Dropped The Ball Quotes & Sayings

I dropped the head and kicked it into the crowd. I say "kicked" but in truth it's a bad idea to kick a head. I learned that years ago, a lesson that cost me two broken toes. What you want to do is shove the head with the side of your foot, like you're throwing it. It's going to roll anyhow so you don't need that much force. See, the thing about severed heads is the owner no longer has any interest in minimizing the force of the blow, or any ability to do so for that matter. When you kick somebody in the head as you do from time to time, they tend to be actively trying to move themselves out of the way and the contact is lessened. A severed head is a dead weight, even if it's watching you.
And that exhausts my insights into the kicking of severed heads. Admittedly it's more than most people have to offer on the subject but there were Mayans who knew a lot more than I do. That of course is a whole different ball-game. — Mark Lawrence

I've already got the storm figured out. Some idiot blew up the sun. Some dumb Russian general pushed the wrong button and launched one of their million missiles, or maybe NASA misaimed one of our test rockets. Either way, the sun is gone and we're now engaged in a nuclear shootout. It's the end of everything. Batman and Superman aren't coming and James Bond doesn't have a trick up his sleeve to save us this time. In a week or a month, we'll all freeze to death, just like in that Twilight Zone episode where the pretty lady is burning up with fever, dreaming the sun is baking the world dry, when really the Earth has dropped out of orbit, is hurtling further and further away from the sun, rapidly turning into a big ball of ice. — Bob Thurber

I think we're going to enter a phase where there's less interest in the CGI and there's a demand for story again. I think we've dropped the ball a little bit on stories for the sake of the amazing toys that we've played with. — Peter Jackson

Y'all dropped the ball and you should be shamed. — Maya Angelou

You need me, just whistle," he said as he arranged his ball cap over his eyes against the sun leaking through the frost-emptied branches. "You're not coming?" Lifting the brim of his cap, he eyed me, "You want me to?" he asked blandly. "Not really, no." He dropped the brim and laced his hands over his middle. "Then why are you bitching? It's a crime scene, not a grocery store. — Kim Harrison

The pitcher wound up and he flang the ball at the batter. The batter swang and missed. The pitcher flang the ball again and this time the batter connected. He hit a high fly right to the center fielder. The center fielder was all set to catch the ball, but at the last minute his eyes were blound by the sun and he dropped it. — Dizzy Dean

We need more drama on Australian TV. We've actually dropped the ball on that. — Gillian Armstrong

I have to admit," I said when he finished a lengthy discussion on the types of drivers, "I've been golfing and it's about the most boring thing I've ever done. Old men drive around in golf carts pretending they're sporty and getting grouchy if there's any noise. It's like the nursing-home Olympics."
Nick's mouth dropped open. "It takes great athletic ability to know how to aim and drive the ball that far."
"I get more exercise shopping at the mall," I joked. "I don't come home and tell everyone I won at shopping." Although those red shoes I got on sale the other day felt like a win. — Cindi Madsen

I'm so glad you're okay."
"So, how do we celebrate my okayness? It's my day off. Let's go crazy. Glow-in-the-dark bowling?"
"No"
"I'll let you use the kiddie ball."
"Shut up. I do NOT need the kiddie ball."
"The way you bowl, I think you might."
He grabbed her in an exaggerated formal dance pose and whirled her around, backpack and all, which didn't make her any more graceful.
"Ballroom dancing?"
"Are you INSANE?"
"Hey, girls who tango are hot."
"You think I'm not hot because I don't tango?"
He dropped the act. Shane was a smart boy.
"I think you are too hot for ballroom or bowling. So you tell me. What do you want to do? And don't say study. — Rachel Caine

A scratch at the door interrupted us. Colin dropped and rolled under the bed again. One of the maids poked her head in. "Miss?"
I tried not to look as if I was hiding a handsome young lad under the mattress.
"Yes?"
"Lord Jasper sent me up to see if you need help getting ready for a ball." She smiled proudly. "I have a fair hand with a curling iron."
"Oh.Thank you." I needed to get Colin out before I ended up naked in the middle of my bedroom. "I,um, could I get some hot water? To wash my face?"
"Certainly,miss. I'll have the footmen bring up the bathtub, if you like, before all the fine ladies start calling for their own baths."
"That would be great, thanks." I'd never actually been in a full reclining tub before. We had a battered hip bath in the kitchen.
The maid curtsied and closed the door behind her. I let out a breath. Colin crawled back out. "They need to sweep under there," he said, sneezing. — Alyxandra Harvey

