Impossible Game Quotes & Sayings

IS [Islamic State] has played a major role in helping Bashar al-Assad to reposition Syria on the international scene. Now, it is almost impossible to come up with a solution that would exclude him. The political game appears to be very cynical indeed. — Tariq Ramadan

Any game plan? (Xypher)
Don't die. (Sin)
I like it. Simple, bold. Impossible. Works for me. (Xypher) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Participation in the dance was entirely voluntary, a mental vow to worship the Mystery in this manner being expressed by a man ardently desiring the recovery of a sick relative; or surrounded by an enemy with escape apparently impossible; or, it might be, dying of hunger ... since some inscrutable power had swept all game from forest and prairie. Others joined in the ceremony in the hope and firm belief that the Mystery ... would grant them successes against the enemy and consequent eminence at home. — Edward S. Curtis

It is possible that a wise and good man may be prevailed on to game; but it is impossible that a professed gamester should be a wise and good man. — Johann Kaspar Lavater

Boxing is a glorious sport to watch and boxers are incredible, heroic athletes, but it's also, to be honest, a stupid game to play. Even the winners can end up with crippling brain damage. In a lot of ways, hustling is the same. But you learn something special from playing the most difficult games, the games where winning is close to impossible and losing is catastrophic: You learn how to compete as if your life depended on it. That's the lesson I brought with me to the so-called "legitimate" world. — Jay-Z

It's Curt Schilling and his bloody sock staring down the Yankees in the Bronx. It's Derek Lowe taking the mound the very next night to complete the most improbable comeback in baseball history - and then seven days later clinching the World Series. It's Pedro Martinez and his six hitless innings of postseason relief against the Indians. Yes, it is also Cy Young and Roger Clemens, and the 192 wins in a Red Sox uniform that they share - the perfect game for Young, the 20 strikeout games for Clemens - but it is also Bill Dinneen clinching the 1903 World Series with a busted, bloody hand, and Jose Santiago shutting down Minnesota with two games left in the season to keep the 1967 Impossible Dream alive, and Jim Lonborg clinching the Impossible Dream the very next day, and Jim Lonborg again, tossing a one-hitter and a three-hitter in the 1967 World Series, and Luis Tiant in the 1975 postseason, shutting out Oakland and Cincinnati in back-to-back starts. They are all winners. — Tucker Elliot

It's impossible to explain the emotions cycling through me to someone who never forgot her life, later remembered it, and now has all these memories bleeding into each other. Every day feels more like chaos, like I'm never going to get my life straight - no pun intended - like starting over again is better than game over. — Adam Silvera

Grown-ups are an untrustworthy, treacherous lot, they don't take their games in the serious wholehearted way children do, and yet they too have their own games, one more serious than the other, one game inside another, so that it's impossible to discover what the real one is. — Italo Calvino

The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a pitch of concentration by the interactions of the office. Now there are only silence and the flashing of the unset clock on the microwave. He feels as if he had been playing a computer game which remorselessly tested his reflexes, only to have its plug suddenly pulled from the wall. He is impatient and restless, but simultaneously exhausted and fragile. He is in no state to engage with anything significant. It is of course impossible to read, for a sincere book would demand not only time, but also a clear emotional lawn around the text in which associations and anxieties could emerge and be disentangled. He will perhaps only ever do one thing well in his life.
For this particular combination of tiredness and nervous energy, the sole workable solution is wine. Office civilisation could not be feasible without the hard take-offs and landings effected by coffee and alcohol. — Alain De Botton

Goals are easily scored with either a skillful strike or a strong one. If you make a strong strike, it's impossible for it to be defended by obstacles in your goal! — Israelmore Ayivor

Managers are obsessed with the game. It's very, very difficult, if not impossible, to live a balanced lifestyle. — Howard Wilkinson

As far as anybody in the rap game ever tryin' to assassinate my character, that's impossible. You talkin' about a man who has always walked the walk and talked the talk. — Suge Knight

