If You Were A Quotes & Sayings

I'd once had a long-term relationship with a Five Point Five that got nowhere near living together. This was because I was a Two Point Five, he was a Five Point Five and he wanted a Nine Point Five. Therefore, we were both destined for a broken heart. He gave me mine. He later found a Six Point Five that wanted a Nine Point Five. She got herself a breast enhancement and nose job which made her a firm Seven (if you didn't count the fact that she thought she was a Ten point Five and acted like it which really knocked her down to a Six) who broke his heart. — Kristen Ashley

Thought for the Week

"Refrain from littering the landscape
with unkind, cynical, mean-spirited words,
and you can return the world to a civility that was lost when human beings began deifying indiscriminant thoughts as if they were the truth."

Leonard Perlmutter (Ram Lev) — Leonard Perlmutter

I'm so sorry. I don't think the etiquette manuals cover this sort of situation." He leaned in close, his lips all but grazing her neck, and inhaled. "Mmm. You smell good, too."
She nearly choked. Took a step backwards, until her back met cold stone. "Th-thank you."
"That's better. May I kiss you?" His finger dipped into her shirt collar, stroking the tender nape of her neck.
"I d-don't th-think that's a good idea."
"Why not? We're alone." His hands were at her waist.
Her lungs felt tight and much too small. "Wh-what if somebody comes in?"
He considered for a moment. "Well, I suppose they'll think I fancy grubby little boys. — Y.S. Lee

The dissonance that I felt daily flew in the face of what Silicon Valley says about itself: that it is a meritocracy, that it values intelligence and creativity, that everyone has a fair shot if they just work hard enough. This was true only if you were technical, and even that may not always be enough: in the age of the social network, who you know and who your friends were was becoming increasingly important. — Katherine Losse

You know, bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet, and, you know, there's a Web log of our college newspaper. You know, there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them. — Lena Dunham

How the hell could Rhiannon keep people loyal to her if she was such a bitch?"
Alanna gave me a knowing look.
"I mean female people. It's obvious how she kept her men happy." My hands were planted on my
hips and I was tapping my foot in time with my anger. (I looked very teacherish - as a matter of fact, I felt the sudden desire to reprimand a teenager. But there's never one around when you need one.) — P.C. Cast

Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him ... These things I know, Ubertino; I also have belonged to those groups of men who believe they can produce the truth with white-hot iron. Well, let me tell you, the white heat of truth comes from another flame. — Umberto Eco

Jephthah called together the men of Gilead and fought against Ephraim. The Gileadites captured the fords of the Jordan leading to Ephraim, and whenever a survivor of Ephraim said, 'Let me cross over,' the men of Gilead asked him, 'Are you an Ephraimite?' If he replied, 'No,' they said, 'All right, say Shibboleth.' If he said, 'Sibboleth,' because he could not pronounce the word correctly, they seized and killed him at the fords of the Jordan. Fourty-thousand were killed at the time.
- Judges 12:4-6 — Edwidge Danticat

Little bits of Norwegian came to me by a kind of aural osmosis. The most surprising linguistic fact I learned was the impoverishment of that language in swear words. In fact, there is only one- 'farn'- which merely means something like 'devil take it!', but is considered very rude by a well brought-up Viking. It has to pass muster for most of the everyday tragedies that beset an expedition. If a finger is hammered, you jump up and down and cry 'farn'; if you drop an outstanding fossil irretrievably into the sea, you splutter for a while and then mutter 'farn' under your breath. If all your provisions were carried away by a hurricane and death were guaranteed, all the poor Norwegian could do would be to stand on the shingle and cry 'farn' into the wind. Somehow this does not seem adequate for the occasion. — Richard Fortey

Goethe's Faust risks all if he should cry to the moment, the 'augenblick', "Verweile doch!" "Last forever!" Who hasn't prayed that prayer? But the 'augenblick' isn't going to 'verweile'. You were lucky to get it in the first place. The present is a freely given canvas. That it is constantly being ripped apart and washed downstream goes without saying; it is a canvas, nevertheless. — Annie Dillard

Like the twig furniture she made, thinking it was going to make us rich, only she's shit with a hammer and nails and the stuff ended up being deadly. You were practically begging for a colonoscopy if you sat on it. — Susan Juby

Seen on her own, the woman was not so remarkable. Tall, angular, aquiline features, with the close-cropped hair which was fashionably called an Eton crop, he seemed to remember, in his mother's day, and about her person the stamp of that particular generation. She would be in her middle sixties, he supposed, the masculine shirt with collar and tie, sports jacket, grey tweed skirt coming to mid-calf. Grey stockings and laced black shoes. He had seen the type on golf courses and at dog shows - invariably showing not sporting breeds but pugs - and if you came across them at a party in somebody's house they were quicker on the draw with a cigarette lighter than he was himself, a mere male, with pocket matches. The general belief that they kept house with a more feminine, fluffy companion was not always true. Frequently they boasted, and adored, a golfing husband. ("Don't Look Now") — Daphne Du Maurier

