Helplessly Quotes & Sayings

I had a terrible premonition. His flight was to Miami. The old news footage flashed through my mind of Air Florida Flight 90 to Miami that went down in a freezing rain. It showed pieces of the wings and smashed fuselage floating in a huge hole in the ice next to the Fourteenth Street Bridge. A helicopter trying to lift a survivor from the black water. Rescuers watching helplessly from the shore. I tried to call him, but the network was down. I'd seen this fearsome power of the past before, how it can rise up without warning and strike the living with unerring timing. Later Lorenzo called from Miami and said it was a rough flight but they made it. I was happy that for once my intuition was wrong. — J. J. Jorgens

His pastoral antennae were buzzing and sparking, and it seemed to him that he was inevitably going to be dragged into this swamp of charges and countercharges. And if so, he preferred going in headfirst and not grabbed at the heels by the swamp monster of circumstances in order to be dragged helplessly into these stagnant ponds of punk water. He was just doing his duty, but his duty seemed a lot bigger than normal. — Douglas Wilson

In too many cases, the moms, the dads, the sisters and brothers of children with cancer must stand by a hospital bed and watch helplessly as this horrible disease consumes the life of an innocent child. — Michael McCaul

In two of your poems you called that central
Passage of womanhood a wound,
Instead of a curtain guarding a silken
Trail of sighs. How many men,
Upon regarding such beauty, helplessly
Touching it, recklessly needing
To enter its warmth again and again,
Have assumed it embodies their own ache
Of absence, the personal
Gash that has punished their lives.
So endowed of anatomy, any woman
Who has been loved
Knows that her tenderest blush
Of tissue is a luxe burden of have.
Although it bleeds, this is only to cleanse,
To prepare yet another nesting for love.
It is not a wound, friend.
It is a home for you.
It is a way into the world. — Michele Wolf

These are the things in which I was so helplessly caught up, the waves that took me, what I loved. When light filled my eyes and I was restless and could move, I knew not what all the color was about, but only that I had a passion to see. And now that I am still, I pass on to you my liveliness and my life, for you will be taken, as once I was, and although you must fight beyond your capacity to fight and feel beyond your capacity to feel, remember that it ends in perfect peace, and you will be as still and content as am I, for whom centuries are not even seconds. — Mark Helprin

Before Gabe could react, he watched helplessly as Rachel slipped backwards and out of sight into the mountainside, a crumbling wall now the only thing he could see.
"Rachel!" Gabe shouted, rushing forward. Before Gabe could reach her Haim, being closer to where she had fallen through, leapt into the gaping hole after her. The group now only heard Haim's cries echoing in the darkness as they drifted further away. — Wendy Owens

The girls in the stories make such fools of themselves. They are so weak. They fall helplessly in love with the wrong men, they give in, they are jilted. Then they cry. — Margaret Atwood

Freedom from activity is never achieved by abstaining from action. Nobody can become perfect by merely ceasing to act. In fact, nobody can ever rest from his activity even for a moment. All are helplessly forced to act ...
A man who renounces certain physical actions but still lets his mind dwell on the objects of his sensual desire, is deceiving himself. He can only be called a hypocrite. The truly admirable man controls his senses by the power of his will. All his actions will be disinterested.
Activity is better than inertia. Act, but with self-control. If you are lazy, you cannot even sustain your own body. — Anonymous

When you are broken, you run. But you don't always run away. Sometimes, helplessly, you run towards. — Helen Macdonald

My sub doesn't pay for me," he says, pulling me to my feet. "That just doesn't happen."
"But we ordered so much," I say helplessly.
"It made you happy," he says simply. "Now I get to play with you. And that makes me happy."
"I don't think it's that simple an equation."
"Maybe not," he concedes. "But then, if if sex were the same thing as math, a lot more people would be lining up to take calculus. — Nenia Campbell

There's something depressing about a young couple helplessly in love. Their state is so perfect, it must be doomed. They project such qualities on their lover that only disappointment can follow. — Roger Ebert

