Half The Year Quotes & Sayings

Basically, what we've done is, every year we take half the money and allow people who've helped us in the industry to give it away. One year, the ladies who put the pretzel bags in the boxes got to give it away. — Nell Newman

I, the unfortunate Doctor Polyakov, who became addicted to morphine in February of this year, warn anyone who may suffer the same fate not to attempt to replace morphine with cocaine. Cocaine is a most foul and insidious poison. Yesterday Anna barely managed to revive me with camphor injections and today I am half dead. — Mikhail Bulgakov

For the first half of your life each minute feels like a year, but for the second half, each year feels like a minute. — Melanie Gideon

I've been back in New York a year and a half now. Before that I was on the West Coast for five years. There's no comparison between the two. You hear things in New York you don't hear anywhere else. Unless these guys go out. Quite a few make it out to the Coast. Of course, you can't stay in New York for ever. You have to move. — Ben Webster

Lumpy and lazy; I aspired to lethargy. In the second year of university, I missed half my classes just because I couldn't pull myself out of bed. — Victor LaValle

Where'd you send her?"
"Siberia. Lovely this time of year. A bit remote, I'm afraid. Might take her weeks to find a town and even longer to arrange transportation back to the States."
My lips quirked. I didn't feel like laughing, but the image of my half-millenium-old grandmother trudging through snow was kind of funny. "You're sick, you know that?"
"What can I day? I thought a cold-hearted bitch like her would feel at home in the tundra. — Jaye Wells

This was in the white of the year,
That was in the green,
Drifts were as difficult then to think
As daisies now to be seen.
Looking back is best that is left,
Or if it be before,
Retrospection is prospect's half,
Sometimes almost more. — Emily Dickinson

We have 11 great potato flavors, and customers have been clamoring for tortilla. For over a year, we worked to develop the four flavors of tortilla popchips: chili limon, nacho cheese, ranch and salsa. They're made with traditional stoneground masa, are gluten-free, and have less than half the fat of other chips. — Keith Belling

"I'm destined to die a virgin." My own admission shocked me. Had those words left my mouth? I rubbed the smooth material of Noah's jacket. Maybe I should have gone off with him. Not to get high, but to ... well ... not die a virgin.
***
"HOLY CROW, ECHO. You hibernate for a year and a half and wake up with a bang." Lila finished changing out of her church clothes and into a tight pink sweater and blue jeans. "Luke tells you he still loves you - and by the way, told you so. And Noah stinking Hutchins tries to kiss you. And you complained you were going to die a virgin." — Katie McGarry

Much of my early career was spent working with two of the most toxic chemicals ever discovered, dioxin and aflatoxin. I initially worked at MIT, where I was assigned a chicken feed puzzle. Millions of chicks a year were dying from an unknown toxic chemical in their feed, and I had the responsibility of isolating and determining the structure of this chemical. After two and a half years, I helped discover dioxin, arguably the most toxic chemical ever found. This chemical has since received widespread attention, especially because it was part of the herbicide 2,4,5-T, or Agent Orange, then being used to defoliate forests in the Vietnam War. — T. Colin Campbell

In 1970, there were approximately 330,000 prisoners in the US. Today there are 2.3 million behind bars - more than any country in the history of the world. In 2009 alone there were 1.6 million drug-related arrests in the U.S. 1.3 million of these were for possession of drugs alone. Over half were related to marijuana. The forty-year war on drugs has cost $2.5 trillion. — Sam Branson

I don't drive an Escalade; I've never lived on a mansion; I live in a townhouse. Even with my internet business, when I was making just shy of a million and a half a year, I lived in the same house. — Romany Malco

Half the things I've done are wrong, mistakes [unintelligible]. The moratorium on pot and LSD a year ago is ridiculous. I shouldn't have done that. I make a blunder at least one out of two times I come to bat. — Timothy Leary

