Quotes & Sayings About Getting Left Out

Jess began to wish she had worn a modest top that covered her up as far as- well, as far as her eyebrows. She wished she had at least rehearsed dancing in front of her full-length mirror before leaving home. She feared that her newly buoyant boobs might be getting rather out of hand. Bonnie especially - the left one - was beginning to feel a bit free-range, and it did seem a little drafty across her chest. Jess also began to worry that, in shaking up the soup so violently, she might somehow make it boil over. — Sue Limb

I thought I made it clear that I was a sure thing, but he left without getting any."
Maybe Hector's holding out for a better deal, Sam."
That never occurred to me. "Negotiating?"
You negotiated with all your other dominants. You call it power exchange. Use your power."
I ducked my head. "I don't have any power."
Then what the hell are you exchanging? — Jay Lygon

In the cramped confines of the toilet I had trouble getting out of my wet trousers, which clung to my legs like a drowning man. The new ones were quite complicated too in that they had more legs than a spider; either that or they didn't have enough legs to get mine into. The numbers failed to add up. Always there was one trouser leg too many or one of my legs was left over. From the outside it may have looked like a simple toilet, but once you were locked in here the most basic rules of arithmetic no longer held true. — Geoff Dyer

You didn't call me last night."
"Was I supposed to?"
He looked down. "Just figured now that you had my number ... Kept my phone on all night, just in case." He laughed. "I started to worry that it didn't work. Actually went out to a pay phone to test it."
"You could have called me. That way you left me after lunch on Saturday, I figured ... " I ended there and shrugged, not wanting to be mad at him or get into any kind of argument. "Anyway, after auditions I went to the gym with Steph, and I'm so behind in my homework it's not even funny." Of course I'd punched in his number about eighteen times without actually ever calling him. I wasn't sure what I'd say, and worried about how I'd feel if he didn't answer.
"I shouldn't have left like that on Saturday."
"Yeah, well." I waved my hands. "Don't worry about it. I have to finish getting ready. There's cereal and stuff ... just make yourself at home. — Sara Zarr

Hey, there, Kizuki, I thought. Unlike you, I've chosen to live - and to live the best I know how. Sure, it was hard for you. What the hell, it's hard for me. Really hard. And all because you killed yourself and left Naoko behind. But that's something I will never do. I will never, ever, turn my back on her. First of all, because I love her, and because I'm stronger than she is. And I'm just going to keep on getting stronger. I'm going to mature. I'm going to be an adult. Because that's what I have to do. I always used to think I'd like to stay 17 or 18 if I could. But not any more. I'm not a teenager any more. I've got a sense of responsibility now. I' m not the same person I was when we used to hang out together. I'm 20 now. And I have to pay the price to go on living. — Haruki Murakami

Wishing is bad," he said again. "It makes you hurt. Makes all the missing parts hurt, makes them open up new and makes them bleed."
xxx
"You take out a part of you," Roosevelt murmured. "Take it out and blow on it and toss it to the winds like dust, and you say, 'Find all the missing parts of me. Go out among the world and find the missing parts of me.' But instead of getting back what you lost you just lose more. Wishing is bad. Wish long enough and there won't be any of you left. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Looking at them now as folks chased in and out, getting ready, it was hard for Cora to image a time when the fourteen cabins hadn't been there. For all the wear, the complaints from deep in the wood at every step, the cabins had the always-quality of the hills to the west, of the creek that bisected the property. The cabins radiated permanence and in turn summed timeless feelings in those who lived and died in them: envy and spite. If they'd left more space between the old cabins and the new cabins it would have spared a lot of grief over the years. — Colson Whitehead

Now with her eyes closed and fist clenched at her side. She was as off balanced as he was. Lilith took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She looked at Ian and did what took every ounce of will power she had; she walked away and out the doors. Ian watched as Lilith left the study and was shocked. He wanted her and she walked away from him. Then anger stormed his emotions and now he was royally pissed off. He was getting fucking tired of the cold and hot treatment she was giving him. Why the hell was she running? — Shadowstorm Norwicca

I keep thinking, well, this'll settle down. It's bound to level off and settle down. But it doesn't. Even when things are just going smooth and we're just ... living, I can look at you, and I've got no breath left."
"Every minute with you, I'm alive. I never knew before there were pieces of me unborn, just waiting for you. I'm alive with you, Eve"
She sighted, touched his cheek. "We'd better get out of here. We're getting mush all over the pool. — J.D. Robb