"Oh, you want too much!" she cried to Gatsby. "I love you now-isn't that enough? I can't help what's past." She began to sob helplessly. "I did love him once-but I loved you too."
Gatsby's eyes opened and closed.
"You loved me too?" he repeated.
"Even that's a lie," said Tom savagely. "She didn't know you were alive. Why-there're things between Daisy and me that you'll never know, things that neither of us can ever forget." — F Scott Fitzgerald

Human beings," said the Ship's Confessor, "cannot designate a 'current best candidate' without psychological consequences. Human rationalists learn to discuss an issue as thoroughly as possible before suggesting any solutions. For humans, solutions are sticky in a way that would require detailed cognitive science to explain. We would not be able to search freely through the solution space, but would be helplessly attracted toward the 'current best' point, once we named it. Also, any endorsement whatever of a solution that has negative moral features, will cause a human to feel shame - and 'best candidate' would feel like an endorsement. To avoid feeling that shame, humans must avoid saying which of two bad alternatives is better than the other. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

He glanced helplessly at Ruby, hoping for some help. She was a scribe and had more experience with dwarves than the six hours that Durham had acquired. He's assumed that, as a fellow human, she would make an effort to be some sort of cultural ambassador to help him survive past lunch. Ruby's current interpretation of being helpful seemed to be a silent smirk. — Jeffery Russell

Growing up I was always prone to obsession, partly because of the way I am, but partly because after feeling so lonely for such a long time, when I found someone or something that I liked, I felt helplessly drawn to it. I suppose that accounts for some of the creepiness in my music. — Lana Del Rey

We need to lose the mental image of our pre-Christian state as a drowning person helplessly flailing about in the water, hoping upon hope that someone might throw us a life preserver. Outside of Christ we are, in fact, spiritual corpses rotting on the ocean floor among the silt and sludge. — Gloria Furman

My lady?" He peered briefly around to see that all seemed
in order, and confusion immediately covered his face.
"Take a dozen men and ride out in search of my husband,"
Emma commanded at once. The steward goggled at her.
"But, my lady - "
"Now, Sebert. Or all will be lost."
Sebert nodded and started to withdraw, then paused and
turned back, his gaze moving helplessly to the two men by
the fireplace, before flying back to Emma herself. "But my
lady, yer husband is dead," he pointed out miserably.
Emma rolled her eyes at that. "Sebert, why can you not be
like other stewards and listen at doors?"
"I ... " Sebert drew himself up indignantly, but Emma
continued.
"Had you done so, you would be aware that I am to marry
Lord Amaury de Aneford. Immediately. Before Lord Fulk's
cousin and aunt can get here and Bertrand can lay claim to
the manor and myself. — Lynsay Sands

In a lifetime among cops since, I've noted that investigators who piece together the aftermaths of home invasion murders tend to keep their guns on all the time after that, even when off duty in their own house, and keep them by the bed when they go to sleep.They have learned from the helplessly-murdered dead — Massad Ayoob

You're so beautiful," he said on a slow exhale. "It hurts to look at you." She sighed helplessly, swaying into him as her eyes drifted closed and wishing - desperately wishing - she could ask him to come home and make love to her. She was positive he knew far more about making love than she did (she'd only had two lovers since losing her virginity at twenty, and she thought of them as Bad and Worse) and would be an exceptional teacher. A distant corner of her mind warned she'd gone — Ann Christopher

But as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certain fatal cliffside fall - falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves. — Philip K. Dick

Gregor grinned. "Congratulations to you, too, Miles. Your father before you needed a whole army to do it, but you've changed Barrayaran history just with a dinner invitation." Miles shrugged helplessly. God, is everybody going to blame me for this? And for everything that follows? "Let's try to avoid making history on this one, eh? I think we should push for unalleviated domestic dullness." "With all my heart," Gregor agreed. With a cheery salute, he cut the com. Miles laid his head down on the table, and moaned. "It's not my fault!" "Yes, it is," said Ivan. "It was all your idea. I was there when you came up with it." "No, it wasn't. It was yours. You're the one who dragooned me into attending the damned state dinner in the first place." "I only invited you. You invited Galeni. And anyway, my mother dragooned me." "Oh. So it's all her fault. Good. I can live with that." Ivan — Lois McMaster Bujold