When the bureaucratic details were handled, they broke up. Del, Shrake, and Jenkins followed him back to his office, where they talked some more about the surveillance aspects. A tech would put a tracking bug on Carver's vehicle, and Del would try to get one on Dannon's, if he could do it without being seen. "The big question is: Is he gonna talk, or is he gonna stonewall, or is he gonna shoot, or is he gonna run?" Jenkins said. "That's four questions," Shrake said. "It irritates me that you can't count. — John Sandford

I've had a long line of failed television programs, pilots that were never picked up, series that didn't go very long. I've learned that there's really nothing you can do. If it's not in my control, I try not to worry about it. — Nathan Fillion

What a relief, Nadya thought; in that light he would not be able to tell that she had been crying.
"You mean if it weren't for the blackout you wouldn't have come?" Dasha took up Shchagov's tone, flirting unconsciously, as she did with every unmarried man she met.
"By no means, never. In bright light women's faces are deprived of all their charm; it reveals their spiteful expressions, their envious glances, their premature wrinkles, their heavy cosmetics."
Nadya shuddered at the words "envious glances" - it was as if he had overheard their argument.
Shchagov went on:" If I were a woman, I would make it a law that lights be kept low. Then everyone would soon have a husband."
Dasha looked disapprovingly at Shchagov. He always talked that way, and she didn't like it. All his phrases seemed memorized, insincere. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

You say that someday your prince will come. More than anything, you want him to reply, "But what if your prince is right under your nose?" Instead he says, "Well, as long as he's mot one of those deposed princes ... "
You wish he weren't such a prince. You wish he were a frog. — David Levithan

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

You never would get through to the end of being a father, no matter where you stored your mind or how many steps in the series you followed. Nit even if you died. Alive or dead a thousand miles distant, you were always going to be on the hook for work that was neither a procedure nor a series of steps but, rather, something that demanded your full, constant attention without necessarily calling you to do, perform, or say anything at all. — Michael Chabon

If you were a corporation needing financial services, and I can give you something better, faster, and cheaper across 12 products as opposed to eight, that's business. I'm doing it because I'm serving you; I'm not doing it because I want to be universal. — Jamie Dimon

Were you acquainted with me, you would know that my failings are equal to my victories. On my own, I am no more than a pauper. It is the Prince for whom I live and for whom I fight. He raised me from the mire and made me a son. I will aspire to serve Him to the utmost, and perhaps my duty to Him will be fulfilled more as a herald than as a warrior, for if my quill and ink capture your attention and cause you to ponder the chronicles of this great kingdom and the story of the Prince, then I am content. — Chuck Black

Time and task were both disorienting, for if you were to remove everything from our lives that depends on electricity to function, homes and offices would become no more than the chambers and passages of limestone caves- simple shelter from wind and rain, far less useful than the first homes at Plymouth Plantation or a wigwam. No way to keep out cold, or heat, for long. No way to preserve food, or to cook it. The things that define us, quiet as rock outcrops - the dumb screens and dials, the senseless clicks of on/off switches- without their purpose, they lose the measure of their beauty and we are left alone in the dark with countless useless things. — Jane Brox

Aelin braced her forearms on the bar, crossing one ankle over the other. "Hello, Tern." Arobynn's second in command-or he had been two years ago. A vicious, calculating little prick who had always been more than eager to do Arobynn's dirty work. "I figured it was only a matter of time before one of Arobynn's dogs sniffed me out."
Tern flashed a too-bright smile. "If memory serves, you were always his favorite bitch. — Sarah J. Maas

Perhaps if you were not a foot taller, or quite so broad across the shoulders.'
'It's considerably less than a foot,' said Damen.
'Is it?' said Laurent. 'It feels like more when you argue with me on points of honour. — C.S. Pacat

In 1995, each cast at The Second City was made up of four men and two women. When it was suggested that they switch one of the companies to three men and three women, the producers and directors had the same panicked reaction. 'You can't do that. There won't be enough parts to go around. There won't be enough for the girls.' This made no sense to me, probably because I speak English and have never had a head injury. We weren't doing _Death of a Salesman._ _We were making up the show ourselves. How could there not be enough parts?_ If everyone had something to contribute, there would be enough. The insulting implication, of course, was that the women wouldn't have any ideas. — Tina Fey

A senator got up today in Congress and called his fellow senators sons of wild jackasses. Now, if you think the senators were hot, imagine how the jackasses must feel. — Will Rogers

