack Kornfield

For those who think Africa's problems can simply be solved by the injection of money, I would recommend a crash course in cobalt economics in the Congo. In 2004 the cobalt boom meant there was plenty of money in Lubumbashi, but the presence of money did not guarantee that the local economy grew or even stabilised. — Tim Butcher

Living in Paris was a crash course in chic. — Rebecca Romijn

I've never crashed a wedding. When I was a kid I, of course, used to crash parties. Crashing a wedding is difficult though because you have to have the suit, and you have to have information in case someone catches you. You have to know at least some names and something. — Christopher Walken

I studied French in high school and German in college and I once took a 24-hour Italian crash course. English has by far the most words in it of any other language. Our money might not be worth anything anymore, but the language is. — Roy Blount Jr.

Picture this broad: 22 going on 18. Half the guys in my class would have given their left testicle to date her. This cupcake is the guidance counselor the principal has assigned me. Miss Boyle is her name. We all call her "Miss Bubbly Water." Imagine the teasing I have to endure from my friends. Not to mention what it's like, sitting across from this Barbie Doll every Thursday afternoon, watching her cross and uncross her legs, while she's lecturing me about - get this: "staying focused." Right! My pants are on fire, and she's handing me a crash course in Psych 101! — Ted Gargiulo

For some reason, these days we tend to downplay the importance of aggression, of taking risks, of barreling forward. It's probably because it's been negatively associated with certain notions of violence or masculinity. But of course Earhart shows that that isn't true. In fact, on the side of her plane she painted the words, "Always think with your stick forward." That is: You can't ever let up your flying speed - if you do, you crash. — Ryan Holiday

It took me nine years to get through the fourth grade. When I got into television commercials, I had to take a crash course in reading. I was 32 years old, and I couldn't read the cue cards. — Rocky Graziano

He actually believes that she was murdered. The reality is, of course, also, that his car, his driver, were involved in this crash therefore there will be people that believe that he is ultimately responsible not only for the death of his own son, but for the death of the princess. — Robert Jobson

As per this course, students use to learn necessary driving skills that can help them further in defending themselves on the road against a possible crash that can be caused due to drunk drivers, bad drivers or poor weather condition. All you need to look ahead in order to detect possible dangers. Your eyes should move in order to trace and avoid any possible collision. Once a potential threat is detected on the road while driving, you need to take the decision right away and act on it instantly. Defensive drivers are lessoned up with the safe and secure driving practices. Due to this reason they are always good at avoiding dangers while driving on the road. — Gary Hensley

I used to be the queen of domesticity, a Good Housekeeping cover model in the making. I was also an ambitious professional. These two identities had always been on a collision course. But I was oblivious to that fact until after the crash. — Tiffany Dufu

I got a crash-course education in urban fantasy. I suddenly had to look up all these other writers I was supposed to be in a genre with. I instantly had to become an expert in this genre I knew almost nothing about. — Carrie Vaughn

You can't take a crash course in serenity. — Shirley Maclaine

They're both a bit cavalier about the whole thing at first; more than anything, they seem to think that it's going to be a lot of fun. Which it is, of course, but mostly in the way a plane crash is fun to reminisce about after you survive it. — Josh Gates

If there was one thing I'd learned, it was that you were responsible for your own ship. You had to look after the engine and make sure the plane was in order and ready to be flown. You were in charge of plotting your course. When you were in the pilot's seat, it was your hand on the throttle, no one else's. If your oil ran out or you lost your engine or the engine caught fire and you had to crash, you were the one saving yourself. No one else could do it for you. — Jennifer Niven

I was on 'Desperate Housewives' and that was my crash course on being on national television topless. Also, I do what I can in between scenes: push-ups, a little free weights. I knew going in it would be a big part of the show. — Josh Henderson

Being gay is like taking a crash course in human nature," he says. "Your first real glimpse at the dirty underbelly of routine social interaction. A lesser person, " he offers with a wry grin, "Might well become one bitter fuck. — Jonathan Tropper

Among those today who believe that modern poetry must do without rhyme or metre, there is an assumption that the alternative to free verse is a crash course in villanelles, sestinas and other such fixed forms. But most ... are rare in English poetry. Few poets have written a villanelle worth reading, or indeed regret not having done so. — James Fenton

Back in July 2003, he'd written them a long essay on the causes and consequences of what he took to be a likely housing crash: "Alan Greenspan assures us that home prices are not prone to bubbles - or major deflations - on any national scale," he'd said. "This is ridiculous, of course ... . In 1933, during the fourth year of the Great Depression, the United States found itself in the midst of a housing crisis that put housing starts at 10% of the level of 1925. Roughly half of all mortgage debt was in default. During the 1930s, housing prices collapsed nationwide by roughly 80%. — Michael Lewis

The only education in grief that any of us ever gets is a crash course. Until Caroline had died I had belonged to that other world, the place of innocence, and linear expectations, where I thught grief was a simple, wrenching realm of sadness and longing that graduallu receded. What that definition left out was the body blow that loss inflicts, as well as the temporary madness, and a range of less straightforward emotions shocking in their intensity. — Gail Caldwell

I've always thought the American eagle needed a left wing and a right wing. The right wing would see to it that economic interests had their legitimate concerns addressed. The left wing would see to it that ordinary people were included in the bargain. Both would keep the great bird on course. But with two right wings or two left wings, it's no longer an eagle and it's going to crash. — Bill Moyers

Every inch of my writing career has been influenced by my screenwriting education. I was lucky enough to go to film school at USC, and I got a crash course in how to tell a story efficiently. I learned structure, pace, my style, how to know your audience, and most importantly, how to take criticism and edits properly. — Victoria Aveyard

I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course. — Tom Stoppard

Said all the dwarves. "Dark for dark business! There are many hours before dawn." "Of course!" said Bilbo, and sat down in a hurry. He missed the stool and sat in the fender, knocking over the poker and shovel with a crash. "Hush!" said Gandalf. "Let Thorin speak!" And this is how Thorin began. "Gandalf, dwarves and Mr. Baggins! We are met together in the house of our friend and fellow conspirator, this most excellent and audacious hobbit - may the hair on his toes never fall out! all praise to his wine and ale! - " He paused for breath and for a polite remark from the hobbit, but the compliments were quite lost on poor Bilbo Baggins, who was wagging his mouth in protest at being called audacious and worst of all fellow conspirator, though no noise came out, he was so flummoxed. So Thorin went on: "We are met to discuss our plans, our ways, — J.R.R. Tolkien

We are all on a collision course with ourselves. Inevitably, our existing habits will be counter-productive to achieving our bigger picture goals. To avoid the crash, we need to regularly review how we are doing things and make adjustments as needed. — John Fairclough

To maximize what you get out of your college experience, I want your friends to look at your semester schedule and say "this is the weirdest schedule I've ever seen!"
Trust me on this one. If you want to be an engineer, take Engineering 101, and a crash course in philosophical literature. then take Engineering 102, and art appreciation. then Engineering 103, and Intro to Women's Rights.
You will expand your knowledge and ways of looking at the world, and become a more powerful person for it. Because that way, when you encounter difficulties, you won't only tackle the problem from the point of view of an engineer. Anybody can do that. You will be able to look at it as a scientist, a philosopher, an artist, and choose the best course of action from there. — Anonymous