You're hopelessly unemployed and helplessly overprivileged. — Mark William Lindberg

The main reason why serious historical studies of the Rosicrucian manifestos and their influence have hitherto been on the whole lacking is no doubt because the whole subject has been bedevilled by enthusiasts for secret societies. There is a vast literature on Rosicrucianism which assumes the existence of a secret society, founded by Christian Rosencreutz, and having a continuous existence up to modern times. In the vague and inaccurate world of so-called 'occultist' writing this assumption has produced a kind of literature which deservedly sinks below the notice of the serious historian. And when, as if often the case, the misty discussion of 'Rosicrucians' and their history becomes involved with the masonic myths, the enquirer feels that he is sinking helplessly into a bottomless bog. — Frances A. Yates

Then her eyes narrowed. The sun was spilling in the window behind her and Dageus's eyes were golden, dappled with darker flecks. Smoky and sensual, fringed by thick dark lashes, but gold nonetheless.
"What is with your eyes?" she exclaimed. "Is it part of being
a Druid?"
"What color are they?" he asked warily.
"Gold."
He flashed her another unguarded smile. It was like basking in the sun, she thought, tracing her fingers over his beard-shadowed jaw, smiling helplessly back. — Karen Marie Moning

It wasn't the risk," I said, flicking my toes at a big black-and-white splotched carp. "Or not entirely. It was - well, it was partly fear, but mostly it was that I - I couldn't leave Jamie." I shrugged helplessly. "I - simply couldn't. — Diana Gabaldon

The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice. — Mahatma Gandhi

O your life, your lonely life
What have you ever done with it,
And done with the great gift of consciousness?
What will you ever do before Death's knife
Provides the answer ultimate and appropriate?
As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls,
Falls in a parachute, falls endlessly, and feels the vast
Draft of the abyss sucking him down and down,
An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown:
This is the way the night passes by, this
Is the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomable abyss. — Delmore Schwartz

So basically your plan is to flail about helplessly. — Harlan Coben

To the white people, among whom I helplessly number myself, life is a very long and high set of stairs, but to my mother life was a river, a slow and stately wind across the sky, an endless sea of grass. — Jim Harrison

You can't do anything. You will be defeated here by me, on the ground helplessly while I kill this girl, being able only to watch. — Reki Kawahara

[The] insistence on the absolutely indiscriminate nature of compassion within the Kingdom is the dominant perspective of almost all of Jesus' teaching.
What is indiscriminate compassion? 'Take a look at a rose. Is is possible for the rose to say, "I'll offer my fragrance to good people and withhold it from bad people"? Or can you imagine a lamp that withholds its rays from a wicked person who seeks to walk in its light? It could do that only be ceasing to be a lamp. And observe how helplessly and indiscriminately a tree gives its shade to everyone, good and bad, young and old, high and low; to animals and humans and every living creature
even to the one who seeks to cut it down. This is the first quality of compassion
its indiscriminate character.' (Anthony DeMello, The Way to Love) ...
What makes the Kingdom come is heartfelt compassion: a way of tenderness that knows no frontiers, no labels, no compartmentalizing, and no sectarian divisions. — Brennan Manning

The child inside me wouldn't stop crying. Every time it loses something so important to it. A person or a thing it loves the most, I pretend like nothing happened. But I hear it sobbing helplessly inside me. And the pathetic part of all this is, It neither grows up nor dies. Every time I stand in front of a mirror, it stares at me through my eyes. With its tear-stained face and that intense eyes that rip my ribs apart and the cry of it echoes through every room of my soul. — Akshay Vasu

