I Left Because You Made Me Quotes & Sayings

When she was eighteen years old she had almost drowned in the Kennebec River, not because of the pummeling current, but because she couldn't come up with a casual phrase with which to call for rescue. "Help!" was such a cliche. By the time she was willing to scream, she had no breath left, and it was just blind luck that somebody saw her gasping and floundering and pulled her to shore. "Why didn't you say something?" they wanted to know, and she said, "I'm not a screamer." "Jesus," said one of them, "couldn't you have made an exception this one time?" "Apparently not," she said. — Jincy Willett

Because of that, because my life ended fifty-two Thursdays ago, because ... I have nothing left to live for. God damn it, suck me, you asshole. You made me want you, always staring at me like I'm candy or something. Suck me, I want to come in your mouth, you motherfucking ... " Deacon lifted him off his body and flipped him onto his back. He landed on the hard floor, out of breath.
"Demanding little foul-mouthed whelp, aren't you? I like that, Thursday. Unbutton your jeans. Slowly. While I watch."
"Fuck you."
"Later, sweetheart. Right now I want to see your cock. Show me your cock, Thursday. — Mercy Celeste

There is a particular view, still popular among left-wing intellectuals in the West, that the Soviet system was "socialism gone wrong." This thought expresses precisely the major political danger of our times, which is the belief that politics involves a choice of systems, as a means to an end, so that one system may "go wrong" while another "goes right." The truth is that socialism is wrong, precisely because it believes that it can go right - precisely because it sees politics asa means to an end. Politics is a manner of social existence, whose bedrock is the given obligations from which our social identities are formed. Politics is a form of association which is not a means to an end, but an end in itself. It is founded on legitimacy, and legitimacy resides in our sense that we are made by our inheritance. — Roger Scruton

I'll find out eventually."
I put my book back down with a huff. "Yeah? How do you suppose you'll do that?"
He rolled onto his side and his eyes did that warm and gentle thing again that made my heart turn to mush.
"Because one day you'll belong to me, Evie, and I'll know everything about you."
Jared looked completely serious and left me with absolutely no doubt that he meant what he said. — Kate McCarthy

It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you've made, and there's this panic because you don't know yet the scale of disaster you've left yourself open to. — Kazuo Ishiguro

With shaking hands, I hold the letter and slide my back down the wall until I'm on the floor. My tears drop on what he's written, leaving blurred ink in its place. I cry for everything that's lost. I cry that he gave up. I cry for the anger in his words. I cry that he's found someone that has made him consider letting me go. I cry for the day I ever met him and thought I could handle someone like him. I cry that the girl he met that day in the restaurant is long gone.
And I cry because I don't know what to do with this person that's left. — Willow Aster

I've only met Reed twice," I said. Kind of sad, but that made him my oldest friend. "And I have no idea who this new guy is. Just for the record, I'm calling him 'Full Metal Jackass' because he's a sucker-punching douchebag, and I hop you'll join me in that by putting it on his official file or threat designator or whatever you use to keep track of metas that cross you."
"Duly noted. We have concerns." She folded her hands again.
"So do I," I agreed. "Most of them involve your fashion sense, with a few left to spare for the armor-clad whackjob that b**** slapped me around a parking lot this morning. — Robert J. Crane

In her memoirs she writes that she left the hospital job because it eventually made her numb to suffering, and it left her no time to write. She neglected — David Brooks

But then this Isabelle turned and laughed and in that instant I saw my wife. This made me weepy and these people whom I didn't recognize exchanged furtive glances and shortly thereafter announced that it was time to leave because Grandpa needed his rest. They patted my hand and they tucked my blanket in around my knees, and they left. They went out into the world, and they left me here. And to this day I have no idea who they were. I — Sara Gruen

I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright ... Or maybe "stupid" is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. — Hunter S. Thompson

My mother made sweet tea for him. He seemed a good conversationalist, but perhaps not a good listener, because at times he appeared to be engaged in a monologue with himself. In the midst of the conversation, my father gave me five Somali shillings, an amount equivalent to one U.S dollar. I was so excited to have paper money that I left immediately to go to a neighborhood store to buy cold soda and candy. My father was still talking and laughing when I returned to the house. I watched him closely, studying his every move. I wondered if had come to visit me or to consume large quantities of tea. — Hassan Abukar

My greatest enemies are Women and the Sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and live in the shadow of men and are nothing compared to them, and the Sea because it has always frustrated me, destroying what I have built, washing away what I have left, wiping clean the marks I have made. — Iain Banks