I am always shocked to discover how many people believe that hardships are a punishment from God! When people face tests or see others facing tests, they assume Allah must be angry with them. SubhannAllah! Remember which people were tested the most: The Prophets! And they were the closest to Allah. Every hardship is good for you-if it brings you closer to Him! — Yasmin Mogahed

In two easy strides, I reach her, weave my arms around her waist and lift her feet off the ground. My angel is so light she practically floats. "Isaiah! You're crazy!"
"Insane," I answer.
She rests her forehead against mine and braids her hands tightly on my neck. "That was close. He almost got you in the end."
I love the sensation of her body against mine. Tonight, I'm going to kiss her again and, if she'll let me, I'll explore a little further. "Were you doubting me?"
She smiles when she notices the lightness in my voice. "Never."
That's right, angel. I'll never let you down. — Katie McGarry

Were you raised in a barn? You don't just walk into someone's house." Ash laughed. "I have an open invitation to enter whenever I'm here." "Yeah, but what if he's naked or something?" Ash led him into the foyer. "I've known Kyrian for over two thousand years, and I can honesty say that I have never once caught him naked in his living room." The door closed behind them without Ash or Nick touching it- something that always unnerved Nick when Ash did it. "Besides, Rosa's still here. I know he's not walking around bare-assed with her on duty. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

You told me that the children of the forest had the greensight. I remember."
"Some claimed to have that power. Their wise men were called greenseers."
"Was it magic?"
"Call it that for want of a better word, if you must. At heart it was only a different sort of knowledge."
Oh, to be sure, there is much we do not understand. The years pass in their hundreds and
their thousands, and what does any man see of life but a few summers, a few winters? We look at mountains and call them eternal, and so
they seem ... but in the course of time, mountains rise and fall, rivers change their courses, stars fall from the sky, and great cities sink
beneath the sea. Even gods die, we think. Everything changes.
So long as there was magic, anything could happen. Ghosts could walk, trees could talk, and broken boys could grow up to be knights. — George R R Martin

You are a low-class streetwalker past her prime." Azriel spoke dispassionately, as if he were observing her as a scientist might. And he wasn't done. "Your soul is black, your prospects non-existent because you've killed them all, and your life expectancy continues to decrease with every john you manage to con to make free use of your body. I am also willing to bet you carry more than one nasty surprise for any fool dumb enough to suck you. You repulse me. — Shara Azod

For John was running, and this was terrible. Because if you ran, time ran. You yelled and screamed and raced and rolled and tumbled and all of a sudden the sun was gone and the whistle was blowing and you were on your long way home to supper. When you weren't looking, the sun got around behind you! The only way to keep things slow was to watch everything and do nothing! You could stretch a day to three days, sure, just by watching! — Ray Bradbury

They were all down there trying to wire the shackle. Each one of them alone, clinging to the stem of a mushroom anchor with one breath inside. One breath. It didn't matter if you got the shackle wired or not. There was no up. When your breath was done, no up."

John Casey, Spartina — John Casey

Oh my, aren't we going to have fun?" Sarah remarked sarcastically as she quickly pulled the covers over herself. A weak sweat covered her body and her arms trembled, feeling no stronger than wet wax. With a weary sigh, she lay down beside her baby. "Imagine staying here for the winter with such a cheery soul."
Thaddeus returned from his sink with a cup of cold water. He glared at her when he saw her trembling and held the cup to her lips himself. "If you were looking for cheery, lady, you shouldn't have come here."
"I didn't come here," she snapped angrily, almost choking on a mouthful of water. "You brought me."
"Would you rather I left you in a blizzard?"
"I'd rather, since we're stuck here together, you spoke civilly and treated me with a measure of kindness."
"Yeah...well, we all want things we can't have. — Patricia Pellicane

You can see right away,' the old man said, 'that he hates us but hides his hatred under a layer of sycophancy. They all hate us. How could they not? If I were them I'd hate us too. In fact, I'd hate us even without being them. Take it from me, Rachel, if you just look at us you can see that we deserve nothing but hatred and contempt. And maybe a bit of pity. But that pity cannot come from the Arabs. They themselves need all the pity in the world. — Amos Oz

Keep at it! Remember marketing is building a relationship! If you use marketing for a year and stop, you cut off your relationship with the larger community. Then you will have to re-start the relationship all over again. The old adage "it takes six to stick" is proven true over and over again. I realized this in year three of our church plant. I think of the hundreds of people that came to our services that had no connection with me or our people because we were willing to build a sustained relationship with them through marketing. — Gary Rohrmayer

the former; "our arrangement thus made, you have nothing to fear from me." He sat down in a chair on the hearth, over against Mr. Lorry. When they were alone, Mr. Lorry asked him what he had done? "Not much. If it should go ill with the prisoner, I have ensured access to him, once." Mr. Lorry's countenance fell. "It is all I could do," said Carton. "To propose too much, would be to put this man's head under the axe, and, as he himself said, nothing worse could happen to him if he were denounced. It was obviously the weakness of the position. There is no help for it. — Charles Dickens

