How To Set Up Your Quotes & Sayings

Nigger, you sure ought to be glad it was us you talked to that way. You're a lucky bastard, 'cause if you'd said that to some other white man, you might've been a dead nigger now." I was learning rapidly how to watch white people, to observe their every move, every fleeting expression, how to interpret what was said and what left unsaid. Late one Saturday night I made some deliveries in a white neighborhood. I was pedaling my bicycle back to the store as fast as I could when a police car, swerving toward me, jammed me into the curbing. "Get down, nigger, and put up your hands!" they ordered. I did. They climbed out of the car, guns drawn, faces set, and advanced slowly. "Keep still!" they ordered. I reached my hands higher. They searched my pockets and packages. They seemed dissatisfied when they could find nothing incriminating. Finally, one of them said: "Boy, tell your boss not to send you out in white neighborhoods at this time of — Richard Wright

Please don't entertain for a moment the utterly mistaken idea that there is no drudgery in writing. There is a great deal of drudgery in even the most inspired, the most noble, the most distinguished writing. Read what the great ones have said about their jobs; how they never sit down to their work without a sigh of distress and never get up from it witout a sigh of relief. Do you imagine that your Muse is forever flamelike
breathing the inspired word, the wonderful situation, the superb solution into your attentive ear? ... Believe me, my poor boy, if you wait for inspiration in our set-up, you'll wait for ever. — Ngaio Marsh

The people who can step up my experience are those who have a common set of experiences with people I know. Think about it. How often did a total stranger come into your life to make your evening better? Not very often. But the friend of your friend? That happens all the time. — Robert Scoble

Track your time: you can use Evernote to easily keep track of your productivity and how you spend your time. Many have found that it is immensely useful to set up a notebook whose sole purpose is recording how you spend your time and every 15 to 30 minutes, they — Jason Bracht

Set goals for yourself and put actionable steps in place to ensure that you achieve them. Whether you aim to get a promotion at work or set up your very own business, these ideas will only remain dreams until you write plan out how you are going to reach them by writing down realistic steps towards hitting your targets. — Kelly Hoppen

The vast majority of you are going to close this tab without, even for a single moment, entertaining the thought of writing something.

Step outside your comfort zone and try something new. Learning the fine rationalist art of CoZE (comfort zone expansion) is a really important life skill, and putting your writing online is a low-risk way to do that. Don't try to cop out with "I don't have any stories." Baloney. Everyone has stories; write up a memory that's important to you. And don't even try to tell me, "Oh, but I don't know how to write!" Neither did I when I started; I learned by doing. So please, set the excuses aside, put something up on the web, and share it with the rest of us. When you do, drop me a PM; I'll leave you your first review, but you have to publish something first.

Well? What are you waiting for? Seriously. Go write one sentence of a new story, write now. — David K. Storrs

If you wait to see how much money you have left at the end of the month to put toward savings, the answer may be zero. So, set up an automated monthly transfer from your checking to savings account. Once you lock into that commitment, you'll be forced to scale back spending to make ends meet. — Suze Orman

think you need a hug. A nice warm, dripping-wet one."

Keenan started clapping while Brecken gave me a warning look. "I've got your son on my shoulders. I can't run away from you."

I gave an overdone smile then lunged. "Exactly," I exclaimed, winding my arms around him and wiggling the rest of my wet self against him.

Brecken let out a drawn-out groan, but he stood there and took it, hanging on to Keenan while I hung on to him. "Mature. So mature." He sighed all dramatic-like. "Wonderful example you're setting for your son here."

I tipped my head up, eyebrow raised. "This coming from the man who mixed Frosted Flakes and Cocoa Puffs this morning?"

His eyebrows lifted. "I'm setting the example of how to behave like a proper five-year-old. You're the parent. You get to set the parental example. — Nicole Williams

Being a successful couple was learning what you were willing to compromise on, and what you weren't; learning when to stand your ground, and when to give it up; what was truly important enough to fight over, and what was just you being pissy. You learned each other's hot buttons, the places that hurt, or angered, when you pressed them. Love makes you learn where all the pitfalls are, and how to avoid them, or how to set them off. — Laurell K. Hamilton

My kids know you can make it if you take risks and work hard. That we can work in the system you lunkers set up. That's all a parent really needs to give his child. That, and how to love someone with all your soul. — Kim Harrison

Yet surely that story she had imagined was a real thing? If you created a story with your mind surely it was just as much there as a piece of needlework that you created with your fingers? You could not see it with your bodily eyes, that was all ... the invisible world must be saturated with the stories that men tell both in their minds and by their lives. They must be everywhere, these stories, twisting together, penetrating existence like air breathed into the lungs, and how terrible, how awful, thought Henrietta, if the air breathed should be foul. How dare men live, how dare they think or imagine, when every action and every thought is a tiny thread to ar or enrich that tremendous tapestried story that man weaves on the loom that God has set up, a loom that stretches from heaven above to hell below, and from side to side of the universe ... — Elizabeth Goudge

