Done And Over It Quotes & Sayings

Outdoors, we knew, was the real terror of life. The threat of being outdoors surfaced frequently in those days. Every possibility of excess was curtailed with it. If somebody ate too much, he could end up outdoors. If somebody used too much coal, he could end up outdoors. People could gamble themselves outdoors, drink themselves outdoors. Sometimes mothers put their sons outdoors, and when that happened, regardless of what the son had done, all sympathy was with him. He was outdoors, and his own flesh had done it. To be put outdoors by a landlord was one thing - unfortunate, but an aspect of life over which you had no control, since you could not control your income. But to be slack enough to put oneself outdoors, or heartless enough to put one's own kin outdoors - that was criminal. — Toni Morrison

It's a bad job," he said, when I had done; "but the sun sets every day, and people die every minute, and we mustn't be scared by the common lot. If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot at all men's doors was heard knocking somewhere, every object in this world would slip from us. No! Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race! — Charles Dickens

This was the greatest gift that he had, the talent that fitted him for war; that ability not to ignore but to despise whatever bad ending there could be. This quality was destroyed by too much responsibility for others or the necessity of undertaking something ill planned or badly conceived. For in such things the bad ending, failure, could not be ignored. It was not simply a possibility of harm to one's self, which could be ignored. He knew he himself was nothing, and he knew death was nothing. He knew that truly, as truly as he knew anything. In the last few days he had learned that he himself, with another person, could be everything. But inside himself he knew that this was the exception. That we have had, he thought. In that I have been most fortunate. That was given to me, perhaps, because I never asked for it. That cannot be taken away nor lost. But that is over and done with now on this morning and what there is to do now is our work. — Ernest Hemingway,

For a long while the past drops away from you easily and it would seem automatically, properly. Its scenes don't vanish so much as become irrelevant. And then there's a switchback, what's been all over and done with sprouting up fresh, wanting attention, even wanting you to do something about it, though it's plain there is not on this earth a thing to be done. — Alice Munro

...the sensation was so startlingly intense that I couldn't help it, I slipped into the shadow.
"What in the name of - " Simon jerked backward, voice shocked. "Gods and suns, Lily, where did you go?"
I froze where I was, embarrassment flowing over me in a fiery tide that burned everything else away. Sweet lords of hell, what had I done? I was fairly certain that vanishing during such a moment was just not done. — M.J. Scott

Stop using, "easier said than done", as an excuse to not change! Bringing your life to a higher level is challenging; get over it and rise to the challenge! — Steve Maraboli

For shit's sake, it wasn't like there was a twelve-step for being the Scribe Virgin's kid:
Hi, I'm Vishous. I'm her son and I've been her son for three hundred years.
HI, VISHOUS.
She's done a head job on me again, and I'm trying not to go to the Other Side and scream bloody murder at her.
WE UNDERSTAND, VISHOUS.
And on the bloody note, I'd like to dig up my father and kill him all over again, but I can't. So I'm just going to try to keep my sister alive even though she's paralyzed, and attempt to fight the urge to find some pain so I can deal with this Payne.
YOU'RE A STRAIGHT-UP PUSSY, VISHOUS, BUT WE SUPPORT YOUR SORRY ASS. — J.R. Ward

It is a different sensation than watching the stars while lying in a field, something Bailey has done many times. There are no trees creeping into the edges, and the gentle swaying of the carriage makes him feel almost weightless. And it is incredibly quiet. As the carriage moves along in what seems to be a circular pattern, Bailey can hear nothing but a soft creak and the sound of Poppet breathing next to him. It is as though the entire circus has faded away into the darkness. He glances over at Poppet, who is looking at him instead of the sky. She gives him a grin and then turns away. Bailey wonders if he should ask if she sees anything in the stars. — Erin Morgenstern

In many different ways it would be an unprecedented plague, a calamity like the one that had befallen the Egyptians in the Old Testament. The only difference between the Egyptians then and the Americans now, Jende reasoned, was that the Egyptians had been cursed by their own wickedness. They had called an abomination upon their land by worshipping idols and enslaving their fellow humans, all so they could live in splendor. They had chosen riches over righteousness, rapaciousness over justice. The Americans had done no such thing. And — Imbolo Mbue

Kudos to you for generating enough sweat that it actually drips off of your body - and all over the machine you are using at the time. If you sweat a lot, that's fine, but wipe down the damn machine when you're done ... or I will confront you, and it will not be pretty. — Rachel Nichols

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting the commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they an best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason
if the worlds are in any way blurred
the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing 'weak specification'. — Raymond Carver

You'll always have to fight for what you want. Definitely crossing over and being able to tackle these grittier parts was a challenge, but I feel like I've done it! It's a whole new chapter. — Vanessa Hudgens