But what has happened during the last year and a half has forced all reasonably farsighted men to understand that we are living in a new world. We have let our navy deteriorate to a degree both shameful and alarming. We have shown by our own conduct when the Hague Conventions were violated that all such treaties are utterly worthless, as offering even the smallest safeguard against aggression. Above all, the immense efficiency, the utter ruthlessness, and the gigantic scale of the present military operations show that we need military preparedness on a scale never hitherto — Theodore Roosevelt

Being alone was the best thing I ever did for myself. I've always gone from one relationship to another, hoping the other person would help me figure out who I was or complete me and make me feel whole. But it never worked out that way. When the other person didn't make me feel whole, I was left with an even bigger emptiness inside. It took the pain of the last year to realize that I needed to stop being a half trying to find my other half, but to be a whole on my own. I had to learn how to love myself. I had to learn to value myself. And I had to learn that I mattered. I'm not sure if I'm whole yet, but I'm more complete. And — Neil Strauss

My attitude goes back to my childhood. I used to audition for theatrical roles, and you can't stand out in a room full of ambitious eight-year-old girls by acting the wallflower. I realised then that I couldn't do things half-heartedly. — Jessie J.

Men and women run away from every goal, whether worldly or spiritual, because they overestimate the initial task. The proper way is a bit at a time. It is the same if someone eats too much; they should diminish it daily by a small bit, gradually. In that way, before a year or two have passed, they will have cut down what they eat by half, reducing it in such a way that their body does not notice. So it is with worship, withdrawing into solitude, attending to the service of God, and prayer. When a person enters upon the Way of God, for a while their prayers will be short. But after that, if they pray with their whole heart, their prayers will go on and on without end. — Jalaluddin Rumi

For 'Boxers & Saints,' I started by reading a couple of articles on the Internet, then writing a really rough outline, then getting more hardcore into the research. I went to a university library once a week for a year, year and a half. — Gene Luen Yang

So, if you don't summon a book and a light before dawn,
If you don't set your mind on honest aims and pursuits,
On waking, you'll be tortured by envy or lust.
Why so quick to remove a speck from your eye, when
If it's your mind, you put off the cure till next year?
Who's started has half finished: dare to be wise: begin! — Horace

I was the first son and first child. When my sister came along, well, she was two years younger, and I had to go to the golf course because my mother couldn't handle all the action going on. So I came with father to the golf course since I was a year and a half old and I spent the day with him here, and it worked in naturally. And it was fun for me being with my father, and doing things that a kid did it was great. — Arnold Palmer

I gather you weren't keen on going back to Scotland with your brother at this time of year. I don't say I blame you. Terribly bleak and cutoff in the winter."
"Oh no, Mom," I said, as her words sunk in. "My brother is not going back to Scotland. He and my sister-in-law are going to the Riviera."
The Riviera? I had no idea."
"For my sister-in-law's health. She's feeling rather frail at the moment."
"I don't think that frail would ever be a word to describe your sister-in-law," the Queen said, looking up with a half smile on her lips as a tray of coffee was reeled into the room.
"I managed to have six children without making a fuss. One just got on with it. — Rhys Bowen

About 100 firefighters a year die in the line of duty in the U.S. Heart attacks on the job and vehicle accidents on the way to the fires account for about half. The other half are traumatic deaths while fighting fires. — Bill Dedman

I love quick," Gina said. "And come on, I'm getting jealous here. Was it zero sex last year for you,
too?"
"Yes," he admitted. "I love you, you weren't there - what was I going to do?"
"Are you actually embarrassed, " she asked, "because you weren't some kind of man-ho and - "
"No," Max said. "I'm embarrassed that it took me an entire fucking year and a half and the worst scare
of my life to figure out that I can't live without you. — Suzanne Brockmann