There was nothing like an extra helping of guilt to cool a man's blood.And it was guilt as much as the hot food and the glass of good wine that got Brian through the evening in the Grant kitchen. The size of it left little room for lust, considering.
There was Adelia Grant giving him a warm greeting as if he was welcome to swing in for dinner anytime he had the whim, and Travis getting out an extra plate himself-as if he waited on employees five days a week-and saying that there was plenty to go around as Brendon had other plans for dinner.
Before he knew it, he was sitting down, having food heaped in front of him and being asked how his day had been.And not in a way that expected a report.
He didn't know what to do about it. He liked these people, genuinely liked them. And there he was lusting after their daughter. An alley mutt after a registered purebred. — Nora Roberts

What was he doing in there? Was he just getting dressed reeeaaally slowly? Was he looking through my things? Was he trashing my place because I'd run out and left him there like the biggest jerk this side of Kanye West at the 2009 VMA's? — Cora Carmack

Another time, I was at the bar getting a drink and this geezer is stood at the bar with a ciggie in his mouth, trying his best to look rock hard. He takes a drag and points his finger in my face and drawls, 'Don't I know you?'
He was looking snake-eyed at me like a typical big screen gangster.
I stood in front of him and drawled back, 'I don't know, but they call me Richy Horsley,' and then bang, I batter him with a left hook that landed with a strange dull thud. Mr Movie Gangster was stood there leaning against the bar and staring out in to space, knocked out standing up. — Stephen Richards

Do not make your child your only hobby or you will end up waiting by the telephone in a cheery room covered in brittle, yellowed crayon drawings, regaling those few friends that are left with stale anecdotes about your youngster's accomplishments. Your little baby will be off in college, or backpacking in the Amazon, or on the other side of the country trying to get as far away from home as possible, and you will begin collecting porcelain frogs and feeding stray cats. So now is the time to start getting that life to fall back on. You know what you must do. Do it for your child. Do it for me, and for everyone out there who has to deal with your child for the rest of your child's life. And do it for yourself. — Christie Mellor

Sucks to be left out of adolescence, sort of like getting locked in the closet on Venus when the sun appears for the first time in a hundred years. — Junot Diaz

Or there are the non-forgiveness stories like Breaking Bad and Crime and Punishment, where there is no such thing as 'getting away with it.' I heard a real-life version of this recently. On the radio show Snap Judgment, Robert Davis, an ex-police officer in New Orleans, tells his story. A crooked cop in the late 1970s, he lists several occasions where he bartered with people to get out of their arrests. When an internal affairs charge was made against him, he was warned that there would be a sting operation, so he ran. Knowing that he could be tracked down in another city, and that any phone calls to his family would be bugged, he became a fugitive living in the woods. I distinctly remember looking at the stars and seeing a plane flying south and thinking about siblings I had left behind. — Anonymous

Amy Martin (ladysky) and Daniel Baciagalupo had a month to spend on Charlotte Turner's island in Georgian Bay; it was their wilderness way of getting to know each other before their life together in Toronto began. We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly
as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth
the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.
Little Joe was gone, but not a day passed in Daniel Baciagalupo's life when Joe wasn't loved or remembered. The cook had been murdered in his bed, but Dominic Baciagalupo had had the last laugh on the cowboy. Ketchum's left hand would lvie forever in Twisted River, and Six-Pack had known what to do with the rest of her old friend — John Irving

Albert, I don't know how long we can keep Sam involved at all," she said.
"You're upset," Albert replied.
"Yes, I'm upset. But that's not the point. Sam is out of control. If we're ever going to have a working system we may have to find someone else to play the role of savior."
Albert sighed. "Astrid, we don't know what's out there in the night. And maybe you're right that Sam is out of control. But me? I'm really glad it's him out there getting ready to face whatever it is."
Albert picked up his omnipresent notebook and left.
To a now empty, silent room, Astrid said, "Don't die, Sam. Don't die. — Michael Grant

First, we cannot overload the human brain. This divinely created brain has fourteen billion cells. If used to the maximum, this human computer inside our heads could contain all the knowledge of humanity from the beginning of the world to the present and still have room left over. Second, not only can we not overload our brain - we also know that our brain retains everything. I often use saying that "The brain acquires everything that we encounter." The difficulty does not come with the input of information, but getting it out. Sometimes we "file" information randomly of little importance, and it confuses us. — Ben Carson

She came quickly over to me and held out her hand. I looked at her full of distrust. Was she doing this freely, with a light heart? Or was she doing it just to get rid of me? She put her arm around my neck, tears in her eyes. I just stood and looked at her. She offered me her mouth but I couldn't believe her, it was bound to be a sacrifice on her part, a means of getting it over with.
She said something, it sounded to me like "I love you anyway!" She said it very softly and indistinctly, I may not have heard it correctly, perhaps she didn't say exactly those words. But she threw herself passionately on my neck, held both arms around my neck a little while, even raised herself on tiptoe to reach well up, and stood thus.
Afraid that she was forcing herself to show me this tenderness, I merely said "How beautiful you are now!"
That was all I said. I stepped back, bumped against the door and walked out backward. She was left standing inside. — Knut Hamsun

