Down East Quotes & Sayings

Growing up in Chicago, I was a theater nerd. That might be very cool on the East Coast, but in Chicago, it's really the athletes that come in No. 1 on the cool scale. Maybe musicians after that. Community theater? That's way down the list, my friend. — Johnny Galecki

I want to go base-jumping off Angel Falls and then canoeing down that river that goes east. That's what I really wanna do. — Billy Magnussen

In a bitter night, a mustard night that was last night, a good thought came and the dark was sweetened when the day sat down. And this thought went from evening star to the late dipper on the edge of the first light
that our betters spoke of. — John Steinbeck

Go down a few steps and take your positions," Prometheus instructed. "Let no one onto the roof. Will and Palamedes, you take the north side. Saint-Germain, can you take the west? Joan, the east is yours. I'll guard the south."
"How come you get the dangerous side?" Saint-Germain asked.
The big Elder smiled. "They're all dangerous sides. — Michael Scott

The light irradiates white peaks of Annapurna marching down the sky, in the great rampart that spreads east and west for eighteen hundred miles, the Himalaya- the alaya (abode, or home) of hima (snow).Hibiscus, frangipani, bougainvillea: seen under snow peaks, these tropical blossoms become the flowers of heroic landscapes. Macaques scamper in green meadow, and a turquoise roller spins in a golden light. Drongos, rollers, barbets, and white Eqyptian vulture are the common birds, and all have close relatives in East Africa. — Peter Matthiessen

At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk. — John Hersey

You cannot watch for twelve months without seeing how it is going down the tide; the anchors are pulled up, and the vessel is floating to destruction. It is drifting now, as near as I can tell you, south-east, and is nearing Cape Vatican, and if it drives much further in that direction it will be on the rocks of the Roman reef. We must get aboard her, and connect her with the glorious steam-tug of gospel truth, and drag her back. I should be glad if I could take her round by Cape Calvin, right up into the Bay of Calvary, and anchor her in the fair haven which is close over by Vera Cruz, or the cross. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

So what do we do, dress up like orderlies and sneak him out in the laundry cart?"
"Something like that."
"Oh, c'mon, Spence, that routine is as old as the Three Stooges."
"Probably older," said Spence, laughing. "Actually I was thinking of something a little less dramatic."
"Like what?"
"Like just walking out with him."
Denny stared at Spence, then shook her head. "In one of the big hospitals in New York you might get away with that," she said, "but in a little tiny hospital like Down East Community, it'll never work."
"It might, if he's dressed like a woman," said Spence.
Denny thought for a minute, then nodded. "Maybe," she said. "But where are we going to get clothes to fit him? My mom and your mom are way too thin."
Spence smiled. "Miss Lizzie," he said.
Denny's eyes opened wide. "Miss Lizzie? Do you really think she'll do it?"
"She's waiting for us right now at the edge of town," said Spence. — Jackie French Koller

When dawn spread its cool clear flush over the meadows and fields and thorny pastures to the north and east, Duane pulled an old lawn chair out of the cabin and sat down to watch, cradling a cup of coffee in his hands. It was chilly enough that he threw an old poncho over his lap. — Larry McMurtry

Mrs. Jones asked me to think up a few gadgets for our agents out here in the East," Smithers replied. He lifted the fan. "This is one of them. It's very simple, but I rather like it. You see, it looks like an ordinary fan, but actually there are very thin plates of galvanized steel hidden under the silk. And when you bring them together ... " He folded the fan, then brought it smashing down onto the desk. The wood shattered. " ... it becomes a useful weapon. I call it ... " " ... the fan club?" Alex suggested. — Anonymous

The Middle East that Obama inherited in 2009 was largely at peace, for the surge in Iraq had beaten down the al Qaeda-linked groups. U.S. relations with traditional allies in the Gulf, Jordan, Israel and Egypt were very good. Iran was contained, its Revolutionary Guard forces at home. — Elliott Abrams

I have to remind the people who put down East Coast surfing that Kelly Slater is from Florida. — Don Winslow

The man who remains in his sin will be damned just as surely as the sun comes up in the east and goes down in the west. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

We face a brutal enemy who will kill the innocent for one purpose and that is to gain control of the Middle East and to use the leverage of oil to bring down the West, and to attack us again. — Karl Rove