The head of the sledgehammer was cold, icy cold, and it touched his forehead as gently as a kiss.
'Pock! There,' said Czernobog. 'Is done.' There was a smile on his face that Shadow had never seen before, an easy, comfortable smile, like sunshine on a summer's day. The old man walked over to the case, and he put the hammer away, and closed the bag, and pushed it back under the sideboard.
'Czernobog?' asked Shadow. Then, 'Are you Czernobog?'
'Yes. For today,' said the old man. 'By tomorrow, it will all be Bielebog. But today, is still Czernobog.'
'Then why? Why didn't you kill me when you could?'
The old man took out an unfiltered cigarette from a pack in his pocket. He took a large box of matches from the mantelpiece and lit the cigarette with a match. He seemed deep in thought. 'Because,' said the old man, after some time, 'there is blood. But there is also gratitude. And it has been a long, long winter. — Neil Gaiman

I noticed that Halliday had added an old eight-track tape player to the cockpit control panel. There was also a rack of eight-track tapes mounted over my right shoulder. I grabbed one and slapped it into the deck. Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC began to blast out of the robot's internal and external speakers, so loud it made my chair vibrate. — Ernest Cline

Maven Gustav, what is that awful noise?" Tobin bellowed, holding his hands over his ears.
"Why, it's my very own creation!" Gustav replied, beaming with pride. "I made this spell to be activated in the event of a castle emergency. In all my tests, it never failed to wake everyone," he noted, proudly.
"Yes, Gustav. It's fantastically loud. Well done. But what is the emergency, and how do we turn the alarm off? — R.S. Mollison-Read

Railing against the past will not heal us. History has happened. It's over and done with. All we can do is to change its course by encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don't. — Arundhati Roy

TROY: Death ain't nothing. I done seen him. Done wrasled with him. You can't tell me nothing about death. death ain't nothing but a fastball on the outside corner. And you know what I'll do to that! Lookee here, Bono...am I lying? You get one of them fastballs, about waist high, over the outside corner of the plate where you can get the meat of the bat on it...and good god! You can kiss it goodbye. Now, am I lying? — August Wilson

And there's a cop over there."
"What?" the boy said, glancing at the D.C. police officer that stood at the corner of the street, "You think that guys can do a better job protecting you than I can?"
Actually, I thought Liz could have done a better job "protecting" me than he could, but instead I said, "No, I think if you don't leave me alone, I can scream and that cop will arrest you."
Somehow the boy seemed to know it was a joke ... — Ally Carter

She'd gotten even prettier over the years.
And now she was in his house.
And he had no idea if this was the best thing to happen to him or the stupidest thing he'd ever done.
Kelsey watched Nate go, thinking this might've been the worst decision she'd ever made. Okay, so it wasn't nearly as bad as that time she'd decided to go on the Sky Screamer at the amusement park when she was drunk. — Cindi Madsen

A look at the past reminds us of how great is the distance, and how short, over which we have come. The past makes us ask what we have done with us. It makes us ask whether our very achievements are not ironical counterpoint and contrast to our fundamental failures. — Robert Penn Warren

The teacher's first duty is to watch over the environment, and this takes precedence over all the rest. It's influence is indirect, but unless it be well done there will be no effective and permanent results of any kind, physical, intellectual or spiritual. — Maria Montessori

She removed the shining black disk from its sleeve, holding it by the edges. After she placed it on the turntable and set the arm into motion, she adjusted the volume on the amplifier, flooding the room with sound. She closed her eyes and began to sway to the music. She could almost feel Clive's arms guiding her, as he had done so many times over the course of their lives together.
(from Independence Day) — Ken Doyle

Toby, if I say challenging him is futile, that you'll change nothing and only grant the omen you saw this morning power over you ... if I say you can save your life and your heart by walking away from this, will it matter?" Part of me
most of me
wanted to say, "Yes, it would matter; please tell me to stay here. If you tell me, I'll stay." I didn't want to go. I'm not a hero; I never have been. I just do what has to be done. But when you get right down to it, isn't that the definition of hero? — Seanan McGuire

When these people stopped, there'd be others to take their jobs over. That was the Lord's plan. He was getting the world's work done through people, and He would see to it that He had enough to keep things going. — Loula Grace Erdman

...it was the very government and the way they treated us that started us on that road. For example, in my case, when they beat me in the DIC cells for being a "communist" and an "extremist" and all that, they awoke a great curiosity in me: "What is communism? What is socialism?" Every day they beat me over the head with that. And I began to ask myself: "What's a socialist country? How are problems solved there? How do people live there? Are the miners massacred there?" And then I began to analyze: "What have I done? What do I want? What do I think? Why am I here? I only asked for justice for the people, I only asked for education to be better, I asked that there be no more massacres like the terrible San Juan massacre. Is that socialism? Is that communism? — Domitila Barrios De Chungara

Although we credit God with designing man, it turns out He's not sufficiently skilled to have done so. In point of fact, He unintentionally knocked over the first domino by creating a palette of atoms with different shapes. Electron clouds bonded, molecules bloomed, proteins embraced, and eventually cells formed and learned how to hang on to one another like lovebirds. He discovered that by simmering the Earth at the proper distance from the Sun, it instinctively sprouted with life. He's not so much a creator as a molecule tinkerer who enjoyed a stroke of luck: He simply set the ball rolling by creating a smorgasbord of matter, and creation ensued. — David Eagleman