Her boys were growing up, too. William would start nursery school in January of 1987 at four and a half. The most exciting part for William was the uniform, "which he is thrilled to bits about, especially as Harry is very envious of his big brother!" The next year would find Diana and Charles in Portugal, Spain, and Germany. "It never stops and it's certainly no holiday package tour!" How true. I'd seen that for myself in Washington.
I had been thrilled to catch a television documentary on the royal couple and had said so in my letter. Diana wrote, "An awful lot of money was raised for very worthy causes so that made the intrusion much more worthwhile!" This comment exemplified the conflict Diana faced between her desire for privacy and her desire to do good. — Mary Robertson

Mom isn't content taking a stroll down memory lane. She's bought a condo and spends half the year there. — Paula Wall

Since the songs were written over a five-year period, I think these are little snapshots. Some people call it political or topical, but I think each song is self-contained. I think it fits together as a picture of the last half-decade of time. — Conor Oberst

[Hades] returned his attention to the playlist while I eased the car back on the road. His fingers flipped deftly over the screen. 'Orpheus ... Dusk ... Orpheus ... Dusk ... do you have anything on here that doesn't make people want to jump off a cliff?'
... 'I'm driving. When you learn to drive something more modern than a horse and buggy, we can listen to your music.'
'I can drive!'
'Did they even have cars the last time you can to the surface?' I teased.
'Yes.'
'Not counting the minute and a half you spent rescuing me last year?'
Hades fell silent, and I laughed. 'I didn't think so. — Kaitlin Bevis

I never had a job. I bought my first house within a year of getting out of school, and I built a custom one four and a half years later. The Art Center didn't teach much about business, but I learned a lot from the Fortune 500 companies that were my clients. — Richard MacDonald

I joined the air force. I took to it immediately when I arrived there. I did three years, eight months, and ten days in all, but it took me a year and a half to get disabused of my romantic notions about it. — Morgan Freeman

Through no fault of his own was a victim of an economy in the toilet. Joe used to make six figures a year in a corporate position commanding a crew that installed high-end security systems in Malibu mansions much like the one he was visiting right now. Joe's Geek Squad job was a step down with no chance of stepping up. He had a monstrous mortgage on a house that was worth half of what he'd originally paid for it. His wife had left him and taken the dog. And his Lexus had been repossessed. He sometimes thought he'd like to become an alcoholic, but he couldn't afford the liquor. — Janet Evanovich

That is the beautiful part about weights: even if you are 100 year old, you can lift something. Maybe it's only a half a pound or a pound or two pounds. It will still do something. — Jack LaLanne

I remembered looking down into her face, her eyes bright with new adventure and a little piece of my heart fell into her hands. My heart tumbled in pieces at her feet as she chipped away at it with her wondrous ways, and it didn't form a whole again until half a year had passed and the end product was a living, beating organ in the palm of her hands. — Fisher Amelie

I don't want to read more into it than there is. I try not to overanalyze anymore, as it tends to make me self-centered. If there is a deeper message in what happened in the last year and a half, I'm not going to look under every rock for it. Just let God be God. — Wayne Watson

I have four daughters, with the two youngest being four years old and a year and a half. When one of my older daughters was in sixth grade, a classmate brought in their talking Winnie the Pooh doll for show and tell, so the next week my daughter one upped her classmates and brought me to school in for show and tell. — Jim Cummings

Year after year goes by, and nothing gets better. All we do is argue and debate and procrastinate. Any decent idea is amended to ineffectuality by the time it's gone half-way through the various committees it's obliged to pass through. The few people qualified to know what's what are talked to a standstill by ignorant people all around them. — Kazuo Ishiguro

I think there are definitely things over the last year-and-a-half we would have done differently, ... I think we've at least learned as we go and hopefully we don't make the same mistake next time ... I think if I said anything different to you, I'd be removed from reality. — Paul DePodesta

I've looted that poor Hab for everything it could give me, and in return it's kept me alive for a year and a half. It's like the Giving Tree. — Andy Weir