When I was a child and heard about angels, I was both frightened and fascinated by the thought of these enormous, invisible presences in our midst. I conceived of them not as white-robed androgynes with yellow locks and thick gold wings, which was how my friend Matty Wilson had described them to me
Matty was the predecessor of all sorts of arcane knowledge
but as big, dark, blundering men, massive in their weightlessness, given to pranks and ponderous play, who might knock you over, or break you in half, without meaning to. When a child from Miss Molyneaux's infant school in Carrickdrum fell under the hoofs of a dray-horse one day and was trampled to death, I, a watchful six year old, knew who was to blame; I pictured his guardian angel standing over the child's crushed form with his big hands helplessly extended, not sure whether to be contrite or to laugh. — John Banville

I have a hatred of the taming of animals, especially large ones that are so contented in the wild. I abominate circus acts that involve big befooled beasts
cowed tigers or helplessly roaring lions pawing the air and teetering on small stools. I deplore zoos and anything to do with animal confinement or restraint. — Paul Theroux

Perhaps this was the greatest genius of the cyber jihadis: the monopoly they clinched on information. They realized how helplessly addicted the population had become to knowing in this information age. So what if news was tainted or unreliable? - people needed their daily fix. — Manil Suri

A strange night, he thought. Somewhere now there is shooting and men are being hunted and imprisoned and tortured and murdered, some corner of a peaceful world is being trampled upon, and one knows it, helplessly, and life buzzes on in the bright bistros of the city, no one cares, and people go calmly to sleep, and I am sitting here with a woman between pale chrysanthemums and a bottle of calvados, and the shadow of love rises, trembling, lonesome, strange and sad, it too an exile from the safe gardens of the past, shy and wild and quick as if it had no right — Erich Maria Remarque

A hedgehog? And just how does a hedgehog make love?" he demanded.
No, I thought. I won't. I will not. But I did. "Very carefully," I replied, giggling helplessly. So now we know just how old that one is, I thought. — Diana Gabaldon

Nor was her love for Udayan recognizable or intact. Anger was always mounted to it, zigzagging through her like some helplessly mating pair of insects. Anger at him for dying when he might have lived. For bringing her happiness, and then taking it away. For trusting her, only to betray her. For believing in sacrifice, only to be so selfish in the end. — Jhumpa Lahiri

The next night, alone in the tent, Laurent said: 'As we draw closer to the border, I think it would be safer
more private
to hold our discussions in your language rather than mine.'
He said it in carefully pronounced Akielon.
Damen stared at him, feeling as though the world had just been rearranged.
'What is it?' said Laurent.
'Nice accent,' said Damen, because despite everything, the corner of his mouth was beginning helplessly to curve up.
[ ... ]
It was of course no surprise to find that Laurent had a well-stocked armoury of elegant phrases and bitchy remarks, but could not talk in detail about anything sensible. — C.S. Pacat

I am hopelessly, helplessly in love with you. Don't you know that? — Michelle Dalton

I mean: if you're going outside to look for your sister, I get it." Max goes silent. Maybe Mirjam's death is hitting him now, maybe his voice will choke - but he goes on. "But if you're going outside to help your mother . . ." He gestures helplessly at my injured arm. His fingers stop a centimeter away, hovering in midair. "Don't risk it. Don't risk you."
"She's my mother."
"The captain will never let her on if she doesn't even try. Not when there are so many people who haven't had thechance to try. People we can use on the ship. People who have been on that waiting list forever."
There are a dozen things I want to say. But she's mymother - as though that means as much as people pretend it does.
She is trying, just in a different way - as though I'm convincing myself.
I wasn't on that waiting list, either.
I might not be someone the ship can use, as much as I'm trying to be. — Corinne Duyvis

I would rather have bowel surgery in the woods with a stick. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistible currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. — Bill Bryson

I said: "He cannot be so bad if he loves roses so much."
"But he is a Beast," said Father helplessly.
I saw that he was weakening, and wishing only to comfort him I said, "Cannot a Beast be tamed? — Robin McKinley