I know I was wrong. If i could go back and do it over, I would. I wish I could undo it all."
I know that." Grandma reached over and put a twisted hand on hers. "'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.' Isaiah one eighteen."
I've done terrible things."
Don't make no difference. You can't out-sin the cross. — Linda Nichols

This boy
this stubborn, selfless, stupid boy
had given himself to the Mafia. He had handed control of his future over to the men they hated most in exchange for her life. For her safety. And he had done it so easily, so quickly, like he didn't have to think about it at all ... like sacrificing for her came just as naturally as breathing. — J.M. Darhower

He shook his fist angrily at the gleaming eyes, and began securely to prop his moccasins before the fire.
'An' I wisht this cold snap'd break,' he went on. 'It's been fifty below for two weeks now. An' I wisht I'd never started on this trip, Henry. I don't like the looks of it. I don't feel right, somehow. An' while I'm wishin', I wisht the trip was over an' done with, an' you an' me a-sittin' by the fire in Fort McGurry just about now an' playin' cribbage- that's what I wisht.'
— Jack London

The Fish She stands over a fish, thinking about certain irrevocable mistakes she has made today. Now the fish has been cooked, and she is alone with it. The fish is for her - there is no one else in the house. But she has had a troubling day. How can she eat this fish, cooling on a slab of marble? And yet the fish, too, motionless as it is, and dismantled from its bones, and fleeced of its silver skin, has never been so completely alone as it is now: violated in a final manner and regarded with a weary eye by this woman who has made the latest mistake of her day and done this to it. — Lydia Davis

Call it professional interest. You see, Jessamine, love is a kind of poison; one of my favorite kinds, in fact. It infects the blood; it takes over the mind; it seizes dominion over the body. It amuses me to think of him pining for you. Aching for what he cannot have. The loneliness in his soul is festering like a wound. There is nothing I could do for him that is worse that what you have already done, my lovely. And I assure you, in his case there will be no cure. — Maryrose Wood

I went to go see 'Final Destination' which you have to be 17 and over to see and they're like 'Uh, we need to see your I.D.' Here's the really funny thing is that I actually had done my hair and makeup that day. If I don't do my hair and makeup I can understand it but I had actually made an effort to look older. — Kay Panabaker

When I have to do something fast, I wear the most unflattering rubber pants over my pants and a big easy sweater. I can get on my knees in the garden in whatever condition, and when I'm done, I can take it off, get in the car, and drive to the office. It's the most practical thing. — Dries Van Noten

Don't you know that love isn't just going to bed? Love isn't an act, it's a whole life. It's staying with her now because she needs you; it's knowing you and she will still care about each other when sex and daydreams, fights and futures
when all that's on the shelf and done with. Love
why, I'll tell you what love is: it's you at seventy-five and her at seventy-one, each of you listening for the other's step in the next room, each afraid that a sudden silence, a sudden cry, could mean a lifetime's talk is over. — Brian Moore

Blake sat down as well, facing her. The moon now claimed the sky as hers, surfacing slowly over the trees. Blake tested her hand-drawn keys, and in his head he heard a full piano play his heart out loud for her.
Livia clapped when he was done. She put her hand behind his head and pulled his lips close. "I think I heard it," she whispered before kissing him. — Debra Anastasia

Time changes its nature in prisons and hospitals. In this cosmogony it both races and drags itself. For anyone who hasn't been a long-term patient or prisoner - or both, like Sharmila - there is no way to imagine what evenings are like when you are locked in - the indeterminate hour when the sun has gone down but night hasn't fully set in. It haunts you. In a hospital, especially one where air-conditioning and double-glass windows don't shield you from the real world, there are mixed sounds that rise up from every floor; murmurs, shallow breaths, the sounds of pain and healing. Once the final inspections are done and the trays and bowls carried away, a shroud of silence falls over everything. It can be strangely tranquil, or eerily desolate. — Anubha Bhonsle

By the time we were done I was exhausted. I don't know how movie stars do the same scene over and over like that. It takes a lot out of you. — Michael Thomas Ford

If that had indeed been ecstasy, I would have to agree. I would also have to say that either we had taken far too much, or it was a very powerful drug. I could nearly blush myself when I remembered what I had said and done. Trying to become a little more human was one thing - but this had been far over the edge into the sludge of dumb, yammer-headed personhood. Perhaps the stuff should be called excess-tasy. In retrospect, I was very glad there was a drug to blame. I did not like to think of myself as behaving like a cartoon. — Jeff Lindsay

When the congregation began to disperse, a number of persons, chiefly ladies, waited for him near the pulpit, and, as he came down, met him with greetings and compliments. Nora watched him from her place, listening, smiling and passing his handkerchief over his forehead. At last they relieved him, and he came up to her. She remembered for years afterward the strange half-smile on his face. There was something in it like a pair of eyes peeping over a wall. It seemed to express so fine an acquiescence in what she had done, that, for the moment, she had a startled sense of having committed herself to something. He gave her his hand, without manifesting any surprise. "How — Henry James

If your coping mechanism to date has been to ignore your weight, don't feel badly. You're in good company. I've done my share of standing on the doctor's scale backwards, cringing as the nurse scribbled on the clipboard, anxious when the doctor came in glancing over my record. I scrutinized his face for any semblance of judgment. Whether or not I faced the scale or the doctor skipped a pep talk, it didn't change the truth and it still pervaded every hour of my waking thoughts. I knew what I needed to do and just agonizingly prolonged it. What about you?