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.
And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing.
What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don't force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don't understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day. — Ray Bradbury

In other languages,
you are beautiful- mort, muerto- I wish
I spoke moon, I wish the bottom of the ocean
were sitting in that chair playing cards
and noticing how famous you are
on my cell phone- picture of your eyes
guarding your nose and the fire
you set by walking, picture of dawn
getting up early to enthrall your skin- what I hate
about stars is they're not those candles
that make a joke of cake, that you blow on
and they die and come back, and you
you're not those candles either, how often I realize
I'm not breathing, to be like you
or just afraid to move at all, a lung
or finger, is it time already
for inventory, a mountain, I have three
of those, a bag of hair, box of ashes, if you
were a cigarette I'd be cancer, if you
were a leaf, you were a leaf, every leaf, as far
as this tree can say. — Bob Hicok

Nature offers us a thousand simple pleasers- Plays of light and color, fragrance in the air, the sun's warmth on skin and muscle, the audible rhythm of life's stir and push- for the price of merely paying attention. What joy! But how unwilling or unable many of us are to pay this price in an age when manufactured sources of stimulation and pleasure are everywhere at hand. For me, enjoying nature's pleasures takes conscious choice, a choice to slow down to seed time or rock time, to still the clamoring ego, to set aside plans and busyness, and to simply to be present in my body, to offer myself up.
Respond to the above quote. Pay special attention to each of your five senses as you describe your surroundings. Also, you need to incorporate at least one metaphor and smile in your descriptions. — Lorraine Anderson

You create your characters, set things in motion, and then let those characters and the situations they encounter tell you how they're going to end up. — Laird Barron

Take off your shoes," Jake said after the kids disappeared up the stairs. Meridith eyed her leather loafers. For some reason, she was reluctant to part with them. Not to mention she needed every inch of height. "You're still wearing yours." "I'm not planning on trampling your feet." She removed her shoes and set them by the wall, taking her time. "You want something to drink? I made coffee. Or there's always tea or soda if you prefer." He tucked the corner of his lip. "No, thanks. You want to come closer? I can't teach you from over there." She inched closer. "I'm really bad." "So you said." He gestured to the blue box. "We'll start with a basic box step. Ballroom dancing is counted off like this: one-two-three, one-two-three. Max said he knows how to lead, so I'll teach you to follow." "Good luck with that." "Stand — Denise Hunter

At that, Ascher stood up. "Hi," she said, smiling brightly. "You don't know me. I'm Hannah. Back off my partner before you get hurt." "I know who you are, hot stuff," I drawled, not standing. I set my staff down across the table. "And I already backed off your partner. You can tell from how there aren't any splatter marks. Play nice, Ascher." Her smile vanished at my response, and her dark eyes narrowed. She drummed her nails on the tabletop exactly once, slowly, as if contemplating a decision. A smirk touched her mouth. "So you're the infamous Dresden." Her eyes went past me, to Karrin. Ascher was a foot taller than she was. "And this is your bodyguard? Seriously? Aren't they supposed to be a little bigger?" "She represents the Lollipop Guild," I replied. "She'll represent them right through the front and out the back of your skull if you don't show a little respect. — Jim Butcher

How's your orange juice, Anna? Does it have a touch of lime?"
The glass paused at my lips as I processed his innuendo, and I took a second to make sure my embarrassment stayed hidden inside. I let the drink swish over my tongue a moment before swallowing and answering.
"Actually it's a little sour," I said, and he laughed.
"Thats a shame. " he picked up a green pear from his plate and bit into it, licking juice that dripped down his thumb. My cheeks warmed as I set down my glass.
"Okay, now you're just being crude," I said.
He grinned with lazy satisfaction. — Wendy Higgins

BISMILLAH
It's a habit of yours to walk slowly.
You hold a grudge for years.
With such heaviness, how can you be modest?
With such attachments, do you expect to arrive anywhere?
Be wide as the air to learn a secret.
Right now you're equal portions clay
and water, thick mud.
Abraham learned how the sun and moon and the stars all set. He said, No longer will I try to assign partners for God.
You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave
till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.
You're trying to live your life in open scaffolding.
Say Bismillah, In the name of God,
as the priest does with a knife when he offers an animal.
Bismillah your old self
to find your real name. — Rumi

And now, dear friend, you who have journeyed with me in all these merry doings, I will not bid you follow me further, but will drop your hand here with a good den, if you wish it, for that which cometh herafter, speaks of the breaking up of things, and shows how joys and pleasures that are dead and gone can never be set upon their feet to walk again. — Howard Pyle

