Hard Lines Quotes & Sayings

Growing up, yeah, I had a magic kit with learn tricks and learn card tricks, but I was never ... I used to watch whatever magic special was on as a kid, but then, it's not that I lost interest, but to be a magician, you really, it's really hard work. Learning lines is hard enough; learning sleight of hand, that's real practice. — Steve Buscemi

They say the world is a stage. But obviously the play is unrehearsed and everybody is ad-libbing his lines."
"Maybe that's why it's hard to tell if we're living in a tragedy or a farce."
"We need more special effects and dance numbers. — Bill Watterson

I loved English literature - if didn't it would have been hard - but I had to learn it myself. I remembered ways to repeat words, to put more emphasis on certain lines. — Benjamin Clementine

It's hard for a comic to be joking when your lines can't be funny. — Steven Michael Quezada

The idea, of course, might be to let them know that writing needn't be hard work; the hard work is getting out of bed in the morning or at noon; the hard work is looking at people's faces in long supermarket lines; the hard work is working for somebody else who is making money using your life's hours and years. — Charles Bukowski

If every other store in town is paying workers $9 an hour, one offering $8 will find it hard to hire anyone - perhaps not when unemployment is high, but certainly in normal times. Robust competition is a powerful force helping to ensure that workers are paid what they contribute to their employers' bottom lines. — Christina Romer

I would hope that people didn't think I was anything like Joan! It's very hard for me because Joan says such cruel things all the time. It sort of makes me cringe every time I read them because I think, 'Who could be so horrible?' To be able to deliver those lines and do them with a coolness, yet still make her likable, is a bit of a challenge. — Christina Hendricks

Say. It." He jerked his head to her, his nostrils flaring and his face set in hard lines. "All right. You're a drough. I loathe droughs. I vowed to my family I would kill them all, especially the one responsible for their deaths. — Donna Grant

But they soften you in ways you can't imagine. It's so unexpected. They just smooth out your hard lines. — Karin Slaughter

It's hard to draw clear lines between writing and life and I don't think it is necessary to or necessarily good to. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Professor Irwin Corey had some of the best timing in the world, and that is something you can't steal. He talked nonsense, not punch-lines, per se. It was a great performance thing he did and his timing was impeccable. Pat Paulsen was a master of comedy too. The Smothers Brothers' strength was not in the content, but how it was said. We had a couple of our albums, including the Purple Onion album, translated in script form. It didn't work at all. It is no wonder that writers had a hard time writing for the Smothers Brothers, because they wrote impressions, but there was something else. — Tommy Smothers

[D]ebt increases that didn't arise either from war or from extraordinary financial crisis are entirely associated with hard-line conservative governments. — Paul Krugman

It's really hard not to think too much. If I try to control the sled too much so that I have perfect lines, I'm really slow. — Katie Uhlaender

A lazy man works twice as hard. My mother told that to me, and now I say it to my kids. If you're writing an essay, keep it in the lines and in the margins so you don't have to do it over. — Gary Oldman

Good roles are hard to come by, and whether they're a few lines or a lead, you snap 'em up when they come along. — Charlie Hunnam

For the record, I tried to stop this," I said grimly. Then I turned my attention back to Ian.
The afternoon sun gave his copper-hued hair golden highlights and he made sure that the hard lines of his chest and abdomen were on full display as his pace kept his shirt billowing behind him. Grudgingly, I had to admit that several heads turned, and more than a few cars slowed down as female drivers gave him a second, third and fourth look. Ian responded by flashing them a dazzling smile, making him appear almost angelic to anyone who didn't know that he was a conscienceless slut. — Jeaniene Frost

I was trying so hard. I would memorize the entire script, then I'd be lipping everybody's lines while they were talking. When I watch those episodes, it's disgusting. My performances were horrible. [On his first season of THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL-AIR (1990)] — Will Smith

Do you always play this hard to get?"
"I wish I could afford to play hard to get. You women have wised up a lot in the last decade or so. None of my old lines work anymore."
"You mean 'wanna get naked' doesn't have women falling all over you?"
Mac peered at her over the top of the menu.
"Hey, that's my best one."
"I'd hate to hear your worst."
Yeah, you would. He set the menu down and leaned in as though about to say something confidential. "I crash and burn a lot."
Mac and Rachel. — Suzie Quint