We want our lies to be true--desperately. We think it means less work, less pain. But aren't we experiencing work and pain every day when we are obese? We don't escape it, we just reallocate it, attach it to different problems.

The sooner we face the numbers and start to deal with them, the sooner we can resolve them. — Shannon Sorrels

Women have one great advantage over men. It is commonly thought that if they marry they have done enough, and need career no further. If a man marries, on the other hand, public opinion is all against him if he takes this view. — Rose Macaulay

Last night I dreamed about her," he said. "She had this shawl wrapped around her shoulders with tassels hanging off it, and her hair was long like old times. She said, 'Red, I want to learn every step of you, and dance till the end of the night.' " He stopped speaking. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. Denny and Stem stood with a screen balanced between them and looked at each other helplessly.

"Then I woke up," Red said after a minute. He stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. "I thought, 'This must mean I miss having her close attention, the way I've always been used to.' Then I woke up again, for real. Have either of you ever done that? Dreamed that you woke up, and then found you'd still been asleep? I woke up for real and I thought, 'Oh, boy. I see I've still got a long way to go with this.' Seems I haven't quite gotten over it, you know? — Anne Tyler

Once you've written a good script, it will get made or not get made, according to variables you cannot control, like stars getting interested, and the superstitions in Hollywood rising or falling around what is over and done with versus what's in. — Jon Spaihts

I had never done a 90-minute play with no intermission, so it is a bit like you get onto the train and you don't get off until it's over - and it's over very quickly, so don't miss a moment of it. That experience is very rare and specific so don't miss a minute, because there aren't very many minutes of it. — Lily Rabe

Exploration! Exploring the past! We students in the camps seminar considered ourselves radical explorers. We tore open the windows and let in the air, the wind that finally whirled away the dust that society had permitted to settle over the horrors of the past. We made sure people could see. And we placed no reliance on legal scholarship. It was evident to us that there had to be convictions. It was just as evident as conviction of this or that camp guard or police enforcer was only the prelude. The generation that had been served by the guards and enforcers, or had done nothing to stop them, or had not banished them from its midst as it could have done after 1945, was in the dock, and we explored it, subjected it to trial by daylight, and condemned it to shame. — Bernhard Schlink

At one time in my infancy I also knew no Latin, and yet by listening I learnt it with no fear or pain at all, from my nurses caressing me, from people laughing over jokes, and from those who played games and were enjoying them. I learnt Latin without the threat of punishment from anyone forcing me to learn it. My own heart constrained me to bring its concepts to birth, which I could not have done unless I had learnt some words, not from formal teaching but by listening to people talking; and they in turn were the audience for my thoughts. This experience sufficiently illuminates the truth that free curiosity has greater power to stimulate learning than rigorous coercion. — Augustine Of Hippo

For him, it was now of no importance, as his place in the world was of no consequence. He was home, after long and harsh buffeting. And it was she, who knew his quality as Grey had done, who had to live with the knowledge that there was no channel by which it could continue; that for the purposes of the present world the flourish, so brief, was now over with. — Dorothy Dunnett

Another atrocity of summer is soccer. When the Euro Cup is on, it brings out the worst in people. It turns them into ravaging beasts who complain when a team they like, which they have done nothing to deserve, slips from grace and loses the match.
An old man sitting beside me at the cafe was watching the men watch the soccer rather than watch the soccer himself. He found their reactions more entertaining than the game.
"All this stuff and nonsense over men kicking a ball," he groused. "And they don't do any of the work themselves."
I told him, "We should just have wars. Then we would not need sports."
He laughed and quite agreed with me. — Michelle Franklin

For the man on the street, science and math sound too and soulless. It is hard to appreciate their significance Most of us are just aware of Newton's apple trivia and Einstein's famous e mc2. Science, like philosophy, remains obscure and detached, playing role in our daily lives. There is a general perception that science is hard to grasp and has direct relevance to what we do. After all, how often do we discuss Dante or Descartes over dinner anyway? Some feel it to be too academic and leave it to the intellectuals or scientists to sort out while others feel that such topics are good only for academic debate. The great physicist, Rutherford, once quipped that, "i you can't explain a complex theory to a bartender, the theory not worth it" Well, it could be easier said than done (applications of tools — Sharad Nalawade

I think we've met our quota for tearful reunions," she chuckled against the top of my head.
"When this is done, I promise I'm never going to leave the house ever again. We'll just stay in and order pizza and watch bad television."
Mom pulled away and looked over my shoulder. "Oh, I think you might want to get out every now and then," she said.
I felt the warm weight of Archer's hand on my waist. "Hey, I like pizza and bad TV."
I turned to him, surprised. "Your chest-"
"Cal," he said by way of explanation. "I owe that guy, like, a mountain of burgers. It's getting embarrassing."
Mom flashed me a little smile before saying, "You know, this isn't how I imagined meeting Sophie's first real boyfriend."
"Mom."
Archer gave me a little squeeze. "You mean I'm the first guy your parents have rescued from an enchanted island via use of a magic mirror? I feel so special. — Rachel Hawkins

In the meantime, Lillian was looking speculatively at the mural. Kami saw her lift her hand. With sorcery, the mural could be done in ten minutes.