Get up, and set your shoulder to the wheel - How long is this life for? As you have come into this world, leave some mark behind. Otherwise, where is the difference between you and the trees and stones? They too come into existence, decay and die. — Swami Vivekananda

And you probably also know that when you look out of an aeroplane window and see the world shrink like that, you can't help but think about the whole of your life, from the beginning until where you are now, and everyone you've ever known. And you'll know that thinking about those things makes you feel grateful to God for providing them, and angry with Him for not helping you to understand them better, and so you end up in a terrible muddle and needing to talk to a priest. I decided I wouldn't sit in the window seat on the way back. I don't know how these jet-set people who have to fly once or twice a year cope, I really don't. — Nick Hornby

This, I now know, is how people go crazy and do things they regret. Look at the woman who almost killed Al Green.I am sure she cooked those grits, fully intending to eat them for breakfast. Then he did something that set her off. After that, she probably picked up the pot, just to scare him a little bit. Next thing she knew and the boiling grits were all over his face. There was a name for that kind of thing. "Crime of passion." It meant that it wasn't your fault. — Tayari Jones

The labor of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal, how can you hope to find inward peace. — A.W. Tozer

Let me tell you what I think about your fucking rules," he said, his voice dripping with venom as he pushed past Liam. "You sit up in your room and you pretend like you want what's best for everyone, but you don't do any of the work yourself. I can't tell if you're just a spoiled little shit, or if you're too worried about getting your pretty princess hands dirty, but it sucks. You are fucking awful, and you sure as hell don't have me fooled ... You talk about us all being equals, like we're one big rainbow of peace and all that bullshit, but you never once believed that yourself, did you? You won't let anyone contact their parents, and you don't care about the kids that are still trapped in camps your father set up. You wouldn't even listen when the Watch kids brought it up. So what I want to know is, why can't we leave? ... What's the point of this place, other than for you to get off on how great you are and toy with people and their feelings? — Alexandra Bracken

Don't do that!" she exclaimed, shivering at the realization that it had been his fingers touching her.
He gave her his lazy, slightly twisted smile and brushed a few pieces of unruly black hair out of his face.
"Are you asking me or ordering me?"
"Shut up." She glanced around, both to avoid his eyes and make sure no one saw them together.
"What's the matter? Worried about what your slaves'll think if they see you talking to me?"
"They're my friends," she retorted.
"Oh.Right. Of course they are. I mean, from what I saw, Camille would probably do anything for you, right? Friends till the end." He crossed his arms over his chest, and in spite of her anger, she couldn't help but notice how the silvery gray of his shirt set off his black hair and blue eyes.
(Lissa&Christian) — Richelle Mead

It makes sense that your response to a bad break-up line would be to set someone on fire," I responded. "Fire is magical to us because it embodies the passage of time. We can never grasp time because it is invisible, unreachable and continually slipping from our grasp. Do we live in the present? How can we? The present is infinitesimally small. It can't contain human action. We teeter on the brink between our assumed future...where we will be in moments to come...and our memory of the past...where we think we just were. The present doesn't exist in a comprehensible way. Similarly, fire is something we can neither grasp nor touch, yet it has a clear effect...the decay and collapse of life, the acceleration of entropy. Thus when we stand mesmerized by fire, we are actually mesmerized by our own mortality. — David David Katzman

Saxton smelled really good and had a handshake that was firm. "You've grown up a lot."
Blay found himself flushing as he took his hand back. "You're just the same."
"Am I?" Those pearl eyes flashed. "Is that good or bad?"
"Oh ... good. I didn't mean
"
"So tell me how you've been. Are you mated to some nice female your parents set you up with?"
Blay's laugh was sharp and hard. "God, no. There's no one for me. — J.R. Ward

Above all, however, resist the temptation to cover the entire room in foam--I can't tell you how often college studios in particular succumb to this seductive error. It is quite simply a recipe for disaster, because it hoovers up the top half of the room's reverberation, making for an extremely unnatural working environment. Although it makes good sense to damp down strong early reflections that can potentially comb filter your frequency response, you also want your monitoring environment to bear at least a passing resemblance to real-world living rooms and offices. If you plaster your whole studio in foam, you'll basically be mixing for people in padded cells--perhaps not the most lucrative demographic to set your sights on! — Mike Senior

Okay, maybe it wasn't some reason. He was handsome. Like, wow, that's a handsome guy, and then you nudge your friend and get her to take a look as well. That kind of handsome. Though I couldn't see him straight on, he had a nice, strong face, broad nose with a bump on the bridge, and just the right amount of stubble on his cheeks and jaw. His deep-set eyes looked rich brown, his longish, thick hair a shade darker than that and his brows even more so. I couldn't tell how tall he was, he was at least a few inches taller than I was, but his body was fit and lean. His stomach looked washboard flat under his white dress shirt and his forearms that peeked out from the rolled up sleeves were muscular, the same color as wet sand, a beach in the afternoon light. — Karina Halle