The first thing we have to do," I told Luke the next day, "is find a nice place we can rent or sublet. Should we focus on the downtown area? Montrose? Or would you be open to finding something close by in Sugar Land? We could always go to Austin, but we'd have to take care to avoid you-know-who. And it's a lot more expensive to rent in Austin."
Luke looked contemplative, sucking slowly on the bottle as if he were mulling the possibilities.
"Are you thinking it over?" I asked him. "Or are you working on another dirty diaper?"
-Ella & Luke — Lisa Kleypas

Shame's hold over you leads you to believe you don't deserve to be rid of shame. As a result, you treat hope as if it were a contaminated substance. — Edward T. Welch

I'm so sorry. God, baby. What were you doing? You ... God." He took a shaky breath. "You couldn't breathe. He hit you so hard and you went down and fuck, sweetheart. I've never been that scared in my life."
I was able to breathe again without pain and I had to fix this. This wasn't Green's fault. I didn't know he wasn't going to be able to stop. I thought he would stop from hitting Krit if I was in front of him. "He was gonna hit you," I said, wincing from the pain in my throat.
Krit went still a minute, and then his hold on me tightened. — Abbi Glines

I thought the other ones were so obviously - what are we going to do if she burns down the house? The DEA, which I think was maybe the best one because she's wearing the jacket when she goes through the mirror and I think that was kind of amazing because you really weren't expecting that. There's something almost slapstick about this in a way that worried me. It was a little pratfalley with the golf club and the - but I think it probably cut together okay. — Mary-Louise Parker

What if stepping off the path isn't a sign you've gone wrong? What if it's a sign you were never meant to take that road in the first place? — Rachel Spangler

If you're putting that energy into performance," he said, "you're also getting it back out again, right? You're giving so you can receive." He spread his arms wide. "If you were writing songs with it, you'd be holed up in your room in the middle of the night, scribbling them in a notebook and feeling self-important. You'd think you were getting it out, but really you'd be keeping it inside and quiet. You'd take what upset you and turn it into art, and now it would fester, because you think other people ought to share your outrage at what happened to you. — Jennifer Echols

If you spent your life concentrating on what everyone else thought of you, would you forget who you really were? What if the face you showed the world turned out to be a mask ... with nothing beneath it? — Jodi Picoult

People always try to separate the good from the bad in Clinton and say that, if he had not done certain things, he would have been a great president. But you can't do that. Those were his major characteristics. — David Maraniss

You were talking about the wind," the Fillyjonk said suddenly. "A wind that carries off your washing. But I'm speaking about cyclones. Typhoons, Gaffsie dear. Tornadoes, whirlwinds, sandstorms ... Flood waves that carry houses away ... But most of all I'm talking about myself and my fears, even if I know that's not done. I know everything will turn out badly. I think about that all the time. Even while I'm washing my carpet. Do you understand that? Do you feel the same way? — Tove Jansson

Dee's hand fluttered around her as she spoke. "I was outside, and it looked as if a light show was going on in your bedroom. Daemon said you were probably mas - "
And Dee also knew no boundaries.
"Ah, no, please don't finish that sentence." He lowered his hands, eyes narrowing at his sister. "Don't ever finish that sentence. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

[As a kid] I felt it was really weird that music schools behaved like a conveyor belt to make performers for those symphony orchestras. If you were really good and practiced your violin for a few hours a day for ten years you might be invited to this VIP elite club. For me music was not about that. It is about freedom and expression and individuality and impulsiveness and spontaneity. It wasn't so Apollonian; it was more Dionysian. — Bjork

Bill Hewlett and I were brought up in the Depression. We weren't interested in the idea of making any money. Our idea was if you couldn't find a job, you'd make one for yourself. — David Packard

Why are there such long words in the world, Miss?' enquires Sophie, when the mineralogy lesson is over.
'One long difficult word is the same as a whole sentence full of short easy ones, Sophie,' says Sugar. 'It saves time and paper.' Seeing that the child is unconvinced, she adds, 'If books were written in such a way that every person, no matter how young, could understand everything in them, they would be enormously long books. Would you wish to read a book that was a thousand pages long, Sophie?'
Sophie answers without hesitation.
'I would read a thousand million pages, Miss, if all the words were words I could understand. — Michel Faber

If during the Reformation you were a Catholic who lived in a part of Germany in which Lutheranism was the ascendant religion and the ruler of the province or the region was Lutheran, to stay a Catholic, you either had to be a dissenter or you had to leave. — Susan Jacoby

If you made up a city like this, no one would have believed you. It seemed more like myth than reality- a whole metropolis built up around an industry that recorded dreams on giant screens, a city bordered by an ocean and a desert and snowcapped mountains. And right through the urban sprawl were canyons full of flowers, wild animals and secrets. — Francesca Lia Block