"I see you, Linnaea," Jon called over his shoulder. "Don't even think it. I have eyes in the back of my head, and all my eyes have artistic vision."

" 'Linnaea' is not a name," grumbled Lillian, but she lowered her hand.

"It is a name," said Jon. "I looked it up. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Miyata was fluent and intelligent. Nothing was beyond his curiosity. He seemed to be above the confusion of life, as if he had been commissioned to spend his own in undisturbed judgement of the world about him, protected always by a mandate from the gods. They spoke briefly of Korea and then of the past war with the United States. Miyata had been in Japan for its entire duration and must have been deeply affected, but when he talked about it, it was without bitterness. Wars were not of his doing. He considered them almost poetically, as if they were seasons, the cruel winters of man, even though almost all the work he had done in the 1930s and early 1940s had been lost when his house was burned in the great incendiary raid of 1944. He described the night vividly, the endless hours, the bombers thundering low over the storms of fire. — James Salter

It's funny, you can get over the win pretty quick and get ready for the next opponent. When you lose, it just eats at you ... What could we have done? What should I have done? All those things. Just part of playing professional sports and sports in general. — Tony Romo

The conversation progressed, bumper-car style, to a very heated discussion about death and the survival of the soul. It amazes me that we, as a species, can argue so fervently over something that is, when all is said and done, unknowable and unprovable. Nonetheless, we all arrive at conclusions and cleave to our certainties: that there is nothing but the Void; or that we will find ourselves writing an admissions exam at the Pearly Gates. — Bill Richardson

Crossing the threshold of faith means that we work out of a sense of dignity and see service as a vocation. It means we serve selflessly and are prepared to begin over time and time again without giving in to weariness - as if all that has been done so far were only a step on the journey toward the Kingdom, the fullness of life. — Pope Francis

Peter Hart, who's a pollster that's - who's done many focus groups about Hillary Clinton, talks about a glass curtain. She talks about the glass ceiling. He says voters feel there's a glass curtain between themselves and Hillary Clinton. They can't relate to her. They feel they don't really understand her, and that's made it easier for her opponents, of which there have been many over many years, to define her the way they want to. — Tamara Keith

There's no point in going on if you feel that way. No point at all. You must be filled with expectancy. You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next." "I am done with being loved," Edward told her. "I'm done with loving. It's too painful." "Pish," said the old doll. "Where is your courage?" "Somewhere else, I guess," said Edward. "You disappoint me," she said. "You disappoint me greatly. If you have no intention of loving or being loved, then the whole journey is pointless. You might as well leap from this shelf right now and let yourself shatter into a million pieces. Get it over with. Get it all over with now. — Kate DiCamillo

In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as — Mark Twain

It was a real revolution. But with one missing feature. That is the feeling in a people that "We have done it once, and if the new lot let us down, we can do it again!" It was that proud, menacing confidence which made the French revolution special. But it's not around in 21st-century Europe. After 1989, the people handed over liberty to the experts. Will they ever want it back? — Neal Ascherson

My God, he whispered. What have I done to her? He thought, humbled. The spell was broken, but it wasn't sealed, and her soul was bare to him, the scars of her tragic past and her triumphs over pain and her aching need to find her place. He just wanted to hold her to him and tell her it would be okay, that she had survived and was beautiful. — Kim Harrison

Happy we were then, for we had a good house, and good food, and good work. There was nothing to do outside at night, except chapel, or choir, or penny-readings, sometimes. But even so, we always found plenty to do until bedtime, for if we were not studying or reading, then we were making something out back, or over the mountain singing somewhere. I can remember no time when there was not plenty to be done.
I wonder what has happened in fifty years to change it all ... But when people stop being friends with their mother and fathers, and itching to be out of the house, and going mad for other things to do, I cannot think. It is like an asthma, that comes on a man quickly. He has no notion how he had it, but there it is, and nothing can cure it. — Richard Llewellyn

He breathed once more, holding the air in his chest, as if it were not air but something more
a sweet taste of freedom, of all cares lifted, everything over and done. — Justin Cronin

What is the greatest surprise you have found about life?" a university student asked me several years ago. "The brevity of it," I replied without hesitation ... Time moves so quickly, and no matter who we are or what we have done, the time will come when our lives will be over. As Jesus said, "As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work" (John 9:4). — Billy Graham