In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I watched helplessly as the Bush administration led America into a strategic blunder of historic proportions. It became painfully obvious that the executive branch of our government did not trust its military. It relied instead on a neoconservative ideology developed by men and women with little, if any, military experience. Some senior military leaders did not challenge civilian decision makers at the appropriate times, and the courageous few who did take a stand were subsequently forced out of the service. — Ricardo Sanchez

As for you, my beloved friend, I loyally believe in your uniqueness; but whenever I try to tell to you wherein it consists, I helplessly describe only a type. — Josiah Royce

I basked in you;
I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love.
And death doesn't prevent me from loving you.
Besides,
in my opinion you aren't dead.
(I know dead people, and you are not dead.) — Franz Wright

I'll do whatever you say, Cassie," he says helplessly. His eyes shine brighter than the stars overhead. "I understand why you have to go. If it were you inside that camp, I would go. A hundred thousand Silencers couldn't stop me."
He presses his lips against my ear and whispers low and fierce, as if he's sharing the most important secret in the world, which maybe he is.
"It's hopeless. And it's stupid. It's suicidal. But love is a weapon they have no answer for. They know how you think, but they can't know what you feel."
Not we. They.
A threshold has been crossed, and he isn't stupid. He knows it's the kind you can't cross back over. — Rick Yancey

People want the right to die at a time of their own choosing. Too many families have watched helplessly as a relative dies slowly, longing for death. — Polly Toynbee

Personality maintains its discreetness by an act of will. Otherwise one person will flow helplessly into another. — Camille Paglia

I saw him glance briefly round the chamber as though to make sure he had not overlooked anything that might appertain to my comfort. He went across to close the wooden shutters at the window and, when he returned to set a glass of water on the table beside the bed, I reached up on impulse to squeeze his cold hand. "You're a good boy, Erik," I said fondly, "I'd like to think you won't ever let anyone persuade you otherwise." He held on to my fingers for a moment, enclosing them between his palms and I became aware that he had started to tremble. My God ... the boy was crying ... crying because I had spoken kindly and touched him with affection!
"Erik ... " I whispered helplessly.
"I'm sorry!" he stammered, dropping my hand and stepping back from the bed hastily, "I'm very sorry! Please forgive me!"
And before I could say a word to stop him he fled from the room. — Susan Kay

I had many things to say, I did not have the words to say them. Painfully aware of my limitations, I watched helplessly and language became an obstacle. It became clear that it would be necessary to invent a new language ... I would pause at every sentence, and start over and over again. I would conjure up other verbs, other images, other silent cries. It still was not right. But what exactly was "it"? "It" was something elusive, darkly shrouded for fear of being usurped, profaned. All the dictionary had to offer seemed meager, pale, lifeless. — Elie Wiesel

I'll be a straitjacketed bookworm burrowed into the binding of an insane, homicidal book, staring helplessly out from the pages of my own life, as they're writ by someone else, and I'd commit atrocities that would damn a saint's soul. — Karen Marie Moning

Jeremy supposed that a Christmas party full of elementary school professionals might be the worst place in the world. He would drift among them helplessly, like a grizzly bear in a roomful of children, expected not to eat anyone. — Nathan Ballingrud

Not a day went by that he didn't think of that moment of impact, and when he watched, helplessly, as his son died in his arms. For all intents and purposes, he died too. Jeb Richardson sealed his heart that day; he closed his mind. He cursed god, gave up on his dreams, and turned away from love altogether. — Patricia Cori

The doors of the darkest room one had ever seen were opened
and everyone was asked to collect the pieces of themselves that they have lost with time all these years. Everyone rushed in and started searching for the pieces that would complete them but all of a sudden they saw the light in the room fading away, they turned around and saw the doors closing back again. They screamed and tried to run back but all of a sudden there were fences all around them, they lost their voice and helplessly stuck in there saw the doors closing. They lost themselves completely in the quest of searching the pieces they had lost before. — Akshay Vasu