Lumani had never managed a failed delivery because, in the end, no matter how skilled or how hard they fought back, pressure applied in the right places caused even the strongest men to fracture.
But this one? He'd watched her. Studied her. Observed what maybe even Uncle, the reader of people, had missed. This one was already fractured, and the lines between her broken pieces were not fissures but scar material stronger than whatever had once filled those spaces. — Taylor Stevens

He covered her mouth with his ---and she felt as if she had suddenly been enveloped in a cascade of sparks. The tingling warmth from his touch did not compare to the sensations that whirled through her as his lips moved over hers. It was as if every part of her body had at once become brilliantly alive.
His beard was a startling, silky roughness against her skin. His other hand came to rest at her waist, drawing her in tight, and her body seemed to meld to his hard, lean lines, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Her thoughts scattered. A sound escaped her, soft and deep, unlike any sound she had ever made in her life.
Then his tongue touched her lower lip and she gave a startled little squeak.
Her suddenly lifted his mouth from hers, his eyes midnight blue, his voice husky. "You have never even been kissed before, leannan. You are as innocent as the day you first set foot in the convent. — Shelly Thacker

Take a long, hard look down the road you will have to travel once you have made a commitment to work for change. Know that this transformation will not happen right away. Change often takes time. It rarely happens all at once. In the movement, we didn't know how history would play itself out. When we were getting arrested and waiting in jail or standing in unmovable lines on the courthouse steps, we didn't know what would happen, but we knew it had to happen.

Use the words of the movement to pace yourself. We used to say that ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part. And if we believe in the change we seek, then it is easy to commit to doing all we can, because the responsibility is ours alone to build a better society and a more peaceful world. — John Lewis

It's instinctive in a certain kind of painting ... It's like a nervous system. It's not described, it's happening. The feeling is going on with the task. The line is the feeling, from a soft thing, a dreamy thing, to something hard, something arid, something lonely, something ending, something beginning. — Cy Twombly

One of the most refreshing changes I've seen in recent years is the blending of genres - the pushing past the hard-and-fast lines of specific publishing categories. — Andrea Davis Pinkney

I can draw pencil lines to show something is moving, but if I'm writing, I struggle with how to write it. The boy ran down the hallway? The boy ran quickly down the hallway? The boy ran down the marble hallway? I agonize over the words. So my editor works very hard. I'm lucky to have her. — Brian Selznick

As the years went on, the audience has become very jaded. They've heard every joke, they've seen every story line, they know where you're going before you even start to get there. And that's a hard audience to keep interested. — Betty White

The less lines, the better. I am the silent film actor, but not in a slapstick sort of way. Film is an image-based medium, so whatever you can say without the words is far more provocative and punctuating. If the lines are not funny or if they don't advance the story, sometimes it's hard. I hate talk in movies. — Callum Keith Rennie

She looked away from him, drawing hard on her Rothman's; when her mouth puckered into hard little lines around the cigarette, it looked like a cat's anus. — Robert Galbraith

Prefer spacious interactions with fewer people. And it means that, when you converse, you are more interested in sharing ideas than in talking about people and what they're doing. In a conversation with someone sharing gossip, the introvert's eyes glaze over and his brow furrows as he tries to comprehend how this conversation could interest anyone. This is not because the introvert is morally superior - he just doesn't get it. As we've discussed, introverts are energized and excited by ideas. Simply talking about people, what they do and who they know, is noise for the introvert. He'll be looking between the lines for some meaning, and this can be hard work! Before long, he'll be looking for a way out of the conversation. But when an introvert is hanging out — Laurie A. Helgoe

