Idea Top Up Quotes & Sayings

Remember my experiments with the RTG and having a hot bath? Same principle, but I came up with an improvement: submerge the RTG. No heat will be wasted that way. I started with a large rigid sample container (or "plastic box" to people who don't work at NASA). I ran a tube through the open top and down the inside wall. Then I coiled it in the bottom to make a spiral. I glued it in place like that and sealed the end. Using my smallest drill bit, I put dozens of little holes in the coil. The idea is for the freezing return air from the regulator to pass through the water as a bunch of little bubbles. The increased surface area will get the heat into the air better. Then I got a medium flexible sample container ("Ziploc bag") and tried to seal the RTG in it. But the RTG has an irregular shape, and I couldn't get all the air out of the bag. I can't allow any air in there. — Andy Weir

In Korea, the director is on top, and the power flows down vertically. On the set, I love to come up with ideas on the spot. But in Hollywood, if I were to come up with a certain idea on set, the idea had to be taken to all these different people who had to agree. — Kim Jee-woon

He pulled himself back up straight into his chair. Then, before she had any idea what he'd planned, he pulled her down into his lap. She fell, surprised. His embrace was passionless; more comforting than anything. She didn't mind. It was too late at night for anything else. Richard yawned as he snuggled her close and rested his cheek against the top of her head. "I'm not good at apologizing," he said with another yawn. She pulled back and put her hand over his mouth. "Yes, you are. Apology accepted. — Lynn Kurland

Up near the top, the view pierces me so totally I have one of those flash thoughts about tossing myself into the ocean. Surrender to the enormous wildness, the water's churning gray force, the solid rocks. It doesn't seem so scary. The idea. It seems like it could bring a lot of quiet. Endless quiet. — Amy McNamara

I get the greatest feeling when I'm singing. It's other-worldly. Your feet are anchored into the Earth and into this energy force that comes up through your feet and goes up the top of your head and maybe you're holding hands with the angels or the stars, I have no idea. — Cyndi Lauper

I snapped the crossbow into the top of the mount, took a canvas bundle from the cart, and unrolled it. Crossbow bolts, tipped with the Galahad warheads.
"This is my baby." I petted the stock.
"You have a strange relationship with your weapons," Roman said.
"You have no idea," Raphael told him.
"This from a man with a living staff and a man who once drove four hours both ways for a sword he then put on his wall," I murmured.
"It was an Angus Trim," Raphael said.
"It's a sharpened strip of metal."
"You have an Angus Trim sword?" Kate's eyes lit up.
"Bought it at an estate auction," Raphael said. "If we get out of this alive, you are invited to come to my house and play with it."
It was good that Curran wasn't here and I was secure in our relationship, because that totally could be taken the wrong way. — Ilona Andrews

I was big as a kid, very overweight. That caused a lot of insecurities for me growing up, and on top of that, I didn't like the idea of big crowds. I found it quite frightening. I enjoy the company of people who I know, and I'm probably still like that today. — Deborah Mailman

I was pressed for time, so all I was able to whip up was deviled eggs with a dollop of Tsar Nicoulai caviar on top, a selection of fruit and artisanal cheeses, and sauteed Dover sole with lemon and capers.
Kate's idea of preparing a quick meal was eating Cap'n Crunch out of the box, so this was Christmas dinner by comparison. — Janet Evanovich

You have no idea the things I want to do to you. No idea of the way I can make you feel."
I think I have some idea. I'm so fucking turned on it's not even funny. I'm not even breathing. I'm on an edge and I'm seconds from falling.
His hand slides up the side of my tank top and brushes over my breasts, sending a shower of sparks down my spine, making me tingle from head to toe.
"And I know you want me to try. — Karina Halle

Some magazines are run from the top down, where the editor-in-chief decides what every article is going to be and who's going to write them, and then they're doled out. My idea is to do it the opposite way, to do it from the bottom up. — Ruth Reichl

The Romans formed a line of mantlets and constructed a siege terrace. When they began to erect a siege tower at some distance, the defenders on the wall at first made abusive remarks and ridiculed the idea of setting up such a huge apparatus so far away. Did those pygmy Romans, they asked, with their feeble hands and muscles, imagine that they could mount such a heavy tower on top of a wall? (All the Gauls are inclined to be contemptuous of our short stature, contrasting it with their own great height.) 31. But when they saw the tower in motion and approaching the fortress walls, the strange, unfamiliar spectacle frightened them into sending envoys to ask Caesar for peace. The envoys said they were forced to the conclusion that the Romans had divine aid in their warlike operations, since they could move up apparatus of such height at such a speed. — Gaius Iulius Caesar