It was the kind of promise a father makes easily and sincerely, knowing at the same time that it will be impossible to keep. The truth of some promises is not as important as whether or not you can believe in them, with all your heart. A game of baseball can't really make a summer day last forever. A home run can't really heal all the broken places in our world, or in a single human heart. And there was no way that Mr. Feld could keep his promise never to leave Ethan again. All parents leave their children one day. — Michael Chabon

I may not, perhaps, be forgiven for introducing sober matters with a frivolous notion, but the problem of making sense out of the seeming chaos of experience reminds me of my childish desire to send someone a parcel of water in the mail. The recipient unties the string, releasing the deluge in his lap. But the game would never work, since it is irritatingly impossible to wrap and tie a pound of water in a paper package. There are kinds of paper which won't disintegrate when wet, but the trouble is to get the water itself into any manageable shape, and to tie the string without bursting the bundle.

The more one studies attempted solutions to problems in politics and economics, in art, philosophy, and religion, the more one has the impression of extremely gifted people wearing out their ingenuity at the impossible and futile task of trying to get the water of life into neat and permanent packages. — Alan W. Watts

...what struck me the most was my father's total immersion in not only her disease but her quest to get well. That is, as long as Laura was game, he was willing to explore every single option and provide every last bit of support that he could. Moreover, he did so by blurring conventional understandings of medical specialties and medication options, crafting a unique plan of treatment culled from his vast clinical knowledge and that of his peers. It is impossible to know the exact impact of my father's ministrations on Laura's survival, but I would like to think she knew that she was receiving all the expertise and comfort that was humanly available to her. — Barron H. Lerner

Any game plan? Xypher asked Sin.
Don't die.
I like it. Simple, bold. Impossible. Works for me.
Kat scoffed at his sarcasm. What are you bitching about, Xypher? You're already dead.
He laughed. You know, for once, it's good to be me. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The increase of knowledge has forced
the thinker to specialise, with the result that there is nobody capable to deal with civilisation as a whole. We are playing a game of chess in which nobody can see more than two or three squares at once, and so it has become impossible to form a coherent plan. — Aleister Crowley

Common sense does not ask an impossible chessboard, but takes the one before it and plays the game. — Wendell Phillips

The chemists who uphold dualism are far from being agreed among themselves; nevertheless, all of them in maintaining their opinion, rely upon the phenomena of chemical reactions. For a long time the uncertainty of this method has been pointed out: it has been shown repeatedly, that the atoms put into movement during a reaction take at that time a new arrangement, and that it is impossible to deduce the old arrangement from the new one. It is as if, in the middle of a game of chess, after the disarrangement of all the pieces, one of the players should wish, from the inspection of the new place occupied by each piece, to determine that which it originally occupied. — Auguste Laurent

It's a no win situation. It's a mug's game. The religions have contrived to make it impossible to disagree with them critically without being rude. They play the hurt feelings card at every opportunity. — Daniel Dennett

One of the main things that's appealing about games is that you know a game can be won. It's an unusual game that's impossible to win. — Jesse Schell

Our entire pattern of socio-sexual interaction is nonexistent here. They cannot play the game. They do not see one another as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby? — Ursula K. Le Guin

But it is impossible to enjoy a tennis game, a book, or a conversation unless attention is fully concentrated on the activity. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Games bring another level out in you. There is no way you can train to the same intensity when you are playing a game. It is just impossible. Your head won't allow you to do it. Because the adrenalin of a game and the importance of it steps it up to another level. — Brian O'Driscoll

Happiness is not a zero-sum game. It's the only case in which the resources are limitless, and in which the rich can get richer at no expense to anyone else. That day in the park, I found it remarkably easy to own my happiness and celebrate Kate's as well.
It's a strange thing, though, how rare, maybe impossible, it is to have everyone you care about thriving at the same time. For a short spell, life seems certain and stable, until something shifts and redistributes, randomly, unpredictably, and when you look around at the new landscape, you see that it's someone else's turn now. You redirect your attention to focus on the friend in need. You hope - you know - they will do the same for you, when your turn comes. — Amy Poeppel

Now it's virtually impossible to write a game that successfully provides challenge and frustration, and that's a shame. We are going to lose something that makes scientists, that makes doers, that makes hard-minded, witty, clever people, and I worry that those people aren't being made these days. — Patrick Rothfuss