On a boat cruising down east, sardines are scooped out of the holding seine at Eastport at dawn. 'Sardines' may be any of several species of fish; in Maine they are usually small herring. Fish are penned in nets until the boats are ready to load. The fish are taken a short distance to canneries which work round the clock, according to the time of the catch. — Luis Marden

I think about Ruth walking down the street on East End and wonder how many other residents questioned what she was doing there, even if they never said it to her face. How incredibly easy it is to hide behind white skin, I think, looking at these probable supremacists. The benefit of the doubt is in your favor. You're not suspicious. — Jodi Picoult

We are stripped of all that gave value and substance to our existence: power and love; in this naked final state, our last lover, our mate, death, comes. Bereft, without cover, we face the elements that will undo us. The winter breakers crash over and through us, flaunting their vigor and our nullity, as if the entire cosmos were now taking its ultimate revenge on the human creature who has lived too long: the dying sun mocks us from the west, for it will return tomorrow to die again, but we go down only once; the rising sun mocks us from the east, for we will not share in the rebirth of light and life; the noonday taunts us with its heat and vitality, for we are detritus; the north finally cloaks us in our last vestments: eternal night. That is how it ends. — Arnold Weinstein

The elder Navarro had believed, as did the ancient philosophers of the Far East, that the cosmos ultimately revealed itself as a repeating pattern, an infinitely replicating superstructure contained and embodied in a galaxy, down to a drop of blood. — Laird Barron

As far as a nuclear weapons-free zone, you know, when the lion lies down with the lamb, and you don't need a new lamb every day to satisfy the lion, then we might have this kind of transformation in the Middle East. — Benjamin Netanyahu

In any offense you put me in, when things break down, I'm going to get outside the pocket and move ... West Coast, East Coast. It doesn't matter. I'm taking off if I have to, to make things happen. — Michael Vick

Just then he spotted a German Messerschmitt in the sky ahead of them. It was firing its machine guns and seemed to be aiming right for them. He ordered everyone to dive into the alleyway beside them, and they all took cover just as the fighter roared by, killing all those who remained in its path. Then came another explosion, just behind them. Luc pressed his body down on Monique and Jacqueline, doing everything he could to protect them. But he knew they couldn't stay pinned down. He could hear the German tanks rumbling up the road from the east. The Nazis were approaching far more quickly than he'd expected. They had to keep moving. — Joel C. Rosenberg

They were walking along a roadway of great slabs of stone set down one after another, the beginning and end of which they could take in at a glance, a road rising from and heading toward nowhere now.
"You can't get there from here," William said, using a Down East accent. "Anymore." Maine, they thought of Maine, then. Evidently this truncated road could still carry them as far away and as long ago as that. — Nancy Clark

Here's a little thought experiment. Imagine that, on September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers came down, the President of the United States was not George W. Bush, but Ann Coulter. What would have happened then? On September 12, President Coulter would have ordered the US military forces to drop 35 nuclear bombs throughout the Middle East, killing all of our actual and potential enemy combatants, and their wives and children. On September 13, the war would have been over and won, without a single American life lost. — Satoshi Kanazawa

Drawing his sword, he gazed down at the gleaming blade. 'I pledge you to the destruction of Sparta,' he whispered. Raising the weapon high he pointed it to the south-east and, though the city was far beyond his range of vision, he pictured the sword poised above it with the sun's harsh light turning it to fire. — David Gemmell

Six: everyone - and when I say everyone, I mean absolutely,positively everyone, from the librarians to the students to the staff to the oldest, cruiser janitor - was piss-down-their-legs scared of Miles Richter.
Of all the crazy things I heard about East Shoal, that was the only thing I couldn't believe. — Francesca Zappia

One of its most distinctive features was the ninety-six meters high and twelve thousand tons heavy sandstone dome that stood the test of time and wars until it came down during the bombing of Saxony by Anglo-American allied forces during the Second World War. Only the altar, a relief description of Jesus' agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the chancel behind it survived. The church then lay dormant for more than forty-five years before it was restored to its former glory as Communist rule enveloped Germany. One of the reasons for the delay was the tensions that ensued before the demolition of the Berlin Wall that divided East and West Germany. — K.T. Tomb