How is it different?"
He rolled his head back, sable hair falling down on his shoulders. "With Rose I knew what to say. I could take a step back and talk to her. I remembered all the crap from the magaznies. It was easy."
"And with me, it's hard?" Why? Because she was a swamp girl? And how did the magazines fit into it?
William looked away from her. "I don't like it when you're away. If I don't see you, I can't settle down. If I see you talking with another man, I want to claw his throat out. And none of the things you're supposed to say fit."
Oh, this had to be good. "What sort of things?"
He sighed. "The lines. Like, 'You're my everything,' or 'Did it hurt when you fell from heaven? — Ilona Andrews

The graphic emphasis placed on those first lines is rather hard to square with the proposition that the monument expresses no particular religious preference. — John Paul Stevens

I would fix other people's lines if they asked me on occasion. The hard part of writing is the architecture of it, getting the story and structuring it. Not the tweaking of lines. — William Devane

I would rather have one article a day of this sort; and these ten or twenty lines might readily represent a whole day's hard work in the way of concentrated, intense thinking and revision, polish of style, weighing of words. — Joseph Pulitzer

It really isn't hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery - you just put in a few lines like "Don't take sex slaves!" and "When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don't rape any of them!" And yet God couldn't seem to manage it. — Sam Harris

I love hard punch lines, and I like anything that has a strong point of view. — Natasha Leggero

Every company should work hard to obsolete its own product line - before its competitors do. — Philip Kotler

He was hard lines, chiseled flesh, bronzed skin. I was a marshmallow melting in a cup of cocoa. — T.J. Klune

But the Count! Never did I imagine such wrath and fury, even to the demons of the pit. His eyes were positively blazing. The red light in them was lurid, as if the flames of hell fire blazed behind them. His face was deathly pale, and the lines of it were hard like drawn wires. — Bram Stoker

It is hard for me to believe that Miss Groby ever saw any work of literature from far enough away to know what it meant. She was forever climbing up the margins of books and crawling between their lines for the little gold of phrase, making marks with a pencil. As Palamides hunted the Questing Beast, she hunted the Figure of Speech. She hunted it through the clangorous halls of Shakespeare and through the green forests of Scott. — James Thurber

I have a hard time retaining the lines. Even on set I make mistakes but I'm okay with that. — Ashley Scott

Before she could move or even think, the male shifted to his human form. Bran stood there, all six feet four inches of sexy, pissed off male. His expression was one of pure rage as he stepped toward her. Not that this stopped her from checking out every single naked inch of him. And the man was built. All those hard lines and striations looked as if he'd been carved from marble. — Katie Reus

It's truly hard to understand how liberal politicians, activists and journalists so consistently escape accountability for stoking the flames of racial disharmony while purporting to dampen them and for dividing our society along racial, gender, and economic lines while claiming to unite us. — David Limbaugh

So much of desire, at that age, was a willful act. Trying so hard to slur the rough, disappointing edges of boys into the shape of someone we could love. We spoke of our desperate need for them with rote and familiar words, like we were reading lines from a play. Later I would see this: how impersonal and grasping our love was, pinging around the universe, hoping for a host to give form to our wishes. — Emma Cline

You cannot do without one specialty. You must have some base-line to measure the work and attainments of others. For a general view of the subject, study the history of the sciences. Broad knowledge of all Nature has been the possession of no naturalist except Humboldt, and general relations constituted his specialty. — Louis Agassiz

Men are men and women are women. We've tried for tens of thousands of years to lay down hard and fast lines for the sexes to walk upon, and we've failed miserably. — William John Locke

He wanted to break me, the me I'd made, the me I'd needed to make, my need, mine, my whole life since I could remember. I didn't want to hear him that night. When I was ready to change I'd change. When life opens up before you, when you don't really know death ... it's easy to promise yourself change. Keeping the lines hard, the parts of me separate, was what I knew, how I lived. — Adam Berlin

In life, as in football, the principle to follow is to hit the line hard. — Theodore Roosevelt

You know, there's such a very thin dividing line between inspiration and obsession that sometimes it's very hard to decide which side we're really on. — Barnes Wallis

I find it difficult to remember lines. When I'm doing a long speech for television, I sometimes have an earpiece with someone feeding me the text. But I can get by in the theatre if I study hard for a couple of months. — Michael Gambon