After I left college, I went to work at the Royal Opera House in London, which became a real catalyst for me because it made me realize that I was interested in cinema and in the way life is thrust at you. So I started making films. — Sam Taylor-Wood

Because I made a promise. A promise to my friend that I would see her kingdom freed." She shoved her scarred palm into his face. "I made an unbreakable vow. And you and Maeve - all you gods-damned bastards - are getting in the way of that." She went off down the hillside again. He followed.
"And what of your own people? What of your own kingdom?"
"They are better off without me, just as you said."
His tattoo scrunched as he snarled. "So you'd save another land, but not yours. Why can't your friend save her own kingdom?"
"Because she is dead!" She screamed the last word so loudly it burned in her throat. "Because she is dead, and I am left with my worthless life!"
He merely stared at her with that animal stillness. When she walked away, he didn't come after her. — Sarah J. Maas

I'm sorry. Really, Echo, I am. I didn't make the Aires connection until after the movie, I swear."
"It's fine." Really - we're even. You took me to a crappy movie. I left and almost kissed a really hot guy. A guy who made my toes curl and shared his food. A guy I should really stop obsessing over because God knows he's not thinking about me. — Katie McGarry

Impending war was evidenced by the faraway expression in the older villagers' eyes, the shadows on their faces, not of fear but of sorrow. Because they knew; they had lived through the last war and they remembered the generation of young men who had marched off so willingly and never come back. Those too, like Daddy, who had made it home, but left in France a part of themselves that they could never recover. Who surrendered to moments, periodically, in which their eyes filmed and their lips whitened, and their minds gave over to sights and sounds they wouldn't share but couldn't shake. — Kate Morton

For Swan's birthday, Calla made pineapple upside-down cake, which is not the kind of cad you put candles on. So there was nothing to blow and make wishes on. Nobody missed the candles, because when you're eating pineapple upside-down cake, there is nothing much left to wish for — Jenny Wingfield

He left for his day at the library. Today is research day. When he got there, he went directly to the microfiche machine and began looking through the newspaper obituaries for married men who died between 1980 and 1983. Their widows would be due for a little romance by now. He stayed there for hours, searching for her. His meticulous search netted seven names that merited further investigation. If some husband died and it made the first five pages of the paper, well, that meant a definite bonus because the dead man was powerful and with power came money. Their widows made excellent prospects for his future plans. — Jean Holloway

But the waves kept moving, with the white wake of the ship traced in them for an instant, and then smoothed over by the water. And it was as if my own footsteps were being erased behind me, the footsteps I'd made as a child on the beaches and pathways of the land I'd left, and the footsteps I'd made on this side of the ocean, since coming here; all the traces of me, smoothed over and rubbed away as if they had never been, like polishing the black tarnish from the silver, or drawing your hand across dry sand.
On the edge of sleep I thought: It's as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed. It is almost the same as being innocent.
And then I slept. — Margaret Atwood

Nathaniel kissed me and then Micah good-bye. Normally he would have kissed Micah more thoroughly, because he might not get another chance for hours, but we'd started doing less of the tonsil-cleaning kisses in front of Matthew - not just between the men, but between me and the men, or anyone and anyone. Why? Because Matthew liked to imitate, and he'd gotten sent home with a note from preschool. We'd been left having to explain that certain kinds of kissing was grownup kissing, and he had to be a grownup to do it. He'd accepted our reasoning and filed it away on the same list as driving a car, drinking liquor, or being able to lift weights. It made perfect sense to him that it was just one more thing he wasn't old enough to do, yet. — Laurell K. Hamilton

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

We made a pact the day you left for Novo - I know you don't remember that, but I do - and I'm holding fast to our promise. To never give up hope. And I have hope, because I know that deep-down, hidden within the innermost fragments of your heart is the love you feel for me. I know it's still there, waiting to be reclaimed. When it comes to you, no amount of time spent waiting is a waste. — Siobhan Davis

Finally, I formulate and say a little prayer to God, and since we haven't officially spoken since my mom and Elliott died that takes up quite a bit of my time.
The rest of it I spend on trying to determine what I think love really is and what I actually feel for Tally Landon at this point. Upon deep reflection, I realize that I must be at the edge of life's abyss. This is me. All there is left of me; and yet, I'm looking over and contemplating its meaning on whether to jump or stay. I'm not sure this feeling for Tally Landon is made up of love any more than it is of hate. This must be a kind of purgatory - the in-between place - because these pervasive feelings of rage and passion for Tally are equalized and actually co-mingle together - like fire and water - each ready to extinguish the other. I've come to accept the truth. There may be nothing left for us. It could go either way. — Katherine Owen