The way he saw it, poker and life had a lot in common. You played the cards you were dealt, figured the odds, took the gamble or not. And when your cards were shit, you bluffed if the pot was worth it, and if you had balls. — Nora Roberts

If a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets." Then he'd get up and leave. Or he'd write, "If you wear shoeleather, the whole earth is covered with leather." These were his ways of teaching me about how motivation affects perception. — Ram Dass

In Ireland, you go to someone's house, and she asks you if you want a cup of tea. You say no, thank you, you're really just fine. She asks if you're sure. You say of course you're sure, really, you don't need a thing. Except they pronounce it ting. You don't need a ting. Well, she says then, I was going to get myself some anyway, so it would be no trouble. Ah, you say, well, if you were going to get yourself some, I wouldn't mind a spot of tea, at that, so long as it's no trouble and I can give you a hand in the kitchen. Then you go through the whole thing all over again until you both end up in the kitchen drinking tea and chatting.
In America, someone asks you if you want a cup of tea, you say no, and then you don't get any damned tea.
I liked the Irish way better. — C.E. Murphy

If you go to a master to study and learn the techniques, you diligently follow all the instructions the master puts upon you. But then comes the time for using the rules in your own way and not being bound by them ... You can actually forget the rules because they have been assimilated. You are an artist. Your own innocence now is of one who has become an artist, who has been, as it were, transmuted ... You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules. — Joseph Campbell

Baby smuggling is a serious crime,' he said. 'There were thirty-six babies on that plane. We could charge you with thirty-six counts of kidnapping.'
That, at least, got Second to look back at Mr. Reardon.
'Does FBI mean Federal Bureau of Idiots?' he asked. 'If any of you were any good at analyzing footprints, you would know that I fell when I was trying to sneak into the airport grounds, not out.'
'And why would you do that?' Mr. Reardon asked, hunching forward over a notepad.
'It was a dare, all right?' Second snarled. 'I was with my friends and we were talking about what it would be like to stand on a runway when a plane was landing and ... we decided to try it out.'
'That's a crime too,' Mr. Reardon said.
Second shrugged. 'It ain't thirty-six counts of kidnapping,' he said. — Margaret Peterson Haddix

Zoroastrianism? Oh, there's never been but a few hundred thousand of them at any one time, mostly located in Iran and India, but that's it. The one true faith. If you're not a Zoroastrian, I'm afraid you are bound for Hell."
The man looked stunned and shocked. "It's not fair."
The demon gave a mirthful laugh. "Well, it was fair when you were sending all the Chinese to Hell who had never heard of Jesus. Wasn't it? — Steven L. Peck

As an exercise, can you recall the last time you saw someone whose gender was ambiguous? Was this person attractive to you? And if you knew they called themselves neither a man nor a woman, what would it make you if you're attracted to that person? And if you were to kiss? Make love? What would you be? — Kate Bornstein

Beginning to feel that her brother was being rather too harsh on Lillian Bowman, Livia frowned. "She's a very pretty girl, Marcus."
"A pretty facade isn't enough to make up for the flaws in her character."
"Which are?"
Marcus made a faint scoffing sound, as if Miss Bowman's faults were too obvious to require enumeration. "She's manipulative."
"So are you, dear," Livia murmured.
He ignored that. "She's domineering."
"As are you."
"She's arrogant."
"Also you," Livia said brightly.
Marcus glowered at her. "I thought we were discussing Miss Bowman's faults, not mine."
"But you seem to have so much in common," Livia protested, rather too innocently. — Lisa Kleypas

The thing about the Lexington International Bank ladder was that it was very long, and climbing it was very exhausting, and so Andrew Brown didn't have a lot of time to think about whether he really wanted to get to the top of it - and besides, since so many other people were climbing too, the view from the top must be worth it.
So he kept going. He worked hard. He put his heart and mind and soul into it. There was an opening for a position half a rung higher than he already was. With a promotion, he might get two hours a week of a secretary's time. He'd go to more important meetings, with more senior people, and have the opportunity to impress them, and if he did he might be promoted again and then ... well, of course eventually he'd be running the whole office. It's important to have a dream: otherwise you might notice where you really are. — Naomi Alderman

Oh, Doctor, if you need a real good woman, you won't find a better lady than our teacher." "That so?" "Yep. Teacher . . . well, she really cares for us. And I just know she'd make a great ma someday." "Thank you, son." The boy nodded solemnly, as if he'd just done Eli the greatest of favors. Dr. Baldwin coughed. And once the boys were gone, Eli turned to look at his old friend. "What?" "Oh, nothing. — Jody Hedlund

Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil. It is as if there were a God who said to us, I set before you two ways: You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars. It's up to you — Carl Sagan