God," he choked out. "This can't happen."
"Oh, yes it can." Breathless, she worked the buttons of his trouser falls. "It will. It must." Having freed the closures of his trousers and smallclothes, she snaked her hand through the opening and brazenly took him in hand. Of course, now that she had him in hand, she wasn't quite sure what to do with him. She tentatively skimmed one fingertip over the smooth, rounded crown of his erection. In return, he pressed a single finger into her aching core.
"Cecily." He shut his eyes and grit his teeth. "If I don't stop this now ... "
"You never will?" She pressed her lips to his earlobe. "That's my fondest hope. You say you're done with fighting, Luke? Then stop fighting this."
He sighed deep in his chest, and she felt all the tension coiled in those powerful muscles release. "Very well," he said quietly, resting his chin on her shoulder. "Very well. To you, I gratefully surrender. — Tessa Dare

You've done a thing you can't clean up, found a place you can't reach with mop or apology. The forever you've created branches like the hairline fracture in a pelvic bone, hides like a dirty Polaroid stored under a mattress, rises like hot blood to burn cheeks pretty with shame. Places you didn't even know you were signing your name will always be marked by your hand, but despite every new day's resolution to never do it again, you will. You'll look away from your own face in the mirror, pull the chain twice to hide from yourself in the dark, and when it's all over you won't say anything. You won't fucking say anything to anyone ever. — Tupelo Hassman

He paused at the bedroom door, shut his eyes, took a deep breath, and walked right out like it was any other morning, and he and Jack would be having breakfast as if they hadn't had sex the night before.
"Morning," he said, casting a quick glance over his shoulder.
"Mmm," D grunted.
"You done in the bathroom?"
D blinked. No, I jus' took a little breather in the middle a my mornin' beauty ritual ta come out here 'n' chat with ya. A course I'm done. — Jane Seville

Yes, I am scared of prison. It's the last thing if you are after building up a business over 38 years and you are approaching your 66th birthday and you never owed a man a penny and you feel hard done by and you try to protect yourself and your family and go to prison - if that is the society we are living in, I am happy to accept that. — Sean Quinn

Over time as an actor, your life with a project can be so short lived because you come on, you do it, and then you're done. You have no control, no say, and all of a sudden there's all of this distance between the work you've put into something and the product as you see it appear on-screen. — Maggie Siff

Vegetables cooked for salads should always be on the crisp side, like those trays of zucchini and slender green beans and cauliflowerets in every trattoria in Venice, in the days when the Italians could eat correctly. You used to choose the things you wanted: there were tiny potatoes in their skins, remember, and artichokes boiled in olive oil, as big as your thumb, and much tenderer ... and then the waiter would throw them all into an ugly white bowl and splash a little oil and vinegar over them, and you would have a salad as fresh and tonic to your several senses as La Primavera. It can still be done, although never in the same typhoidic and enraptured air. You can still find little fresh vegetables, and still know how to cook them until they are not quite done, and chill them, and eat them in a bowl. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

-Elves never make any major decision until they have thought the matter over for at least a year or two, gone round to all their friends and relatives and discussed the problem, done research, read tomes, consulted the sages.
-And what happens then?
- By then they've usually forgotten what it was they meant to do in the first place. — Margaret Weis

Our beliefs are rooted deep in our earth, no matter what you have done to it and how much of it you have paved over. And if you leave all that concrete unwatched for a year or two, our plants, the native Indian plants, will pierce that concrete and push up through it. — John Fire Lame Deer

I happened to look up and there it was. All over and done with, at last. I sat on for a few moments with the ball in my hand and the dog yelping and pawing at me. (Pause.) Moments. Her moments, my moments (Pause.) The dog's moments. — Samuel Beckett

My old man tells me every chance he gets I'm "style over substance" and that I've never done anything of value in my life. I'm fifteen. What does he expect? Being "cool as" is the only thing anyone cares about."
Burt, Book 1 "Making it — Jamie Scallion

Wait, how do most people make friends? I've only done it once. There has to be an easier way of going abouit it than getting thrown around and bleeding all over the place. But both of us went through that. So maybe...

Nosebleeds = Friendship Maybe friends are drawn to bloodsheed. You know. Like sharks. — Leah Thomas

Ronan wasn't exactly sure why he was angry. Although Gansey had done nothing to invoke his ire, he was definitely part of the problem. Currently, he propped his cell between ear and shoulder as he eyed a pair of plastic plates printed with smiling tomatoes. His unbuttoned collar revealed a good bit of his collarbone. No one could deny that Gansey was a glorious portrait of youth, the well-tended product of a fortunate and moneyed pairing. Ordinarily, he was so polished that it was bearable, though, because he was clearly not the same species as Ronan's rough-and-ready family. But tonight, under the fluorescent lights of Dollar City, Gansey's hair was scuffed and his cargo shorts were a greasy ruin from mucking over the Pig. He was barelegged and sockless in his Top-Siders and very clearly a real human, an attainable human, and this, somehow, made Ronan want to smash his fist through a wall. — Maggie Stiefvater

And wasn't that him giving her permission to hurt him? It felt as if he were handing over the reins of his own suicidal impulses. That was how Sadie understood it. Of course, it was how she wanted to understand it, because to her, toying with him and offering him hope every now and then that she might actually find value in him as a human being, before pulling it all out from under him, was pure pleasure. It was everything and more. So there'd been no reason why she'd done what she'd done. There'd just been no reason not to. — Stephanie Kuehn

So for me the creative world isn't what you do after your day job, though many professional musicians do this to make ends meet, but it's something that IS a job. Perhaps that's why I'm not as disheartened by the more cold blooded aspects of the industry. Over the course of watching my mother navigate the creative world I've seen just about every trick pulled that could have been and I've seen her deposit the checks received for a job well done. When I recently asked her why she chose the creative world she said: "Early on I decided that if I had to work I was going to work at something that I loved."

