High D'haran Quotes & Sayings

Decades of behavioral blunders and ill-conceived marriages and businesses run amok had left next to nothing by the time Leonard was in high school. He'd wangled himself an engineering scholarship to Cornell and then a job with Dow Chemical during a time he referred to, reverently, as the Dawn of the Absorbency Revolution. — Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney

I don't know if I'd call myself a prodigy, but I was a big forensics competitor in high school, and then during college I spent some time working at speech and debate camps as a coach. — Josh Gad

Wistfully, she says, "I wish I'd been in love more than once. I think you should fall in love at least twice in high school." Then she lets out a little sigh and falls asleep. Margot falls asleep like that
one dream sigh and she's off to never-never land, just like that. — Jenny Han

I played teen roles until high definition came out, and I could never understand it. I would go in for adult roles and be older than many of the people auditioning, but they'd cast the girl without a line on her face. — Selma Blair

Bob and Maria's kids, now grown and in high school and college, each have a quiet dignity and confidence. They also have an informal charm. [...] It is obvious they'd played the roles in the story their family was living, the roles of foreign dignitaries, traveling with their parents on the important assignment of asking world leaders what they hope in. Their STORY had given them their CHARACTER.

I only say this about the children because I used to believe charming people were charming because they were charming, or confident people were confident because they were confident. But all of this is, of course, circular. The truth is, we are all living out the character of the roles we have played in our stories. — Donald Miller

Deception wasn't Tricia's strongpoint. Not when she'd been seven and blamed Angelica for a vase she'd broken, nor when coming up with excuses to avoid dating high school jocks who couldn't spell, let alone comprehend, Sherlock Holmes. — Lorna Barrett

George!' [Horace] said, the relief evident in his voice. 'Are you all right?'
'No! I am not!' George replied with considerable spirit. 'I have a whacking great arrow stuck through my arm and it hurts like the very dickens! How could anybody be all right in those circumstances?' ...
'You saved my life, George,' Horace said gently ...
George grimaced. 'Well, if I'd known it was going to hurt like this, I wouldn't have! I would have just let them shoot you! Why do you live this way?' he demanded in a high-pitched voice. 'How can you bear it? This sort of thing is very, very painful. I always suspected that warriors are crazy. Now I know. — John Flanagan

Glass shattered, vampires roared, humans screamed. The noise battered at me, just as the tidal wave of scores of brains at high gear washed over me. When it began to taper off, I looked up into Eric's eyes. Incredibly, he was excited. He smiled at me. "I knew I'd get on top of you somehow," he said.
Are you trying to make me mad so I'll forget how scared I am?"
No, I'm just opportunistic."
I wiggled, trying to get out from under him, and he said, "Oh, do that again. It felt great. — Charlaine Harris

It didn't matter.
Carson wasn't the one for me. He wasn't even the one for right now. My life would hopefully have its great love story but this wasn't it. It would happen in D.C. in the next four years or it would happen in Africa, if I ever got there, or in Sienna or, for all I knew, Kentucky or Timbuktu.
Life was long.
And people only really had great love affairs in high school in the movies. And maybe during world wars. But this was not a movie and not a war, even if it sometimes felt that way. It was only high school and it was almost over with anyway. — Tara Altebrando

When David Fincher called me up a few years ago and said, 'Hey, I'd like you to score this film 'The Social Network,' I said, 'I'm flattered, but I really don't have any real experience scoring films, and I'd rather not screw it up on a high-profile project. And I like you and I don't want to compromise our friendship.' — Trent Reznor

The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war. — Stanley Crouch

Were I to be appointed Secretary of Education, I'd issue a prospectus for a compulsory nationwide high school course called 'The American Experience in Art.' — Terry Teachout

Long before a thermonuclear war can come about, we have had to lay waste our own sanity. We begin with the children. It is imperative to catch them in time. Without the most thorough and rapid brainwashing their dirty minds would see through our dirty tricks. Children are not yet fools, but we shall turn them into imbeciles like ourselves, with high I.Q.s if possible. — R.D. Laing