Shit," he says helplessly. "No - piss," I say, like Oscar fucking Wilde. — Caitlin Moran

If you like, you could call this the psychology of total equivalence, let's say neuronics for short, and dismiss it as biological fantasy. However, I am convinced as we move back through geophysical time, so we reenter the amnionic corridor, and move back through spinal and archeopsychic time, recollecting in our unconscious minds the landscapes of each epoch, each with a distinct ecological terrain, its own flora and fauna, as recognizable to anyone else as they would be to a traveller in a Wellsian time machine. Except that this is no scenic railway, but a total reorientation of the personality. If we let these buried phantoms master us as we reappear, we'll be swept back helplessly in the floodtide like pieces of flotsam. — J.G. Ballard

It is that we are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love, never no helplessly unhappy as when we have lost our loved object of its love. — Sigmund Freud

It's like looking into a full-length mirror and seeing nothing but pure beauty in the reflection ... and then watching helplessly as it shatters into a thousand pieces before your eyes, knowing that you can do nothing to keep it from breaking ... — J. Sterling

Do they still hurt?" she whispered in anguished surprise.
"No," Jason said tautly. Shame washed over him in sickening waves as he waited helplessly for her inevitable reaction to the stark evidence of his humiliation.
To his utter disbelief he felt her arms encircle him from behind and the touch of her lips on his back. "How brave you must have been to endure this," she whispered achingly, "how strong to survive it and go on living ... " When she began kissing each scar, Jason rolled to his side and jerked her into his arms. "I love you," he whispered agonizedly, plunging his hands into her luxuriant hair and turning her face up to his. "I love you so much ... — Judith McNaught

Just standing on the slope, waiting, I felt helplessly committed with the other two. I started hating the predicament, and then hating climbing, utterly and in general, and wishing myself out of it. — Peter Boardman

people who throw kisses are helplessly lazy — Bob Hope

She felt as if the world were tilting and she was clinging on helplessly, trying to keep from tumbling into a black abyss. — Cassandra Clare

I have reached far beyond my competence and have probably secured for good a reputation for flamboyant gestures. But the times still crowd me and give me no rest, and I see no way to avoid ambitious synthetic attempts; either we get some kind of grip on the accumulation of thought or we continue to wallow helplessly, to starve amidst plenty. So I gamble with science and write. — Ernest Becker

I love you," Bill said helplessly, as if he wished those magic words would heal me. But he knew they wouldn't.
"That's what you all keep saying," I answered. "But it doesn't seem to get me any happier. — Charlaine Harris

Everything started to move in slow motion. A vehicle was coming up the hill in the opposite direction, facing us but in its own lane. With vehicles parked on both sides of the road, this meant that there was just a narrow passage area for both vehicles to pass through. However, he had yet to reduce his speed, and now I knew which car he was going to hit. I was frozen stiff with fear in the front passenger seat, as I helplessly watched him slam into the back of a parked car. I was not wearing a seat belt, so upon impact my head crashed into the windshield. I was then slammed back into my seat, but with such force that everything went black. — Drexel Deal

i am confident i am over you. so much that some mornings i wake up with a smile on my face and my hands pressed together thanking the universe for pulling you out of me. thank god i cry. thank god you left. i would not be the empire i am today if you had stayed.

but then.

there are some nights i imagine what i might do if you showed up. how if you walked into the room this very second every awful thing you've ever done would be tossed out the closet window and all the love would rise up again. it would pour through my eyes as if it never really left in the first place. as if it's been practicing how to stay silent so long only so it could be this loud on your arrival. can someone explain that. how even when the love leaves. it doesn't leave. how even when i am so past you. i am so helplessly brought back to you. — Rupi Kaur

You don't have conversations with microprocessors. You tell them what to do, then helplessly watch the disaster when they take you literally! — David Brin