I'm glad she did. As difficult, chaotic, dysfunctional and crazy as the world in music and the arts can be I always knew that they mattered deeply to her, as they do to me. — Jamie Freveletti

I traveled the world ten times over doing something I never thought I'd do in a million years. I found myself in Tokyo, Japan. I (was in) a Dell Computer commercial, the first thing I had ever done, and I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the green screens, I fell in love with (everything). The translator was explaining everything to me. It was a passion like I had never felt before. I came back and it took me five years to really accept that that was okay. — Drew Waters

Excellent. We keep your furniture. Whose bed?"
"Yours."
"Why mine?"
"It's bigger, for one."
"And for another?"
"Mine doesn't have the sort of headboard you can tie someone to. I've always sort of wanted to do that."
"Bend over. Now. Take off your pants and bend over. I'll be done in five minutes. No one will ever know. — Amy Lane

Later that day, Kestrel sat with Arin in the music room. She played her tiles: a pair of wolves and three mice.
Arin turned his over with a resigned sigh. He didn't have a bad set, but it wasn't good enough, and beneath his usual level of skill. He stiffened in his chair as if physically bracing himself for her question.
Kestrel studied his tiles. She was certain he could have done better than a pair of wasps. She thought of the tiles he had shown earlier in the game, and the careless way in which he had discarded others. If she didn't know how little he liked to lose against her, she would have suspected him of throwing the game.
She said, "You seem distracted."
"Is that your question? Are you asking me why I am distracted?"
"So you admit that you are distracted."
"You are a fiend," he said, echoing Ronan's words during the match at Faris's garden party. Then, apparently annoyed at his own words, he said, "Ask your question. — Marie Rutkoski

A-tone-ment-its a chance to fix the unfixable and to start all over again. It begins when you forgive yourself for all you've done wrong, and forgive others for all they've done to you. Your mistakes aren't mistakes anymore, they're just things that make you stronger. — Glenn Beck

Democracy is a continuous, open process of civility.
A democracy can never be "done"; updating democracy can never be over.

Democracy can be nothing else but a continuous process, because we use it to organize our life, and life is nothing but a continuous process.

Democracy can be compared to an operating system or an anti-virus software; if it does not get perpetually updated, it becomes obsolete very fast.

Trusting the updates or the "improvements" of democracy to the elected and the owned mass media is like trusting the updates of an anti-virus program to virus creators; it defeats the purpose of updates or improvements. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

"It smells all right; it makes your head go round; it catches your breath; you feel ticklish all over - and not the faintest clue how it's done. The man's a sorcerer; the thing's a conjuring trick, it's a miracle," ... — Marcel Proust

If writing is the ultimate act of self-pleasure, then mine certainly qualifies as masturbatory.
Still, if you gave me a box of pens and a box of tissues, and then locked me in a room with nothing else but skin mags and blank notebooks, I'd be lying if I told you I'd run out of pens before tissues.
The nice thing about writing is that you actually get to share it with other people when you're done, which usually doesn't go over so well with spent bodily fluids, but ideally you don't want readers walking away from your book with the sneaking suspicion that they've just spent hours of their precious lives watching you masturbate.
Unless of course it's that type of publication. — Arthur Graham

Don't let people interfere with you. Boot 'em out, turn off the phone, hide away, get it done. If you carry a short story over to the next day you may overnight intellectualize something about it and try to make it too fancy, try to please someone. — Ray Bradbury

Even though he had admitted to her that he used to watch me shower through a hole in the bathroom wall back when I was thirteen. She blamed us both for what we had "done" to her. But it sounds like she got over being mad at him pretty quick. She later told me that she had to go back and have sex with him one more time, just to make sure that there was nothing left between the two of them and to get some closure. That almost made me want to vomit. The only interaction between us after that was her showing up at the courthouse when I had to sit in front of a grand jury of twelve strangers and tell them what had happened. She came into the waiting room where I was sitting and started screaming that I was a whore and that I'd fucked her husband. She had to be escorted out of the court by two officers. That's what I got from her. — Ashly Lorenzana

It is because I believe that it is in the power of such nations to lead the world back into the paths of peace that I propose to devote myself to explaining what, in my opinion, can and should be done to banish the fear of war that hangs so heavily over the world. — Arthur Henderson

i am confident i am over you. so much that some mornings i wake up with a smile on my face and my hands pressed together thanking the universe for pulling you out of me. thank god i cry. thank god you left. i would not be the empire i am today if you had stayed.