Sentences spoken by writers, unless they have been written out first, rarely say what writers wish to say. Writers are unlucky speakers, by and large, which accounts for their being in a profession which encourages them to stay at their desk for years, if necessary, pondering what to say next and how best to say it. Interviewers propose to speed up this process
by trepanning writers, so to speak, and fishing around in their brains for unused ideas which otherwise might never get out of there. Not a single idea has ever been discovered by means of this brutal method
and still the trepanning of authors goes on every day.
I now refuse all those who wish to take the top off my skull yet again. The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down. — Kurt Vonnegut

My friend, when you're above the law, when you are the law. the phrase about ends justifying means has a real meaning. Put yourself in their place. If you felt that the state which you worshiped above your God was endangered by the life of one insignificant man, would you hesitate to have him shot? I can tell you that you wouldn't. That's the danger of Fascism, of state-worship. It supposes an absolute, an egocentric unit. The idea of the state is not rooted in the masses, it is not of the people. It is an abstract, a God-idea, a psychic dung-hill raised to shore up an economic system that is no longer safe. When you're on the top of that sort of dung-hill, it doesn't matter whether the ends are in reality good or bad. The fact that they are your ends makes them good
for you. — Eric Ambler

The traditional view of purpose says it comes from on high, from God, from the Creator. Darwin's idea of natural selection makes people uncomfortable because it reverses the direction of tradition. Whereas people used to think of meaning coming from on high and being ordained from the top down, now we have Darwin saying, "No, all of this design can happen, all of this purpose can emerge from the bottom up without any direction at all." — Daniel Dennett

He remembered something about darkness, about pressure and weighted blankets and silence. Though he had no idea how he was going to get hold of any of those things up on top of a building.

"Tell me," Kit said. Tell me what you need.

"Put your arms around me," said Ty. His hands were pale blue blurs in the air, as if Kit were looking at a time-lapsed photo. "Hold on to me."

He was still rocking. After a moment, Kit put his arms around Ty, not knowing what else to do. — Cassandra Clare

What's your problem with the Guild?"
"The only way to resolve it involves me being entangled in running it and I don't want to do it." I waved my arms. "I have the Consort crap and I have the Cutting Edge crap and whatever other bullshit the two of you throw my way. I don't want to go to the Guild every month and deal with their crap on top of everything else."
Curran leaned toward me. "I have to dress up and meet with those corpsefuckers once every three months and be civil while we're eating at the same table. You can deal with the Guild."
"You dress up? Wow, I had no idea that putting on your formal sweatpants was such a huge burden."
"Kate," Curran snarled. "They're not sweatpants, they are slacks and they have a belt. I have to wear shoes with fucking laces in them. — Ilona Andrews

If I were to make a list of shit that is so clearly a terrible idea that I shouldn't have to explain to people why I'm not going to do it, walking into the hedge maze behind a mansion full of dead bodies would have been right up there. Not top 5 maybe, but high enough that I wouldn't have expected people to make me do it. — Seanan McGuire

You do not conceive a novel as easily as you conceive a child, nor even half as easily as you create nonfiction work. A journalist amasses facts, anecdotes and interviews with top brass. Enough of these add up to a book. A novelist demands quite different things. He has to find himself in his materials, to know for sure how he would feel and act and the events he writes about. In addition, he requires a catalyst - a person, idea, or emotion which coalesces his ingredients and makes them jell into a solid purpose. — Zelda Popkin

It came as a gift. A large gray bird flew up with a loud alarm call as he approached. As it gained height and wheeled away over the valley, it gave out a piping sound on three notes, which he recognized as the inversion of a line he had already scored for a piccolo. How elegant, how simple. Turning the sequence round opened up the idea of a plain and beautiful song in common time, which he could almost hear. But not quite. An image came to him of a set of unfolding steps, sliding and descending-from the trap door of a loft, or from the door of a light plane. One note lay over and suggested the next. He heard it, he had it, and then it was gone. There was a glow of a tantalizing afterimage and the fading call of a sad little tune ... These notes were perfectly interdependent, little polished hinges swinging the melody through its perfect arc. He could almost hear it again as he reached the top of the angled rock slab and paused to reach into his pocket for notebook and pencil. — Steven Pinker

I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I know there's a house under there, and I'm pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That's how I feel. It's like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that says: If I sit down and do this, everything will come out OK. — Stephen King

Well, if this place is going down, I'll just go home. I have hours of Real Housewives DVRed that I have to catch up on." Holli sounded almost bored at the idea of the top fashion magazine in the country going into a tailspin. Probably because no matter what happened, she would be fine. Holli didn't have an ego about her job, and would just as happily do cleaning product commercials as high-fashion shoots. I often used her somewhat lackadaisical approach to her career to get some perspective on my own. — Abigail Barnette