I despise flowery speech since those who use it are usually guilty of the worst betrayals later. That and the type of life I've lived have made me incapable of saying the pretty words you deserve to hear, yet if I made you a vampire, you'd feel my emotions as clearly as I hear your thoughts now."
Then he drew my hand to his chest, placing it over his heart.
"I never turned any of my previous lovers because I didn't want them to feel how little I cared. You I loved, yet you left me because I wouldn't verbalize my emotions. That will probably happen again, but if you could feel what you mean to me, Leila" - his voice deepened - "words wouldn't matter. — Jeaniene Frost

Manage me, I am a mess, swept under the rug of yesterday's home improvement, a whimsical urge tossed aside for the easy reassurance of home and comfort. I am the photograph tucked away as a book-mark, in a book left half unread, once reopened to find memories crawling back into peripheral sight, faded, creased and lonely. I long to be admired, long to be held, torn and laughed at, laughed with, like a distant relative or an old friend breathing in their last breath. I missed the moment when time collapsed and memory was erased, replaced by finicky social experiments, lost in the blur of intoxication, sucked through multi-colored bendy-straws, making way for a spinning world where hub-caps stood still, but our vision didn't. If I could leave you with only one thing, it would be small, foldable, and made from trees, with a few careless words, scribbled in blue; Take a minute to learn me, take a moment to love me, because I need your love to live,and without it, I am nothing. — Alex Gaskarth

My date the next night brought a sock puppet with him. A. Sock. Puppet. And he talked to me with it" ...
"It completely freaked me out," Kalani continued. "I made it through drinks and that was more than enough. I told the guy it was a good thing he had one good hand left because if this was his usual MO for dates, he was going to need it. — Robin Bielman

I have this theory," says Andy Stone, seated in his office at Prudential-Bache Securities. "Wall Street makes its best producers into
managers. The reward for being a good producer is to be made a
manager. The best producers are cutthroat, competitive, and often
neurotic and paranoid. You turn those people into managers, and they go
after each other. They no longer have the outlet for their instincts that
producing gave them. They usually aren't well suited to be managers.
Half of them get thrown out because they are bad. Another quarter get
muscled out because of politics. The guys left behind are just the most
ruthless of the bunch. That's why there are cycles on Wall Street - why
Salomon Brothers is getting crunched now - because the ruthless people
are bad for the business but can only be washed out by proven failure. — Michael Lewis

Lily, if you left this earth and left me behind, I'd be miserable. I probably wouldn't want to live. But you know what? If you left me with our baby girl, I'd spend my whole life raising her the best I could. Making sure I did right by her and by you. Making sure that everything I did would make you happy and proud of me. You'd leave this earth knowing that I would give our children everything. You would have no doubt about that. Not doing that, not taking care of the babies we made together, would mean that I didn't love you, that you didn't mean the world to me. Because if something means that much to you, then it means that much to me. If I were him, I'd grab hold of anything that reminded me of the woman I loved. — Alexa Riley

If Mark's words had once made him angry, Martha's words left him stunned. He started to try to talk her out of it, but Martha gently cut him off. "Will you really miss me?" she said. "We hardly know each other anymore." "I can change," he said. Martha smiled. "I know you can. And you should. But you should do it because you want to, not because you think I want you to. — Nicholas Sparks

It was his idea to go horseback riding that day. It was his idea I could do anything if I just made up my mind to. I fell off the horse because I didn't know how to hold on. Cecil left for pretty much the same reason. — Marsha Norman

Oh, you know ... , I start. In my head, I finish: Oh, you know, just the usual. I've slept in Otter's bed two or three times now. Oh, don't worry! We haven't really done anything. Except tell stories about you. And me. And him. Did you know he's wanted me for a long time? He really left because he needed me so bad that it hurt, and he thought he was projecting. Remember when I used to say that to you? That you're projecting? Well, he thought it too. But his was so bad that he used it as an excuse and got the hell out of Dodge, but then he came back, and I still don't completely understand why yet. Oh, and we may have made out. And I may have liked it. And this is after you and I broke up, like ... what? Two days ago? Three days ago? After being together since like second grade? So you know, the usual. — T.J. Klune