I remember I went to Berlin right after the Wall came down. I first went to East Berlin, and all the buildings were old and falling down, and now when you go back to Berlin, you know you're in the East because all the buildings are brand new and very tall. — Moby

There were a great many jokes about the disaster (house falling on and killing Wicked Witch of the East), naturally. "You can't hide from desinty, that house had her name on it" "That Nessarose, she was giving such a good speech about religious lessons, she really brought down the house!" "Everybody needs to grow up and leave home sometimes, but sometimes HOME DOESN'T LIKE IT." "What's the different between a shooting star and a falling house?" "One which is propitious grants delicious wishes, the other which is vicious squishes witches." "What's big, thick, makes the earth move, and wants to have its way with you?" "I don't know, but can you introduce me? — Gregory Maguire

For me, personally, Detroit is a melting pot for everything. We get the best from the East Coast, West Coast and down South. — Big Sean

This rootless shifting east and west
I can't suppress a smile myself
but how else can I make
the whole world my home.
If any of my old friends
come around asking
say I'm down at the river
by the Second Fushimi Bridge. — Baisao

Water indeed will flow indifferently to the east or west, but will it flow indifferently up or down? The tendency of our nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards. There are none but have this tendency to good, just as all water flows downward. — Mencius

Military parades roll down the Champs-Elysees, but pedestrians stroll up ["East Meets West on the Champs-Elysees," Metropolis, March 2006, p73] — Veronique Vienne

The world is full of men and women who work too much, sleep too little, hardly ever exercise, eat poorly, and are always struggling or failing to find adequate time with their families. We are in a perpetual hurry-constantly rushing from one activity to another, with little understanding of where all this activity is leading us ... The world has gone and got itself in an awful rush, to whose benefit I do not know. We are too busy for our own good. We need to slow down. Our lifestyles are destroying us. The worst part is, we are rushing east in search of a sunset. — Matthew Kelly

You go down some street - no doubt it's there, and we have to do something about it, and our programmes are designed to do that - but if that's a picture of Newcastle, it's not the one I recognise and I bet none in the North East do either. — John Prescott

The North Country is purple, and it's the Country of the Gillikins. The East Country is blue, and that's the Country of the Munchkins. Down at the South is the red Country of the Quadlings, and here, in the West, the yellow Country of the Winkies. — L. Frank Baum

She had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, like when you're swimming and you want to put your feet down on something solid, but the water's deeper than you think and there's nothing there — Julia Gregson

Given the clientele, the restaurants on Capri might resemble those fancy Northern Italian places on the East Side of Manhattan where the captain has taken bilingual sneering lessons from the maitre d' at the French joint down the street and the waiter, whose father was born in Palermo, would deny under torture that tomato sauce has ever touched his lips. — Calvin Trillin

Imagine the day after the Berlin Wall came down if everybody in East Germany was plump and comfortable-looking and dressed in Caribbean pastels, and you'll have a pretty good idea what the Fort Lauderdale Airport terminal looks like today. — David Foster Wallace

On a distant battlefield, somewhere in the Middle East, Sergeant Jackson is sick of this fucking war and stands up from behind the trench he's hiding in, ignores the pleas of his squad mates to get down and starts to play the electric guitar he's insisted he bring into battle with him. He plays a song: his father's favourite. He's spent years learning it and he thinks it's beautiful. The first bullet kills him. Someone takes a picture as he falls. A dying soldier clutching his electric guitar. — Pleasefindthis

Analysts often write about the need for certain cultures not to lose face, or ever be seen to back down, but this is not just a problem in the Arab or East Asian cultures - it is a human problem expressed in different ways. — Tim Marshall

At first I thought I saw the sun setting in the east ... Then I realized that what I saw was a full moon rising just as the sun was going down. Each of them was standing on its edge, with the most wonderful light between them. It seemed as if you could touch it, as if there were palpable currents of light passing back and forth, or if there were great taut skeins of light suspended between them ... We just stood there until the sun was down and the moon was up. They seemed to float on the horizon for quite a long time, I suppose because they were both so bright you couldn't get a clear look at them. And that grave, and my father and I, were exactly between them ... My father said, I would never have thought this place could be beautiful. I'm glad to know that. — Marilynne Robinson