Demon?" Gwen gasped out. Her back jerked ramrod-straight, and her face leeched of
color. "Did you just say demon?"
Oh, uh ... did I say that?" Strider once again glanced around the plane helplessly. "No, no.
I think I said seaman. — Gena Showalter

Those drugs in our backpacks are important, but this" - I helplessly pointed to the paintings around us - " this is just as important. It's our heritage, our legacy, the sum of who we are. When this is gone, in a few months or years, a part of us will be lost forever. Civilization won't shine quite as bright. — Manel Loureiro

Domestic violence was a way of life in my home growing up, my brother and I watched helplessly numerous times as my mother was beaten and knocked unconscious while we dialed 911. — Troy Vincent

I'm helplessly and permanently a Red Sox fan. It was like first love ... You never forget. It's special. It's the first time I saw a ballpark. I'd thought nothing would ever replace cricket. Wow! Fenway Park at 7 o'clock in the evening. Oh, just, magic beyond magic: never got over that — Simon Schama

about. I looked around helplessly — Hana Schank

Yet this thou art alive, but if ye soar,
My poor frail heart will have beat out its cry
And sadly miss thy sweet form all the more
While helplessly I stand and watch you die. — Timothy Salter

We do not respect people's beliefs, we evaluate their reasons. If my reasons are good enough for believing what I believe, you will helplessly believe what I believe. I will give you my reasons and reasons are contagious. That is what it is to be a rational human being. — Sam Harris

Ela reached out for Grego. He refused to go to her. Instead he did exactly what Ender expected, what he had prepared for. Grego turned in Ender's relaxed grip, flung his arms around the neck of the speaker for the dead, and wept bitterly, hysterically. Ender spoke gently to the others, who watched helplessly. "How could he show his grief to you, when he thought you hated him?" "We never hated Grego," said Olhado. "I should have known," said Miro. "I knew he was suffering the worst pain of any of us, but it never occurred to me . . ." "Don't blame yourself," said Ender. "It's the kind of thing that only a stranger can see." He heard Jane whispering in his ear. "You never cease to amaze me, Andrew, the way you turn people into plasma. — Orson Scott Card

No one can teach writing, but classes may stimulate the urge to write. If you are born a writer, you will inevitably and helplessly write. A born writer has self-knowledge. Read, read, read. And if you are a fiction writer, don't confine yourself to reading fiction. Every writer is first a wide reader. — Cynthia Ozick

As his drove past the silhouettes of maple trees, stefan cringed from the memory that sprang up suddenly. He would not think that, he would not let himself... but the images were already unreeling before him. It was as if the journal had fallen open and he could do no more than stare helplessly at the page while the story played itself out in his mind... — L.J.Smith

Last night I dreamed about her," he said. "She had this shawl wrapped around her shoulders with tassels hanging off it, and her hair was long like old times. She said, 'Red, I want to learn every step of you, and dance till the end of the night.' " He stopped speaking. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. Denny and Stem stood with a screen balanced between them and looked at each other helplessly.

"Then I woke up," Red said after a minute. He stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. "I thought, 'This must mean I miss having her close attention, the way I've always been used to.' Then I woke up again, for real. Have either of you ever done that? Dreamed that you woke up, and then found you'd still been asleep? I woke up for real and I thought, 'Oh, boy. I see I've still got a long way to go with this.' Seems I haven't quite gotten over it, you know? — Anne Tyler

On one plane, the very great writers and the popular romancers of the lower order always meet. They use all of themselves, helplessly, unselectively. They are above the primness and good taste of declining to give themselves away. — V.S. Pritchett

A man awakes every morning
and instead of reading the newspaper
reads Act V of Othello.
He sips his coffee and is content
that this is the news he needs
as his wife looks on helplessly. — B.J. Ward

black-cloaked monsters chased after me. I shoved helplessly through the brittle pine trees, leafless branches clawing at my flesh. Snow flooded my sneakers, soaking higher and higher on my jeans with every step I took. — Jessica Sorensen