And all that time I was lying to my support group. I told the ladies, "Sure! I'm writing!" when I wasn't. Yes, I could have filled all those newfound minutes with actual work, but I had no confidence in myself. I was a fraud. Who was I to pick up a pen and expect anything good to come out of it? I expected perfection as soon as the pencil hit the paper, and since that's impossible, I couldn't get myself to start. Then I felt guilty about not starting, which made me want to start even less. And with no game to bury the feelings, I got very depressed. No wonder I didn't book any acting jobs in the last half of 2006. No one wanted to hire a clinically depressed person to sell snack foods. — Felicia Day

Sometimes I would hold it in for days so that I could have a really big one and also because it felt good in itself. When I really did have to shit, so much that I could barely stand upright but had to bend forward, I had such a fantastic feeling in my body if I didn't let nature take its course, if I squeezed the muscles in my butt together as hard as I could and, as it were, forced the shit back to where it came from. But this was a dangerous game, because if you did it too many times the turd ultimately grew so big it was impossible to shit it out. Oh Christ, how it hurt when such an enormous turd had to come out! It was truly unbearable, I was convulsed with pain, it was as if my body were exploding with pain, AAAAAAGGGHHH!! I screamed, OOOOOHHH, and then, just as it was at its very worst, suddenly it was out.
Oh, how good that was! — Karl Ove Knausgard

I'm not much of a chess player, but there is an aspect of the game that I find fascinating. After a while, you can almost see lines of force between the pieces. Areas of danger where it is physically impossible to move pieces into. Clouds of possibility, forbidden zones. — Hannu Rajaniemi

You're playing a game, whether it's Little League or Game 7 of the Word Series. It's impossible to do well unless you're having a good time. People talk about pressure. Yeah, there's pressure. But I just look at it as fun. — Derek Jeter

That which Steinitz gave to the theoretical aspect of the game when he was at his best is very remote to all out home-bred chess philosophers, but with his views on Morphy, whom he tries to discredit completely, it is of course impossible to agree. — Alexander Alekhine

EverTune is, without a doubt, the most important advance in guitar playing since the electric tuner. Using the EverTune, both onstage and in the studio, has completely changed the game. It's almost impossible to explain how amazing this innovation is. Pure magic! — Ben Weinman

You and I should play sometime. I think you would like it,' she said." It's a game of strategy, mostly. The strong pieces are in the back row, while the weak pieces - the pawns - are all in the front, ready to take the brunt of the attack. Because of their limited movement and vulnerability, most people underestimate them and only use them to protect the more powerful pieces. But when I play I protect my pawns.' ... 'They may be weak when the game begins, but their potential is remarkable. Most of the time, they'll be taken by the other side and held captive until the end of the game. But if you're careful - if you keep your eyes open and pay attention to what your oppenent is doing, if you protect your pawns and they reach the other side of the board, do you know what happens then?' I shook my head, and she smiled.
"Your pawn becomes a queen." ... 'Because they kept moving forward and triumphed against impossible odds, they become the most powerful piece in the game. — Aimee Carter

Golf challenges you mentally at any age, and when you become my age, it's a challenge physically to try to make your game work as well as it ever did. That's close to impossible, but that doesn't keep you from trying to hit the ball where you used to hit it and make the putts you used to make all the time. — Arnold Palmer

It's technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism you wouldn't be allowed to have a debate on a woman's place in society. You'd be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor
biting down on a wooden spoon, so as not to disturb the men's card game
before going back to hoeing the rutabaga field. — Caitlin Moran

It is impossible for any single medium to fully capture the emotion and intensity of war. The Battlefield 3: The Russian novel is one window into the experience, and the game is another. They complement each other perfectly, — Andy McNab

It's really impossible for athletes to grow up. On the one hand, you're still a child, still playing a game. But on the other hand, you're a superhuman hero that everyone dreams of being. No wonder we have such a hard time understanding who we are. — Billie Jean King

