How Far You Came Quotes & Sayings

No matter how far you go, if you can't go back to the essence, you're not sayin' nothin'. The essence for me is hip-hop. But the hip-hop community I came up in isn't a loyal community. — Wyclef Jean

Vodou says, there's God, sure, Gran Met, but He's big, too big and too far away to worry Himself if your ass is poor, or you can't get laid. Come on, man, you know how this works, it's street religion, came out of a dirt-poor place a million years ago. Vodou's like the street. Some duster chops out your sister, you don't go camp on the Yakuza's doorstep, do you? No way. You go to somebody, though, who can get the thing done. — William Gibson

That boulder did what it was there to do. Boulders fall. That's their nature. It did the only natural thing it could do. It was set up, but it was waiting for you. Without you coming along and pulling it, it would still be stuck where it had been for who knows how long. You did this, Aron. You created it. You chose to come here today; you chose to do this descent into the slot canyon by yourself. You chose not to tell anyone where you were going. You chose to turn away from the women who were there to keep you from getting in this trouble. You created this accident. You wanted it to be like this. You have been heading for this situation for a long time. Look how far you came to find this spot. It's not that you're getting what you deserve - you're getting what you wanted. — Aron Ralston

Daughter of Eve from the far land of Spare Oom where eternal summer reigns around the bright city of War Drobe, how would it be if you came and had tea with me? — C.S. Lewis

I was young and beginning to study the Bible for myself and, in the process, came to believe that I held a volatile document in my hands-one that had the potential to destroy all religion from the inside out. — Bruxy Cavey

Listen to me, Defecates-with-Pigeons. Long before any of you came here, we dream'd of you. All the people, even Nations far to the South and the West, dreamt you before ever we saw you, - we believ'd that you came from some other World, or the Sky. You had Powers and we respected them. Yet you never dream'd of us, and when at last you saw us, wish'd only to destroy us. Then the killing started, - some of you, some of us, - but not nearly as many as we'd been expecting. You could not be the Giants of long ago, who would simply have wip'd us away, and for less. Instead, you sold us your Powers, - your Rifles, - as if encouraging us to shoot at you, - and so we did, tho' not hitting as many of you, as you were expecting. Now you begin to believe that we have come from elsewhere, possessing Powers you do not - Those of us who knew how, have fled into Refuge in your Dreams, at last. Tho' we now pursue real lives no different at their Hearts from yours, we are also your Dreams. — Thomas Pynchon

Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't ( ... ) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories. — Douglas Coupland

Sugar," Tara said in a voice that was pure Pissed-Off South. "You need to go far, far away."
A few weeks ago, he'd have taken that to mean she didn't want to see his face within a six-hundred-mile radius. Now he knew the truth. He distracted her. He could live with that. "Came to see if I can help."
"I think I know how to make burgers," she said smoothly. "But bless your heart."
In other words, f*** off and die. — Jill Shalvis

The fastest I ever did that was when Kill the Moonlight came out after Girls Can Tell, and I remember both labels I was working with at the time saying, "If this was any other period, I would probably say this is too fast, but because this is first time anybody has ever paid attention to Spoon, let's keep it on an upward trajectory." — John Britt Daniel

As a kid, I had the worst mile time ever. Our gym teacher made us run the mile a few times a year for something called the Presidential Fitness Test. I'd huff and puff and wonder why the hell President Bush cared how fast I could run laps around the playground. I always came in dead last. — Miranda Kenneally

If you are a long-time reader, then you know the story thus far. You were there when the Alma Alerons first arrived at Hogwarts in their peculiar flying cars. You know how the new Hogwarts headmaster came to be, and what his story is. You know all about the Gremlins - including Ted Lupin's dark secret, and Petra Morganstern's tragic past. You witnessed the raising of the Wocket, the return of the Gatekeeper, and the Hogwarts all-school debate. In short, you are prepared (as much as you can be) for what is to come. — G. Norman Lippert

I won't waste your time with the injuries of my childhood, with my loneliness, or the fear and sadness of the years I spent inside the bitter capsule of my parents' marriage, under the reign of my father's rage, after all, who isn't a survivor from the wreck of a childhood? I have no desire to describe mine; I only want to say that in order to survive the dark and often terrifying passage of my life I came to believe certain things about myself. — Nicole Krauss