The pain is stronger than ever. I've seen bit of lost Paradises and I know I'll be hopelessly tryng tu return even if it hurts. The deeper I swing into the regions of nothingness the further I'm thrown back into myself, each time more and more frightening depths below me, until my very being becomes dizzy. There are brief glimpses of clear sky, like falling out of a tree, so I have some idea where I'm going, but there is still too much clarity and straight order of things, I am getting always the same number somehow. So I vomit out broken bits of words and sintaxes of the countries I've passed through, broken limbs, slaughtered houses, geographies. My heart is poisoned, my brain left in shreds of horror and sadness. I've never let you down, world, but you did lousy things to me.
(from "As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of beauty", 2000) — Jonas Mekas

When Adam's House Cat broke up in 1991, which was Cooley and my band for six years, I put my entire life, heart, and soul into that thing. I mean everything. I ended up getting divorced over it, and then the band broke up and I was left with nothing. I had nothing to show for six years of my life except for a finished record that still hasn't come out. And I went through a pretty deep, dark, two-year depression after that, [which] probably resulted in some of the earlier songs that became Drive-By Trucker songs, for that matter. — Patterson Hood

The Times Square Incident wasn't a terrorist attack, it was a Jim Carrey movie. The terrorist locked the keys to the safe house he was going to escape to in the carbomb. And I love that he locked the carbomb. Nobody's getting my Ipod. Then he left the keys to carbomb hanging out of the tailgate of the carbomb, and built the carbomb out of fertilizer that wouldn't explode. I have been doing comedy for 25 years and I have never been that funny. — Christopher Titus

What's your name?" Oedipa said. "Winthrop Tremaine," replied the spirited entrepreneur, "Winner, for short. Listen, now we're getting up an arrangement with one of the big ready-to-wear outfits in L.A. to see how SS uniforms go for the fall. We're working it in with the back-to-school campaign, lot of 37 longs, you know, teenage kid sizes. Next season we may go all the way and get out a modified version for the ladies. How would that strike you?""I'll let you know," Oedipa said. "I'll keep you in mind." She left, wondering if she should've called him something, or tried to hit him with any of a dozen surplus, heavy, blunt objects in easy reach. There had been no witnesses. Why hadn't she? — Thomas Pynchon

Davy,
Didn't you realize that the only thing I wanted from Mark was his version of the night you,
well, removed him from the party? I know Mark is a sleaze. I'm not involved with him in any
way, but when you vanished from in front of me, what was I to think?
I don't know if you're even human. For all I knew you fly around in a flying saucer kidnapping
humans left and right. If this sort of jumping to conclusions bothers you, think how much
alternative explanation you offered.
I know you're hurt, and I guess you were hurt even more when you thought I was getting
involved with Mark again. But, dammit, you are doing your share of lashing out, yourself.
Millie
P.S. I still don't know if you are human, but I know that I care for you enough that you can
hurt me. You did. — Steven Gould

The suite was set: Chris and I in the left, back room; Tom and Ricky in the left, front room; Junior and Danny Tampon in the back, right room next to the bathroom; and Dickstein all by his peanut-dick-self in the front, right room. It was quite a radical change from the suite that surrounded me, Chris, and Tom the previous year. Just getting rid of Lebeuf was addition by subtraction. The Beachside Dorm, Suite 524, would be one of the happiest places in my two-decade life. Freedom of expression was never diminished, unless Dickstein opened his mouth and shit flew out of it. — Phil Wohl

I help up my left hand. The sapphire and diamonds sparkled.
"Oh my God," my mom said and fell out of her chair.
"Mom? Mom!" I said getting worried.
"I'm okay," she said and her hand appeared on the screen as she climbed back into the kitchen chair. "You just gave me quite a shock. I wasn't expecting that. Engaged?" she panted.

Sloane and Tammi — Micalea Smeltzer

Oh, don'tleave now, little bird," Sarren crooned, licking blood from one long bony finger. "It's just getting interesting. You can't fly away just yet."
"I wasn't leaving," I snarled. "I'm not about to let you spread your superplague or virus or whatever you want to call it. You might have given up on this world, but I'm not ready to die yet. I don't need your brand of salvation." The katana shook as I raised it in front of me, but I gripped the hilt and forced my arms to be steady. "So, come on, you psycopath. Let's do this. I'm not tied to a table anymore."
Sarren's grin widened, making him even more frightening. " I still owe you for this, love," he said, gesturing to his left eye, cloudy and blind. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth. Perhaps, I will pluck out both your eyes, then remove all your teeth, and make a necklace from them. Or maybe a wind chime. I do love wind chimes, don't you, little bird? — Julie Kagawa