The saddest thing of all was that their party represented a deviation from the conditions of the time. It was impossible to imagine that in the houses across the lane people were eating and drinking in the same way at such an hour. Beyond the window lay mute, dark, hungry Moscow. Her food stores were empty, and people had even forgotten to think of such things as game and vodka.
And thus it turned out that the only true life is one that resembles the life around us and drowns in it without leaving a trace, that isolated happiness is not happiness, so that duck and alcohol, when they seem to be the only ones in town, are not alcohol and a duck at all. — Boris Pasternak

So let's be done with the comparison game. Let's be done with constantly fighting for the higher moral ground to stand on and look down on everyone else. Let's be done with thinking we can actually earn something that is impossible to earn. Let's stop trying to be perfect and righteous because those are not the people God is looking for. God is looking for people who can admit their needs and surrender to a Savior, because if the Bible is any indication, it doesn't matter how messed up you are. If you love him, he can and will use you. — Jefferson Bethke

One of the more bizarre games I played as a kid was something called 'kill the man.' It was a cross between football and rugby, which found the person carrying the ball a target of some hungry tacklers. I still don't know why we enjoyed the game because it was impossible to win. — Chuck Todd

I'll tell them how I survive it. I'll tell them that on bad mornings, it feels impossible to take pleasure in things because I'm afraid it could be taken away. That's when I make a list in my head of every act of goodness I've seen someone do. It's like a game. Repetitive. Even a little tedious after more than twenty years.
But there are much worse games to play. — Suzanne Collins

When I turn in my list, obviously every record was important to me. I didn't just put records on there to put records on there. I was excited that "All I Do Is Win" could go on there because you hear it at the end of the game and that represents victory. That's undeniable. You can't hate on that, it's impossible. — DJ Khaled

Beatrix kept pace easily with Christopher as they headed toward the forest. It nagged at him to have someone else holding Albert's leash. Beatrix's assertiveness was like a pebble lodged in the toe of his shoe. And yet when she was near, it was impossible to feel detached from his surroundings. She had a knack of keeping him anchored in the present.
He couldn't stop watching how her legs and hips moved in those breeches. What was her family thinking, to allow her to dress this way? Even in private it was unacceptable. A humorless smile curved his lips as he reflected that he had at least one thing in common with Beatrix Hathaway--neither of them was in step with the rest of the world.
The difference was that he wanted to be.
It had been so easy for him, before the war. He had always known the right thing to do or say. Now the prospect of reentering polite society seemed rather like playing a game in which he had forgotten the rules. — Lisa Kleypas

It is all very well to say that a man should play for the pure love of the game. Perhaps he ought, but to the working man it is impossible. — John Bentley

Albert had created a currency based on gold bullets and McDonald's game pieces. He'd wanted to call the currency something else, but no one remembered what. So, 'Bertos they were, a play on "Albert," coined by Howard, of course, who had also come up with "the FAYZ" to describe their weird little world.
Sam had thought Albert was nuts with his obsession with creating money. But the evidence was in: Albert's system was producing just enough food for kids to survive. And a lot more kids were working. Far fewer were just hanging out. It was no longer impossible to get kids to go into the fields and do the backbreaking work of picking crops. They worked for 'Bertos and spent 'Bertos, and for now at least starvation was just a bad memory. — Michael Grant

My internal temper tantrum tirade continued: But attracting and holding the interest of someone like Quinn Sullivan will have to go into my box of make believe with the eventual remake of Final Fantasy 7 with Playstation 3 graphics or finding an original, pristine version of Detective Comics No. 27- Batman's debut. — Penny Reid

Chase, we don't believe that homosexuality is a sin. The Bible was inspired by God, but it was written, translated, and interpreted by imperfect people just like us. This means that the passing of this sacred scripture from generation to generation and from culture to culture has been a bit like the "telephone game" you play at school. After thousands of years, it's impossible to judge the original spirit of some scripture. We believe that when in doubt, mercy triumphs judgment. So your parents are Christians who study and pray and then carefully choose what we follow in the Bible, based on whether or not it matches our understanding of Jesus's overall message. — Glennon Doyle Melton