We also want to try and slow down all this foolishness that's going on between the East and West. We gotta understand that Hip Hop is now universal. Hip Hop is not East coast or West coast. — Afrika Bambaataa

Because the Asian market is so omnivorous, it affects all the shark populations up and down the Central and South American coast, and to a certain extent the East Coast of the United States as well. — Peter Benchley

Like the wind that carries one ship east and another west, the law of autosuggestion will lift you up or pull you down according to the way that you set your sails of thought. — Napoleon Hill

I love as you come into Paris, you've got the Arch de Triomphe and all that crazy traffic. Then I love the drive from Paris down to Antibes and you veer off east in through the Alps and you come into the south of France on the mountain road as opposed to the freeway. — Luke Goss

For me, growing up in Harlem and then migrating down to SoHo and the Lower East Side and chillin' down there and making that my stomping ground ... That was a big thing, because I'm from Harlem, and downtown is more artsy and also more open-minded. So I got the best of both worlds. — ASAP Rocky

The East Coast, and certainly Boston, has a provincial quality to it that makes it harder to bust out and move up. Try to be too different and they'll pull you down. — Brad Falchuk

History has often showed us the strength of the forces that are unleashed by the yearning for freedom. It moved people to overcome their fears and openly confront dictators such as in East Germany and Eastern Europe about 22 years ago. [ ... ] The yearning for freedom cannot be contained by walls for long. It was this yearning that brought down the Iron Curtain that divided Germany and Europe, and indeed the world, into two blocs. — Angela Merkel

I wasn't interrupting, I interrupted, and Ms. East's mouth tilted down ever farther, which meant I'd just crossed into the land of Royally Screwed. — Rachel Hawkins

I watched American TV shows: Starsky & Hutch, Dallas, Rockford Files, Bonanza. And for many summers growing up, I worked on my aunt and uncle's farm in East Anglia. Down the street was an American cemetery for the Second World War, and every Memorial Day an American bomber would fly over that cemetery and drop rose petals. — Scott Raab

I have noticed that most men when they enter a barber shop and must wait their turn, drop into a chair and pick up a magazine. I simply sit down and pick up the thread of my sea wanderings, which began more than fifty years ago and is not quite ended. There is hardly a waiting room in the east that has not served as my cockpit, whether I was waiting to board a train or to see a dentist. And I am usually still trimming sheets when the train starts or drill begins to whine. — E.B. White

By the time the plan's wheels touched down on a desolate stretch of desert runway, the sun had cleared a ridge of mountains and revealed a land the color of dust. The single building that served as a terminal was squat and seemingly of the same dust.
The Middle East? Eliza wondered. Tattooine? A sign, handpainted, was illegible in exotic, curling letters. Arabic, at a guess. That probably eliminated Tattooine. — Laini Taylor

So many tankers come down with maintenance problems all at once. I do not think that the press is telling us the whole story. Then again, maybe they are just a little slow on the uptake. The truth will reveal that Allah has truly blessed us. — Christian F. Burton

If Broadway was a river running from the top of Manhattan down to the Battery, undulating with traffic and commerce and lights, then the east-west streets were eddies where, leaf-like, one could turn slow circles from the beginning to the ever shall be, world without end. — Amor Towles

As the Iberian explorers made their way down the African coast - the Portuguese going around the Horn to East Asia, the Spaniards cutting west to the Americas - both powers had two main goals in mind: finding precious metals and planting sugarcane. (Oh, and spreading the word of God.) The — Tom Reiss

There are certainly numberless women of fashion who consider it perfectly natural to go miles down Fifth Avenue, or Madison Avenue, yet for whom a voyage of half a dozen blocks to east or west would be an adventure, almost a dangerous impairment of good breeding. — Jules Romains

We can understand that the Fathers of the Church in the East wanted Apocalypse left out of the New Testament. But like Judas among the disciples, it was inevitable that it should be included. The Apocalypse is the feet of clay to the grand Christian image. And down crashes the image, on the weakness of these very feet. There is Jesus
but there is also John the Divine. There is Christian love
and there is Christian envy. The former would "save" the world
the latter will never be satisfied till it has destroyed the world. They are two sides of the same medal. — D.H. Lawrence