This was my world: a world of truly irrational behavior. We spend our way into the poorhouse. We buy giant TVs and iPads. Our children wear nice clothes thanks to high-interest credit cards and payday loans. We purchase homes we don't need, refinance them for more spending money, and declare bankruptcy, often leaving them full of garbage in our wake. Thrift is inimical to our being. We spend to pretend that we're upper class. And when the dust clears - when bankruptcy hits or a family member bails us out of our stupidity - there's nothing left over. Nothing for the kids' college tuition, no investment to grow our wealth, no rainy-day fund if someone loses her job. We know we shouldn't spend like this. Sometimes we beat ourselves up over it, but we do it anyway. — J.D. Vance

I think the fear of being seen as childish or crazy severely limits our enjoyment of the world around us, thus inducing a state of boredom that in turn gives rise to much of the stupidity and meanness that oftem seem to epitomize the human condtion. In fact, these ills merely signify that the dues we pay for adult respectability are far too high, and bring some 'benefits' of questionable value. — D. Patrick Miller

Richard either didn't hear me, or chose to ignore it. Smart, handsome, junior high science teacher, degree in preternatural biology, what more could i ask for? Give me a minute and I'd think of something. — Laurell K. Hamilton

There's a pizza place I want you to try, Ciccio's. You heard of it?"

"We can get good pizza on Fifth."

"No, you have to try this place, Matt. It's phenomenal."

"What's phenomenal, the pizza or the staff?" Since my divorce a few years ago, Scott - boss, friend, and eternal bachelor - had high hopes that I'd become his permanent wingman. It was impossible to talk him out of anything, especially when it involved women and food.

"You got me. You have to see this girl. We'll call it a work meeting. I'll put it on the company card." Scott was the type who talked about women a lot and about porn even more. He was severely out of touch with reality.

"I'm sure this qualifies as sexual harassment somewhere. — Renee Carlino

Colleges and universities, meanwhile, have no such qualms about torturing their applicants. Think about how much work a high-school student must do to even be considered for a spot at a decent college. The difference in college and job applications is especially striking when you consider that a job applicant will be getting paid upon acceptance while a college applicant will be paying for the privilege to attend. — Steven D. Levitt

I returned Zack's hug, and he slipped something into my pocket that felt like one of the vials I'd just bought. He stepped back, looked me earnestly in the eye, and said, "To protect you from the nudge."
Darryl high-fived him as he stepped out on the porch. It made Adam laugh. — Patricia Briggs

We should strengthen the faith of our people in their own future, the faith of every Canadian in Canada, and of every province in its sister province. This faith wrongs no one; burdens no one; menaces no one; dishonors no one; and, as it was said of old, faith moves mountains, so I venture reverently to express my own belief that if the difficulties of our future as a dominion were as high as the peaks of the Alps or Andes, yet that the pure patriotic faith of a united people would be all sufficient to overcome and ultimately to triumph over all such difficulties. — Thomas D'Arcy McGee

Astrid Dane. . . Her long colorless hair was woven back into a braid, and her porcelain skin bled straight into the edges of her tunic. Her entire outfit was fitted to her like armor; the collar of her shirt was high and rigid, guarding her throat, and the tunic itself ran from chin to wrist to waist, less out of a sense of modesty, Kell was sure, than protection. Below a gleaming silver belt, she wore fitted pants that tapered into tall boots (rumor had it that a man once spat at her for refusing to wear a dress; she'd cut off his lips). The only bits of color were the pale blue of her eyes and the greens and reds of the talismans that hung from her neck and wrists and were threaded through her hair. . .
"I smell something sweet," she said. She'd been gazing up at the ceiling. Now her eyes wandered
down and landed on Kell. "Hello, flower boy. — V.E Schwab

The more I pursue God, the more I realize that he is inherently different from us. He does not protect his possessions and hoard his toys. He does not look for
ways to make us jealous of him, though he, the God Most High, is jealous for us. — John D. Richardson

Stop complainin." Jess climbed up to the cab and leaned down to pull me up beside him. "I'm not complaining." His fingers clung to my wrists as the soles on my gray, canvas shoes slipped up the worn steps. "It's hot. I'm sweatin'. I don't want to go campin'," his voiced pitched high to mock me. — S.D. Hendrickson