Yakov spent the whole day playing his fiddle; when it got completely dark, he took the notebook in which he recorded his losses daily, and out of boredom began adding up the yearly total. It came to over a thousand roubles. This astounded him so much that he flung the abacus to the floor and stamped his feet. Then he picked up the abacus, again clicked away for a long time, and sighed deeply and tensely. His face was purple and wet with sweat. He thought that if he could have put that lost thousand roubles in the bank, he would have earned at least forty roubles a year in interest. And therefore those forty roubles were a loss. In short, wherever you turned, there was nothing but losses everywhere.
- Rothchild's Fiddle — Anton Chekhov

My Italian granny and my mother made great spaghetti, but it wasn't a kind of southern Italian, Godfather-esque kind of thing - it was a wonderful, big mixing pot of all kinds of people - when you came home from school and your mum wasn't in, there were lots of people you could go to. — Peter Capaldi

Just as the English missionaries discovered when they came to India, there was no better way to carry Christ's love than through stupes and poultices, liniments and dressings, cleansing and comfort. — Abraham Verghese

Charles, a footman who had once worked on his father's farm and who loved animals, appeared and came over to help her prepare dishes of boiled chicken and brown rice for the cats and dogs waiting eagerly at their feet.
When guests were staying, Charles often assisted with the care of her furry brood. Without asking, he set to work, even taking a few moments to gather fresh meat scraps for Aeolus, her wounded hawk, and cut-up apple and beetroots for Poppy, a convalescing rabbit who had an injured leg. He gave her several more apple quarters for the horses, who got jealous if she didn't bring them treats as well.
Once all her cats and dogs were fed, Esme set off for the stables, laden pail in hand, Burr trotting at her heels. She stopped along the way to chat with the gardener and his assistant, who gave her some timothy grass, comfrey and lavender to supplement the hay she regularly fed Poppy. — Tracy Anne Warren

Scully, you're a doctor, for God's sake. You gonna tell me you actually go along with this s
?' [said the Sheriff].
Mulder held his breath.
'Sheriff,' [Scully] answered in her most official, neutral voice. 'I have never known Mulder to be so far off-base that I would dismiss everything he says out of hand.' ...
Thank you Scully, Mulder thought with a brief smile. I'd rather have a resounding 'Absolutely and how dare you,' but that'll do in a pinch.
On the other hand, the day that 'Absolutely and how dare you' actually came, it would probably kill him with amazement. — Charles Grant

There is a major turning point in life when you have to decide: shall I grow old gracefully or shall I try everything to stem the tide? For me, that point came in 2001, when I stopped dyeing my hair. — Nik Kershaw

Basically, my socialization as a child didn't come from any schooling; it came from being in theater and meeting people online. — Felicia Day

Well how do you know we ain't Negroes?"
"Uncle Jack Finch says we really don't know. He says as far as he can trace back the Finches we ain't, but for all he knows we mighta come straight out of Ethiopia durin' the Old Testament."
"Well if we came out durin' the Old Testament it's too long ago to matter."
"That's what I thought," said Jem, "but around here once you have a drop of Negro blood, that makes you all black. — Harper Lee

What I said was that I was at first supportive of Bernie [Sanders] when he came to Los Angeles for his first rally, I was there, I was supportive. — Tom Hayden

And there is enchantment in the very hour I am now spending with you. Who can tell what a dark, dreary, hopeless life I have dragged on for months past? Doing nothing, expecting nothing; merging night in day; feeling but the sensation of cold when I let the fire go out, of hunger when I forgot to eat: and then a ceaseless sorrow, and, at times, a very delirium of desire to behold my Jane again. Yes: for her restoration I longed, far more than for that of my lost sight. How can it be that Jane is with me, and says she loves me? Will she not depart as suddenly as she came? To-morrow, I fear I shall find her no more. — Charlotte Bronte

Something was happening to the five, however. Battered by the chance collision of several billion molecules, the die flipped onto a point, spun gently and came down a seven. Blind Io picked up the cube and counted the sides. "Come on," he said wearily. "Play fair. — Terry Pratchett

There came a point when I wanted to do television, and I didn't think the Afro was going to play, so I made a very difficult choice - to straighten my hair. — Jami Floyd