Free trade and Christianity, it's the German East Africa Company, it's French Equatorial Africa, it's the Belgians cutting down the Congo population from twenty million to ten in barely twenty years, by nineteen fourteen there's nothing left to plunder in Africa so they go to war with each other in Europe instead that's what the whole damned first world war was all ab ... — William Gaddis

America has no north, no south, no east, no west. The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains, the compass just points up and down, and we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north and a south. We are one and undivided. — Sam Watkins

Where the sun had gone down in simple state - pure of the pomp of clouds - spread a solemn purple, burning with the light of red jewel and furnace flame at one point, on one hill-peak, and extending high and wide, soft and still softer, over half heaven. The east had its own charm or fine deep blue, and its own modest gem, a casino and solitary star: soon it would boast the moon; but she was yet beneath the horizon. — Charlotte Bronte

I trained for the marathon. I run along the East River, and I used to run all the way down Manhattan, up the West Side and back home. — Amy Carlson

There are times now, and my life has changed so completely, that I think back on the early years and I find myself thinking: It was not that bad. Perhaps it was not. But there are times, too - unexpected - when walking down a sunny sidewalk, or watching the top of a tree bend in the wind, or seeing a November sky close down over the East River, I am suddenly filled with the knowledge of darkness so deep that a sound might escape from my mouth, and I will step into the nearest clothing store and talk with a stranger about the shape of sweaters newly arrived. This must be the way most of us maneuver through the world, half knowing, half not, visited by memories that can't possibly be true. But when I see others walking with confidence down the sidewalk, as though they are free completely from terror, I realize I don't know how others are. So much of life seems speculation. — Elizabeth Strout

Gradually, I was getting worn down. My sense of direction had evaporated by our fourth day. When south became the opposite of east, I bought a compass, but going around with a compass only made the city seem less and less real. The buildings began to look like backdrops in a photography studio, the people walking in the streets like cardboard cutouts. — Haruki Murakami

The firstdown team for this planet must have had a fixation on animals. Horse, Bear, Eagle. For three days we were creeping down the east coast of Equus over an irregular coastline called the Mane. We've spent the last day making the crossing of a short span of the Middle Sea to a large island called Cat Key. Today we are offloading passengers and freight at Felix, the "major city" of the island. — Dan Simmons

The conflict has become like a Middle East version of the Thirty Years' War in Germany four hundred years ago. Too many players are fighting each other for different reasons for all of them to be satisfied by peace terms and to be willing to lay down their arms at the same time. Some still think they can win and others simply want to avoid a defeat. In Syria, as in Germany between 1618 and 1648, all sides exaggerate their own strength and imagine that temporary success on the battlefield will open the way to total victory. Many Syrians now see the outcome of their civil war resting largely with the US, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. In this, they are probably right. — Patrick Cockburn

I was against it [war in Middle East]. And I was against it very early. And we shouldn't have been in there. And I think it is probably perhaps the worst mistake we have ever made. First of all, they didn't knock down the World Trade Center, OK? It wasn't Iraq. It was other people. — Donald Trump

When they'd gone the old man turned around to watch the sun's slow descent. The Boat of Millions of Years, he thought; the boat of the dying sungod Ra, tacking down the western sky to the source of the dark river that runs through the underworld from west to east, through the twelve hours of the night, at the far eastern end of which the boat will tomorrow reappear, bearing a once again youthful, newly reignited sun.
Or, he thought bitterly, removed from us by a distance the universe shouldn't even be able to encompass, it's a vast motionless globe of burning gas, around which this little ball of a planet rolls like a pellet of dung propelled by a kephera beetle.
Take your pick, he told himself as he started slowly down the hill ... But be willing to die for your choice. — Tim Powers

I was thinking of writers living in East Europe before the Berlin Wall came down. They wrote fantastic stuff but were dealing with a situation that was almost impossible to deal with, but they found a way. — Romesh Gunesekera

I sought Him where my logic led.
"This friend is always sure and right;
His lantern is sufficient light.
I need no Star," I said.

I sought Him in the city square.
Logic and I went up and down
The marketplace of many a town,
But He was never there.