At that point I ought to have gone away, but a strange sensation rose up in me, a sort of defiance of fate, a desire to challenge it, to put out my tongue at it. I laid down the largest stake allowe-four thousand gulden-and lost it. Then, getting hot, I pulled out all I had left, staked it on the same number, and lost again, after which I walked away from the table as though I were stunned. I could not even grasp what had happened to me. — Fyodor Dostoevsky

A restlessness has seized hold of many of us, a sense that we should be doing something else, no matter what we are doing, or doing at least two things at once, or going to check some other medium. It's an anxiety about keeping up, about not being left out or getting behind. — Rebecca Solnit

There was never anybody before you," she said. "I just wanted to say that. And when I did what I do, and it opened a crack in me like it did last night, there was nobody there to hold on to me. I didn't want anyone to hold on to me. Until you. And I got through and I got by, and it was okay. But I think, maybe, if I'd just kept getting through and getting by, I'd have come to a point where I couldn't do it anymore. And if I couldn't do it anymore, it'd be the end of me, Roarke. So when you hold on to me, You're helping me stand up, one more time. And the dead, you're standing for them, too. I just wanted to say that." She went out quickly, and left him staring at her. — J.D. Robb

As Wessner struggled to his feet, he resembled a battlefield, for his clothing was in ribbons and his face and hands streaming blood. "I--I guess I got enough," he mumbled. "Oh, you do?" roared Freckles. "Well this ain't your say. You come on to me ground, lying about me Boss and intimatin' I'd stale from his very pockets. Now will you be standing up and taking your medicine like a man, or getting it poured down the throat of you like a baby? I ain't got enough! This is only just the beginning with me. Be looking out there!" He sprang against Wessner and sent him rolling. He attacked the unresisting figure and fought him until he lay limp and quiet and Freckles had no strength left to lift an arm. Then he arose and stepped back, gasping for breath. With his first lungful of air he shouted: "Time!" But the figure of Wessner lay motionless. — Gene Stratton-Porter

The reward you get from a story is always less than you thought it would be, and the work is harder than you imagined. The point of a story is never about the ending, remember. It's about your character getting molded in the hard work of the middle. At some point the shore behind you stops getting smaller, and you paddle and wonder why the same strokes that used to move you now only rock the boat. You got the wife, but you don't know if you like her anymore and you've only been married for five years. You want to wake up and walk into the living room in your underwear and watch football and let your daughters play with the dog because the far shore doesn't get closer no matter how hard you paddle.

The shore you left is just as distant, and there is no going back; there is only the decision to paddle in place or stop, slide out of the hatch, and sink into the sea. Maybe there's another story at the bottom of the sea. Maybe you don't have to be in this story anymore. — Donald Miller

Even though Liz might have been at the bottom of our class in P&E, she is the best person I've ever seen at getting me out of bed, which is saying something, considering the woman who raised me. Macey was asleep in her headphones, so Liz felt free to yell, "We're doing this for you!" as she pulled on my left leg and Bex went in search of breakfast. Liz put her foot against the mattress for leverage as she tugged. "Come on, Cam. GET. UP. " "No!" I said, burrowing deeper into the covers. "Five more minutes. " Then she grabbed my hair, which is totally a low blow, since everyone knows I'm tender-headed. "He's a honeypot. " "He'll still be one in an hour, " I pleaded. Then Liz dropped down beside me. She leaned close. She whispered, "Tell Suzie she's a lucky cat. " I threw the covers aside. "I'm up! — Ally Carter

Now, Ron, have you cleaned out your room yet?" "Why?" exclaimed Ron, slamming his spoon down and glaring at his mother. "Why does my room have to be cleaned out? Harry and I are fine with it the way it is!" "We are holding your brother's wedding here in a few days' time, young man - " "And are they getting married in my bedroom?" asked Ron furiously. "No! So why in the name of Merlin's saggy left - " "Don't talk to your mother like that," said Mr. Weasley firmly. "And do as you're told. — J.K. Rowling

And me being jealous of how a girl like Abby could move here and choose to befriend you out of everyone, and you have so many friends already, and I don't think you even get what a big deal that is. ,.. I'm just saying that it seems like it's so easy for you, and you should know you're actually really lucky.
... You deserve it completely. You're an awesome dude, Spier and it was cool getting to know you. If I could do it again, I would have blackmailed you into being my friend and left it at that. — Becky Albertalli

I think great businessmen are more likely made than born. I don't know if it's from your upbringing, your parental background, the struggles you go through. In my own particular situation, I left school at 15 and I was struggling to survive in the jungle and that was a great education. So I think just getting out there, hands on, learning to survive teaches you a lot. — Richard Branson