Every time you get angry with yourself for where you are in your process of growth, it's the equivalent of chopping off the head of the rose because it hasn't bloomed yet. Now you have to go through that part of the process again. Anger will set you back every time and slow down your growth. However, self-compassion and self-encouragement are like water and sunshine; they help the growth process happen faster and easier. It's up to you how you want to proceed, but if you can break the habit of getting angry with yourself and replace it with some compassion and encouragement, then you will bloom like you have never bloomed before. — Emily Maroutian

How can I help you through this? What can I do to ease your pain, because I swear to God, I'll do anything."
Absolutely anything.
She set her hand on her heart and looked up at me, her eyes filled with so much emotion, I swear, some of it overflowed, spilling into me. "Just love me," she whispered.
"I do," I promised. — Linda Kage

An exit is only a success if you set an exit as your primary goal. My primary goal was to build a globally influential tool, to build something from the ground up that could literally change how we communicated in business and individually. — Ryan Holmes

Well, make up your mind. I don't have all night." Fidelia set her beer on the porch and removed a set of keys from her skirt pocket. She fumbled with the key, trying to release the trigger lock on her pistol.
"Don't do that," Heather warned her. "You've had too much to drink."
Fidelia snorted. "I'm not drunk. I'm in complete control." She tore off the trigger lock.
Bang! The gun fired, ripping into a nearby oak tree.
The women screamed. Jean-Luc winced.
A squirrel plummeted from the tree and landed in the yard with a thud.
Fidelia shrugged. "I meant to do that. Damned rodent's been gnawing on the house. And stealing all the nuts from our pecan tree."
Heather planted her hands on her hips. "Haven't I told you a million times to keep the locks on?"
Fidelia hung her head, looking properly remorseful. "I'll be more careful." She switched on the safety, then shot Jean-Luc a pointed look. "I know how to deal with a scumbag with nuts. — Kerrelyn Sparks

I think the equipment you use has a real, visible influence on the character of your photography. You're going to work differently, and make different kinds of pictures, if you have to set up a view camera on a tripod than if you're Lee Friedlander with handheld 35 mm rangefinder. But fundamentally, vision is not about which camera or how many megapixels you have, it's about what you find important. It's all about ideas. — Keith Carter

When amazing realities of the gospel quit commanding your attention, your awe, and your worship, other things in your life will capture your attention instead. When you quit celebrating grace, you begin to forget how much you need grace, and when you forget how much you need grace, you quit seeking the rescue and strength that only grace can give. This means you begin to see yourself as more righteous, strong, and wise than you actually are, and in so doing, you set yourself up for trouble. — Paul David Tripp

But the real fun of writing, for me at least, is the experience of making a set of givens yield. There's an incredibly inflexible set of instruments - our vocabulary, our grammar, the abstract symbols on paper, the limitations of your own powers of expression. You write something down and it's awkward, trivial, artificial, approximate. But with effort you can get it to become a little flexible, a little transparent. You can get it to open up, and expose something lurking there beyond the clumsy thing you first put down. When you add a comma or add or subtract a word, and the thing reacts and changes, it's so exciting that you forget how absolutely terrible writing feels a lot of the time. — Deborah Eisenberg

You don't like me talking to other girls?"
"I don't like you grinning at them."Teagan admitted
"Then tame me with your fine Irish eyes, girl."
"Humph."
"You have nothing to worry about. You've had my heart since ... "
"When?"
"I was just trying to sort it, " Fin said. "It could have been the time you explained how its cockles were related to a shellfish." he paused. "No, it was when you flat refused to kiss me
and me thinking I'd never see you agina, risking my kife to lead the goblins away into the night. It was heroic. And sad."
Teagan punched his arm.
"All right." He smiled. "It was the first time I set eyes on you. My heart stopped beating, and that's a fact."
"I know," Teagan said. "The first time I met you, it made me throw up."
Finn knit his brows. "I'll never get over how romantic you are. It's like you've stepped right out of one of those fairy movies Aiden's making Roisin watch. — Kersten Hamilton

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day-
A sunny day with the leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled - since I watched you play
Your first game of fotball, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away
Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
with the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.
That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature's give-and-take - the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one's irresolute clay.
I had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show-
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love proved in the letting go. — Cecil Day-Lewis

To what nadir of paltriness , pettiness, and squalor a man can sink! How could he change so! But is this really true to life? ---It is, it's all true to life, for anything can happen to a man. Your ardent youth of today would recoil in horror if you were to show him his own portrait as an old man. Once you set off on life's journey, once you take your leave of those gentle years of youth and enter the harsh, embittering years of manhood, remember to keep with you all your human emotions, do not leave them by the wayside, for you will not pick them up again! Grim and terrible is the old age which awaits us, and nothing does it give in return! The grave itself is more merciful than old age, for at least on the gravestone you will find written the words: 'Here a man lies buried!' but in the cold, unfeeling features of inhuman old age you can read nothing. — Nikolai Gogol