I tracked Him to the mind's far rim.
The valiant intellect went forth
To east and west and south and north,
But found no trace of Him.

We walked the world from sun to sun,
Logic and I, with Little Faith,
But never came to Nazareth,
Nor met the Holy One.

We sought in vain. And finally,
Back to the heart's small house I crept,
And fell upon my knees, and wept;
And Lo! He came to me! — Sara Henderson Hay

As the episode of Scandal ended, I sat up in my bed and thought, I have to read it again. It was driving me crazy, so I got out of bed and skipped down stairs of my comfy loft on the east side of Paradise Hills.

Once downstairs I slipped the letter out of the side closure of my briefcase. I walked back to my bedroom, and I began reading the note left for me. — Hazel Cartwright

I had been in Chicago for 22 years, and my wife and I didn't want to see another Chicago winter. Its a wonderful town but the winters are brutal. My wife and I are both east coast people and we wanted to live someplace a little bit warmer but didn't want to live way down south. So Delaware seemed like a good compromise. — David Bromberg

As you go down the water,' he said, 'you will find that the trees will fail, and you will come to a barren country. There the River flows in stony vales amid high moors, until at last after many leagues it comes to the tall island of the Tindrock, that we call Tol Brandir. There it casts its arms about the steep shores of the isle, and falls then with a great noise and smoke over the cataracts of Rauros down into the Nindalf, the Wetwang as it is called in your tongue. That is a wide region of sluggish fen where the stream becomes tortuous and much divided. There the Entwash flows in by many mouths from the Forest of Fangorn in the west. About that stream, on this side of the Great River, lies Rohan. On the further side are the bleak hills of the Emyn Muil. The wind blows from the East there, for they look out over the Dead Marshes and the Noman-lands to Cirith Gorgor and the black gates of Mordor. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Winfree came from a family in which no one had gone to college. He got started, he would say, by not having proper education. His father, rising from the bottom of the life insurance business to the level of vice president, moved family almost yearly up and down the East Coast, and Winfree attended than a dozen schools before finishing high school. He developed a feeling that the interesting things in the world had to do with biology and mathematics and a companion feeling that no standard combination of the two subjects did justice to what was interesting. So he decided not to take a standard approach. He took a five-year course in engineering physics at Cornell University, learning applied mathematics and a full range of hands-on laboratory styles. Prepared to be hired into military-industrial complex, he got a doctorate in biology, striving to combine experiment with theory in new ways. — James Gleick

And out of the blue, I got a call from an editor friend at Knopf and she said that they were interested in putting out an update for their vintage paperback line. So I was more than thrilled and it was suggested that perhaps I could do a 1,000 word new introduction covering what's happened with the whole Warhol thing since 1990 when the first edition hardcover came out and, uh, that was about August 1st and I sat down at my computer here in East Hampton and on on August 30th I'd written almost 10,000 words! — Bob Colacello

If you really wanted to settle down the Middle East, if what you wanted was change in the Middle East, it is perfectly obvious that the first step is resolving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. — Molly Ivins

In 1914, I believe, the excitement in Berlin on the first day of the World War was tremendous. Today, no excitement, no hurrahs, no cheering, no throwing of flowers, no war fever, no war hysteria. There is not even any hate for the French and British - despite Hitler's various proclamations to the people, the party, the East Army, the West Army, accusing the "English warmongers and capitalistic Jews" of starting this war. When I passed the French and British embassies this afternoon, the sidewalk in front of each of them was deserted. A lone Schupo paced up and down before each. — William L. Shirer

A sudden wind thrashed the treetops in the garden, sweeping down from the east. — Steven Erikson

I love country music so much. I love all kinds of music. But when it comes down to it, I'm from East Tennessee, and country melodies and country songs have always just sliced me in the heart. — Ashley Monroe