But Jesus also had a way of reading Scripture that was surprising, unconventional, and paradoxical. This is part of what first fascinated me about Jesus in the gospels. His reading of Scripture got him into trouble. Getting into trouble is not a goal in our reading of Scripture (with whom and for what?) but we cannot rule it out as a possible consequence at times. Perhaps for this reason I've always been attracted to movements (the Jesus movement, the charismatic renewal movement, and the Vineyard) that began, for their time and context, with non-traditional readings of Scripture. This has left me open (one might say vulnerable) to considering such readings. — Ken Wilson

I think LeBron asked out of the game once or twice before that, so we knew he was getting tired but we were all getting tired out there ... I don't think I've played in anything like this since I left the islands. — Tim Duncan

I can't fathom the day when I'll be able to figure out how to independently maneuver my way into my bra, like I used to, every day since I was thirteen. The left arm through the left loop, the left boob into the left cup. Never mind the clasp in the back. My poor injured brain gets all twisted up like some circus contortionist even trying to imagine how this procedure would work. I'm supposed to at least try every step of getting dressed on my own, but when it comes to the bra, I no longer bother. My mother just does it for me, and we don't tell the therapists.She holds up one of my white Victoria's Secret Miracle Bras. I close my eyes, shutting out the humiliating image of my mother manhandling my boobs. But even with my eyes closed, I can feel her cold fingers against my bare skin, and as I can't help but picture what she's doing, humiliation saunters right in, takes a seat, and puts its feet up. Like it does every day now. — Lisa Genova

When I got home, I told my dad the truth about Yazzie; I told him that he had belonged to Don and Nettie's grandson who was going into the Marine Corps, and he had given him to me because he couldn't keep him. Truth without embellishment, although one could argue that it was slightly abbreviated. My dad didn't seem to care where I'd gotten him.

"I've been thinking about getting a dog around here." My dad cooed as well as a gravely cowboy can. "He's a good boy, oh yes he is! He's a little beauty!"

What was it about babies and puppies that made everyone talk with their lips pushed out in that kissy-faced way? I left Yazzie in my dad's enthusiastic care and climbed up to my room — Amy Harmon

I swear to you, Zane. I thought what I was doing was right. I searched for you after I left New York. You were out of my reach. When Burns read me in, the only thing I could think of was that it was the only way of getting back to you. Being partnered with you full-time, being able ... being able to see you every day, to have you in my life. When he said you might need protecting, it was the only thing I heard. I swear to you. All I wanted from the day I left you in that hospital was you. To be back there with you. — Abigail Roux

We'd also left lots of time unscheduled - the long stretches of hours we'd spend at the beach or walking around or just hanging out with no plan beyond maybe getting fountain Diet Cokes. It was Sloane - you usually didn't need more than that to have the best Wednesday of your life. — Morgan Matson

Get up with the alarm, shower, get dressed, and have breakfast. Without much effort, you've already put yourself in a good position for the rest of the day. If you have to struggle to get out of bed and decide every single day about showering and breakfast and what to wear, you've put yourself in a depleted state before the day has really started. The person who's taking care of herself without thinking about it, getting to work on time without procrastinating, has much more will power left in reserve when important decisions come up. This is why people with high self-control consistently report less stress in their lives; they use their will power to take care of business semiautomatically, so they have fewer crises and calamities. When there is a real crisis, they have plenty of discipline left in reserve. — Richard O'Connor

I feel very strongly that history is about everything. It isn't just about politics or the military or social issues. If art, music, engineering, science, medicine, finance, the world of architecture and technology - if those are left out, then you're not getting a full sense of the human condition. History is human and we human beings are involved in all kinds of things and that's part of our humanity. — David McCullough

It's not the dead even. They're gone. Nothing you can do about that. It's what's left behind - the echo. These woods you're walking through. There are some old timers who think a sound echoes here forever. Makes sense when you think about it. That Billingham kid. I'm sure he screamed. He screams, it echoes, just bounces back and forth, the sound getting smaller and smaller, but never entirely disappearing. Like a part of his is still calling out, even now. — Harlan Coben

We were still confined to that corner. More and more people joined us, some black and some white. On the second day, we awoke to learn that somebody must have told Martin Luther King that things were getting out of hand in Montgomery, because rumor had it that he left the line of march from Selma to join us in the hood. Despite myself, I was thrilled at the prospect of marching with King. I knew this was SNCC turf, and I was now with SNCC, but how can you not be thrilled with the prospect of being so close to the big man himself? — Junius Williams

Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its gloomy garden. He was jealous of the very light and air getting to her, and they kept her close. He stopped the wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the strong-stemmed ivy to wander where it would over the house-front, the moss to accumulate on the untrimmed fruit trees in the red-walled garden, the weeds to over-run its green and yellow walks. He surrounded her with images of sorrow and desolation. He caused her to be filled with fears of the place and of the stories that were told of it, and then on pretext of correcting them, to be left in it in solitude, or made to shrink about it in the dark. When her mind was most depressed and fullest of terrors, then, he would come out of one of the hiding-places from which he overlooked her, and present himself as her sole resource. — Charles Dickens