She called me Nerdy because I wore glasses and read books and ate yogurt on my lunch break. I'm not really a nerd: I only aspire to be one. Because of the high-school-dropout thing, I'm a self-didact. (Not a dirty word, look it up.) I read constantly. I think. But I lack formal education. So I'm left with the feeling that I'm smarter than everyone around me but that if I ever got around really smart people - people who went to universities and drank wine and spoke Latin - that they'd be bored as hell by me. It's a lonely way to go through life. So I wear the name as a badge of honor. That someday I may not totally bore some really smart people. The question is: How do you find smart people? — Gillian Flynn

If you are going to start a regulatory regime from scratch, you'd design it to protect middle-and lower-middle-income people, because the opportunity for them to get ripped off was so high. Instead what we had was a regime where those were the people who were protected the least. — Michael Lewis

A few other couples joined us on the dance floor and we lost ourselves among them. I'd never been able to figure out exactly what was involved in slow dancing, so I contented myself, as I had since high school, with gripping my partner to me, letting out awkward breaths against her ear, and tipping from foot to foot like someone waiting for a bus. I could feel the sweat cooling on her forearms and smell a trace of apples in her hair. — Michael Chabon

Unfortunately, Bretorius had found mediocrity too high a bar. He had advanced in the fleet the old-fashioned way: he'd stuck around so long they had to give him a command, or muster him out. — John Jackson Miller

A man had said that to her once at the stage door. She'd been leaving after a theatre session, buzzing still with the high of performance, and he'd stopped her to say how much he'd enjoyed it. "You've a great talent for observation," he'd said. "Ears, eyes, and heart, all at once. — Kate Morton

I started a novel back in high school. It wasn't very good. It was the opposite of good. The writing itself wasn't too bad, and the characters were interesting. But the story was a mess, and it was full of fantasy cliches. Dwarf with an axe. Barbarian warrior. I don't ever think I'd bother finishing that. It's just not worth my time. — Patrick Rothfuss

The next day I was driven down to New York City to take the physical. It was one of the strangest things I'd ever seen. Several hundred young men, maybe even a thousand, in their skivvies, walking around an enormous room, all of us lost, dazed, and confused.
Some of these guys had dodged the draft and were there under the watchful eyes of dozens of federal marshals lined up against one of the walls. After eight hours of being poked, prodded, stuck, and poked again, I was given a large red envelope. I had been rejected. I had the respiratory problems of an old man, high blood pressure, partial loss of hearing, very bad teeth, very flat, very wide feet and I tested positive for tuberculosis.
"Frankly," the doctor said, "I don't know how the hell you're even standing up," and that was when the sergeant told me that if they bottled everything that was wrong with me "we could take over the world without a shot. — John William Tuohy

It was a morning for Ella Fitzgerald. There are fine things in the world, after all. Dignity, refinement, warmth and humour, where you'd never expect to find them. Even as an old woman, an amputee in a wheelchair, Ella sang like a girl who could still be at high school, falling in love for the first time. — David Mitchell

Meadows trim with daisies pied, Shallow brooks and rivers wide Towers and battlements it sees Bosom'd high in tufted trees, Where perhaps some beauty lies, The cynosure of neighboring eyes. — John Milton

Hey, asshole," Lash said to the sw'old-up one, "your boyfriend give you those p-tats? Or was he too busy fucking you in the ass?" The guy's eyes narrowed. "What'd you say to me?" The gangbanger shook his head. "Gotta be out ya damn mind, white boy." Skinhead laughed like a blender, high and fast. Who knew recruiting would be this easy, Lash thought. * — J.R. Ward

There is a line somewhere in Wozzeck that translates out to, roughly, 'The world is awful.' Yes, I said to myself as I shot across the Bay Bridge not giving a fuck how fast I drove, that sums it up. That is high art: 'The world is awful.' That says it all. This is what we pay composers and painters and the great writers to do: tell us this; from figuring this out, they earn a living. What a masterful, incisive insight. What penetrating intelligence. A rat in a drain ditch could tell you the same thing, were it able to talk. If rats could talk, I'd do anything they said. — Philip K. Dick

You will not easily get a man to believe that his carnal love for the woman he has made his wife is as high a love as that he feltfor his mother or sister. — D.H. Lawrence