Stories move in circle. They don't move in straight lines. So it helps if you listen in circles. There are stories inside stories and stories between stories and finding your way through them is as easy and as hard as finding your way home. And part of the finding is the getting lost. And when you're lost you start to look around and to listen. — Deena Metzger

Nebraska was white, a page as still as fallen snow. It was not crosshatched with roads, overrun with the hard lines of interstate systems. It was a state on which you could make lists, jot down phone numbers, draw pictures. — Ann Patchett

One of the saddest lines in the world is, 'Oh come now - be realistic.' The best parts of this world were not fashioned by those who were realistic. They were fashioned by those who dared to look hard at their wishes and gave them horses to ride. — Richard Nelson Bolles

Pushing myself against my own will really, because some of this stuff is hard. I don't consider myself to be a great guitar player, so pushing myself as a guitar player or pushing myself as a singer, as a performer, and just riding that fine line between being so hard on yourself that it's counter-productive and being so hard on yourself that nothing is ever good enough is what drives me. — Cody Johnson

In a conversation with someone sharing gossip, the introvert's eyes glaze over and his brow furrows as he tries to comprehend how this conversation could interest anyone. This is not because the introvert is morally superior - he just doesn't get it. As we've discussed, introverts are energized and excited by ideas. Simply talking about people, what they do and who they know, is noise for the introvert. He'll be looking between the lines for some meaning, and this can be hard work! Before long, he'll be looking for a way out of the conversation. — Laurie A. Helgoe

When your day is hard, remember to sing HU. It puts you back in line with the Holy Spirit. — Harold Klemp

I've forgotten lines all the time. Sometimes I switch verses in a song. It's just hard not to when you're doing the same thing all the time. — Josh Young

I was a hard worker, and I always knew my lines. — Diane Cilento

And then I went back into my room, locked into a sequence as perfect as a pattern, and I sat down on my great rock throne, invisible to the outside world but palpable beneath me, and from how my face felt I thought maybe I was crying, either because I didn't want to do this or because I did, it was hard to tell and anyway I never would, who would believe me in either case and who would be there to believe me in all cases, it was a puzzle, I had yet to learn the way of the jigsaw, and so I positioned the rifle beneath my chin, it feels cold, like an actual thing in the actual present physical world, OK, there it is, I am here now, and then I lay down on my belly and listened to the rising squall beyond the door. — John Darnielle

I can't draw a line between myself and stuff that I do. It's funny, I don't want to sound like it's just about this, but really with everything I do, it's hard for me to take myself out of it. — Kristen Stewart

Her hair was hidden under a white headdress, like some kind of wimple; she wore a long white tunic and trousers, and her skin had the pale golden hue associated in our world with Orientals. The lines of her cheekbone and jaw reminded him of pictures he had seen of the head of Nefertiti, thought her neck was longer, slightly too long for an ordinary human, and as she turned toward him he realized the planes of her face were subtly different, though it would have been hard to explain in what way. A fraction of an inch here, a fraction of an inch there, and the whole visage was somehow distorted, though its beauty remained undiminished. — Amanda Hemingway

Conversely, every moderate seems to believe that his interpretation and selective reading of scripture is more accurate than God's literal words. Presumably, God could have written these books any way He wanted. And if He wanted them to be understood in the spirit of twenty-first-century secular rationality, He could have left out all those bits about stoning people to death for adultery or witchcraft. It really isn't hard to write a book that prohibits sexual slavery - you just put in a few lines like "Don't take sex slaves!" and "When you fight a war and take prisoners, as you inevitably will, don't rape any of them!" And yet God couldn't seem to manage it. This is why the approach of a group like the Islamic State holds a certain intellectual appeal (which, admittedly, sounds strange to say) because the most straightforward reading of scripture suggests that Allah advises jihadists to take sex slaves from among the conquered, decapitate their enemies, and so forth. — Sam Harris

Once there was a little old lady who lived next-door. I was eleven when I decided to kill her. But I didn't. As an eleven-year-old I was shocked, upset and angry enough to take the life of the frail-looking, white-haired woman, but I lacked the ingenuity and resolve to put a plan into action. It's easy to want to kill someone but hard to actually do it. Especially when you're a kid. That's why I waited until I was eighteen. — G.H. Finn