If intelligence were a television set, it would be an early black-and-white model with poor reception, so that much of the picture was gray and the figures on the screen were snowy and indistinct. You could fiddle wiht the knobs all you wanted, but unless you were careful, what you would see often depended more on what you expacted or hoped to see than on what was really there. — Madeleine K. Albright

The program of scientific experimentation that leads you to conclude that animals are imbeciles is profoundly anthropocentric. It values being able to find your way out of a sterile maze, ignoring the fact that if the researcher who designed the maze were to be parachuted into the jungles of Borneo, he or she would be dead of starvation in a week ... If I as a human being were told that the standards by which animals are being measured in these experiments are human standards, I would be insulted. — J.M. Coetzee

I WILL NOT TRUST IN RICHES Wealth has some pretty powerful side effects. If wealth were an over-the-counter medicine, there would be bold warnings printed on the packaging. Warning: May cause arrogance. While taking this medicine, extra precaution should be taken not to offend people. If taken for prolonged periods, may impair perception, causing hope to migrate. If you saw a commercial for wealth on TV, it would show pictures of happy people holding hands in the park. Meanwhile, the announcer would be listing all the ways it can ruin your kidneys, rot your stomach, cause sudden heart failure, and destroy your life. — Andy Stanley

Charles, if you were here right now, I'd totally kiss you."
He chuckled softly. "I get that a lot, but I doubt my boyfriend will approve. — Laurel Cremant

There is nothing more important than being a man, just a plain, ordinary, human man. I know you think Spartacus is something more than a man. He isn't. If he were, then he wouldn't be any good at all.
There is no great mystery about Spartacus. — Howard Fast

Being certain one is alive isn't something to which one pays mind. If you could ask the question, you were fine. If you could not, hopefully you had a cozy coffin. — Thomm Quackenbush

She raised her eyebrows, looping her hands around his neck and wriggling provocatively. 'Looks like I've just been promoted to Alpha then, huh?'
Lucien made a face. 'Well the job is yours if you want it, but I should warn you that the contract is bull crap. I've received none of the perks that were promised.'
'Perks?'
'Oh, you know ... a lifetime supply of beer and foot massages, a harem of women to bathe and clothe me etcetera ... '
She snorted and pulled back from him. 'Harem of women?'
He grinned unrepentantly. 'Did I mention my sense of humour is greatly underappreciated? — Samantha Young

There was no one for you to impress and no one for you to offend. You were right there and I was afraid of how real you were, which made me question my own level of authenticity. I'd take off my clothes on the beach or spill my guts to a girl I'd never met on the bus, thinking I was uncensored and open, but I wasn't always real if I wanted someone to like me. I gravitated to those who withheld or told me who they thought I was. — Mary-Louise Parker

You, who only know love when in love, do not ask what it is, nor do you look for it. But when a woman once asked you if you were in love with love itself, you were evasive and escaped by answering: I love you. She persisted: Do you not love love? You said: I love you, because of you. She left you, because you could not be trusted with her absence. Love is not an idea. It is an emotion that can cool down or heat up. It comes and goes. It is an embodied feeling and has five, or more, senses. Sometimes it appears as an angel with delicate wings that can uproot us from the earth. Sometimes it charges at us like a bull, hurls us to the ground, and walks away. At other times it is a storm we only recognize in its devastating aftermath. Sometimes it falls upon us like the night dew when a magical hand milks a wandering cloud. — Mahmoud Darwish

'I really don't see what all the fuss is about, Sir Hugh,' said Kate with a polite smile. 'As a man of science you should know that urine is sterile. It's only when it's left to stand that it accumulates bacteria. So, if I were you, Sir Hugh, I'd eat my soup quickly.' — Kenneth Oppel

Be yourself! Don't be somebody! Be humble to authority, but be assertive! Mind your solemn duty and responsibility to the Supreme God, for you shall give account to Him in the end! You were created uniquely, mind your mind! Mind the things that can change your mindset, and mind people! People are always alert to do all things possible to change your mind set. They wish you become the reason for their joy even if it causes you an inner pain! They wish you halt a purposeful journey. They wish you look and see, hear and listen, think and act, as they do! Their joy is to see you being like them, and their sorrow and envy is to see you living your true you! Be yourself! If only you living your true you please God, no problem exists! Just be yourself and mind your mind! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

You ever hear about that experiment an American journalist did in Moscow in the 1970s? He just lined up at some building, nothing special about it, just a random door. Sure enough, someone got in line behind him, then a couple more, and before you knew it, they were backed up around the block. No one asked what the line was for. They just assumed it was worth it. I can't say if that story was true. Maybe it's an urban legend, or a cold war myth. Who knows? — Max Brooks