Yet as she tells the story, the change came about when that director stopped treating her like an antagonist and treated her like a person. He apologized for publicly calling her "baby-killer" and started spending time with her during her smoking breaks in the parking lot. Later, McCorvey accepted an invitation to church from a seven-year-old girl whose mother also worked at Operation Rescue. Pro-abortion forces had dismissed McCorvey - her dubious record of drug-dealing, alcohol, lesbianism, and rape made bad public relations - but Christian leaders took the time to counsel her in the faith, keeping her out of the public spotlight for half a year. "Ultimately, God is the one who changes hearts," says McCorvey now. "A Christian witness is the biggest tool in effecting change. — Philip Yancey

You'll find you spend half your second year shaking off the undesirable friends you made in your first ... — Evelyn Waugh

Eight years ago, you may remember Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary was tough. I was worn out. She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels. — Barack Obama

Renewed hope followed renewed effort: It shone like the former for some weeks, then, like it, faded, flickered: Not a line, not a word reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out, and then I felt dark indeed. — Charlotte Bronte

I have very strong Canadian connections. My daughter was born there a year and half ago. But because of the nature of my job, I need to be in countries where I can get the stories that I am looking at. — Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Every year, more than 120,000 new books are published in Britain, creating millions of volumes that will never be opened, let alone read. Many of these unread books are shredded into tiny fibre pellets called bitumen modifier, which can beused to make roads, holding the blacktop in place and doubling up as a sound absorber. A mile of motorway consumes about 50,000 books. The M6 Toll Road used up two-and-a-half million old Mills and Boon novels, romantic dreams crushed daily by juggernauts...Having your unread books vanish into the authorless anonymity of a road feels pleasingly melancholic, like having your ashes scattered in a vast ocean. — Joe Moran

Once I became interested in China, I flew to Beijing in 1996 to spend half a year studying Mandarin. The city stunned me. — Evan Osnos

I spent about a year and a half doing technical post work on 'The Fountain'. Although I do like the process, I think my favorite part of filmmaking is the actors. — Darren Aronofsky

After a year and a half my therapist retired, so I was bounced to someone else-a woman.
Shazam! I suddenly felt I could open up and talk about the real stuff going on in my head. She lasted two session. I guess it was the castration fantasy that pushed over the edge. — Joan Nestle

In Vienna, when I was a year-and-a-half or two years-old. I remember it because I remember the little blue raincoat I used to wear, and how the buttons felt. I liked to walk on the street in front of our house when it was raining, and jump into all the puddles. That's weird, but that's my earliest memory. — Boris Kodjoe

When you healed my arm ... You didn't need to bargain with me. You could have demanded every single week of the year." My brows knit together as he turned, already half-consumed by the dark. "Every single week, and I would have said yes." It wasn't entirely a question, but I needed the answer.
A half smile appeared on his sensuous lips. "I know," he said, and vanished. — Sarah J. Maas

What surprises me is that I did not talk for One and a Half Year....when I was born....I can still feel the claustrophobia of those times and now vent out my thoughts all the time !! — Abha Maryada Banerjee

I touched his hand, carefully. Not too intimate, but not some half-assed there-there pat, either. Would he understand? Usually the thought process for a seventeen-year-old boy went girl touching me>omg>boner. — Leah Raeder

The business aspect is one of the most important things about having a music career, because every choice you make in a management meeting affects your life a year-and-a-half from now. — Taylor Swift

Ever since I left Greece more than two decades ago, it has been my dream to return and perform at the Acropolis. This project took more than a year and a half to plan and accomplish, and I would like to thank my band and crew and the scores of people involved in helping my dream become a reality. — Yanni

And thus the (Christmas) evening passes, in a strain of rational good will and cheerfulness, doing more to awaken the sympathies of every member of the party in behalf of his neighbor, and to perpetuate their good feeling during the ensuing year, than half the homilies that have ever been written, by half the Divines that have ever lived. — Charles Dickens

The next Monday, assembly seemed to go on forever. The kindy kids got up to sing 'Kookaburra', and then half of year two were awarded certificates for reading. Holly thought it would never end. Then — Rowan McAuley