You...you always made everything sound like it's not a big deal. You're doing that now."
His lips continued to curve on the right and the dimple appeared. Then he sighed and scooted forward, spreading his legs. His hands suddenly landed on my hips, and I almost dropped the cotton ball at the unexpected contact. My breath caught as he lowered me so I was sitting on the edge of the coffee table and he kept moving forward, the inside of his legs sliding against the outside of mine. The rough material of his jeans touching my bare skin sent a raw, drenching rush of sensation through my veins.
"That better?" he asked, peering at me through lowered lashes.
I blinked, having no idea what he was talking about, and then I realized that seated like this, it was easier to reach him. His hands dropped from my hips to rest on his thighs, and they were oh so close to mine. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Mr. Pappadakis smells like Just for Men peroxide dye and eucalyptus foot unguents. He has a face like a catcher's mitt. The whole thing puckers inward, drooping with the memory of some dropped fly ball. — Karen Russell

Shelly, what is this?"
"What?"
"This." She shook her fork.
"A Rocky Mountain oyster."
"Is it a shellfish?"
"No, it's a testicle."
"Oh, my God!" She dropped the fork as if it had suddenly zapped her. "Whose?"
Dylan burst out laughing. "Not mine."
"They came from the Rocking C. I bought 'em during castration season," Shelly told her.
"You bought them? Oh, my God!"
"Well," Shelly answered as if Hope were the crazy one, "they don't just give away free oysters, you know."
"No, I don't know. I'm from California. We eat real food. We don't eat cow ball. — Rachel Gibson

You know what it's like when you go to IKEA and you can't believe how cheap everything is, and even though you may not need a hundred tea lights, my God, they're only ninety-nine cents for the whole bag? Or: Sure the throw are filled with a squishy ball of no-doubt toxic whatnot, but they're so bright and three-for-five-dollars that before you know it you've dropped five hundred bucks, not because you needed any of this crap, but because it was so damn cheap? — Maria Semple

You never want to be the director who dropped the ball, you know? — David Yates

You idiot! What do you call a person who plays the piano?' she said, a steely glint in her eyes. 'Pi . . . Pianist?' Derek mumbled. 'And a person who exorcises?' 'Ex . . . Exorcist?' 'So what would you call a person who prepares Mayo . . . whatever?' she screeched. And then the ball dropped. A trembling Derek gasped, 'Mayo . . . ist! Shit! — C.S. Krishna

I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy. — Wynton Marsalis

It has always been difficult for Jews to take Christians serious, mostly because Christians lack the fundamentals that religious Jews learn in their youth. It remains an embarrassing fact, that modern Jews can comprehend the New Testament better than modern Christians. There is no excuse for this. Christians have dropped the ball and should be anxious to remedy that neglect. Not only would they benefit themselves, but their community too. — Michael Ben Zehabe

The overwhelming condemnation makes it clear we have made enormous progress in teaching everyone that racism is bad. Where we seem to have dropped the ball ... is in teaching people what racism actually is ... which allows people to say incredibly racist things while insisting they would never. — Jon Stewart

When the ball dropped in 1999, I was holding dough and champagne in my hands and holding my kids. — Method Man

Finally, we need the church to help move single adults toward marriage and family. In other words, we need you to get into the business of godly matchmaking. The church has really dropped the ball on this one. But it's not entirely its fault. Singles and the church at large are in a catch-22 here. On one hand, the church doesn't talk to singles much about marriage. In an effort not to make us feel bad (a good thing), the church has chosen to remain silent with singles on relationships and marriage (not a good thing). The problem is, most singles want to be married. But the other problem is, we're embarrassed to admit it. Why? Because when we do, we get shamed and preached at. You can see why this all gets crazy. — Lisa Anderson

I can't believe that any man would care enough to go to all that trouble. Not for me."
He stopped pacing and approached her. He put his hands on her shoulders and forced her to meet his intense blue gaze. "I am wearing a cravat and cuff links at the godforsaken Beetle Ball. Does this not count as going to trouble for you?"
"But ... that's not for me. Not really."
"Maddie, mo chridhe." His grip on her arms softened to a caress, and his gaze dropped to her mouth. "Like hell it isn't."
-Maddie & Logan — Tessa Dare

As children, we were given a choice between the talented but erratic hare and the plodding but steady tortoise. The lesson was supposed to be that slow and steady wins the race. But, really, did any of us ever want to be the tortoise? No, we just wanted to be a less foolish hare. We wanted to be swift as the wind and a bit more strategic - say, not taking quite so many snoozes before the finish line. After all, everyone knows you have to show up in order to win. The story of the tortoise and the hare, in trying to put forward the power of effort, gave effort a bad name. It reinforced the image that effort is for the plodders and suggested that in rare instances, when talented people dropped the ball, the plodder could sneak through. — Carol S. Dweck

I figured if evolution did its job, spinach salad would taste like pumpkin pie and pumpkin pie would taste like spinach salad. Sadly, it ain't so; so evolution must have dropped the ball somehow. (If you don't buy Darwin, then you'd have to agree this whole set up speaks volumes about God's sense of humor.) I — George Del Prado

When she sat back, she nearly dropped the cotton ball in surprise: What had Isabelle done to her? Her cheekbones looked sharp and angular, her eyes deep-set, mysterious, and a luminous green.