Jenna is the kind of beautiful that I can get lost in. Lost from all the fucked-up-ness in my head. She's the kind of beautiful that laughs at all my non funny jokes because she gets me. She's the kind of beautiful that'll put me in my place without batting an eye. Jenna is the kind of beautiful that can transform a non believing man like me into a man who wants more. A man who can fall hard, stumbling over his own two feet because he's so tangled up in her. — E.L. Montes

The strong lines of the woman's
face bespoke hard-won wisdom and courage, and somehow that made watching
her more difficult. If such a woman could be defeated by Elantris, what hope was there for Raoden? — Brandon Sanderson

My hometown is 30,000 people. It's remote, but it's an oil town, so it's developed. There's definitely a mill mentality: not a lot of people leave. It's a lot of long hours, shift work. Even my Dad, who's a dentist worked hard, because that's what people do up there. — Aaron Lines

It's 2 lines. Font like a typewriter inked across the very bottom of his torso.
hell is empty
and all the devils are here
Yes. Interesting. Yes. Sure. I think I need to lie down. "Books," he's saying, pulling his boxer-briefs up and rezipping his pants, "are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them. Tattoos, for example, are very hard to forget. — Tahereh Mafi

It took me almost two thousand miles in the woods to see I had to do some hard work that wasn't simply walking - that I needed to begin respecting my own body's boundaries. I had to draw clear lines. Ones that were sound in my mind and therefore impermeable, and would always, no matter where I walked, protect me.

Moving forward, I wanted rules.

First - when I felt unsafe I'd leave, immediately. The first time, not the tenth time. Not after a hundred red flags smacked in wind violently, clear as trail signs pointing the way to SNAKES. Not after I'd been bitten - the violation. If I wasn't interested, I would reject the man blatantly. — Aspen Matis

With no bottom line, it's hard to know wrong from right. But I ain't ever satisfied. — John Mellencamp

Q: What's hard for you?
A: Mostly I straddle reality and the imagination. My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane. Math is hard. Reading a map. Following orders. Carpentry. Electronics. Plumbing. Remembering things correctly. Straight lines. Sheet rock. Finding a safety pin. Patience with others. Ordering in Chinese. Stereo instructions in German. — Tom Waits

He sat her on the edge of the bed then stood in front of her. When he stripped off his shirt, her jaw dropped.

Dear. God.

Ropes of corded muscles, hard lines of strength, sex, and everything in between covered his body. He had some chest hair, enough to enhance the beauty of his ink, but not too much.

And, sweet baby Jesus, his ink. — Carrie Ann Ryan

Don't foul, don't flinch-hit the line hard. — Theodore Roosevelt

The crew of the Argo II assembled at the rail and cut the grappling lines. Piper brought out her new horn of plenty and, on Percy's direction, willed it to spew Diet Coke, which came out with the strength of a fire hose, dousing the enemy deck. Percy thought it would take hours, but the ship sank remarkably fast, filling with Diet Coke and seawater. "Dionysus," Percy called, holding up Chrysaor's golden mask. "Or Bacchus - whatever. You made this victory possible, even if you weren't here. Your enemies trembled at your name ... or your Diet Coke, or something. So, yeah, thank you." The words were hard to get out, but Percy managed not to gag. "We give this ship to you as tribute. We hope you like it." "Six million in gold," Leo muttered. "He'd better like it. — Rick Riordan

I thought I could rely on the plot in the novel and fill in the colour between the lines, but I made a mistake with that assumption. It was really, really hard because you pull a few things apart and then you realise how everything relies on everything else and it can all fall apart. — Ben Affleck

When you feel dissatisfied, or when you're working too hard, the problem could be a mismatch between your goals and actions. Write out your goal ladder and make sure it all lines up. First start with your actions and ask "Why?" to find your subgoals. Keep asking why until you map up to your larger-level goals, at least two or three levels. — Stever Robbins