I made a date with her for the following week. Mid-week, I went for a ride in a T-28. The engine failed, the pilot slid the plane into the sand of the Mojave out near El Centro, and I slid into a hospital bed for about ten days at North Island Naval Air Station. While I was in the hospital, the CARDIV left for WestPac. I called Marguerite and told her what happened and that I wanted to see her again. I'm not sure she believed me, but agreed to another date. Unfortunately it had to be a short date because I had to head for Norton Air Force base to catch a flight for Hawaii, to meet up with the CARDIV. — W.R. Spicer

The fact that a thesis is flawed does not mean that we should not invest in it as long as other people believe in it and there is a large group of people left to be convinced. The point was made by John Maynard Keynes when he compared the stock market to a beauty contest where the winner is not the most beautiful contestant but the one whom the greatest number of people consider beautiful. Where I have something significant to add is in pointing out that it pays to look for the flaws; if we find them, we are ahead of the game because we can limit our losses when the market also discovers what we already know. It is when we are unaware of what could go wrong that we have to worry. — George Soros

If you guys want us to get better marks, then please don't have debates in parliament about school funding, don't schedule after-school lessons. Just show us the people who've left this town and have made something of their lives, because I can't imagine anything outside of this town. I can't imagine their lives. All I've ever been shown, in my fourteen years of living here, is that good grades equal spit balls. Please show me why I should try. Please show me what's possible. Please show me something else. — Megan Jacobson

I felt bad because Little Big Tom came in while we were making the tape and was like over the moon because he thought we were interested in his music. We had to humor him and listen to him deliver around six hundred speeches about fusion and the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Chicano and Latino influences on pretentious jazzy pseudorock. I think it was probably the happiest I'd ever seen him. And I also felt bad about the fact that after he left we kind of made fun of the funny way he said Latino, like he was the Frito Bandito or something. I felt bad, but I did it anyway, because I'm only human. I was ashamed of myself and depressed afterward, though, which is human, too, I guess. Being human is an excuse for just about everything, but it also kind of sucks in a way. — Frank Portman

All along - not only since she left, but for a decade before - I had been imagining her without listening, without knowing that she made as a poor a window as I did. And so I could not imagine her as a person who could feel fear, who could feel isolated in a roomful of people, who could be shy about her record collection because it was too personal to share. Someone who might have read travel books to escape having to live in the town that so many people escape to. Someone who - because no one thought she was a person - had no one to really talk to. — John Green

She looks at me, square in the eye. Taking aim. And then she pulls the trigger. "Because I hated you."
The wind, the noise, it all just goes quiet for a second, and I'm left with a dull ringing in my ear, like after a show, like after a heart monitor goes to flatline.
"Hated me? Why?"
"You made me stay." She says it quietly, and it almost gets lost in the wind and the traffic and I'm not sure I heard her. But then she repeats it louder this time. "You made me stay!"
And there it is. A hollow blown through my heart, confirming what some part of me has always known.
She knows. — Gayle Forman

He held up his right hand and spread his fingers out in a fan. I held up my left hand and spread my fingers out in a fan and we made our fingers and thumbs touch each other. We do this because sometimes father wants to give me a hug, but I do not like hugging people so we do this instead, and it means that he loves me. — Mark Haddon

The surgical process turned out to be slightly out of the ordinary because I was not the best patient. I was extremely worried that the doctors would cut open my palm. Cutting the palm would mean substantially altering my grip, which I really didn't want to do. I explained to both my surgeons the nuances of cricket and urged them to cut open the back of the hand. I was so obsessed with this issue that I woke up during the surgery and asked them to show me where they had made the incision. Dr Joshi later told me that they were all surprised to see me awake despite the anaesthesia. The doctors showed me that my palm had been left untouched and told me to calm down and allow them to carry on. Satisfied, I instantly drifted back to sleep. — Sachin Tendulkar

Why not? Tell me. You owe me this!" She looks at me, square in the eye. Taking aim. And then she pulls the trigger. "Because I hated you." The wind, the noise it all just goes quiet for a second, and I'm left with a dull ringing in my ear, like a after a show, like a after a heart monitor goes to flatline. "Hated me? Why?" "Because you made me stay. — Gayle Forman

We cannot buy it. We are too poor. Then men who have made the law have taken our own drink from us, and have not left us wherewith to buy it. Yet they can buy it, because they are rich. I have a feeling that that is not just. I do not grudge them their riches and all it can buy for them. — Neil M. Gunn