Cordelia shook her head helplessly. "You would. A vote. Right." She buried her face in her hands a moment, and sobbed a laugh. "Why?" she asked through her fingers. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I have been told to reason by the heart,
But heart, like head, leads helplessly;
I have been told to reason by the pulse,
And, when it quickens, alter the actions' pace — Dylan Thomas

When he could wait no longer, he levered his body over hers and entered her, his heavy shaft spreading her deliciously, pushing deep. The sway of the train rocked them exquisitely, the subtle hint of motion teasing her senses. Her inner muscles began to close on him helplessly, and he followed that secret rhythm, sensitive to her every need. — Lisa Kleypas

It doesn't matter whether you're the one having to douse a flame or helplessly watching it sputter. Either way, it goes out eventually. — Sarah Dessen

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man , more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.
'How do you get to West Egg village?' he asked helplessly.
I told him. Ans as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He has casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood. — F Scott Fitzgerald

In this world, family is the final, most elemental unit of power. A small group, helplessly bound together by blood with a shared set of skills and tools for consolidating power and subjugating others. — Joe Hill

Ours is the century of enforced travel of disappearances. The century of people helplessly seeing others, who were close to them, disappear over the horizon. — John Berger

Far away on the path we saw Sir Henry looking back, his face white in the moonlight, his hands raised in horror, glaring helplessly at the frightful thing which was hunting him down. But that cry of pain from the hound had blown all our fears to the winds. If he was vulnerable he was mortal, and if we could wound him we could kill him. Never have I seen a man run as Holmes ran that night. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Moses loved his relatives quite openly and even helplessly . . . It was childish of him; he knew that. He could only sigh at himself, that he should be so undeveloped on that significant side of his nature. — Saul Bellow

The internet, as its proponents rightly remind us, makes for variety and convenience; it does not force anything upon you. Only it turns out it doesn't feel like that at all. We don't feel as if we had freely chosen our online practices. We feel instead that they are habits we have helplessly picked up or that history has enforced, that we are not distributing our attention as we intend or even like to — Nicholas Carr

If you killl yourself, Comorra, it will wreck him. Utterly. Believe me on this one. So there you go - there's another casualty of war. And sure, in the grand scheme of things, whoop-dee-doo, who gives a crap about some dude's broken heart. But what about the not-so-grand scheme? Doesn't love count for something? Do you think all this ... this carnage would have happened if the Romans hadn't taken Prasutagus away from your mother? If she hadn't been so blinded by grief maybe she would have found a way to work things out with the governor instead of goading him to war." Clare shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe two people alone in the darkness can't generate enough light to drive it back. But maybe they can be a beacon for others. A candle in the window at midnight, you know? I mean, they can at least be there for each other, right? — Lesley Livingston

...But you, Lance, you've always needed someone special. And...I knew it was right when I met Tim. He needs you too, so much."

Lance just looked at her helplessly, unable to say anything.

"Oh, my dear son." She squeezed his hands. "He makes you dance. — Eli Easton

Setting her jaw, Whitney turned left. "This is a one-way street." He looked around helplessly. "Didn't you see the sign?" "I know it's a one-way street," she muttered and pressed harder on the gas. "It's also the quickest way across town." "Oh, Jesus. — Nora Roberts

His eyes re-focused on the page. He discovered that while he sat helplessly musing he had also been writing, as though by automatic action. And it was no longer the same cramped, awkward handwriting as before. His pen had slid voluptuously over the smooth paper, printing in large neat capitals
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER
DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER — George Orwell

Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul. — Joyce Carol Oates

That same night, I wrote my first short story. It took me thirty minutes. It was a dark little tale about a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms. — Khaled Hosseini

The intervening years are sucked down these acheronian halls like light into a black hole while you helplessly teeter upon the event horizon, where time is measured by the beating of a fly's wing in the stagnant air. — Rick Yancey

The unphilosophical majority among men are the ones most helplessly dependent on their era's dominant ideas. — Leonard Peikoff