I lit a candle in a Catholic church for the first time that afternoon. Me, a Presbyterian. I lit a candle in the warm, dark, waxy-smelling air of Saint Adelbert's. I put it beside the one that Mrs. Baker lit. I don't know what she prayed for, but I prayed that no atomic bomb would ever drop on Camillo Junior High or the Quaker meetinghouse or the old jail or Temple Emmanuel or Hicks Park or Saint Paul's Episcopal School or Saint Adelbert's. I prayed for Lieutenant Baker, missing in action somewhere in the jungles of Vietnam near Khesanh. I prayed for Danny Hupfer, sweating it out in Hebrew school right then. I prayed for my sister, driving in a yellow bug toward California - or maybe she was there already, trying to find herself. And I hoped that it was okay to pray for a bunch of things with one candle. — Gary D. Schmidt

When I was in high school, girls made fun of me for liking vampire movies. Now, I'd be their king. Time machine, where are you? — Dana Gould

How had things gone so terribly wrong? She wasn't supposed to be returning to Murdoch House in defeat, and she most certainly was not supposed to be returning alone.

Lilly should be there. And Gideon. High-handed, muleheaded, wonderful Gideon. She'd never admitted it, not even to herself, but a part of her had expected him to come back to Murdoch House with her. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say that no part of her had been able to imagine going back without him. — Alissa Johnson

With any free time I have, I'd take a high energy work out class at Soul Cycle, grab an outdoor bite somewhere by the beach and then finish it off by lounging at my pool. — Tia Mowry

More of a QUESTION: When I was in high school in the 1980's I read a book but cannot remember the name. It had a spooky green cover with a german shepherd like dog on it and I seem to remember it being about ghosts or something in the English countryside -although it could have been Irish or Wales or Scottish. Does anyone else remember this book and can you tell me the name? I would love to reread it since it set me on my path to my LOVE if reading. — M.D. Robinson

These solar poems sound very monotheistic, with the high god in his heaven; here we can see whence our traditional concepts of God come. These numinous notions are repeated in the Bible and are clearly related to, if not derived from, Babylonian, Canaanite, Egyptian and other sources, not arising as a result of unique "divine revelation" to the "chosen people. — D.M. Murdock

I'd like to explode a few myths about what we call classical music. It's not high art for the titillation of a chosen few. — Charles Hazlewood

How she wished she had Elizabeth to herself for a little so they could discuss what Henry's real intentions were and also how high and mighty Penelope had acted at lunch and what a tremendous insult it was that she'd come at all and did anyone really think she was beautiful with those oversize features anyway. — Anna Godbersen

I am thrilled with my fan base. For some reason some of them are quite young, so they are quite frightened. I remember when I did 'Click' and I'd see Adam Sandler's fan base. He's the guy that people feel that he's their best friend, so he's walking down the street and people sort of high five him and want to tell him a joke or invite him to come home and have a sandwich with them. Mine are not like that. Mine tend to go: 'Argh,' and look horrified. They shake and take a picture from a really long way away. I do feel I've got quite good, respectful ones though. — Colin Farrell

It was in his high school music class that he first became acquainted with a battered caramel-colored Stella Parlor. When Harlan raked his fingers over the six strings, his entire body vibrated. He'd never thought of himself as incomplete - one half of something he could name - but there it was, the very thing that had been missing from his young life. — Bernice L. McFadden

When I met you, my first thought was you were very pretty, great fuckin' eyes, but not my type. High-class which means high maintenance. Then you got pissed and that was it. Even if you hadn't been in that ditch, now you'd still be in my bed. So if you think this attitude is a turn off, baby you're wrong. — Kristen Ashley

Father, I do acknowledge and confess
That I this honor, I this pomp have brought
To Dagon, and advanc'd his praises high
among the Heathen round; to God have brought
Dishonor, obloquy, and op'd the mouths
Of Idolists, and Atheists
[ ... ]The anguish of my Soul, that suffers not
Mine eye to harbor sleep, or thoughts to rest.
This only hope relieves me, that the strife
With mee hath end. — John Milton

