Givings Quotes & Sayings

I want to be able to look back and say, 'I've done everything I can, and I was successful.' I don't want to look back and say I should have done this or that. I'd like to change things for the younger generation of swimmers coming along. — Michael Phelps

Shy Gifts
Shy gifts that come to us from a world that may not
even know we're here. Windfalls, scantlings.
Breaking a bough like breathy flute-notes, a row
of puffed white almond-blossom, the word in hiding
among newsprint that has other news to tell.
In a packed aisle at the supermarket, I catch
the eye of a wordless one-year-old, whale-blue,
unblinking. It looks right through me, recognising
what? Wisely mistrustful but unwisely
impulsive as we are, we take these givings
as ours and meant for us - why else so leap
to receive them? - and go home lighter
of step to the table set, the bed turned down, the book
laid open under the desk-lamp, pages astream
with light like angels' wings, arched for take-off. — David Malouf

When all is said and done, we are in the end absolutely dependent on the universe; and into sacrifices and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into our only permanent positions of repose. Now in those states of mind which fall short of religion, the surrender is submitted to as an imposition of necessity, and the sacrifice is undergone at the very best without complaint. In the religious life, on the contrary, surrender and sacrifice are positively espoused: even unnecessary givings-up are added in order that the happiness may increase. Religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any case is necessary. — William James

Develop a clean line of action for your leading character — Billy Wilder

Read good books many times,
rather than many books — Seneca.

... it charms
mere eyesight to believe
The nearest thing not trees
Is the sky, into which
The trees reach, opening
their luminous new leaves ...
and thought finds rest
beneath a brightened tree
In which, unseen, a warbler
feeds and sings. His song's
Small shapely melody
Comes down irregularly,
as all light's givings come.
Sabbaths 1999 III — Wendell Berry

Life is full of tough choices between less-than-perfect alternatives. — Maryanne O'Hara

His own government, suing him, that's not Chocolate Sundae! — William H. Gates, Sr.

There's no such thing as good or bad dinosaurs. There are predators and prey. The T-Rex in 'Jurassic Park' took human lives and saved them. No one interpreted her as good or bad. — Colin Trevorrow

Do you not think, Mrs. Givings, that snow is always kind? Because it has to fall slowly, to meet the ground slowly, or the eyelash slowly - And things that meet each other slowly are kind. — Sarah Ruhl

So that was where we were in our relationship.Derwent's scale ran all the way from wouldn't piss-on-you-if-you-were-on-fire to would-kill-for-you-no-need-to-ask-twice. I was quite glad to be somewhere near the middle. — Jane Casey

Grief came in waves, sometimes big, sometimes small, but even on the calmest days, the grief remained. The tide still came ashore. — Dianna Hardy

It's hard to be a son of a candidate. It's hard to be a brother of a candidate. I think it may be the hardest thing to be the dad of the candidate. — Jeb Bush

... turning your ankle hurts like hell, even if you're a superhero. — Christopher Moore

She cried because she'd had such high, high hopes about the Wheelers tonight and now she was terribly, terribly, terribly disappointed. She cried because she was fifty six years old and her feet were ugly and swollen and horrible; she cried because none of the girls had liked her at school and none of the boys had liked her later; she cried because Howard Givings was the only man who'd ever asked her to marry him, and because she'd done it, and because her only child was insane. — Richard Yates