And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached. — Rick Riordan

From out of nowhere, she had an image of some poor human in a FedEx Office branch getting an eyeful and a half of the mostly naked fallen angel.
Without warning, she started to laugh so hard, tears came to her eyes. The good kind of tears, that was.
And as she gave herself up to the angel's ridiculousness, Lass just say there on the couch, staring up at "Melrose Place", a sly, quiet smile on his beautiful, deranged face.
What an angel he was, she thought to herself. A total angel. — J.R. Ward

I just don't understand how you can get so much comfort from a religion whose language does so much harm." ... I realized that what troubled me most was her use of the word "comfort," so in my reply I addressed that first. I said that I didn't think it was comfort I was seeking, or comfort that I'd found. Look, I said to her, as a rush of words came to me. As far as I'm concerned, this religion has saved my life, my husband's life, and our marriage. So it's not comfort that I'm talking about but salvation. — Kathleen Norris

Jack and Jill came to the hill
on a grave and somber mission
you've made them mad
the time's so bad
to be a politician"
"Jack and Jill came to hill
to do some deadly deeds
they weren't far wrong
to judge how long
a bleeding liberal bleeds. — James Patterson

Other clubs never came into my thoughts once I knew Arsenal wanted to sign me. — Dennis Bergkamp

Okay, maybe it didn't get that close and it didn't move that much, but it still came toward me, and if you've been chased by an alligator at any distance or speed, I don't think people should get all 'But how far was it? And how fast was it going? — Maureen Johnson

In the 1920s, a generation before the coming of solid-state electronics, one could look at the circuits and see how the electron stream flowed. Radios had valves, as though electricity were a fluid to be diverted by plumbing. With the click of the knob came a significant hiss and hum, just at the edge of audibility. — James Gleick

He sighed. "Why are you sitting out here? If you came this far, why don't you go in and see her? She knows you're here, after all."
My head snapped up. "She's awake?"
I watched Darren turn to look at me, a sad smile on his lips. "No, not yet."
"Then how do you know she knows?"
"Her heart rate's been steady all day. It picked up about fifteen minutes ago," he said, then quirked his brow. "How long have you been sitting out here?"
I stared up at him in wide-eyed shock. "About fifteen minutes."
"That's what I thought. — K.I. Lynn

Always remember that with privilege comes responsibility. You must go to Casa Azul and see the place you came from. Only then will you be able to understand how far you've come. — Sandra Rodriguez Barron

No matter how far they traveled, they always had this house to welcome them home." "True. Did you ever wonder why they altered it so often?" "Miss Everleigh says they were innovators. Visionaries." He glanced at her, the firelight shadowing his face. "They kept knocking down the walls. Expanding them, making new routes for egress. Not much innovation in that. As visions go, it's the dream of claustrophobics." The notion unsettled her. "What do you mean to say?" "I mean, they traveled to escape this place." He reached for the bottle, splashed more liquor into his glass. Set down the bottle and stared at it. "Came back very reluctantly, already itching to leave again." She did not like that idea. "It was their home. They were a famously loving family - " "It's a house," he said. "That doesn't make it a home. And family - yes, family is important. But it can trap you more neatly than four walls and a locked door." Her — Meredith Duran

The villagers marked the time in two ways: before the swamp and after. What came before was good. And all that came after was not. — Melanie Crowder

I s'pose you know - though I can see you're a Westerner by your talk - what a lot our New England ships used to have to do with queer ports in Africa, Asia, the South Seas, and everywhere else, and what queer kinds of people they sometimes brought back with 'em. You've probably heard about the Salem man that came home with a Chinese wife, and maybe you know there's still a bunch of Fiji Islanders somewhere around Cape Cod. — H.P. Lovecraft

I would say that when I came into this chapter of my filmmaking career, starting with 'The Fighter,' there was this sense that you have to go from your instincts and you have to go from your gut, and you have to not hesitate and you have to not hedge. — David O. Russell

No outcome is certain, even when it seems so. Fates can change with the swing of a bat, or the flip of a switch, or the closing of a circuit.
It all came down to how far you dared to go to accomplish what the world thinks can't be done. — Neal Shusterman