He smiled. "I suppose I thought we'd have a madly impractical, terrifyingly modern sort of marriage. One based on love. Not to mention dangerous undertakings and hair's-breadth escapes from burning buildings, high ledges and exploding sewers."
"And bickering."
"Always that, yes."
"Assuming I want to marry at all."
"True. I know of no good way of forcing you to do anything."
"And you're mad enough to think it could work - one day?"
He cupped her face in his hands. His smile was so brilliant it seemed to illuminate the room. "I think it would be heaven."
She trembled, then. "You have a very strange idea of heaven."
"Kiss me and see. — Y.S. Lee

I always knew when I graduated from high school, I'd go to college. I never thought about what I was walking away from ... I just wanted to study literature and writing. — Gaby Hoffmann

She gave Pretty Boy a surreptitious glance. Did he honestly expect her to believe he was gay? True, there were the gay boots and those stunning good looks. But, even so, he blasted enough heterosexual mega-wattage to light up the entire female population. Which he'd undoubtedly been doing since he shot out of the birth canal, glimpsed his reflection in the obstetrician's eyeglasses, and gave the world a high five. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I'd wanted to be a writer since I was knee-high. Once I knew that books were written by people and didn't just happen, it was obviously that I would write them, too. — Jon Spaihts

Welcome to Tartarus, the griffin said. The first time I'd arrived in Tartarus, I'd expected them to have screechy, high-pitched bird voices, and when they spoke in their own language to one another, it did sound like birds chirping, with the occasional low growl. But when speaking in a human tongue, they copied the accent of the language and spoke in a much lower humanlike tone, which gave the slightly weird side effect of them all having British accents when they spoke English. — Steve McHugh

We're guessing at our future opportunity cost. Warrenis guessing that he'll have the opportunity to put capital out at high rates of return, so he's not willing to put it out at less than 10% now. But if we knew interest rates would stay at 1%, we'd change. Our hurdles reflect our estimate of future opportunity costs. — Charlie Munger

I'd tax the Daily Mail [if I were a Prime Minister] so high no one could afford to buy it. I hate that paper, I think it's really vicious. I picked one up the other day and every single page is about hate. It's just so negative. — Jason Flemyng

Ofttimes a very small man can cast a very large shadow.
Tyrion smiled. Lord Varys, I am growing strangely fond of you. I may kill you yet, but I think I'd feel sad about it.
I will take that as high praise. — George R R Martin

He'd had his own book published, Across the High Frontier - the one years before The Right Stuff or Yeager! - so he wasn't shy when it came to publicity. — Donald K. Slayton

I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sidestepped the army with a 4-F on the grounds of mental instability, went back to school, made a go of it, entered a Ph.D. program in nineteenth-century British literature, sat in the front row, took notes assiduously, bought a pair of horn-rims, and quit on the eve of my comprehensive exams. I got married, separated, divorced. Quit smoking, quit jogging, quit eating red meat. I quit jobs: digging graves, pumping gas, selling insurance, showing pornographic films in an art theater in Boston. When I was nineteen I made frantic love to a pinch-faced, sack-bosomed girl I'd known from high school. She got pregnant. I quit town. — T.C. Boyle

Everybody's got to do something ... I'd been on my own since an early age and I thought I better find something to do to buy biscuits and stuff. From high school onwards I was earning my way with photography, one way or another, working in darkrooms and taking pictures of weddings, neighbors' children and so on. — Elliott Erwitt

I'd make a terrible surgeon. The fear of blood? Very high on my list. — Kristen Wiig

She'd said that revenge was not sweet, that it was bloody. She was wrong. It *was* sweet. For one fleeting, glorious moment you felt incredible satisfaction. Then it was gone, empty, and you had to go on living. The power high that filled me with her light had faded, and all I tasted now were bitter ashes. — Sunny

I need to address my people, and I need to look the part. I will walk out onto the balcony with my head held high, fulfilling the fantasy I'd had as a little girl in my father's home. — Marie Lu

Rhys casually released me with a flick of his tongue over my bottom lip as a crowd of High Fae appeared behind Amarantha and chimed in with her laughter. Rhysand gave them a lazy, self-indulgent grin and bowed. But something sparked in the queen's eyes as she looked at Rhysand. Amarantha's whore, they'd called him. — Sarah J. Maas