After driving 30-minutes East of Seattle, I expect to see a great bowling alley. But, as we pull into the parking lot, all I see are pot holes, a horse and Amish buggy, and no cars to speak of- broken down or otherwise. Even the building is in shambles, needs painted and looks a bit haunted. The old road sign reading- Flicker Lanes- is half-burnt out. Seeing the building's interior lights on, I'm reassured that the place is open- but then again, maybe they've been left on by mistake. "There's LOTS of NICE bowling alleys in SEATTLE," I said. "Why did we come ALL THIS WAY to go BOWLING?"
"I take it that you've never BEEN here before."
"I don't think ANYONE HAS. I don't even KNOW what PLANET we're on."
"I don't know what PLANET you're on either... but the rest of us are on your ANUS."
I half-smile, marveling at his wittiness. — Giorge Leedy

I grew up in leafy suburbs in north and east Belfast, but if I had been born a mile down the road closer to the city centre, you might never heard of me. — Mike Nesbitt

Still, a part of me will never stop thinking of her as my sergeant. She's the toughest, most competent, and most evenhanded soldier I've known, and she runs her squad as a strict meritocracy. If only a tenth of the military consisted of people like Sergeant Fallon, we would have kicked the SRA off of every inhabited celestial body between Earth and Zeta Reticuli fifty years ago already. As things stand, we're weighed down by people like Major Unwerth, who coast through the system doing only the expected minimum. If a military is the reflection of the society it serves, it's amazing that the Commonwealth is still at the top of the food chain on Terra. Even with all the dead wood in our ranks, we have been able to hold the line against the SRA and the dozens of regional powers in the Middle East and the Pacific Rim that are short on resources and long on grievances with their neighbors. — Marko Kloos

The King with half the East at heel is marched from lands of morning;
Their fighters drink the rivers up, their shafts benight the air.
And he that stands will die for nought, and home there's no returning.
The Spartans on the sea-wet rock sat down and combed their hair. — A.E. Housman

Kitchen solace - the feeling that a delicious meal is simmering on the kitchen stove, misting up the windows, and that at any moment your lover will sit down to dinner with you and, between mouthfuls, gaze happily into your eyes. (Also known as living.)" RECIPES THE CUISINE of Provence is as diverse as its scenery: fish by the coast, vegetables in the countryside, and in the mountains lamb and a variety of staple dishes containing pulses. One region's cooking is influenced by olive oil, another's is based on wine, and pasta dishes are common along the Italian border. East kisses West in Marseilles with hints of mint, saffron and cumin, and the Vaucluse is a paradise for truffle and confectionery lovers. Yet — Nina George

If you walk east at daybreak from the town
To the cliff's foot, by climbing steadily
You cling at noon whence there is no way down
But to go toppling backward to the sea.
And not for birds nor birds' eggs, so they say,
But for a flower that in these fissures grows,
Forms have been seen to move throughout the day
Skyward; but what its name is no one knows.
'Tis said you find beside them on the sand
This flower, relinquished by the broken hand. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Some people, I am told, have memories like computers, nothing to do but punch the button and wait for the print-out. Mine is more like a Japanese library of the old style, without a card file or an indexing system or any systematic shelf plan. Nobody knows where anything is except the old geezer in felt slippers who has been shuffling up and down those stacks for sixty-nine years. When you hand him a problem he doesn't come back with a cartful and dump it before you, a jackpot of instant retrieval. He finds one thing, which reminds him of another, which leads him off to the annex, which directs him to the east wing, which sends him back two tiers from where he started. Bit by bit he finds you what you want, but like his boss who seems to be under pressure to examine his life, he takes his time. — Wallace Stegner

As long as the United States - and the world - gets its oil from the Middle East, we will be drawn into the endless crises that seem endemic to the region. American energy independence would not only liberate us, it would also drive down the worldwide price of oil. — Kathleen Troia McFarland

When Tony Benn became a minister in the 1960s
and I think this must be apocryphal
he had a huge map of Britain hung upside down in his office, so the channel was at the top and Scotland was at the bottom and, apparently, he said, "This is how we need to look at this country, with the money and the power draining by force of gravity out of the south east." That was a great idea. I rather liked him for that. I don't know if it's actually true or not. — Neal Ascherson

He looked down, watching her delicate, soft fingers encircle his rock-hard dick and wondering when a hand job had turned him on so much.

"Tell me what to do."

"Stroke, don't pull," he said, noticing his voice was incoherent, but somehow she understood it. "North and south, not east and west."

"It's huge."

"Don't worry its bark is worse than its bite."