Larson had been putting up a front like he wasn't listening, but hearing that last statement from Owen made him speak up. "It's not about that," he asserted.
"It has to be," Owen disagreed. "How else am I supposed to define myself?"
"Why do you have to have a definition? A label isn't gonna make you feel any better about yourself or this situation. Stop trying to put yourself in one group or the other. It doesn't matter."
"It matters to me!" Owen challenged. "My whole world has been flipped upside down thanks to you! Am I just supposed to sit back and accept that?"
Larson was beginning to boil over with repugnance. "Yes! Because that's what happens!" He was trying as hard a he could not to scream. "Things change and sometimes there's nothing we can do about it. Life sucks. Deal with it! That's what I'm doing. I'm not doing it in the best way, but I'm doing it. I'm dealing with that fact that you left me. — Megan Duke

I don't care if you've changed. I don't care who you are now. I don't need or want your explanations because what you did, you didn't do it to me, you did it to that girl you left behind. And I'm not her anymore. You made certain of that. She might have needed answers and an apology, but me ... I don't know what you're talking about. — Samantha Young

Meanwhile Don Quixote worked upon a farm labourer, a neighbour of his, an honest man (if indeed that title can be given to him who is poor), but with very little wit in his pate. In a word, he so talked him over, and with such persuasions and promises, that the poor clown made up his mind to sally forth with him and serve him as esquire. Don Quixote, among other things, told him he ought to be ready to go with him gladly, because any moment an adventure might occur that might win an island in the twinkling of an eye and leave him governor of it. On these and the like promises Sancho Panza (for so the labourer was called) left wife and children, and engaged himself as esquire to his neighbour. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Name the book that made the biggest impression on you. I bet you read it before you hit puberty. In the time I've got left, I intend to write artistic books - for kids - because they're still open to new ideas. — Gary Paulsen

So we gave up. I'd finally had enough of chasing after a ghost who did not want to be discovered. We'd failed, maybe, but some mysteries aren't meant to be solved. I still did not know her as I wanted to, but I never could. She made it impossible for me. And the accident, the suicide, would never be anything else, and I was left to ask, Did I help you to a fate you didn't want, Alaska, or did I jsut assist in your willful self-destruction? Because they are different crimes, and I didn't know wheter to feel angry at myself for letting go.
But we knew what could be found out, and in finding out, she had made us closer- the Colonel adn Takumi and me, anyway. And that was it. She didn't leave me enough to discover her, but she left me enough to rediscover the Great Perhaps. — John Green

The flash would prove that proton decay really happens. The flash would mean that the matter of the proton - the solid stuff - had turned into the energy of the flash (E-mc2). Totally. Nothing left behind. No ash. No smoke. No smell. Nada. One moment it's there, the next moment - pffft - gone.
What would it mean? Only this: Nothing lasts. Nothing. Because everything that exists is made of protons. — Jerry Spinelli

You think you'll be ok because in the end your mother will still be your mother. You don't know that she'll be changed. Loving you still, of course, but what you find out later is that her love now tastes different from all that time spent training to withstand distance, containing herself in order to live with impotence so strong, the phrase "so near and yet so far" was made for it. You think if you'd known all this you'd be able to live with the results of your choices, never again wondering what would've happened if you'd never left. — Anjanette Delgado

Reacher looked at the books on the tables. He read when he could, mostly through the vast national library of lost and forgotten volumes. Battered paperbacks mostly, all curled and furry, found in waiting rooms or on buses, or on the porches of out-of-the-way motels, read and enjoyed and left somewhere else for the next guy. He liked fiction better than fact, because fact often wasn't. Like most people he knew a couple of things for sure, up close and eyeballed, and when he saw them in books they were wrong. So he liked made-up stories better, because everyone knew where they were from the get-go. He wasn't strict about genre. Either shit happened, or it didn't. Chang — Lee Child

So, why are you in Biloxi?" ...
Bran didn't move, but there was a subtle change in him as he watched her. "I thought the reason I was here was obvious."
"Do you mean because of me?" Asking that left her feeling exposed even if she'd made it clear that things between them were just about having fun.
"I am here because of you. — Katie Reus