But Nebraska was not always a bed of roses. When the first settlers arrived, they found a harsh, unforgiving place, a vast treeless expanse of barren, drought-parched soil. And so, summoning up the dynamic pioneer spirit of hope and steely determination, they left. But a few of them remained and built sod houses, which are actually made of dirt. Think about that. You can't clean a sod house, because it would be gone. The early settlers had a hell of a time getting this through to their children. "You kids stop tracking dirt out of the house!" they'd yell. — Dave Barry

Getting hung up on 'how' is just the stupid part of your brain throwing a tantrum because it feels left out. — Mark Frost

Right, we've got a few questions for you," Harry told Mundungus, who shouted at once.
"I panicked okay? I never wanted to come along, no offense, mate, but I never volunteered to die for you, an' that was bleedin' You-Know-Who come flying at me, anyone woulda got outta there, I said all along I didn't wanna do it--"
"For your information, none of the rest of us Disapparated," said Hermione.
"Well, you're a bunch of bleedin' 'eroes then, aren't you, but I never pretended I was up for killing meself--"
"We're not interested in why you ran out on Mad-Eye," said Harry, moving his wand a little closer to Mundungus's baggy, bloodshot eyes. "We already knew you were an unreliable bit of scum."
"Well then, why the 'ell am I being 'unted down by 'ouse-elves? Or is this about them goblets again? I ain't got none of 'em left, or you could 'ave 'em--"
"It's not about the goblets either, although you're getting warmer," said Harry. "Shut up and listen. — J.K. Rowling

Mass shootings are all part of a vast Left-wing conspiracy to undermine the 2nd Amendment and deprive your 6-year-old of his God-given right to bring a Bushmaster to class for "show and tell" ... The one he got from his psychotic, meth-addicted uncle's trailer while the latter was out getting the Confederate flag tattooed on his face. Remember, guns don't kill: the dimwits who insist EVERYONE should have the right to own 'em do. — Quentin R. Bufogle

Except they kept asking me questions like 'What is your biggest source of conflict about the Pope?' Or 'Has the Pope ever tried to suppress your scientific work?' Completely out of left field!
"They didn't want to hear me tell them how much Pope Benedict supported the Vatican Observatory and its scientific work. So, finally, frustrated that they weren't getting the story they wanted out of me, one of them asked, 'Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?'
"What did you answer?"
"Only if she asks!"
"I love it! How did they react?"
"They all got a good laugh, which is what I intended. And then, the next day, they all ran my joke as if it were a straight story, as if I had made some sort of official Vatican pronouncement about aliens. — Guy Consolmagno

This is getting out of hand. We are seeing more and more cases of orthorexia nervosa" - people who progressively withdraw different foods in what they perceive as an attempt to improve their health. "First, they come off gluten. Then corn. Then soy. Then tomatoes. Then milk. After a while, they don't have anything left to eat - and they proselytize about it. Worse is what parents are doing to their children. — Anonymous

When I returned to camp, they walked behind me on the trail, and we spoke not a word about getting skunked today, but rather talked about the days we returned with a stringer full of fish, and how we filleted them and the left the guts out for bears and eagles, and how those fish tasted fresh when we fried them over a fire. — Daniel J. Rice

He moved into the left lane, rolled down his window, and tossed all of Alessandra's new clothes and her shoe out of the car. "Oh, my God!" She spun in her seat, watching as her clothes hit the ground seventy-five miles an hour, getting caught in the brush. "Oh, my God!" She stared at him, aghast. "Why did you do that? Are you completely out of your mind? — Suzanne Brockmann

Paint ghosts over everything, the sadness of everything. We made ourselves cold. We made ourselves snow. We smuggled ourselves into ourselves. Haunted by each other's knowledge. To hide somewhere is not surrender, it is trickery. All day the snow falls down, all night the snow. I try to guess your trajectory and end up telling my own story. We left footprints in the slush of ourselves, getting out of there. — Richard Siken

Well, I think," said Nobby, "that when you rule out the impossible, whatever is left, however improbable, ain't worth hanging around for on a cold night wonderin' about when you could be getting on the outside of a big drink. — Terry Pratchett

She left the room, with her black-and-white kitty, Ruff, Elizabeth, Naiad and Persephone- a spotted gray-and-white shorthair- following on her heels in hopes of getting breakfast. As for her other two cats, she knew they must be out hunting rodents and birds rather than waiting to go down to the kitchens with everyone else.
Burr and old Henry, who had climbed with a stiff gait out of his basket, joined the furry entourage, tails wagging and tongues lolling as they descended the stairs. The Scotties were probably asleep in the nursery, happy to wait to see what tidbits the children would sneak them during their breakfast in another hour or two. — Tracy Anne Warren