In the year of Christ 1571, at the age of thirty-eight, on the last day of February, anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, lon weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire, retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins [Muses], where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. If the fates permit, he will completethis abode, this sweet ancestral retreat; and he has consecrated it to his freedom, tranquility, and leisure. — Michel De Montaigne

Contentment has learned how to find out what she needs to know. Last year she went on a major housecleaning spree. First she stood on her head until all the extra facts fell out. Then she discarded about half her house. Now she knows where every thing comes from - who dyed the yarn dark green and who wove the rug and who built the loom, who made the willow chair, who planted the apricot trees. She made the turquoise mugs herself with clay she found in the hills beyond her house.
When Contentment is sad, she takes a mud bath or goes to the mountains until her lungs are clear. When she walks through an unfamiliar neighborhood, she always makes friends with the local cats. — J. Ruth Gendler

He studied the composition of food-stuffs, and knew exactly how many proteids and carbohydrates his body needed; and by scientific chewing he said that he tripled the value of all he ate, so that it cost him eleven cents a day. About the first of July he would leave Chicago for his vacation, on foot; and when he struck the harvest fields he would set to work for two dollars and a half a day, and come home when he had another year's supply - a hundred and twenty-five dollars. That was the nearest approach to independence a man could make "under capitalism," he explained; he would never marry, for no sane man would allow himself to fall in love until after the revolution. — Upton Sinclair

I love golf. But do you know how I got good at golf? Because of Charles Barkley. I was playing with Charles, Michael Jordan and Roy Green, and Charles was talking so much trash. On every shot, he was talking trash. So I left the tournament, and I went and practiced for a year and half. — Eric Dickerson

She stepped out of the box, smiled sweetly. "You know, Brian, just because you can make a fifteen hundred pound horse do what you want, doesn't mean you can budge me one inch.I'm going to go bet on our horse.To win."
"It's not our-" He broke off, swore, as she'd already flounced out. "And you don't bet to win," he muttered. "It's nothing personal," he said to Finnegan who was watching him with soft, sad eyes. "I just can't be owning things.It's not that I don't have great affection and respect for you,for I do. But what happens in a year or two down the road I move on? Even if I don't-as it's feeling more and more that I'd wonder why I would-I can't have the wman give me a horse.Even a half a horse. Well, not to worry.We'll straighten it all out later. — Nora Roberts

In survey after survey, people report that the greatest dangers they face are, in this order: terrorist attack, plane crashes and nuclear accidents. This despite the fact that these three combined have killed fewer people in the past half-century than car accidents do in any given year. — Will Self

I think it's time to have a celebration of life and renew our vows. And this time we're going to write the vows because they're going to mean a lot more. We certainly put the 'in sickness and in health' vow to the test the last year and half. — Bill Rancic

There is a sound reason why one and a half billion dollars are spent for cosmetics in your country every year, and only half that sum for education: There are no naturally pretty girls in the United States. — Elizabeth Hawes

Wanting to kill myself is was an appropriate and reasonable response to a whole series of unfortunate events that had rendered life unlivable. Oh, yes, I know the shrinks would say that they could have helped, but that's half the trouble with this bloody country, isn't it? No one's willing to face their responsibilities. It's always someone else's fault. Boo hoo hoo. Well, I happen to be one of those rare individuals who believe that what went on with Mummy and Daddy had nothing to do with me screwing a fifteen-year-old. I happen to believe that I would have slept with her regardless of whether I'd been breast-fed or not, and it was time to face up to what I'd done. — Nick Hornby

I joined the Communist Party late in 1934. I got out a year and a half later. — Elia Kazan

VI. If you were coming in the fall, I'd brush the summer by With half a smile and half a spurn, As housewives do a fly. If I could see you in a year, I'd wind the months in balls, And put them each in separate drawers, Until their time befalls. If only centuries delayed, I'd count them on my hand, Subtracting till my fingers dropped Into Van Diemen's land. If certain, when this life was out, That yours and mine should be, I'd toss it yonder like a rind, And taste eternity. But now, all ignorant of the length Of time's uncertain wing, It goads me, like the goblin bee, That will not state its sting. — Emily Dickinson