She chose books because they never left her lonely the way that Kirk had left her lonely. BEcause company was often nothing of the kind, whereas a good book always was.
She chose books for the smell of fresh-pressed pages, for the yellow-brown musk of library mould, but always for the breathy kiss of paper rustling. She chose books because some of the held prose that made her weep, or poetry that winded her, and words that mae her heart skip beats.
She chose books because some came readey-made with characters that seemed like perfect versions of hrself, all of them little proofs that somehow, somewhere, it might just be possible for her to be better: to be popular, powerful, sexy and smart.
She chose books because they lied to her with more conviction than people ever had. — Dan Micklethwaite

Our greatest fear is that we will lose the love in our life ... that we will be abandoned, left alone, bereaved, misunderstood, deprived, hated and rejected ... but we can never be OUT OF LOVE. We are love and if our minds separate ourselves from who we really are it is a painful delusion. Ego personalities, including our own, might separate ourselves from love but love never dies because it is what we are made of. — Susan Mitchell

Let's say then you've made the decision to tear the life you know asunder in order to be with this person you love. A difficult decision to be sure. Putting it lightly. Because you cannot imagine a life without her, and the alternative left to you is a lifetime of desolation, as you don't intend to don a hair shirt or join a monastery or fling yourself into the ocean and drown. And so you go ahead and do the unthinkable and tear your life asunder ... only to discover the person you love won't have you after all, and she actually has a reason — Julie Anne Long

Turning off the machines is a technicality. Her mind is already gone. Her spirit lingers, but it's tied to her bed because we are. If we want it free, we have to do this for her." Molly heard an echo of her father and saw no inconsistency. Yes, Robin's soul was in heaven. Her spirit, though, was different. It was the part of her that lived on in everyone she left behind. In that regard, what Kathryn said made sense. — Barbara Delinsky

Conservatives and those on the right are usually willing to settle for thinking themselves correct on political issues; those on the left have always needed to feel not so much that they are correct but that they are also good. Disagree with someone on the right and he is likely to think you obtuse, wrong, sentimental, foolish, a dope; disagree with someone one the left and he is more likely to think you selfish, cold-hearted, a sellout, evil-in league with the devil, he might say, if he didn't think religious terminology too coarse for our secular age. To this day one will hear of people who fell for Communism in a big way let off the hook because they were sincere; if one's heart is in the right place, nothing else matters, even if one's naive opinions made it easier for tyrants to murder millions. — Joseph Epstein

Every choice closes doors ," I said, "and at some point you are left in the little room of yourself. I think most people who get to that room go crazy because they're surrounded with missed possibilities and no principle to explain or justify why they made the choices they did. I don't invite unhappiness, Aaron. Avoiding conflict may not be the noblest principle, but it works for me. — Michael Nava

He realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding, they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm because it left no residue behind. — George Orwell

Georgia took once a creative-writing course, and what the instructor told her was: Too many things. Too many things going on at the same time; also too many people. Think, he told her. What is the important thing? What do you want us to pay attention to? Think.
Eventually she wrote a story that was about her grandfather killing chickens, and the instructor seemed to be pleased with it. Georgia herself thought that it was a fake. She made a long list of all the things that had been left out and handed it in as an appendix to the story. The instructor said that she expected too much, of herself and of the process, and that she was wearing him out.
The course was not a total loss, because Georgia and the instructor ended up living together. — Alice Munro

I would argue that's because we had a bunch of smart people running around here. They were coming in and working very hard and many of them had left jobs in which they made significantly more money. — John Hickenlooper

Why am I the expert all of a sudden?"
"Of the two of us, you have more stalking experience."
He leaned back. "Really?"
"Yes. When you let yourself into my apartment before we were dating, did you fidget while you watched me?"
"Will you let it go?" he growled.
"No."
"I didn't fidget. I checked on you to make sure you hadn't gotten yourself killed. I wanted to know that you weren't dying slowly of your wounds, because you have no sense and half of the time you couldn't afford a medmage. I didn't stand there and watch you. I came in, made sure you were okay, and left. It wasn't creepy."
"It was a little creepy."
"It worked, didn't it?"
"Worked how?"
"You're still alive."
"Yes, of course, take all the credit. — Ilona Andrews

He left because the world is not made to accommodate people like him. — Michael Finkel

I love the way Dorothy Sayers described the wild side of His personality. To do them justice, the people who crucified Jesus did not do so because he was a bore. Quite the contrary; he was too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround Him with an atmosphere of tedium. We have declawed the lion of Judah and made Him a housecat for pale priests and pious old ladies.9 — Mark Batterson