You might have good, moral efforts of working hard and earning money in order to help feed the poor or something along those lines - and then you get the money you've been seeking and you see and feel and taste how sweet it is and you only want more and more and more for ... yourself.
Money corrupts its own intentions. — Cole Ryan

And, because in some hard core of me, in some stubborn trench of selfish refusal, I could not, even at ten years of age, surrender to anything or anyone, I fought that pain. I analysed its offensive, and found its lines of attack. It festered, like the corruption in a wound turned sour, drawing strength from me. I knew enough to know the remedy. Hot iron for infection, cauterize, burn, make it pure. I cut from myself all the weakness of care. The love for my dead, I put aside, secure in a casket, an object of study, a dry exhibit, no longer bleeding, cut loose, set free. The capacity for new love, I burned out. I watered it with acid until the ground lay barren and nothing there would sprout, no flower take root. — Mark Lawrence

When you cross the line, it is such a wonderful feeling it's hard to describe. — Kelly Holmes

He was a collection of hard lines and tailored edges — Leigh Bardugo

If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hard-line, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world but not with Republicans? Maybe he's not the problem. — Jon Stewart

Lines drawn into his face suggested he had spent many years thinking very hard over very difficult problems. — Marissa Meyer

Her elf is going to do just that," he said, the red glow of the ever-after sun turning his hair auburn, almost as red as mine. "I did not work this hard at getting her to accept who she is to let you take your spoiled brat of a little-boy temper tantrum out on her. She stays on my side of the lines. — Kim Harrison

When you're hard and unyielding your words score me with lines - I hate lines - I want curves - curves are happy like a snowman ... — John Geddes

Of course, an exhausting day at sail lines and nets left little energy to expend on running or laughing. Perhaps that was why her parents couldn't appreciate her music-it wouldn't appear to be hard work to them. Menolly shook her hands, letting them flap from her wrists. They ached and trembled from the constricted movements and tension of an hour of intensive playing. No, her parents would never understand that playing musical instruments could be as hard work as sailing or fishing. — Anne McCaffrey

Even if chords are simple, they should rub. They should have dissonances in them. I've always used a lot of alternate bass lines, suspensions, widely spaced voicings. Dfferent textures to get very warm chords. Sometimes you're setting up strange chords by placing a chord in front of it that's going to set it off like a diamond in a gold band. It's not just finding interesting chords, it's how you sequence them, like stringing together pearls on a string ... Interesting chords will compel interesting melodies. It's very hard to write a boring melody to an interesting chord sequence. — Jimmy Webb

From the way her buttocks looked under the black silk dress, I knew she'd be good in bed. The silk was tight and under it the muscles worked slow and easy. I saw weight there, and control, and, brother, those are things I like in a woman. — Jonathan Latimer

Learning lines is hard for me because I have the attention span of a six year old. That's why being on planes all the time is so useful - I'm forced to learn out of boredom. — Eddie Redmayne

Thank god for Vegas. Seriously.
A lobotomy wasn't as effective as a weekend three hours of Red Bull away (from LA, not Pismo) where I wore the thinnest pinned stilettos, gambled like a sweaty degenerate mobster in black loafers, drank like Amy Winehouse and Charles Bukowski's baby, and snorted throat-dripping lines of coke in a Hard Rock Hotel bathroom with four new best friends. I'd giddily rub off any one of those from the to-do list I wrote in eyeliner on my hotel bathroom mirror. — Christy Heron

Acting isn't that hard, really. I mean, I think that people make a big deal about it, but you just kind of try to say your lines naturally. — Ryan Gosling

Los Angeles has no seasons, so it's kind of hard to keep track of time here. The lines between spring, summer, fall, and winter all blur like my vision. I get stuck on repeat for different measures of eternity. — Kris Kidd

Find somebody else to entertain you," I said.
"There is no one else."
I turned a page in my notebook and started writing again. "There's always someone else.You've been Feeding off Forfeits for hundreds of years. Get a new one."
"You don't give my job enough credit. It's really hard to convince a girl to follow me. The average pickup lines don't work so well. 'Hey,wanna get coffee? And then spend an eternity getting the life force sucked out of you?' They don't go for it. — Brodi Ashton