I soon found an opportunity to be introduced to a famous professor Johann Bernoulli ... True, he was very busy and so refused flatly to give me private lessons; but he gave me much more valuable advice to start reading more difficult mathematical books on my own and to study them as diligently as I could; if I came across some obstacle or difficulty, I was given permission to visit him freely every Sunday afternoon and he kindly explained to me everything I could not understand ... — Leonhard Euler

We had a $10 billion budget deficit when we got here in January of 2003. We cut that budget deficit; we did not raise taxes; we came back in '05, and we had an $8 billion surplus. That's how fast it can happen. — Rick Perry

You may not believe in evolution, and that's all right. How we humans came to be the way we are is far less important that how we should act now to get out of the mess we have made for ourselves. — Jane Goodall

It was really rather wretched that you couldn't will yourself to fall in love, for the very effort can keep falling at bay. Nor could you will yourself to stay that way. Least of all could you will yourself NOT to fall in love, for thus far whatever meager resistance she had put up had only made the compulsion more intense. So you were perpetually tyrannized by a feeling that came and went as it pleased, like a cat with its own pet door. How much more agreeable, if love were something that you stirred up from a reliable recipe, or elected, however perversely, to pour down the drain. Still, there was nothing for it. The popular expression notwithstanding, love was not something you made. Nor could you dispose of the stuff once manifested because it was inconvenient, or even because it was wicked, and ruining your life, and, by the by, someone else's. — Lionel Shriver

I was at a dinner party with a group of people, and we were talking about fake names. You know, how its difficult to come up with a really great fake name. Its a very specific type of gift. You don't want to go too far into the silly, and you don't want to go too far into the banal. I always thought one of the funniest names ever was Gern Blanston, which came from a Steve Martin routine on one of his early records. — Paul Rudd

It was always better to have friends in low places, often far better, than having them in high places. At least when it came to Sorilla's line of work. Friends in high places tended to forget your name as soon as things got inconvenient, but she'd been consistently surprised by how loyal thugs and thieves could be in the right circumstances. They might literally stab you in the back, true, but they'd never just forget your name and ignore you in a crisis. Sorilla learned a long time past that she preferred an honest betrayal over a political one. — Evan Currie

Will you tell them about that far off and mythical land And how a child to the virgin came? Will you tell them that the reason why we murdered Everything upon the surface of the world Is so we can stand right up and say we did it in his name? — Andy Partridge

Baseball is the slow creation of something beautiful. It is the almost boringly paced accumulation of what seems slight or incidental into an opera of bracing suspense. The game will threaten never to end, until suddenly it forces you to marvel at how it came to be where it is and to wonder at how far it might go. It's the drowsy metamorphosis of the dull into the indescribable. — Joshua Ferris

Where are you going?" Millie whispered, although why she was whispering was a bit of a mystery since the sound of yelling, along with a lot of cursing, was flowing into the house. "I'm not just going to sit here while everyone else is fighting my battle." She made it all the way to the door, crawling on her stomach, no less, before she was forced to stop when she encountered a pair of shoes. They were nice shoes, a little dusty, and unfortunately, they belonged to none other than Bram. "You weren't trying to sneak out to help, were you?" he asked, squatting down next to her. "I might have been." "There's no need. Silas has been secured." Lucetta frowned. "He came down here on his own?" Holding out a hand, Bram helped her to her feet before he smiled. "Apparently, yes. I imagine those women he hired weren't too keen to travel the country with him. Aiding and abetting men on the run usually results in a stint behind bars, and they must have decided he wasn't worth that." "I — Jen Turano

Voodou isn't like that. It isn't concerned with notions of salvation and transcendence. What it's about is getting things done. You follow me? In out system, there are many gods, spirits. Part of one big family, with all the virtues, all the vices. There's a ritual tradition of communal manifestation, understand? Voodou says, there's a God, sure, Gran Met, but He's big, too big and too far away to worry Himself if your ass is poor, or you can't get laid. Come on, man, you know how this works, it's street religion, came out of dirt poor places a million years ago. Voodou's like the street. Some duster chops out your sister, you don't go camp on the Yakuza's doorstep, do you? No way. You go to somebody, though, who can get the thing done. Right? — William Gibson