Years passed. The trees in our yard grew taller. I watched my family and my friends and neighbors, the teachers whom I'd had or imaged having, the high school I had dreamed about. As I sat in the gazebo I would pretend instead that I was sitting on the topmost branch of the maple under which my brother had swallowed a stick and still played hide-and-seek with Nate, or I would perch on the railing of a stairwell in New York and wait for Ruth to pass near. I would study with Ray. Drive the Pacific Coast Highway on a warm afternoon of salty air with my mother. But I would end each day with my father in his den.
I would lay these photographs down in my mind, those gathered from my constant watching, and I could trace how one thing- my death- connected these images to a single source. No one could have predicted how my loss would change small moments on Earth. But I held on to those moments, hoarded them. None of them were lost as long as I was there. — Alice Sebold

They live, we sleep, we starve, they eat. You must comply with their deceit, don't trust the wolves to guard the sheep. They'll colonize when you close your eyes into a superpower that will never die. — Trevor D. Richardson

I definitely straddled the line and hung out with high-school dirtbags. I'd tell my parents I was spending the night at my friend's but actually go to Philly and see a show at Starlight Ballroom. I would drink and do all that stuff, but I didn't set any barns on fire. — Daughn Gibson

With the high stress of life many people find that their mind is constantly racing. They cannot stop from thinking even during time away from work or school, when they'd like to be relaxing. Subsequently, they may also feel associated physical tension in their bodies. In this case, the mind and the body are very closely connected to the stress response. — Tim McCarthy

I loved the High Line when it was just mine, when I was the only person up there, and I had a private park in New York City. I had to make an appointment to see it ... I'd walk around. I was all alone. — Joel Sternfeld

It made economic sense, if you looked at it from the right angle; it was not in the Clan's interest for the price of the commodity they shifted to drop - and drop it surely would, if it was legalized or if the pressure to keep up the war on drugs ever slackened. But for Mike Fleming, who'd willingly given the best years of his life to the DEA, it was a deeply unsettling idea; nauseating, even. Bought and sold: We're doing the dealers' work for them, keeping prices high. — Charles Stross

Big D. November '63. He was there that Big Weekend. He caught the Big Moment and took this Big Ride.
He was a sergeant on Vegas PD. He was married. He had a chemistry degree. His father was a big Mormon fat cat. Wayne Senior was jungled up all over the nut Right. He did Klan ops for Mr. Hoover and Dwight Holly. He pushed high-line hate tracts. He rode the far-Right zeitgeist and stayed in the know. He knew about the JFK hit. It was multi-faction: Cuban exiles, rogue CIA, mob. Senior bought Junior a ticket to ride.
Extradition job with one caveat: kill the extraditee. — James Ellroy

Nobody fights with Jerry because you know the price would be too high. You might come out the winner, at his age, you might even lick him, but you'd lose an eye, an arm, your testicles in the process, everything would be gone. — Frank Layden

When I was in high school, I read the whole thing about Don King and he had this quote that said, "Set yourself on fire and the world will pay to watch you burn." I thought that was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard and I wrote it on my wall. — Anthony Mackie

We come from a country that has made a fetish if not a virtue out of proving it can live without art: high, low, old, new, fat, lean, and particularly the rarely visible nocturnal art of poetry.
We must do something with our time on this small aleatory sphere for motives other than money. Power is not an acceptable surrogate. — C.D. Wright

Imagine the spirit as a mansion. You'll guess we don't use many rooms. Apart from a few moments in childhood we don't dance around it in sunlight. But there's a traffic of things in and out, and what happens is that unwanted bulks can gather inside. Gather and gather, menacing us. Unable to shift them, we hide in ever-smaller spaces. And in our last hole, life offers a choice: to play out our demise in parallel theatres - psychosis, zealotry, religion, cancer, addiction - or to bow quietly out. But beware: life doesn't ask these high questions when we're confident and fresh - it waits for hopelessness. — D.B.C. Pierre

I've had to work by myself at combines before and forced myself to work out alone all the way back to high school. You have to be self-motivated. — D'Brickashaw Ferguson