Curb Your Enthusiasm set me up so perfectly. That was one of my favorite shows before I got on it. That started a whole different level of a story for me. I didn't know how to process it until after I got on the show and realized what the purpose of it was. — J. B. Smoove

It's time for us to join the line of your madmen all chained together.
Time to be totally free, and estranged.
Time to give up our souls, to set fire to structures and run out in the street.
Time to ferment.
How else can we leave the world-vat and go to the lip?
We must die to become true human beings.
We must turn completely upside down
like a comb in the top of a beautiful woman's hair.
Spread out your wings as a tree lifts in the orchard.
As seed scattered on the road,
as a stone melts to wax,
as a candle becomes the moth.
On a chessboard the king is blessed again with his queen.
With our faces so close to the love mirror, we must not breathe, but change to a cleared place where a building was and feel the treasure hiding inside us.
With no beginning or end,
we live in lovers as a story they know.
If you will be the key, we'll be tumblers in the lock. — Rumi

When I have not rage or sorrow, and you depart from me, then I am most afraid. When the belly is full, and the mind has its sayings, then I fear for my soul; I rush to you as a child at night breaks into its parents' room. Do not forget me in my satisfaction. When the heart grins at itself, the world is destroyed. And I am found alone with the husks and the shells. Then the dangerous moment comes: I am too great to ask for help. I have other hopes. I legislate from the fortress of my disappointments, with a set jaw. Overthrow this even terror with a sweet remembrance: when I was with you, when my soul delighted you, when I was what you wanted. My heart sings of your longing for me, and my thoughts climb down to marvel at your mercy. I do not fear as you gather up my days. Your name is the sweetness of time, and you carry me close into the night, speaking consolations, drawing down lights from the sky, saying, See how the night has no terror for one who remembers the Name. — Leonard Cohen

I realised that I had set so many of my novels and stories abroad, because custom had prevented me from seeing how exotic my own country is. Britain really is an immense lunatic asylum. That is one of the things that distinguishes us among the nations ... We are rigid and formal in some ways, but we believe in the right to eccentricity, as long as the eccentricities are large enough ... Woe betide you if you hold your knife incorrectly, but good luck to you if you wear a loincloth and live up a tree. — Louis De Bernieres

I need dating advice. Fast...Julian, how did you meet your wife?"

Julian shrugged. "My brother the sex god cursed me into a book for two thousand years. Grace got drunk on her birthday and summoned me out of it."

Vane rolled his eyes. "That's useless. Kyrian? What about you?"

"I woke up handcuffed to Amanda."

Vane could work with that. "So I need to get a set of handcuffs? — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Everybody is great and the chemistry is different with everyone. That is the joy of acting - you really don't know how it is going to go until you turn up. It's like playing tennis, you can't plan for the match you are going to play until you are actually up against your opponent and what happens, happens. That is the joy of being on set. — Tom Hiddleston

Well - I have to say I personally have never drawn such a sharp line between 'good' and 'bad' as you. For me: that line is often false. The two are never disconnected. One can't exist without the other. As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how. But you - wrapped up in judgment, always regretting the past, cursing yourself, blaming yourself, asking 'what if,' 'what if.' 'Life is cruel.' 'I wish I had died instead of.' Well - think about this. What if all your actions and choices, good or bad, make no difference to God? What if the pattern is pre-set? No no - hang on - this is a question worth struggling with. What if our badness and mistakes are the very thing that set our fate and bring us round to good? What if, for some of us, we can't get there any other way? — Donna Tartt

Faith!" Tracy called. "Your dog's got serious identity issues."...
"Hey!" she said, picking Humperdinck up in her arms.
"How'd you do at Tracy's"
"He mounted the damn cat." Tracy set the travel kennel beside the couch. "You're going to have Siamese Yorkies if you don't do something about him. — Kristin Miller

They wanted you to grow up into some helpless combination of old person and infant. They wanted you to have a house and a family and a refrigerator and a TV, and not know how any of it worked. They wanted you to spend your life working on something that was never concrete, never anything you could see or hold in your hands, and if you didn't do that they wanted to put you in jail. Cutting down forests, poisoning the earth - it was a country driven by stupid, blind impulse. It was a country where nobody knew where their food came from or where their garbage went, they just flushed the bowl, kept eating it and throwing it away, building bombs and computers, cars and TVs, sending people off to Vietnam so they could set it on fire. It was a country that had turned against everyone he knew, cast them out like garbage, and all they could do was smile to themselves at all they'd learned and wait patiently for the fires to start here at home. — Zachary Lazar