The big weekend rush is on. The big city emptying itself out at once. Just a skeleton crew left to keep it going until Monday morning. Everybody getting out - everybody but me, everybody but those who are coming here for me tonight. We're going to have the whole damned town to ourselves.
("New York Blues") — Cornell Woolrich

No, no, no. No way!" I shook my head and looked at the offending black motorcycle. "I am not getting on that thing!"
"Sophie, it's a motorcycle, it doesn't bite."
I turned my head to look at the beast. "Really? It looks like it could bite, to me."
"Please, Sophie," he held out a helmet.
I crossed my arms over my chest. "What if I fall off?"
"You're supposed to hang on to me, Soph. What happened to my mighty little she-wolf?"
"She packed her bags and left," I said. — Micalea Smeltzer

Black America surely faces an existential crisis, but not the one imagined in the condescending news media - of somehow getting non-black America to be more just and generous. The truth is, we've already been through that, and there is nothing left to do. We're out of 'affirmative actions' of all kinds. — James Howard Kunstler

Life is like a book. Some of the pages you want to rip out and others you want to keep. I've been ripping out a lot of pages lately, getting rid of the ugly stuff. The stuff that's left behind isn't as bad as I thought it was. — R.K. Ryals

Keep your mouth shut around me," he says, his voice low, "or I will do this again, only next time, I'll shove it right through your esophagus."
"That's enough," Evelyn says. Edward drops the fork and releases Peter. Then he walks across the room and sits next to the person who called him "Eddie" a moment before.
"I don't know if you know this," Tobias says, "but Edward is a little unstable."
"I'm getting that," I say.
"That Drew guy, who helped Peter perform that butter-knife maneuver," Tobias says. "Apparently when he got kicked out of Dauntless, he tried to join the same group of factionless Edward was a part of. Notice that you haven't seen Drew anywhere."
"Did Edward kill him?" I say.
"Nearly," Tobias says. "Evidently that's why that other transfer--Myra, I think her name was?--left Edward. Too gentle to bear it. — Veronica Roth

The green painted concrete out in front of the house, which at first seemed like a novel way to save money on lawn-moving, was now just plain depressing. The hot water came reluctantly to the kitchen sink as if from miles away, and even then without conviction, and sometimes a pale brownish color. Many of the windows wouldn't open properly to let flies out. Others wouldn't shut properly to stop them getting in. The newly planted fruit trees died in the sandy soil of a too-bright backyard and were left like grave-markers under the slack laundry lines, a small cemetery of disappointment. It appeared to be impossible to find the right kinds of food, or learn the right way to say even simple things. The children said very little that wasn't a complaint. — Shaun Tan

I left Stone Sour in '97 because, by that time, we'd been together for about five years and I was kind of getting to the point where I wanted to do something different. I loved the music that we did and I loved the guys that I was with, but I was 24 and just felt like I needed to go and try something different so I didn't get stuck where I was, you know, just doing the same thing. And, coincidentally, that's when Slipknot came and asked me to join. I'd never done anything like Slipknot up until then, so I was like, "Okay, we'll try this and we'll see what happens." And it worked out. — Corey Taylor

My school friends are really understanding and still want to hang out with me. Ever since I was in sixth grade, I was at the gym every day to work out while my friends were getting their nails done or going to the mall. I used to feel left out, but I don't anymore. — Aly Raisman

I think the important thing now, getting closer to the pitch counts, it feels like I got something left. I felt I could have gone out and thrown another 20-25 pitches. — Roy Halladay

So out of the six major subcontractors who buy from us, there are two left? Man, that's a turf war, right there."
"And whoever's pulling this shit is probably going to try to work his way up the food chain." Trez spoke up. "Which is why iAm and I think you should have someone with you twenty-four/seven until this shit shakes out."
Rehv seemed annoyed but he didn't disagree. "We got any intel on who's leaving all those bodies around?"
"Well, duh," Trez said. "People think it's you."
"Not logical. Why would I kill off my own buyers?"
Now Rehv was the one getting the hairy eyeball from the peanut gallery.
"Oh, come on," he said. "I'm not that bad. Well, okay, but only if someone fucks with me."