[Religious belief is] outmoded and ridiculous. [Belief in gods was a] worn out but once useful crutch in mankind's journey towards truth. We consider the time has come for that crutch to be abandoned.
It is a vacuous answer ... To say that 'God made the world' is simply a more or less sophisticated way of saying that we don't understand how the universe originated. A god, in so far as it is anything, is an admission of ignorance.
Religion utterly failed to provide an explanation of the biosphere other than that 'God made it all'. Then Darwin thundered over the horizon and in a few decades of observation and thought ... arrived at an answer.
I regard teaching religion as purveying lies. I came here today to de-corrupt you all. — Peter Atkins

You will, once again, have to save me from myself. You have done that, you know." "Saved you?" "My Persephone," he whispered in her ear. "Do you know I would have come for you no matter how far you'd gone?" "Hades always came for Persephone," she echoed his earlier explanation. He lightly kissed her again. "And she always returned home." "Always," Persephone repeated. "Always. — Sarah M. Eden

How far back his treachery goes, who can guess?' said Gandalf. 'He was not always evil. Once I do not doubt that he was the friend of Rohan; and even when his heart grew colder, he found you useful still. But for long now he has plotted your ruin, wearing the mask of friendship, until he was ready. In those years Wormtongue's task was easy, and all that you did was swiftly known in Isengard; for your land was open, and strangers came and went. And ever Wormtongue's whispering was in your ears, poisoning your thought, chilling your heart, weakening your limbs, while others watched and could do nothing, for your will was in his keeping. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I played eight years without really being hurt seriously and hadn't had to deal with that part of the game. So, to get hurt and to have to miss games, that part of it was very hard. And so when I came back and somebody else had my job and I couldn't get it back. You know that was hard. — Drew Bledsoe

I was in Manhattan during 9/11, and that was really the only thing that I related to as far as a disaster on a grand scale. It was really interesting to see on that day and in the weeks afterwards how people came together, and what people were able to do for each other, and what I found myself feeling and thinking and doing for the people around me, whether it was strangers on the street or my own family. It was really an experience that you can't fake. — Alexandra Daddario

With Kit, Age Seven, at the Beach
We would climb the highest dune,
from there to gaze and come down:
the ocean was performing;
we contributed our climb.
Waves leapfrogged and came
straight out of the storm.
What should our gaze mean?
Kit waited for me to decide.
Standing on such a hill,
what would you tell your child?
That was an absolute vista.
Those waves raced far, and cold.
"How far could you swim, Daddy, in such a storm?"
"As far as was needed," I said,
and as I talked, I swam. — William Stafford

My son is the reason why I write music. He's the reason why everything is different for me. Because when he came into the picture, my priorities changed. I can risk possibly being incarcerated because the only person pays for it is me. I know that if I'm not physically available to take care of him, nobody else will. I want to have the relationship with him that me and my father never had. — Curtis Jackson

Funny how people value eyes, when really, their colors are super limited. I doubt anyone would enjoy a new box of crayons if they came only in eye-color shades. — Courtney C. Stevens

He unpacks his bag of tales
with fingers quick
as a weaver's
picking the weft threads
threading the warp.
Watch his fingers.
Watch his lips
speaking the old familiar words:

"Once there was
and there was not,
oh, best beloved,
when the world was filled with wishes
the way the sea is filled with fishes..."

All those threads
pulling us back
to another world, another time,
when goosegirls married well
and frogs could rhyme,
when maids spoke syllables of pearl
and stepmothers came to grief.

.... (from The Storyteller poem) — Jane Yolen

It seems everyone is converging on a simple set of facts: Our lives are digital, and we wish to share our lives. Pinterest came at it through images, artfully curated. Facebook came at it through friends, cunningly organized. Dropbox came to it via files, cleverly clouded. — John Battelle

Another Kilgore Trout book there in the window was about a man who built a time machine so he could go back and see Jesus. It worked, and he saw Jesus when Jesus was only twelve years old. Jesus was learning the carpentry trade from his father.
Two Roman soldiers came into the shop with a mechanical drawing on papyrus of a device they wanted built by sunrise the next morning. It was a cross to be used in the execution of a rabble-rouser.
Jesus and his father built it. They were glad to have the work. And the rabble-rouser was executed on it. So it goes. — Kurt Vonnegut