"I look like my mom," she said in surprise.

Isabelle raised her eyebrows. "What? Too middle-aged? Maybe some more glitter - — Cassandra Clare

Here's a nice image for a life in balance," she said. "You're juggling these four balls that you've named work, family, friends, spirit. Now, work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it bounces back. The other balls they're made of glass."
"I've dropped a few of those glass balls in my day. Sometimes they chip, sometimes they shatter to pieces. — James Patterson

In the NFL, every practice could make or break you. If you dropped one ball, you'd worry about getting cut. — Darren Flutie

When a president promises something beyond his years in office, he is fundamentally unaccountable. It is not his budget that must finish the job. Another president inherits the problem, and it becomes a ball too easily dropped, a plan too easily abandoned, a dream too readily deferred. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Meanwhile, people have to join us and fight back against the federal government that has dropped the ball, that is in bed with these energy companies, that wants them to make more money than they've made before. — Gray Davis

Barack Obama is not Harry Truman, who dropped the A-bomb on Japan to stop World War II. Barack Obama is not John F. Kennedy, who lowered marginal tax rates to get economic growth and job creation. Barack Obama and the far left, they are a completely different ball of wax. — Monica Crowley

Swish, the net sounded like the blast of a cannon, signaling the game was tied at 64. Dave then saw the second shot in his mind before even going into his pre-shot routine. The ball tickled the front rim, brushed against the backboard, and then dropped through the net. The home crowd erupted as Dave backpedaled toward the opposing rim. Central High attempted a last-second shot that fell short into Breslin's hands. The fans rushed onto the floor as the number two train came roaring into the station, bringing Dave back from his glorious past back into the oppressive heat of the present. — Phil Wohl

You're pathetic. You screwed your best friend's boyfriend. Congratulations. You got into a guy's pants. Wonderful achievement for you. Revel in it. It'll last a week. He's going to drop you." I glanced at him, saw he was already uncertain, and rolled my eyes. "She's already dropped you and you're now known as the friend who sleeps with her friend's boyfriends. Congratulations on your new reputation. The only people who will want to be your friend will be people like you. You'll never get the good friends, the ones who are actual friends." I never looked away. I never faltered. The longer I talked, the more she withered beneath me. I was finished. "I've kept quiet, but I'm done. Mess with Mandy again and you will be messing with me." I stepped closer. "That's not a threat. It's a fact. Ball's in your court if you decide to take me on and with that said, get out of my house. — Tijan

Let's see if I remember all of this - born in Charlottesville, Virginia, but raised in Salem by her mother, Susan, a teacher, and her father, Jacob, a police officer. Attended Salem Elementary School until your tenth birthday, when your father called into his station to report an unknown child in his house - "
"Stop," I muttered. Liam looked over his shoulder, trying to divide his attention between me and the boy reciting the sordid tale of my life. " - but, bad luck, the PSFs beat the police to your house. Good luck, someone dropped the ball or they had other kiddies to pick up, because they didn't wait around long enough to question your parents, and thus, didn't pre-sort you. And then you came to Thurmond, and you managed to avoid their detecting you were Orange - " "Stop!" I didn't want to hear this - I didn't want anyone to hear it. — Alexandra Bracken

But you are lucky. You are going to live. The one ball that might have killed you just pushed your intestines aside - like a marble dropped into a bowl of spaghetti. — Judith Ivory

When a prominent dissident was arrested in China, we would write a front-page article; when 100,000 girls were routinely kidnapped and trafficked into brothels, we didn't even consider it news. Partly that is because we journalists tend to be good at covering events that happen on a particular day, but we slip at covering events that happen every day - such as the quotidian cruelties inflicted on women and girls. We journalists weren't the only ones who dropped the ball on this subject: Less than 1 percent of U.S. foreign aid is specifically targeted to women and girls. — Nicholas D. Kristof

I think the liberals are going to try to blame - and they already are - this entire mess on the right and on President [George W.] Bush. I think Republicans dropped the ball on actually articulating why we got into this economic mess, but it's not too late. — Andrea Tantaros

One time I dropped a fly ball in Milwaukee and, after the game, the writers asked me what happened. I told them, 'Well, I was looking up and a UFO flew right across. It was weird. I never saw anything like that in my life.' Man, I was only joking and they wrote it up and put it in the paper. — Jesse Barfield

People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over. — Hugh Laurie

The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it. — Lou Holtz