I don't let anyone touch me," I finally said.
Why not?"
Why not? Because I was tired of men. Hanging in doorways, standing too close, their smell of beer or fifteen-year-old whiskey. Men who didn't come to the emergency room with you, men who left on Christmas Eve. Men who slammed the security gates, who made you love them then changed their minds. Forests of boys, their ragged shrubs full of eyes following you, grabbing your breasts, waving their money, eyes already knocking you down, taking what they felt was theirs. ( ... ) It was a play and I knew how it ended, I didn't want to audition for any of the roles. It was no game, no casual thrill. It was three-bullet Russian roulette. — Janet Fitch

You were the one choice I made for myself. And that one choice was taken away from me, because the night I realized I was in love with you was the same night you left. — Annette K. Larsen

It's an unfortunate word, 'depression', because the illness has nothing to do with feeling sad, sadness is on the human palette. Depression is a whole other beast. It's when your old personality has left town and been replaced by a block of cement with black tar oozing through your veins and mind. This is when you can't decide whether to get a manicure or jump off a cliff. It's all the same. When I was institutionalised I sat on a chair unable to move for three months, frozen in fear. To take a shower was inconceivable. What made it tolerable was while I was inside, I found my tribe - my people. They understood and unlike those who don't suffer, never get bored of you asking if it will ever go away? They can talk medication all hours, day and night; heaven to my ears. — Ruby Wax

He was listed as right-handed. The army needed to know that because bolt-action sniper rifles are made for right-handers. Left-handed soldiers don't usually get assigned as snipers. Pigeonholing starts on day one in the military. — Lee Child

And so we have the result noted: the resources of God's kingdom remain detached from human life. There is no gospel for human life and Christian discipleship, just one for death or one for social action. The souls of human beings are left to shrivel and die on the plains of life because they are not introduced into the environment for which they were made, the living kingdom of eternal life. To counteract this we must develop a straightforward presentation, in word and life, of the reality of life now under God's rule, through reliance upon the word and person of Jesus. In this way we can naturally become his students or apprentices. We can learn from him how to live our lives as he would live them if he were we. We can enter his eternal kind of life now. — Dallas Willard

she came out - dancing around in a white shirt with nothing underneath, the rosy coins of her nipples visible under the thin fabric - asking for a wood saw and spackle, he'd been jumpy as a jackrabbit sniffing Easter candy. He could have looked in the bedroom when she left to sleep, to go to Brass and Bones, to go wherever sex-witch art-fairies go. She came back every day with packages from the Indian import store, bags from the pagan crystal shop, boxes that smelled like incense and old wood. But he didn't look because deep down he liked the mystery, that a woman had claimed a space in the house he'd designed, made it hers to reveal on her terms. — Kira A. Gold

Maylon Stark was medium-built and husky. That was the only word to fit him, husky. He had a husky face, and the nose on it was badly bent and flattened huskily. His voice was husky. His head sat huskily on his neck, the way a fighter carries his chin pulled in from habit. It was the huskiness of a man who hunches up his shoulders and hangs on hard with both hands. And with it Maylon Stark had a peculiar perpetual expression, like that of a man who is hanging hard onto the earth to keep it from moving away, out from under him. The line from the right side of his flattened nose to the corner of his mouth was three times as deep as the same line on the left side; his mouth did not curl, but the deepness of this line made him look like he was about to smile sardonically, or cry wearily, or sneer belligerently. You never knew which. And you never found out which. Because Maylon Stark never did any of them. — James Jones

Jonah's the only man who ever made my entire mind splinter like this. Because I can't speak. I can't think. I don't know what to feel. All I know is that he's pumping me hard now, so deep inside me that it seems like - like there's nothing left of me except my body, and my body is completely his - even the arousal arcing inside me, more and more powerful, that belongs to him too - — Lilah Pace

When you love someone you tend to tell them so much about your past because you're trying to catch up to the present moment. You're trying to say, my past has been bloody. My past has been as painful and pounding as an ear ache, but I am still here. I survived it. You're trying to say, here I am before you. I can be brutal. I can be as harsh and unforgiving as sun burn, but this is how I got to this moment. This is who I am. I am not always kind and lovely, I am so often fierce and cutting and unforgiving. I have made some mistakes I'm still trying to forgive myself for. Please accept it. Please try to love me for it. Here is the muscle and bone of me. It's frightening. It's a roller coaster. Here is the meat of me, after I've shed my skin, after I've left the cicada shell behind. It's manic. It's a monster, but it will try to love you well. It will try to leave fingerprints all over you. — Jessica Therese