Wealth was the power to set things and people in motion; and in America, therefore, wealth came to be frankly regarded as the breath of God, the divine spirit immanent in man. God was the supreme Boss, the universal Employer. — Olaf Stapledon

Do what? Kill me? Then my blood would be on your hands - more than it already is - as well as that of your four dear friends. Because you, frater, are responsible for all this. You know it. You made me what I am." "I made you nothing." "Well said! Well said!" A dry, almost desiccated laugh came over the tiny speaker. Listening, — Douglas Preston

I knew that I wanted to be an illustrator since I was in kindergarten. I can remember the exact day. The art teacher usually came to our classroom once a week, but she was absent that day. Instead, our regular teacher gave us each a huge piece of paper and crayons, and we could do whatever we wanted. — Jan Brett

From the standpoint of our spiritual development, it might be important for us to realize that we came from an unknown somewhere; we brought with us an attained state of consciousness; and while we are here, we are expanding that consciousness. From some perspectives, it may seem that we are making giant strides, but from the greater overview, our quantity of spiritual knowledge is smaller than Ptolemy's knowledge of astronomy! — John Templeton

In an instant, everything in the room came alive. Like the sunshine had a melody and the sounds of footsteps had a texture I could feel in my fingertips each time anyone moved — Kiera Cass

It seemed my whole life was composed of these disjointed fractions of time, hanging around in one public place and then another, as if I were waiting for trains that never came. And, like one of those ghosts who are said to linger around depots late at night, asking passersby for the timetable of the Midnight Express that derailed twenty years before, I wandered from light to light until that dreaded hour when all the doors closed and, stepping from the world of warmth and people and conversation overhead, I felt the old familiar cold twist through my bones again and then it was all forgotten, the warmth, the lights; I had never been warm in the life, ever. — Donna Tartt

On the day the Grisha Examiners came, the boy and the girl were perched in the window seat of a dusty upstairs bedroom, hoping to catch a glimpse of the mail coach. Instead, they saw a sleigh, a troika pulled by three black horses, pass through the white stone gates onto the estate. — Leigh Bardugo

It wasn't just the look of Dolly that drew us in. It was the attitude that came with knowing how ridiculous people thought she looked, but never changing a thing because she felt good about herself. To us, she is...invincible. — Julie Murphy

In the Golden Age, Rulers were unknown. In the following age Rulers were loved and praised. Next came the age When rulers were feared. Finally the age When rulers are hated. — Laozi

I was never a guy who came into a new situation on a team being vocal right away. I kind of monitored the situation, observed the situation and then found my role throughout that process. — Drew Gooden

One day a man came running to a Sufi and said, panting, "Hey, they are carrying trays, look over there!"
The Sufi answered calmly, "What is it to us? Is it any of my business?"
"But they are taking those trays to your house!" the man exclaimed.
"Then is it any of your business?" the Sufi said.

Unfortunately, people always watch the trays of others. Instead of minding their own business, they pass judgment on other people. It never ceases to amaze me the things they fabricate! Their imagination knows no limit when it comes to suspicion and slander. — Elif Shafak

My father got a job at Bradford University in textiles. And he came for - I guess, you know, why do people immigrate? - like, for a better life to find, you know, a new world. And, you know, I think he always - he saw it as an opportunity. And so yeah so we came to this coal mining town in the north of England and that's where I grew up. — Aasif Mandvi

First came him, then came I, then he came again and then I was lost forever. — Alok Jagawat

A complete subnormal idiot. A good guy. wait until the fog came in some night and they sent him back to his lonely closed for a hand job. — Charles Bukowski

I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible; to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom, and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit. — Dawna Markova

I was the illegitimate child of the legitimate theater. I had no training. I came from downtown rock and roll, and when I came in and auditioned for the Broadway revival of 'Hair,' I had no eyebrows - kind of a Bowie-esque glimmer kid. And it was hard representing the flower power era when we were stone cold punks. — Annie Golden

When I came home after my statutory term as surgeon general, I just resumed my life here in southern Arizona. Teaching at the university; my law enforcement career. Sitting on some boards. All the things I did before. — Richard Carmona