The truth is we all get tired, we all get weary. In fact, if you never feel like giving up, then your dreams are too small. If you never feel like quitting, then you need to set some larger goals. When that pressure comes to get discouraged and to think about how you can't take it anymore, that is completely normal. Every person feels that way at times. — Joel Osteen

What you eat, how much you exercise, what example you set for those you influence are all matters of choice. Consistently making that best choice will add up to living your best life. Your health is the key to that. — Adam Rodriguez

Eating carbs in the morning will set you up for an energy spike and crash along with food cravings throughout the entire day. If you decide to test this for yourself, it will be blindingly obvious. Try having just Bulletproof Coffee instead of your usual breakfast and see how long it takes you to want food. For most people, it turns off the desire for food for at least 5 to 6 hours. — Dave Asprey

You're serious? You want me to go to school?"
"Why not?" he challenged. "So long as you take care of shit around here, I'm fine with it. Might want to move on that whole divorce thing too while you're at it. Club's got a lawyer, I'll set up an appointment for you. I can pretty much guarantee your ex won't put up a fight."
He smiled when he said it - not a nice smile.
"Okay, I'll go check it out," I said slowly. "This is weird, you get that? You kidnapping me, holding me hostage and then sending me to school? This isn't how things like this usually work."
Horse grinned at me, eyes lazy and satisfied.
"Just roll with it," he whispered. "And keep doing whatever exercises you do to make your cunt squeeze like that. They got a college degree for that? — Joanna Wylde

In the old days when I first was coming up, you would turn up on set in the morning with your coffee, script, and hangover and you would figure out what you were going to do with the day and how you were going to play the scenes. You would rehearse and then invite the crew in to watch the actors go through the scenes. The actors would go away to makeup and costume and the director and the DP would work out how they were going to cover what the actors had just done. — Paul Bettany

The problem with being an alpha is that you can never make the first move.
Makes you feel like you're taking advantage of your position. You have to wait until
the other person decides they want in."
Jim set the basket on the coffee table and crouched by me.
"And sometimes it seems like that person likes you, and you try to test the waters,
so you try to tell her how you feel, that she matters and that you want to be with her
and you're concerned about her safety. And every time you do that, she waves her
arms around and accuses you of being a controlling alpha asshole. So you back off
and hope you didn't completely fuck it up."
He was close, too close. I just stared at him. What was happening ... "Why are
you telling me this?"
His voice was low and smooth. "That time when I told you it didn't matter what
your mother thought about your looks ... "
"Aha ... "
"I meant it," he said. "Because I think you're beautiful. — Ilona Andrews

It will be necessary for you to intentionally set aside time each day to go before the Lord for revelation and insight as well as to stay in alignment with the heart of God. Know in advance that there will be spiritual warfare, but that as you stay in your covenant position you will grow in your faith and learn how to overcome and push back the resistance of the enemy. This will be a rewarding and challenging spiritual experience as you determine to plow up the ground of your heart, advancing in deeper levels of surrender and trust with understanding. You will then be able to encourage others in their faith and to humbly lead others in discussion. — John Mulinde

Sometimes the world begins
To set you up on your feet again
It wipes the tears from your eyes
How will you ever know
The way that circumstances go
Always going to hit you by surprise
I know my past
You were there
In everything I've done
You are the one — Blue Rodeo

And isn't the whole world yours? For how often you set it on fire with your love and saw it blaze and burn up and secretly replaced it with another world while everyone slept. You felt in such complete harmony with God, when every morning you asked him for a new earth, so that all the ones he had made could have their turn. You thought it would be shabby to save them and repair them; you used them up and held out your hands, again and again, for more world. For your love was equal to everything. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I'll never leave you. I'll never mistreat you. I think you know that by now. Try with me. Let us find what we
may find."
"What do you expect to find, Robert?"
"How should I know? I've never experienced anything like this before in my life."
Tears shone briefly under her graceful long lashes before she blinked them away and glanced at him
again with a reluctant twist of a smile. Sitting up, she wrapped her arms around her bent knees and
sighed. "You are asking us both to set ourselves up for great hurt when it comes time for me to leave."
"Leave? Don't speak of leaving, angel. You must stay forever."
"As your mistress."
"As my love," he countered insistently. — Gaelen Foley

At core, no matter how kindly may be your thoughts of the human race, there are times when all you want to do is crumple it up and either set fire to it, or use it to pad the floor of a bird cage.
Big bird cage.
Really big bird. — Harlan Ellison