She looked up at home, knitting her brows together and smiling nervously. "It bites?"

He had never laughed so hard and been so hard at the same time. — M.K. Schiller

The eternal opposites meet and kiss. The wolf and the lamb lie down together, the dove and the serpent share one nest. The stars bend down and touch the earth and the young and the old forgive each other. Night and day meet here, so do the poles. The East leans over towards the West and the circle is complete. — P.L. Travers

The city of 500,000 is wedged between a granite spine of mountains zigzagging up and down the coast and the Sea of Japan, which Koreans call the East Sea. — Barbara Demick

There, too, she would sit for hours gazing seawards. No tiniest speck of sail that crossed the waters could escape her watchful eyes, and as she watched she dreamed that some day one of these distant sails should bear down towards her, and one should come, in whose hand she would lay her own, and they two would flee to the far East. But as the changeless years went by and brought him not, the girl grew sullen, and a sense of wrong possessed her, for the older she grew, the clearer became her consciousness of a world beyond her, and the greater her longing to seek it.
("The Serpent's Head") — Emilia Francis Strong Dilke

Day was breaking at Plashwater Weir Mill Lock. Stars were yet visible, but there was dull light in the east that was not the light of night. The moon had gone down, and a mist crept along the banks of the river, seen through which the trees were the ghosts of trees, and the water was the ghost of water. This earth looked spectral, and so did the pale stars: while the cold eastern glare, expressionless as to heat or colour, with the eye of the firmament quenched, might have been likened to the stare of the dead. — Charles Dickens

It came boring out of the east like some ribald satellite of the coming sun howling and bellowing in the distance and the long light of the headlamp running through the tangled mesquite brakes and creating out of the night the endless fenceline down the dead straight right of way and sucking it back again wire and post mile on mile into the darkness after where the boilersmoke disbanded slowly along the faint new horizon and the sound came lagging and he stood still holding his hat in his hands in the passing ground-shudder watching it till it was gone. Then — Cormac McCarthy

It is true that water will flow indifferently to east and west, but will it flow equally well up and down? Human nature is disposed toward goodness, just as water tends to flow downwards. There is no water but flows downwards, and no man but shows his tendency to be good. Now, by striking water hard, you may splash it higher than your forehead, and by damming it, you may make it go uphill. But, is that the nature of water? It is external force that causes it to do so. Likewise, if a man is made to do what is not good, his nature is being similarly forced. — Mencius

To someone standing in the nave, looking down the length of the church toward the east, the round window would seem like a huge sun exploding into innumerable shards of gorgeous color. — Ken Follett

One thing he held against the bird force was the curse of knowing always which direction he was headed in, without the vaguest idea where he was going. He headed east this time, recalling as if it were yesterday every fifth or sixth mile of the road, where they hadn't torn it up, straightened it, bent it, laid it down again, and bordered it with regular houses planted eave-to-eave like an impenetrable, multicolored fence - soon a flag will wave from every antenna, we'll peek out at the savage world from a plaster fortress, nationwide. — Douglas Woolf

Yessir, they's big money involved in this park fight, that's the story. Dyer's the mouthpiece for them east coast developers that has fought that park idea for years; them boys are workin day and night to grab that real estate before all them nature-lovers and such get the Glades nailed down by the federl gov'mint. You ain't seen all that stuff in the papers? Gettin the public fired up against the feds for wastin half of Florida on this big green nothin? Stead of sellin off that land and cuttin taxes? — Peter Matthiessen

I think actors go along a continuum from Simon Callow down to kind of Ross Kemp, and I like to think of myself as the Ross Kemp of comedy. He's very good in 'East Enders' because he plays a version of himself. I think I can play a version of myself - that's about all I can do. — Jo Brand

Mainiacs away from Maine are truly displaced persons, only half alive, only half aware of their immediate surroundings. Their inner attention is always preoccupied and pre-empted by the tiny pinpoint on the face of the globe called Down East. They try to live not in such a manner that they will eventually be welcomed into Paradise, but only so that someday they can go home to Maine. — Louise Dickinson Rich

I went to my room and packed a change of clothes, got my banjo, and started walking down the road. Soon I found myself on the open highway headed east. — Burl Ives