What is your collective GPA for this year?"
"Not as high as I'd like it to be."
Freud steepled his fingers in front of his mouth. "What about your parents?"
"I don't know. They haven't been in school for a while. — Nenia Campbell

I'd actually been making my living as an organist with bands since I was probably 15 or 16 years old, and then as a senior in high school I put together a jazz quintet called The Bobby Mack Jazz Quintet. — Bobby McFerrin

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades High over-arch'd imbower. — John Milton

He sings, "I'm in Mississippi, with mud all in my shoes / My girl in Louisiana with those high water blues." Later he says, "Listen here, you men, / one more thing I'd like to say / Ain't no womens out here, for they all got washed away. — Tom Franklin

This two-bit bar, this worn-out town, just a speck in the middle of a lonely grassy prairie with the stony hills beyond, the small fix-it-yourself house I'd bought for us - that was all ours, our world, our high life. It wasn't name-brand, shiny, or white picket fences, but none of that mattered. As long as we were together, it was good, it was clean, it was ours. — Cat Porter

There could not be a manor house. There had never been a manor house anywhere near Lostfarthing. Nobles did not come to Lostfarthing. It was not possible for a noble to disgrace themselves badly enough to be exiled this far east. The Duke of Entwood had been convicted of black magic, cannibalism, and high treason, and while he'd been burned at the stake, his heirs had only been sent as far east as Blue Lady, which was still two day's travel west of Skypepper. — T. Kingfisher

When I was a child, my father used to encourage my brother and me to fail. At the dinner table, instead of asking about the best part of our day, he would ask us what we failed at that week. If we didn't have something to tell him, he would be disappointed. When we shared whatever failure we'd endured, he'd high-five us and say, 'Way to go!' The gift my father gave us by doing this was redefining what failure truly meant. — Sara Blakely

The accused rapist, Calvin Smith, had graduated from a small-town high school the previous June, where he'd distinguished himself as an athlete. Individuals who knew Smith have described him as "kind," "easygoing," and "goofy." But he had never had sex before meeting Kaitlynn Kelly, and a look at what he has posted on a social media site suggests that he was a frustrated, involuntary celibate. On January 11, 2011, Smith posted a line from the animated sitcom Family Guy on his Facebook page: "women are not people god just put them here for mans entertainment. — Jon Krakauer

You must be Sara." Lucas extended his hand.
Sara slipped her hand into Lucas's. "That's me. And you are?"
"Lucas Parker, Kylie's boyfriend."
Boyfriend? Kylie's breath caught. The water slipping down her throat went down the wrong pipe. She started coughing so hard, the sound bounced around the high beams of the dining hall. If that wasn't bad enough, her mom, who'd been sipping on a diet soda, did the same thing.
Crap! If there was one person in the dining hall who hadn't already stared at them, they did now. — C.C. Hunter

I'll have to think about it, but I can do that," Taryn said. "Of course you can," Dannon said. "But don't think about ways to trick them or outsmart them. Just focus on your ignorance. You don't know anything, but you're willing to speculate, and you'd like some information from them - to hear what they think." "What about you and Carver?" "We can handle it," Dannon said. "We've spent half our lives lying to cops, of one kind or another. Nobody else on the staff knows. Might not be a bad idea for us to stay away completely . . . unless they ask for us." "Let's do that," Taryn said. "Maybe you two could start doing some advance security work." "I'll talk to Ron," Dannon said. He heard high heels, and said, "Here comes Alice. — John Sandford

She thought she'd hate it, this huge, faceless city far from home, but the opposite was true: she felt nothing but relief. The heedless sprawl of Denver, its chaotic snarl of subdivisions and freeways; the openness of the high plains and the indifferent mountains; the way people talked to each other, easily, without pretense, and the fact that nearly everyone was from somewhere else: exiles, like her. — Justin Cronin

Baby Kochamma grudged them their moments of high happiness when a dragonfly they'd caught lifted a small stone off their palms with its legs, or when they had permission to bathe the pigs, or they found an egg hot form a hen. But most of all, she grudged them the comfort they drew from each other. She expected from them some token unhappiness. At the very least. — Arundhati Roy