Well, that was life. It was an old tree, and the old passed on. Probably they did not mind. There came a time when all sap ran slowly, and the peace of age with all things behind it merged easily into the peace of death. The difficult thing was to be young. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

I looked at the book lying on a table. Though not a great reader myself, I knew that those who were - even Nora - could grow testy when one came between them and their books. — Susan Higginbotham

If you want easy, you came to the wrong man. I don't do easy. I do worth-it. — Anonymous

I was pursuing my acting career, but I was silent on the LGBT issue, the issue that was closest to me. I knew if I came out then, I'd have had to change careers. — George Takei

Love was the greatest of enchantments; if Echidna and her children succeeded in killing Kypris, Thelxiepeia would no doubt, would doubtless ... Become the goddess of love in a century or less, said the Outsider, standing not behind Silk as he had in the ball court, but before him - standing on the still water of the pool, tall and wise and kind, with a face that nearly came into focus. I would claim her in that case, long before the end. As I have so many others. As I am claiming Kypris even now because love always proceeds from me, real love, true love. First romance. The Outsider was the dancing man on a toy, and the water the polished toy-top on which he danced with Kypris, who was Hyacinth and Mother, too. First romance, sang the Outsider with the music box. First romance. It was why he was called the Outsider. He was outside - — Gene Wolfe

Everything is the same except composition and as the composition is different and always going to be different everything is not the same. So then I as a contemporary creating the composition in the beginning was groping toward a continuous present, a using everything a beginning again and again and then everything being alike then everything very simply everything was naturally simply different and so I as a contemporary was creating everything being alike was creating everything naturally being naturally simply different, everything being alike. This then was the period that brings me to the period of the beginning of 1914. Everything being alike everything naturally would be simply different and war came and everything being alike and everything being simply different brings everything being simply different brings it to romanticism. — Gertrude Stein

I didn't say, "I'll call you." I didn't hug her because of the wet clothes. Just a quick kiss. Then I turned and left. I made my way quietly down the hallway to the stairwell. I could tell she thought she wasn't going to see me again. I had to admit she might be right. The knowledge was as damp and dispiriting as my sodden clothes. I came to the first floor and looked out at the entranceway of the building. For a second I pictured the way she had hugged me here. It already seemed like a long time ago. I felt an unpleasant mixture of gratitude and longing, streaked with guilt and regret. And in a flash of insight, cutting with cold clarity through the fog of my fatigue, I realized what I hadn't been able to articulate earlier, not even to myself, when she'd asked me what I was afraid of. It had been this, the moment after, when I would come face to face with knowing that it would all end badly, if not this morning, then the next one. Or the one after that. — Barry Eisler

I remember when I was five playing tag with Cara and her brother. I accidentally got pushed into the side of her trampoline, and I bit the inside of my mouth. Blood gushed everywhere. Cara's mom held me until my parents came back. I didn't need stitches, but it was nasty. I roll my tongue over a small bump on the side of my mouth. Yep. It's still there. Real friendships have battle scars. — Jacquelyn Nicole Davis

When Jack Swagger copies my Ankle Lock and Randy Orton does my Angle Slam, it's disrespectful. I didn't come up with the Ankle Lock; Ken Shamrock came up with the Ankle Lock, but I waited until he retired to do the Ankle Lock. — Kurt Angle

It is another unsolved mystery in a world full of unsolved mysteries.Now stand up and walk out the way you came, and the moment that fresh air caresses your face, you will realize that that is what makes the world so beautiful. All those unsolved mysteries. And you won't ever want to interfere with that beauty again. — Matt Haig

Alone is how our story starts. But then I came along and changed all that. — Erica Lorraine Scheidt

Wolsey sits with his elbows on his desk, his fingers dabbing his closed lids. He takes a great breath, and begins to talk: he begins to talk about England. You can't know Albion, he says, unless you can go back before Albion was thought of. You must go back before Caesar's legions, to the days when the bones of giant animals and men lay on the ground where one day London would be built. You must go back to the New Troy, the New Jerusalem, and the sins and crimes of the kings who rode under the tattered banners of Arthur and who married women who came out of the sea or hatched out of eggs, women with scales and fins and feathers; beside which, he says, the match with Anne looks less unusual. These are old stories, he says, but some people, let us remember, do believe them. — Hilary Mantel