You ever have the feeling you were in the wrong place? That if you could just get over the next hill, cross the next river, look down into the next valley, it'd all ... fit. Be right."
"All my life, more of less"
"All your life spent getting ready for the next thing. I climbed a lot of hills now. I crossed a lot of rivers. Crossed the sea even, left everything I knew and came to Styria. But there I was, waiting for me at the docks when I got off the boat, same man, same life. Next valley ain't no different from this one. No better anyway. Reckon I've learned ... just to stick in the place I'm at. Just to be the man I am. — Joe Abercrombie

The rest of the journey passed uneventfully, if you consider it uneventful to ride fifteen miles on horseback through rough country at night, frequently without benefit of roads, in company with kilted men armed to the teeth, and sharing a horse with a wounded man. At least we were not set upon by highwaymen, we encountered no wild beasts, and it didn't rain. By the standards I was becoming used to, it was quite dull. — Diana Gabaldon

I don't like when I watch a fight in a movie that's perfectly worded and very articulate. If you were able to be that composed, you wouldn't be fighting! Fighting in real life is sloppy. — Jason Segel

It was dark in the corridor; they were standing near a light. For a minute they looked silently at each other. Razumikhin remembered that minute all his life. Raskolnikov's burning and fixed look seemed to grow more intense every moment, penetrating his soul, his consciousness. All at once Razumikhin gave a start. Something strange seemed to pass between them . . . as if the hint of some idea, something horrible, hideous, flitted by and was suddenly understood on both sides . . . Razumikhin turned pale as a corpse.
"You understand now? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Never trust the occultist who tells you that he is the head of a tradition, because if he were, in the first place, he would not tell the fact to the uninitiated, and in the second place he would in all probability be living in great seclusion and inaccessible to all but his immediate subordinates. If a man is a great artist he does not need to inform us of the fact; we shall know him by his pictures that are hung in the galleries of the nation, and we shall, moreover, find that he guards himself from casual acquaintances because of the inroads on his time to which his fame renders him liable. The more eminent a person, the harder he is to approach, not out of any spirit of pride and exclusiveness, but because so many people want to see him that discrimination has to be used in admitting them. — Dion Fortune

If you were plowing a field, which would you rather use? Two strong oxen or 1024 chickens? — Seymour Cray

Don't make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life. - MIGUEL ANGEL RUIZ It's better to take the time to ask questions and to find the words to say what you really feel. Often we leave so much room for interpretation either because we are rushing or because we are afraid to speak the whole truth, but this is where miscommunications start. So even if you aren't sure about what someone means or how they feel, just ask them. Goal: When was the last time you assumed something and were wrong? Make a point to know the truth and not assume it. — Demi Lovato

Merton. Gethsemani required a vow of silence, and at dinner if you wanted salt, you had to stare hard at the shaker until another brother noticed. One day, cutting down a tree, Jack couldn't contain himself. He held his head back and roared, "Timber." After that, his days at the monastery were numbered. Within a couple of years, he had married, and he and his young wife, Fran, who herself had just spent a year in a nunnery, opened a Catholic Worker farm in eastern Missouri for recovering alcoholics. — Alex Kotlowitz

Fear is a cheap emotion, but I'm not going to tell you there's nothing to be frightened of. If Alfred Packer's cannibalism victims woke up the morning of their deaths humming "Don't Worry, Be Happy," they were mistaken. — Mark Darrah

Lonely? How can you be lonely ? You've got yourself, haven't you? If you ever lose yourself, then you'll really be lonely. In the meantime, stop complaining. You're nearly a man now, and a man has to work. Ever since the world began, men have been doing jobs they didn't like. Why should it be any different for you? You're the seventh son of a seventh son, and this is the job you were born to do. - Mam — Joseph Delaney

Eventually as a teenager, I was pulled up on stage by James Brown's saxophone player, Maceo Parker, during one of his concerts and scatted on his stage for 20 minutes. After I was done, Maceo's bass player got down on one knee as if he were proposing, took a string off of his bass guitar and coiled it up around my ring finger. He hushed the crowd and said into the microphone, "Wendy, from this day forward you are married to music. You have a gift from God. You must devote your life to using this gift or else you will deprive the world of something so special." I got the chills. — Wendy Starland

If you're any kind of artist, you make a miraculous journey, and you come back and make some statements in shapes and colors of where you were. — Romare Bearden

I had sent [the magazine] a batch of poems which they turned down flat. I was furious. Floss [my wife] said, 'If I were the editor of that magazine *I* would turn down what *you* sent.' So *she* picked a batch and they accepted them *all*. — William Carlos Williams