-Rehv & Trez — J.R. Ward

I have this theory," says Andy Stone, seated in his office at Prudential-Bache Securities. "Wall Street makes its best producers into
managers. The reward for being a good producer is to be made a
manager. The best producers are cutthroat, competitive, and often
neurotic and paranoid. You turn those people into managers, and they go
after each other. They no longer have the outlet for their instincts that
producing gave them. They usually aren't well suited to be managers.
Half of them get thrown out because they are bad. Another quarter get
muscled out because of politics. The guys left behind are just the most
ruthless of the bunch. That's why there are cycles on Wall Street - why
Salomon Brothers is getting crunched now - because the ruthless people
are bad for the business but can only be washed out by proven failure. — Michael Lewis

I do feel that the boys are getting left out. Girls will read boys' books, but boys won't read girls' books. If you're writing for a girl, you've got most of the audience on your side anyway. — S.E. Hinton

Phil has always been a fighter. He was getting in fights all the time. I told him that if he ever hit me then I would leave the band. He wanted to find out if I was telling him the truth. He hit me so I left and that is how UFO split up. — Michael Schenker

The world today is ruled by harassed politicians absorbed in getting into office or turning out the other man so that not much room is left for debating the great issues on their merits — Winston S. Churchill

I was walking around in an almost blind, crazy rage of madness. There was a story burning a hole in my brain, and it was dying to come out on paper. It was begging of me to create it, but I didn't know where to begin. A month after giving birth to the idea, I felt like I was losing my mind. Ideas would pop into my head in the middle of the night, or during a midterm, and I missed them, quite narrowly, almost every time. Every time an idea left my mind without taking the shape of a word on paper, my mind would automatically begin to churn something just as impressive, or at least close to it. I was digging myself into a shallow grave, and I was getting nowhere. And this was even before the thoughts were committed to paper. — Leigh Hershkovich

Fearghus watched his mate a moment longer. It had been five years since he last saw her. Five years since he last touched her, kissed her, fucked her, saw her smile, told her to calm down, yanked a weapon from her hands before she hurt someone, or stopped her from getting in a pit brawl with her own daughter. It had been too long since he'd done all that and it was a bit overwhelming to be here now, so close to her after all this time.
Annwyl slammed her spear into another Sovereign, then leaned against it, wiping her brow with the back of her hand and looking out over all the bodies she and her troops had left behind.
She looked rather proud. — G.A. Aiken

I once read that most people are afraid to live alone because to live alone means to die alone. They have visions of themselves eating their breakfast, enjoying the dripping sluice of a ripe plum, and then suddenly the lights go out and they fall face-first into their pancakes. People, it seems, are less afraid of loneliness than worrying about what other people will think when they're found in some unappealing, disintegrating state, tongue out, one leg curled underneath the other, internal fluids in a puddle on the floor, etcetera. Most people are afraid that if left alone, they will not be found. Being found is apparently of the utmost importance to people. — Jessica Anthony

I signed schoolboy forms for Watford when I was 12, but then my parents got divorced, and I never kicked a ball for three years. I rebelled, I left home, but getting back into football sorted me out. It was the second chance I needed. — Vinnie Jones

She has a bookshelf for a heart, and ink runs through her veins, she'll write you into her story with the typewriter in her brain. Her bookshelf's getting crowded. With all the stories that's she's penned, of all the people who flicked through her pages but closed the book before it ended. And there's one pushed to the very back, that sits collecting dust, with its title in her finest writing, 'The One's Who Lost My Trust'. There's books shes scared to open, and books she doesn't close. Stories of every person she's met stretched out in endless rows. Some people have only one sentence while others once held a main part, thousands of inky footprints that they've left across her heart. You might wonder why she does this, why write of people she once knew? But she hopes one day she'll mean enough for someone to write about her too. — E.H.

The sidewalk was all cracked and wavy, like little hills, and the weeds pushed their way up through the cement. I had to roller-skate there anyway, because they wouldn't let me out of their sight, and they could watch me from the swing on the front porch of the old house. It was hard to skate there, and I kept falling down and getting sores on my knees...Sometimes, when they left me alone in 102 to go to the store, I'd turn on the radio and dance all around the room. I'd get on the furniture and jump from couch to the bed to the chair, leaping and twirling the whole time. — Carol Burnett

I am a plant, she said, I need fire, earth, water. Otherwise I will be stunted. And: Is marriage not such a stunting? The fire goes out. The wind grows weak. The earth dries out. The water dwindles. I would die. You too. She tossed her hair over her shoulders. Purple lavender. And what if it wasn't like that, I argued. What if the daily routine, our daily routine, is my promise to you? Your toothbrush next to mine. You get annoyed because I've forgotten to turn the light off in the bathroom. We choose wallpaper we think is horrible a year later. You tell me I'm getting a belly. Your forgetfulness. You've left your umbrella somewhere again. I snore, you can't sleep. In my dream I whisper your name...You tie my tie. Wave goodbye to me as I go to work. I think: you are like a fluttering flag. I think it with a stabbing pain in my heart. For Heaven's sake, is that not enough? Is that not enough to be happy? She turned away: Give me time. I'll think about it. — Milena Michiko Flasar