I'd like to see the high schools put in a rule that limits recruitable athletes from playing on teams outside a 100-mile radius from their home or school. — Dean Smith

His mouth was a little too wide and snaked from corner to corner. His nose had been broken a few times, and when you looked at him straight on like I was doing as I stared at him across the circle bar, you could really tell. But his eyes were beautiful, cunning and otherworldly. His hair was a controlled mess; wispy dark strands that swooped across his forehead with long sideburns. He had high cheekbones, a strong jawline. When you combined all the parts, they equaled so much more than the sum. He was exotically, dangerously beautiful.
He'd been mine once. He'd broken my heart once.
And he was here to kill me. He only needed to do that once, too. — Karina Halle

Come hell or high water you will never take me back to the place I was before. I have been through too much to let life whoop me again. My faith is stronger than it's ever been, my mind is more tenacious than it's ever been, my soul is more absolute. — T.D. Jakes

And in that unlikely moment, as she held his dagger poised high, ready to strike, Royce Westmoreland thought she was the most magnificent creature he'd ever beheld; a wild, beautiful, enraged angel of retribution, her chest rising and falling with fury as she courageously confronted an enemy who towered over her. — Judith McNaught

The lectures you deliver
may be wise and true,
But I'd rather get my lessons
by observing what you do.
I may not understand
the high advise you like to give,
But there's no misunderstanding
how you act and how you live. — Edgar Guest

When Sadik lost his own lease, we moved in together. And after a few months of closer scrutiny, he began to realize that the city had indeed had an effect on me, although not the one he'd expected. I stopped getting high. I ran three miles a day and fasted on Sundays. For the first time in years, I applied myself to my studies and started keeping a journal of daily reflections and very bad poetry. — Barack Obama

If someone had told me in high school that one day I'd write an historical novel, I would have rolled my eyes. — Nancy Horan

The first discipline is the realization that there is a discipline - -that all art begins and ends with discipline, that any art is first and foremost a craft. We have gone far enough on the road to self-indulgence now to know that. The man who announces to the world that he is going to "do his thing" is like the amateur on the high-diving platform who flings himself into the void shouting at the judges that he is going to do whatever comes naturally. He will land on his ass. Naturally. You'd think, to listen to the loudspeakers that surround us, that no man had ever tried to "do his thing" before. Every poet worth reading has, but those really worth reading have understood that to do your thing you have to learn first what your thing is and second how to go about doing it. — Archibald MacLeish

However, at the end of the night I saw Nick stomping out to the car park, obviously in a terrible mood. They take their lives so seriously, these young people. "Just appreciate the fact that you can stomp so energetically," I wanted to say to him. I'd pay a million dollars to be Alice and Elisabeth's age again for just one day. I'd dance like Olivia's butterfly and bite into crisp green apples and run across hot sand into the surf, and I'd walk, as far as I wanted, wherever I wanted, in big loping, leaping strides, with my head held high and my lungs filling with air. — Liane Moriarty

Yeah," Chaz says. "You know, when you packed up all your stuff and left his ass high and dry, I thought finally. A woman with some moral fiber. Little did I know that all he'd need to win you back was a big diamond ring and few crocodile tears. I really expected bigger things from you, Lizzie. Tell me something. Are you going to wait until the invitations have actually gone out before you admit to yourself that Luke is that last guy you ought to be spending the rest of your life with? Or are you going to do the right thing and call if off now? — Meg Cabot

Last year CNN brought me on live TV to discuss a proposal to create "kid-free planes," and I explained if we were really going to start segregating passengers I'd prefer to ride in an "a-hole-free plane" because babies almost never ask you to join the Mile-High Club, or clip their toenails while in flight, or do any of a plethora of horrible things I've witnessed from others. — Jenny Lawson

When I was in high school, if my favorite band got too popular, I'd watch carefully. — Mike Shinoda

My high-tech aversion caused me to make fun of the typical biotech enterprise: $100 million in cash from selling shares, one hundred Ph.D.'s, 99 microscopes, and zero revenues. — Peter Lynch

He walked as he'd learned to walk, with only a minimal limp, back straight, head held high in confidence rather than cockiness. He walked like a man who had learned to lean into God for whatever strenth he needed. — Robin Lee Hatcher