The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's. — G.K. Chesterton

If you're going to have guests," the ghost said with a sigh, "would it be so hard to give me a little advance warning?" Her eyes were dark with heavy lids. She had soft cheekbones and gentle features, framed neatly by twin locks of hair, which swept her cheeks on either side. The rest was tucked behind her ears and spilled down her back and shoulders in silvery waves, like a mercurial waterfall. She had a slim, spritely figure, and her movements were as smooth as smoke in a soft breeze. She placed the cup on the tray with a gentle clink, and drifted to a seat on the windowsill. Through her opaque figure, I could see the swaying branches of a weeping willow in the yard. "How — William Ritter

India went through a dramatic revolution after the '90s when our economy started opening up for the first time and Indians were now experiencing the Western life, if you will. Drugs and sex and a lot of those influences came in as the economy stabilized, and we were growing up and experiencing that. The Indian writing market was very small at that time. Our literature was very attuned to what Western audiences were interested in, so everybody was writing about the slums in India and magic realism or stories about Hindus and Muslims and partition. — Karan Bajaj

If I do a movie where I have to have a son and it's a chubby kid, my mother is always like, 'You were never like that.' She gets so upset about it. — Kevin James

But the stories you told yourself
which you pretended to recall as if they'd happened every afternoon of an infinite summer
were really a pocketful of days distorted into legend, another jailhouse exaggeration, like the dimensions of those ballpoint-crosshatched tits or of the purported mountains of blow you once used to enjoy, or how you'd bellowed an avenger's roar when you squeezed the trigger of a pistol you'd actually brandished in self-pissing terror. How often had that hydrant even been opened? Did you jet water through a car window, what, twice at best? Summer burned a few afternoons long, in the end. — Jonathan Lethem

Pinn's Accoutrements - what's that?" "If anyone else asked that question, O He Who is Terrible and Great, I would have said they were an ignorant fool; in you it is a sign of that disarming simplicity which is the fount of all virtue. Pinn's Accoutrements is the most prestigious supplier of magical artifacts in London. It is situated on Piccadilly. Sholto Pinn is the proprietor. — Anonymous

If I waited long enough and said, "Okay, so what you're saying is you liked your life a lot better when you were 30?" everybody would get real quiet and then admit that that wasn't the case, that they really felt like they were sort of growing into themselves in a way. — Anna Quindlen

When developers of digital technologies design a program that requires you to interact with a computer as if it were a person, they ask you to accept in some corner of your brain that you might also be conceived of as a program. — Jaron Lanier

If you were a person in Rockhampton who is wondering where your next job was coming from, and you had the prospect of one of Australia's largest ever coal projects with a very, very long life span being developed and reviving the regional economy. And you saw the Greens in particular doing their little best to stop it happening. — George Brandis

Medicine labours to restore 'natural' structure or 'normal' function. But greed, egoism, self-deception,and self-pity are not abnormal in the same sense as astigmatism or a floating kidney. For who, in Heaven's name, would describe as natural or normal any man from whom these failings were wholly absent? 'Natural,' if you like, in a quite different sense; archnatural, unfallen. We have only seen one such Man. And he was not at all like the psychologist's picture of the integrated, balanced, adjusted, happily married, employed, popular citizen. You can't really be 'well adjusted' to your world if it says 'you havea devil' and ends by nailing you up naked to a stake of wood. — C.S. Lewis

In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still; it goes deeper and makes for itself a deeper groove, delves. Delve meansa 'dig with a spade'; it means hard work. In talk your mind can be stretched, widened, exhilarated to heights but it cannot be deepened; you have to deepen it yourself.
It needs sturdiness. You will be lonely, you will be depressed; you must expect it; if you were training your body it would ache and be tired. It is worth it. There is a Hindu proverb which says: 'You only grow when you are alone'. — Rumer Godden

I remember the language of the people I grew up with. Language was so important to them. All that power was in it. And grace and metaphor. Some of it was very formal and Biblical, because the habit is that when you have something important to say you go into parable, if you're from Africa, or you go into another level of language. I wanted to use language that way, because my feeling was that a black novel was not black because I wrote it, or because there were black people in it, or because it was about black things. It was the style. It had a certain style. It was inevitable. I couldn't describe it, but I could produce it. — William Zinsser

The Declaration of Independence ... is much more than a political document. It constitutes a spiritual manifesto - revelation, if you will - declaring not for this nation only, but for all nations, the source of man's rights. Nephi, a Book of Mormon prophet, foresaw over 2,300 years ago that this event would transpire. The colonies he saw would break with Great Britain and that 'the power of the Lord was with [the colonists],' that they 'were delivered by the power of God out of the hands of all other nations' (1 Nephi 13:16, 19). The Declaration of Independence was to set forth the moral justification of a rebellion against a long-recognized political tradition - the divine right of kings. At issue was the fundamental question of whether men's rights were God-given or whether these rights were to be dispensed by governments to their subjects. This document proclaimed that all men have certain inalienable rights. In other words, these rights came from God. — Ezra Taft Benson