The difference between dead and not dead had never been so hard to see. It was the slimmest of lines. Possible to cross at any given moment. — Suzanne Brockmann

Think of how hard it would be to create a gender-based movement across racial lines as long as one group believes that it has to be strong while seeing the other group as passive and weak. We could also go into the stereotypes of the saucy, mercurial Latina and the docile, easily-dominated Asian woman. — Melissa Harris-Perry

I was thinking about how free of mobs recent centuries had been: to create a mob there must be public meetings, and public meetings in our time consisted of individuals communing via the All Thing or other datasphere channels; it is hard to create mob passion when people are separated by kilometers and light-years, connected only by comm lines and fatline threads. — Dan Simmons

Teamwork may just be hard in certain lines of work. Under conditions of extreme complexity, we inevitably rely on a division of tasks and expertise - in the operating room, for example, there is the surgeon, the surgical assistant, the scrub nurse, the circulating nurse, the anesthesiologist, and so on. They can each be technical masters at what they do. That's what we train them to be, and that alone can take years. But the evidence suggests we need them to see their job not just as performing their isolated set of tasks well but also as helping the group get the best possible results. This requires finding a way to ensure that the group lets nothing fall between the cracks and also adapts as a team to whatever problems might arise. — Atul Gawande

Everyone had coverage. You might have like three lines, but there were 10 people, so they would cover each person. Three lines could take 12 or 15 hours, but it was fun because everybody was together. As hard as it was to shoot those scenes, I always enjoyed when we were all together. — Peter Facinelli

As an actor, doing it for 30 years, with every movie, you're trying to figure out a way to make it more naturalistic and more organic to humanity. When you have lines like, "Never let the monster out," it's hard. — Josh Brolin

Old England is an imaginary place, a landscape built from words, woodcuts, films, paintings, picturesque engravings. It is a place imagined by people, and people do not live very long or look very hard. We are very bad at scale. The things that live in the soil are too small to care about; climate change too large to imagine. We are bad at time too. We cannot remember what lived here before we did; we cannot love what is not. Nor can we imagine what will be different when we are dead. We live out our three score and ten, and tie our knots and lines only to ourselves. We take solace in pictures, and we wipe the hills of history. — Helen Macdonald

Winter Grace It is autumn again and our anxiety blows With the wind, breaking the heart of the rose, Petals and leaves fall down and everything goes. All but the seed, all but the hard bright berry And the bulbs we kneel on the earth to bury And lay away with our anguish and our worry. It is time we learned again the winter grace To put the nerves to sleep in a dark place And smooth the lines in the self-tortured face. For we are at the end of our endurance nearly And we shall have to die this winter surely, For this is the end of more than a season clearly. Now we shall have to be poor, to yield up all, With the leaves wither, with the petals fall, Now we shall have to die, once and for all. Before the seed of faith so deep and still Pushes up gently through the frozen will And the joyless wake and learn to be joyful. Before this buried love leaps up from sorrow And doubt and violence and pity follow To greet the radiant morning and the swallow. — May Sarton

Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income on war and a minimum on education. The twenty-first century will reverse this order. It will be more glorious to fight against ignorance than to die on the field of battle. The discovery of a new scientific truth will be more important than the squabbles of diplomats. Even the newspapers of our own day are beginning to treat scientific discoveries and the creation of fresh philosophical concepts as news. The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere 'stick' in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.
Progress along such lines will be impossible while nations persist in the savage practice of killing each other off. I inherited from my father, an erudite man who labored hard for peace, an ineradicable hatred of war. — Nikola Tesla

As a reader I feel included a lot in Julie Carr's hard and beautiful book. I can pretty much hear its author speak - a whispering that enables us into its world ... a masterfully sutured journey, painfully useful. Sarah - Of Fragments and Lines is a book I know I will return to. And urge it on my friends who have lives too and write in them. — Eileen Myles

I've worked very hard in this book to keep the lines of communication open. I don't want to turn someone away from this information for partisan political reasons. — Jared Diamond