But did he go to heaven?" Katherine persisted.
"That's between him and God, not him and history," JB said.
Alex started, jerking so spastically that he kicked the basketball and would have sent it spinning out into the street if Chip hadn't caught it. Amazingly, Chip still seemed to have a swordsman's quick reflexes.
"YOU believe in God?" Alex asked JB incredulously. "But you know how to travel through time. You're a scientist." He hesitated. "Aren't you?"
JB rolled his eyes.
"It amazes me how people of your time set up such a false dichotomy between science and religion. Fortunately, that only lasts for another ... well, I can't tell you that," he said, stopping himself just in time. "But I assure you, the more I travel through time, the more I witness, the more I realize that there are things that are both strange and wonderful, far beyond human comprehension." (pgs 299-300) — Margaret Peterson Haddix

Choice, not chance, determines your destiny. It's up to you to decide what you are worth, how you matter, and how you make meaning in the world. No one else has your gifts
your set of talents, ideas, interests. You are an original. A masterpiece. — Regina Brett

Seeing modern health care from the other side, I can say that it is clearly not set up for the patient. It is frequently a poor arrangement for doctors as well, but that does not mitigate how little the system accounts for the patient's best interest. Just when you are at your weakest and least able to make all the phone calls, traverse the maze of insurance, and plead for health-care referrals is that one time when you have to - your life may depend on it. — Ross I. Donaldson

Spontaneity is great when the opportunity is there, but what I'm really saying is you need to trust yourself. Instead of checking and rechecking your camera and the lighting and everything else, just set it up once and trust that you've done it right. Then focus more on capturing the emotion of the photo and less on how technically perfect its composition will be. — Nicola Sinclair

No matter how potent your talents are, they remain to be out of use until you take time to develop them to their optimum level. This calls for preparation. Through preparation, personal branding, consistent exposure and productive connections, you set up a condition for your dreams to flourish and bear fruits! — Israelmore Ayivor

Charlie glared at the puppet. "I'm really mad."
"Sure you are. Super mad." Leo circled his head one way and then the other. "I've got an idea."
"What?"
"Tell him how mad you are. Then look really pitiful and ask him to take you Boogie-boarding. If you look pitiful enough, I bet he'll feel so bad that he'll take you."
Charlie wasn't born yesterday. He looked past Leo to the man holding him. "Really! Can we go right now?"
His father set Leo aside and shrugged. "The waves look good. Why not? Get your stuff."
Charlie jumped up, and raced toward the house. His legs pumping. But just as he got to the front step, he stopped and whipped around. "I get to drive!"
"No you don't!" his mother countered, slipping Scamp from her arm.
Charlie stomped inside, and his father laughed. "I love that kid. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Watching the way he treats you made me realize that maybe I had set my sights too low. After chasing someone who didn't give me the time of day ... I just see how Vincent anticipates your every desire and tries to make it come true for you. How, when he sees you walk into a room, it's like he's transformed into this person who is bigger and better than the one he was just minutes before. I want to be that for someone. I think I deserve it. And I'm not going to pine away for a guy who feels that for someone else. So until my own chivalrous knight shows up, I've decided to live a full life and be happy with my lot. — Amy Plum

We put the kettle on to boil, up in the nose of the boat, and went down to the stern and pretended to take no notice of it, but set to work to get the other things out. That is the only way to get a kettle to boil up the river. If it sees that you are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to be made into tea. It is a good plan, too, if you are in a great hurry, to talk very loudly to each other about how you don't need any tea, and are not going to have any. You get near the kettle, so that it can overhear you, and then you shout out, "I don't want any tea; do you, George?" to which George shouts back, "Oh, no, I don't like tea; we'll have lemonade instead - tea's so indigestible." Upon which the kettle boils over, and puts the stove out. — Jerome K. Jerome

I am struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. — Haruki Murakami

I am neither religious nor superstitious, but there is something otherworldly about the space where two roads come together. The devil is said to set up shop there if you want to swap your soul for something more useful. If you believe that God can be bribed, it's also the hallowed ground to make sacrifices. In the literal sense, it's also a place to change direction, but once you've changed it, you're stuck until you come to another crossroads, and who knows how long that will be. — Tayari Jones

Telling your story out loud is the way human beings communicate. We don't normally think up words, translate how to spell them and then move our fingers up and down over this randomly arranged set of keys to make the same letters appear on a screen. — Kevin J. Anderson

Set foot in his classroom, and you'll see that he hasn't quite given up on these dreams. True to his compulsive nature and eclectic taste, he punctuates his courses with entertaining routines to keep his students engaged, playing four songs at the start of each class and tossing candy bars to the first students who shout out the correct answers to music trivia. This is how a poster of a rapper ended up on his wall. "If you want to engage your audience, if you really want to grab their attention, you have to know the world they live in, the music they listen to, the movies they watch," he explains. "To most of these kids, accounting is like a root canal. But when they hear me quote Usher or Cee Lo Green, they say to themselves, 'Whoa, did that fat old white-haired guy just say what I thought he said?' And then you've got 'em. — Adam M. Grant