but then.

there are some nights i imagine what i might do if you showed up. how if you walked into the room this very second every awful thing you've ever done would be tossed out the closet window and all the love would rise up again. it would pour through my eyes as if it never really left in the first place. as if it's been practicing how to stay silent so long only so it could be this loud on your arrival. can someone explain that. how even when the love leaves. it doesn't leave. how even when i am so past you. i am so helplessly brought back to you. — Rupi Kaur

He (Kris Medlin) has a communication with a force in pitching that most of us can't talk to. It's an awareness; it's a sixth sense. When he steps in and stares in to that catcher, that little man on his shoulder's going to take over and tell him what to do. And he's done it well. — Don Sutton

When my father died, my mother was still alive. And I think when your second parent dies, there is that shock: 'Oh man, I'm an orphan.' There's also this relief: It's done; it's finished; it's over. — Roz Chast

Doctor.' Piper's smile was so warm it would've melted a Boread. 'We'd be so grateful for your help. We need the physician's cure.'
Leo wasn't even her target, but Piper's charmspeak washed over him irresistibly. He would've done anything to help her get that cure. He would've gone to medical school, got twelve doctorate degrees and bought a large green python on a stick. — Rick Riordan

Would you like me to write Mrs. Ames about inviting you to Yaddo? Get Miss Moore to write too. You can't invite yourself, though, of course, almost all the invitations are planned. It would be marvelous to have you there. I know the solitude that gets too much. It doesn't drug me, but I get fantastic and uncivilized.
At last my divorce [from Jean Stafford] is over. It's funny at my age to have one's life so much in and on one's hands. All the rawness of learning, what I used to think should be done with by twenty-five. Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing - I suppose that's what vocation means - at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction, so I'm thankful, and call it good, as Eliot would say. — Robert Lowell

the former; "our arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me." He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Lorry. When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done? "Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured access to him, once." Mr. Lorry's countenance fell. "It is all I could do," said Carton. "To propose too much, would be to put this man's head under the axe, and, as he himself said, nothing worse could happen to him if he were denounced. It was obviously the weakness of the position. There is no help for it. — Charles Dickens

We all get caught up in the process, especially when you have a wave of success. But to me, being creative is not about rehashing everything you've done over and over. It's to continue to grow, continue to get better. — Vince Gill

Kaylee, this means something to me." His hands trailed down my arms to cup my elbows, and his gaze held mine. "With any
luck, we're going to have millions of moments over the course of eternity, and I plan to love every one of them. But we'll never
have this moment again, and this is very important to me." The twists of blue in his eyes coiled so tightly the color was almost gone,
lost among pale shades of a need so deep it couldn't possibly be captured in a kiss, or a touch. "I need to know that this is important
to you, too. I need to know that this isn't like last time. That you're not doing this just so you can say you've done it. Because that's
not good enough for me. That's not good enough for us. — Rachel Vincent

DEAR MISS MANNERS:
I a tired of being treated like a child. My father says it's because I am a child
I am twelve-and-a-half years old
but it still isn't fair. If I go into a store to buy something, nobody pays any attention to me, or if they do, it's to say, "Leave that alone," "Don't touch that," although I haven't done anything. My money is as good as anybody's, but because I am younger, they feel they can be mean to me. It happens to me at home, too. My mother's friend who comes over after dinner sometimes, who doesn't have any children of her own and doesn't know what's what, likes to say to me, "Shouldn't you be in bed by now,dear?" when she doesn't even know what my bedtime is supposed to be. Is there any way I can make these people stop?
GENTLE READER:
Growing up is the best revenge. — Judith Martin

This can't happen again, Wyatt. We're done. It's over."

A palm slapped against the door, right next to her head, so hard she jumped.

"I don't think so."

"If you think I can spend the next thirteen days seeing you, hearing you, smelling you"--he inhaled deeply and growled a little--"without touching you, you're very, very mistaken."

"It's not over, Faith. It's just begun."

~Wyatt — Sydney Croft

What's glamorous is being a good father, a good husband, a good fucking dog owner. That's what I care about today. That's what matters. I will devote everything to that. And I will succeed. Because I cannot fall down again. I will not fall down again. I mean, I don't have to fall. None of us have to fall. We don't all fall down. We don't. So I'm over this drug shit. It's done. And this is my last recovery memoir ever. — Nic Sheff

Next Christmas he was going to open this shabby sack of hers ... and put something in the money compartment. She would fritter it away, of course, in small unimportances; so that in the end she would not know what she had done with it; but perhaps a series of small satisfactions scattered like sequins over the texture of everyday life was of greater worth than the academic satisfaction of owning a collection of fine objects at the back of a drawer. — Josephine Tey

Remember, lad," said the newt, "If it's going to be tommorow, it might as well be today. And if it is today, it could have been yesterday. If it was yesterday, then you're over and done with it, and can write your own book. Think about that. — Avi