But Nebraska was not always a bed of roses. When the first settlers arrived, they found a harsh, unforgiving place, a vast treeless expanse of barren, drought-parched soil. And so, summoning up the dynamic pioneer spirit of hope and steely determination, they left. But a few of them remained and built sod houses, which are actually made of dirt. Think about that. You can't clean a sod house, because it would be gone. The early settlers had a hell of a time getting this through to their children. "You kids stop tracking dirt out of the house!" they'd yell. — Dave Barry

A study of the San Francisco Beat enclave by psychiatrist Dr. Francis Rigney in the late 1950's showed 60 percent "were so psychotic or crippled by tensions, anxiety and neurosis as to be nonfunctional in the competitive world." In contrast, the several studies released so far made of the student radicals at Berkeley show them to be stable, serious, and of above-average intelligence. The point is that the Beats had to "cop out" of the Rat Race because they couldn't perform; the New Left chooses to reject a society it could easily be successful in. — Jack Newfield

The 'action' began: to me it seemed all the more obscure because in those days, when I read to myself, I used often, while I turned the pages, to dream of something quite different. And to the gaps which this habit made in my knowledge of the story more were added by the fact that when it was Mamma who was reading to me aloud she left all the love-scenes out. — Marcel Proust

I hollowed out, stopped listening to music, never picked up a pencil, started slipping into old habits. All of the vibrancy I used to see became de-saturated. Lost Slowly, once I had done enough damage to myself, I began to climb out of the hole. Clean. When I made it out, the only thing left inside was the voice, and for the second time in my life, I no longer ignored it - because it was my own. — Gerard Way

But Moominpappa wasn't listening, because just at that moment he had got the right grip on a big round boulder, and with a great thud it rolled down the slope. It made two very clear sparks and left a faint but enchanting smell of gunpowder behind. Now it was lying at the bottom, just where it should lie. It was wonderful to roll stones, first pushing with all one's might, then feeling them beginning to move just a little at first
then a little more
and then giving way and rolling into the sea with a colossal splash, leaving one standing there trembling with effort and pride. — Tove Jansson

When I came it was in the face of everything decent, white sperm dripping down over the heads and souls of my dead parents. If I had been born a woman I would certainly have been a prostitute. Since I had been born a man, I craved women constantly, the lower the better. And yet women - good women - frightened me because they eventually wanted your soul, and what was left of mine, I wanted to keep. Basically I craved prostitutes, base women, because they were deadly and hard and made no personal demands. Nothing was lost when they left. Yet at the same time I yearned for a gentle, good woman, despite the overwhelming price. Either way I was lost. A strong man would give up both. I wasn't strong. So I continued to struggle with women, with the idea of women. — Charles Bukowski

He spent two years running a hospital for Chai." Molly put her arm around the younger woman. "Which was the equivalent of working the ER in a city like New York or Chicago. He saved a lot of lives." She made sure Max was paying attention, too. "And before you say, 'Yeah, of drug runners, killers, and thieves,' you should also know that his patients were just regular people who worked for Chai because he was the only steady employer in the area. Or because they knew they'd end up in some mass grave if they refused his offer of employment. Before Grady came in, if they were injured in some battle with a rival gang, they were just left for dead."
Jones looked up to find Max watching him as he sterilized a particularly sharp knife. "Me and Jesus," he said. "So much alike, people often get us confused. — Suzanne Brockmann

Beneatha: Love him? There is nothing left to love.
Mama: There is always something left to love. And if you ain't learned that, you ain't learned nothing. (Looking at her) Have you cried for that boy today? I don't mean for yourself and for the family 'cause we lost the money. I mean for him: what he been through and what it done to him. Child, when do you think is the time to love somebody the most? When they done good and made things easy for everybody? Well then, you ain't through learning - because that ain't the time at all. It's when he's at his lowest and can't believe in hisself 'cause the world done whipped him so! when you starts measuring somebody, measure him right, child, measure him right. Make sure you done taken into account what hills and valleys he come through before he got to wherever he is. — Lorraine Hansberry

Why were so many Americans treated by their government as though their lives were as disposable as paper tissues? Because that was the way authors customarily treated bit-part players in their made-up tales ... Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. All facts would also be given equal weightiness. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead, which I think I have done. — Kurt Vonnegut