I started acting when I was 13, but it really wasn't my plan. The actual decision to become an actor was when I was 17, after I didn't act for half a year because I came to an exchange student program in the US, and I realized how much I missed it. — Meital Dohan

Alan Greenspan assures us that home prices are not prone to bubbles - or major deflations - on any national scale," he'd said. "This is ridiculous, of course ... . In 1933, during the fourth year of the Great Depression, the United States found itself in the midst of a housing crisis that put housing starts at 10% of the level of 1925. Roughly half of all mortgage debt was in default. — Michael Lewis

A year and a half had indeed made some changes in Veda's appearance. She was still no more than medium height, but her haughty carriage made her seem taller. The hips were as slim as ever, but had taken on some touch of voluptuousness. The legs were Mildred's, to the last graceful contour. But the most noticeable change was what Monty brutally called the Dairy: two round, swelling protuberances that had appeared almost overnight on the high, arching chest. They would have been large, even for a woman: but for a child of thirteen they were positively startling. Mildred had a mystical feeling about them: they made her think tremulously of Love, Motherhood, and similar milky concepts. — James M. Cain

Call it "the New Year's resolution effect" - it's why gyms that were crowded in January are only half full in July and why so many slightly used guitars are available on Craigslist. So — Anders Ericsson

I just started to do my own thing for about a year and a half, and I worked in the evening selling phonograph records. Then I said to myself, "I'm afraid I have to go to New York after all." — Claes Oldenburg

I was on a par with the Creator of the Universe there in the dark in the cocktail lounge. I shrunk the Universe to a ball exactly one light-year in diameter. I had it explode. I had it disperse itself again.
Ask me a question, any question. How old is the Universe? It is one half-second old, but that half-second has lasted one quintillion years so far. Who created it? Nobody created it. It has always been here. — Kurt Vonnegut

At that point, I sat down and made an alphabetical list of all the crime related words I could think of. So here I am now, nearly half-way through, probably tied up until the year 2015 or SO. — Sue Grafton

I work seven days a week and I work about 12 hours a day, from the beginning of September to about the end of May; the school year. I take two days off, Christmas and New Year's, Thanksgiving sometimes - two and a half. And the result is that I bonded myself to my desk. — James Lipton

The whole - it's the economy's bad. It's bad for everybody. I have my own comedy club. I opened it three years ago in a horrible economy. I created jobs. And we just started breaking even after a year and a half, barely. For that entire time, I have had to pay the difference of what we owe in rent and taxes and everything out of my own pocket. — Jon Lovitz

Consider how many times you've seen either a crashed plane or a crashed car. It's entirely possible you've seen roughly as many of each - yet many of those cars were on the road next to you, whereas the planes were probably on another continent, transmitted to you via the Internet or television. In the United States, for instance, the total number of people who have lost their lives in commercial plane crashes since the year 2000 would not be enough to fill Carnegie Hall even half full. In contrast, the number of people in the United States killed in car accidents over that same time is greater than the entire population of Wyoming. Simply — Brian Christian

If you could fly backwards into the past at the rate of one year per second, it would take you about half an hour to reach the time of Christ, and a little over three weeks to get back to the beginnings of human life. But it would take you twenty years to reach the dawn of the Cambrian period. — Bill Bryson

Old Spice, the seventy-five-year-old brand of men's grooming products, had begun to lose market share in the body wash category as the market became more and more crowded. Under the direction of the digital agency Wieden+Kennedy, the brand's manufacturer, Procter & Gamble, aimed to change how women (who were buying more than half of the body wash products) felt about their men wearing "lady-scented body wash." The video campaign called "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like," starring Isaiah Mustafa, was launched online in July 2010 during Super Bowl weekend. On the first day, the campaign received almost 6 million views. After the first week, Old Spice had 40 million views. Traffic to their website was up 300% and Facebook fan interaction was up 800%. Within six months, the campaign generated 1.4 billion impressions. — Bernadette Jiwa