I came up with this idea to create an app. And the premise of the app is this: every problem in the bar business goes away when there's sales. You increase revenue and you solve every problem. It's when the revenues are low that [the business] doesn't work. So I wanted to put together an app that focused on top-line revenue, guest experience, and business management in a more organized way. — Jon Taffer

The idea that the millionaire finds nothing but a sad, empty place at the top of this society; the idea that the rich do not know what to do with their
money; the idea that the successful become filled up with futility, and that
those born successful are poor and little as well as rich - the idea, in short,
of the disconsolateness of the rich - is, in the main, merely a way by which
those who are not rich reconcile themselves to the fact. Wealth in America is
directly gratifying and directly leads to many further gratifications. To be
truly rich is to possess the means of realizing in big ways one's little whims
and fantasies and sicknesses ... — C. Wright Mills

Here's the thing. I hate kids. Always have.
I mean, I know the job of the race, biologically speaking, is to achieve immortality through reproduction, but the idea of getting impregnated and blowing up like a balloon as I serve as a carrier and service unit for this other person who will eventually burst out of me in the most terrifying way imaginable, then carry on using me one way or another for the rest of my life, is right up there with throwing myself off the top of a twenty-story building. If I have a biological clock, it is digital and does not tick. — Isobelle Carmody

You can't just come up with an idea for a game and stick the drama on top. It all has to be one driving thrust. — Andy Serkis

Cambodian dust whipped up in the wind and stuck to my clothes like clay. I put a hand between my face and the sun and blinked Phnom Penn dust from my tired eyes. One idea, drink, beamed light in all directions across my dark consciousness.
A slim lady walked toward me with a big smile and a bigger head. Her left hand rested on her waggling hips and her right hand rose above her head, limp-wristed, like she'd just thrown a winning ball toward a basket and was leaving her hand in the shot position. The lady walking toward me was a man. At least that much was clear, but the nature or our relationship was still a fog to me. She wore blue jeans and a white top accentuating her breasts, but her Adam's apple and cow sized hands revealed more in daylight than she could hide at night. — Craig Stone

I've known people who had fantastic ideas, but who couldn't get the idea off the ground because they approached everything weakly. They thought that their ideas would somehow take off by themselves, or that just coming up with an idea was enough. Let me tell you something - it's not enough. It will never be enough. You have to put the idea into action. If you don't have the motivation and the enthusiasm, your great idea will simply sit on top of your desk or inside your head and go nowhere. — Donald Trump

The start-up life kept me busy and surfaced the problem of not being able to stay on top of my personal finances, which led me to invent Mint. I was working 80-hour weeks, and had done enough preliminary work and research to know I had a big idea: To make money management effortless and automated. — Aaron Patzer

We used to send up the idea of getting to the top. John would shout, "Where are we going, fellas?" We'd shout back, "To the top, Johnny! — George Harrison

The opening chapter was the book's unique selling point, the singular idea that had carried Darcy through last November, and Coleman had just come up with it off the top of his head. — Scott Westerfeld

I think about how many people I know who try to brush off the fact that their 'agenda' might be something that exists. That it might be to tell a story that isn't just the same as everyone else's. The very idea of being accused of an agenda in itself: what a horrifying prospect. The idea that people might want to be heard! It was as if Karla, right there, had screamed at the top of her voice over almost everyone in the games industry. I have an agenda. I have a fucking agenda. I imagine her standing in front of an audience made up of everyone in attendance at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, and pointing at people: 'YOU have an agenda. And YOU have an agenda. And YOU have one too. I HAVE A FUCKING AGENDA. — Cara Ellison

Writing your book is not the end all of your strategy. It is a powerful catalyst that will push you to the top of your game. You see, something magical happens when you write your book and this is the best place to mention it because a sale happens when your book is complete. You sell yourself on the idea that you are more than you previously believed yourself to be. You get to experience that "I did it" moment where your mind releases these wonderful stimulators that make you feel awesome. You see yourself in a different way and this opens up a greater opportunity for accomplishment, achievement, and success. — Kytka Hilmar-Jezek

I waited at least two hours. I'd begun to think that he'd given up on me in the weeks that had passed. Or that he no longer cared about me. Hated me even. And the idea of losing him for ever, my best friend, the only person I'd ever trusted with my secrets, was so painful I couldn't stand it. Not on top of everything else that had happened. I could feel my eyes tearing up and my throat starting to close the way it does when I get upset.
Then I look up and there he was, three metres away, just watching me. Without even thinking, I jumped up and threw my arms around him, making some weird sound that combined laughing, choking and crying. — Suzanne Collins

The old-fashioned idea that the simple piling up of experiences, one on top of another, can make you an artist, is, of course, so much rubbish. If acting were just a matter of experience, then any busy harlot could make Garbo's Camille pale. — Helen Hayes