Then tell me this: How do I outthink an enemy I know is smarter than I am?' ...
I face some of the most crafty people who have ever lived. My current foe understands the minds of others in a way that I cannot hope to match. So how do I defeat her? She will vanish the moment I threaten her, running to one of a dozen other refuges that she is sure to have set up ...
I have to peer into her eyes, see into her soul, and know that it's her that I face and not some decoy. I have to do that without frightening her into running. How?'
***
The question remains,' he said, voice soft but tense. 'How would you fight her, Nynaeve?'
I don't care to play your games, Rand al'Thor,' Nynaeve replied with a huff. 'You've obviously already decided what you intend to do. Why ask me?'
Because what I'm about to do should frighten me,' he said. 'It doesn't. — Brandon Sanderson

You have the right to set ground rules. This means deciding if, when, and how you want to see the people in your family. Many survivors feel that if they open up the channels at all, they have to open them up all the way. When you were a child you had two options - to trust or not to trust. Your options are broader now. — Ellen Bass

The Fox And The Crow
A CROW having stolen a bit of meat, perched in a tree and held it in her beak. A Fox, seeing this, longed to possess the meat himself, and by a wily stratagem succeeded. "How handsome is the Crow," he exclaimed, in the beauty of her shape and in the fairness of her complexion! Oh, if her voice were only equal to her beauty, she would deservedly be considered the Queen of Birds!" This he said deceitfully; but the Crow, anxious to refute the reflection cast upon her voice, set up a loud caw and dropped the flesh. The Fox quickly picked it up, and thus addressed the Crow: "My good Crow, your voice is right enough, but your wit is wanting. — Aesop

Well, in regards to surfing, I've learned that there is always another wave coming. Translated that means there is always tomorrow. No matter how badly you get caught inside, if you can just hang in there and keep paddling, the set is going to pass and there will be a lull afterwards. So don't give up, just take your pounding, wait until the set passes, then make your move. — Gerry Lopez

Chess is "a lot like football because you have to set up your offense and your defense, every once in a while you need to give up a piece of your team in order to make the big play. It's a game of patience, and that pretty much defines how I run the ball. I'm patient, always looking for the opportunity and always trying to capitalize on the other person's mistake." — Priest Holmes

The idea for the Guild first came up at a party. Your father and I met there and, well, I suppose that's a story all its own. But we were both frustrated by the media at the time. We set out to tell the truth when everyone else seemed set on choosing sides. We had grand ideas about how far we could reach. ... Back then, we knew we should be careful, but we had no idea how dangerous it would turn out to be. — Sonny And Ais

Back in Minneapolis, I said I would go to American. I have a remarkable ability to delete all better judgment from my brain when I get my head set on something. Everything is done at all costs. I have no sense of moderation, no sense of caution. I have no sense, pretty much. People with eating disorders tend to be very diametrical thinkers-everything is the end of the world, everything rides on this one thing, and everyone tells you you're very dramatic, very intense, and they see it as an affectation, but it's actually just how you think. It really seems to you that the sky will fall if you are not personally holding it up. On the one hand, this is sheer arrogance; on the other hand, this is a very real fear. And it isn't that you ignore the potential repercussions of your actions. You don't think there are any. — Marya Hornbacher

Start your day with good intentions and set yourself up for a good attitude. It's not what happens to you that matters but how you respond. — Ken Blanchard

I don't really have any advice, other than to say it's the most appallingly difficult thing I've ever tried to do and I wish I had a better idea of how to do it. In my experience what you end up with is the by-product of your failure to achieve what you set out to do. It may turn out OK, but it wasn't what you meant and you've no idea how you got there. — Douglas Adams

We walked the length of Jackson Square, stopping to look at the work of a couple of artists who'd set up their sidewalk shops for the day.
"Look." Eugenie stopped in front of an acrylic painting of a mustached man with curly dark hair, hooded eyes, and a big hooked nose. He looked like he'd steal the hubcaps off your grandmother's Cadillac.
"It's Jean Lafitte, our most famous pirate," the artist said. "He was quite a character."
She had no idea. She also had badly missed the mark on his looks. His hair wasn't that curly, he'd been clean-shaven the whole time I'd known him, his nose was straight and in perfect proportion to the rest of his features, and he didn't have hooded black eyes. Still, he might find it entertaining. "How much?" I asked. — Suzanne Johnson

half a dozen of Jack's friends had set their status. Jack pointed out that instead of just saying "Away" or "Busy" or something like that, people were playing with the status message. One of them had changed it to "Feeling blah," and another had made it "Listening to the White Stripes." Or something like that. Jack said that he liked having a sense of how his friends were feeling or what they were up to just by glancing at these status messages. He asked me if I thought we should build something similar - a way to post a status message and a way to see your friends' status messages. — Biz Stone