By the end of his presidency - and the sixteen-year run of Dixie dominance in Washington - income inequality and the concentration of wealth in the federation had reached the highest levels in its history, exceeding even the Gilded Age and Great Depression. In 2007 the richest tenth of Americans accounted for half of all income, while the richest 1 percent had seen their share nearly triple since 1994.8 — Colin Woodard

As there was no rational foundation for Frederick's complaints, and as he could not give evidence of any real misfortune, Martinon was unable to understand his lamentations about existence. As for him, he went every morning to the school, after that took a walk in the Luxembourg, in the evening swallowed his half-cup of coffee; and with fifteen hundred francs a year, and the love of this work-woman, he felt perfectly happy. — Gustave Flaubert

In other words these children, by avoiding the early drill on combinations, tables, and that sort of thing, had been able, in one year, to attain the level of accomplishment which the traditionally taught children had reached after three and one-half years of arithmetical drill. — Louis P. Benezet

Of all I saw and learned this past half year, one thing stands out. What goes
on in the class is not what teachers think
certainly not what I had always
thought. For years now I have worked with a picture in mind of what my
class was like. This reality, which I felt I knew, was partly physical, partly
mental or spiritual. In other words, I thought I knew, in general, what the
students were doing, and also what they were thinking and feeling. I see now
that my picture of reality was almost wholly false. Why didn't I see this
before? — John Holt

Another year passed on . The waves of time seemed long since to have swept away all trace of poor Mary Barton. But her husband still thought of her, although with a calm and quiet grief, in the silent watches of the night :And Mary would start from her hard-earned sleep,and think in her half dreamy, half awakened state, she saw her mother stand by her bed-side ,as she used to do 'in the days of long-ago'; with shaded candle and an expression of ineffable tenderness, while she looked on her sleeping child. — Elizabeth Gaskell

At about a year and a half, the child discovers another fact, and that is that each thing has its own name. — Maria Montessori

The statistics John Wesson has compiled in The Science of Soccer show that Premiership football players are vastly more likely to have been born in the first half of the school year. These were the biggest boys in the class and were thus selected for the school team. How fair is that? — Daniel Finkelstein

The fear came from the loss of income and the sudden detour in her career. As a third-year associate, she was earning $180,000 a year in base salary, plus a nice bonus. A lot of money, but life in the city had a way of devouring it. Half evaporated in taxes. She had a savings account, one she halfheartedly acknowledged. When you're twenty-nine, single, and free in the city, in a profession where next year's package will exceed this year's salary plus bonus, why worry too much about saving money? She had a friend from Columbia Law who'd been at S&P for five years, had just made junior partner, and would earn about half a million this year. Samantha had been on that track. — John Grisham

All the others knew that he had a mind, knew that he was capable of understanding ideas. What will new people think when they see me? They'll see a body that's already atrophying, hunched over; they'll see me walk with a shuffling gait; they'll watch me use my hands like paws, clutching a spoon like a three-year-old; they'll hear my thick, half-intelligible speech; and they'll assume, they'll know, that such a person cannot possibly understand anything complicated or difficult. — Orson Scott Card

Saudia Arabia takes in half a trillion dollars every year in oil revenue, and the country has a population smaller than New York state, but when your system of government is an eleventh century monarchy, someone's going to end up poor, and it's not gonna be the guy whose first name is King. — Craig Ferguson

To shut the door at the end of the workday, which does not spill over into evening. To throw away books after reading them so theydon't have to be dusted. To go through boxes on New Year's Eve and throw out half of what is inside. Sometimes for extravagance to pick a bunch of flowers for the one table. Other women besides me must have this daydream about a carefree life. — Maxine Hong Kingston

So, it just seemed like it happened naturally. We nailed our live show to some extent in a year or about a year and a half, maybe just a year of playing songs pretty much around L.A. then we went and scheduled a mini-tour up-state on the West Coast and that's when the whole Rough Trade [Records] thing started happening and from there, things just happened so quick. It changed really quickly. — Theresa Wayman

Good God. Johnny freakin' Ramos. Out in the hall. Of course, out in the hall. Hell, he'd spent half his life out in the hall,especially at Campbell Junior High,especially during seventh-grade social studies call. She'd gotten sent out in the hall with him once, her one and only time in the hall ever, the two of them put there to "work things out", and her poor little thirteen-year-old heart had barely survived the experience. — Tara Janzen

Years ago, after the publication of my third book, a journalist once asked me if you could tell right away whether a student had a mind for law or not, and the answer is: Sometimes. But often, you're wrong - the student who seemed so bright in the first half of the semester becomes steadily less so as the year goes on, and the student about whom you never thought one thing or another is the one who emerges as a dazzler, someone you love hearing think. — Hanya Yanagihara

Were I laid on Greenland's Coast, And in my Arms embrac'd my Lass; Warm amidst eternal Frost, Too soon the Half Year's Night would pass. — John Gay

Half the court thinks I'm the most beautiful woman in the world. All of them know that I am the wittiest and the most stylish. The king cannot take his eyes off me. Sir Thomas Wyatt has gone to France to escape me. But my sister, a year younger than me, is married and has two children by the king himself. When is it going to be my turn? When am I to be wed? Who is going to be the match for me?" There — Philippa Gregory

On our studio album 'Fly From Here' in 2011, we spent a year and a half promoting that around the world. — Chris Squire

Two and a half million years ago, when our distant relative Homo habilis was foraging for food across the Tanzanian savannah, a beam of light left the Andromeda Galaxy and began its journey across the Universe. As that light beam raced across space at the speed of light, generations of pre-humans and humans lived and died; whole species evolved and became extinct, until one member of that unbroken lineage, me, happened to gaze up into the sky below the constellation we call Cassiopeia and focus that beam of light onto his retina. A two-and-a-half-billion-year journey ends by creating an electrical impulse in a nerve fibre, triggering a cascade of wonder in a complex organ called the human brain that didn't exist anywhere in the Universe when the journey began. — Brian Cox

My kid is a year and a half old, and I just want to roll around on the floor with him for a little bit and have a normal relationship with my family. — Sam Huntington

If you have the 'Total Information Awareness' project working, it might be relatively easy to find everyone who had bought more than a ton of fertilizer and 500 gallons of diesel in the last year, which would be a great way of spotting potential Tim McVeighs - but it would also spot half the farmers and ranchers in America. — John Perry Barlow

At forty-five, I feel grateful almost daily to be the adult I wished I could be when I was seventeen. I work on my arm strength at the gym; I've become pretty good with tools. At the same time, almost daily, I lose battles with the seventeen-year-old who's still inside me. I eat half a box of Oreos for lunch, I binge on TV, I make sweeping moral judgments. I run around in torn jeans, I drink martinis on a Tuesday night, I stare at beer-commercial cleavage. I define as uncool any group to which I can't belong. I feel the urge to key Range Rovers and slash their tires; I pretend I'm never going to die.
You never stop waiting for the real story to start, because the only real story, in the end, is that you die. — Jonathan Franzen

My home is a red desert that trembles with spirits and bones.

There are two reasons I came here: my father's death, and the lion man who prowled my dreams. Perhaps it was coincidence, but a man--half wild, ravenous beyond words--slid from the dream world into the mud of the waking one the same year my father left this world for another.

Ghosts. Paw prints. I have tried to stay put. — Amy Irvine

We have to get government out of the job of picking winners and losers. That's what they've been doing the last year and a half, getting in the way of businesses that are trying to reinvest to get our economy back on its feet. — Kristi Noem