When a country has political parties, sooner or later it becomes impossible to intervene effectively in public affairs without joining a party and playing the game. Whoever is concerned for public affairs will wish his concern to bear fruit. Those who care about the public interest must either forget their concern and turn to other things, or submit to the grind of the parties. In the latter case, they shall experience worries that will soon supersede their original concern for the public interest. — Simone Weil

An economy should exist for the people who inhabit it, not the other way around. The purpose of an economy is to provide everyone with opportunities to live full, happy, and productive lives. Yet when most people come to view the economic game as rigged, this most basic purpose cannot be achieved. It is impossible to live happily in a society that seems fundamentally unfair or to live well in a nation rife with anger and cynicism. — Robert B. Reich

In a situation of manipulation, the Left is almost always tempted by a "quick return to power," forgets the necessity of joining with the oppressed to forge an organization, and strays into an impossible "dialogue" with the dominant elites. It ends by being manipulated by these elites, and not infrequently itself falls in an elitist game, which it calls "realism."
Manipulation, like the conquest whose objectives it serves, attempts to anesthetize the people so they will not think. For if the people join to their presence in the historical process critical thinking about that process, the threat of their emergence materializes in revolution ... One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success. This manipulation is sometimes carried out directly by the elites and sometimes indirectly, through populist leaders. — Paulo Freire

Wealth ... or death. Those were the choices Gateway offered. Humans had discovered this artificial spaceport, full of working interstellar ships left behind by the mysterious, vanished Heechee. Their destinations are preprogrammed. They are easy to operate, but impossible to control. Some came back with discoveries which made their intrepid pilots rich; others returned with their remains
barely identifiable. It was the ultimate game of Russian roulette, but in this resource-starved future there was no shortage of desperate. — Frederik Pohl

Turing presented his new offering in the form of a thought experiment, based on a popular Victorian parlor game. A man and a woman hide, and a judge is asked to determine which is which by relying only on the texts of notes passed back and forth.
Turing replaced the woman with a computer. Can the judge tell which is the man? If not, is the computer conscious? Intelligent? Does it deserve equal rights?
It's impossible for us to know what role the torture Turing was enduring at the time played in his formulation of the test. But it is undeniable that one of the key figures in the defeat of fascism was destroyed, by our side, after the war, because he was gay. No wonder his imagination pondered the rights of strange creatures. — Jaron Lanier

It was impossible to imagine a time when [Fielding's] dry wit wouldn't be around to make me laugh, or to imagine someone else being the one to see the joy on his face when he learned something new. I thought about all of that, and then I thought about never holding him again, never kissing him again, never again experiencing Fielding pushy and demanding and needing me so bad he trembled with it.
And man, it fucking hurt.
"Okay," I said out loud, swallowing hard. "Okay, I give. Uncle."
It was time to admit defeat, to lay down my cards, and concede the game.
For the first time in my life, I was in love. I was in love with a guy. I was in love with Fielding Monroe. — Eli Easton

These days, however, I am much calmer - since I realised that it's technically impossible for a woman to argue against feminism. Without feminism, you wouldn't be allowed to have a debate on women's place in society. You'd be too busy giving birth on the kitchen floor - biting down on a wooden spoon, so as not to disturb the men's card game - before going back to quick-liming the dunny. This is why those female columnists in the Daily Mail - giving daily wail against feminism - amuse me. They paid you £1,600 for that, dear, I think. And I bet it's going in your bank account, and not your husband's. The more women argue loudly, against feminism, the more they both prove it exists and that they enjoy its hard-won privileges. — Caitlin Moran

Challenge: we find personal meaning in pursuing a goal that's difficult but not impossible. Curiosity: we're intrigued and find pleasure in learning more. Control: we like the feeling of mastery. Fantasy: we play a game; we use our imagination to make an activity more stimulating. Cooperation: we enjoy the satisfaction of working with others. Competition: we feel gratified when we can compare ourselves favorably to others. Recognition: we're pleased when others recognize our accomplishments and contributions. — Gretchen Rubin

Language itself is so value-laden as to render value-neutrality almost impossible. Growing up in England I was introduced to the American Revolution by a 'footnote' to colonial history about the 'revolt' of the American colonies. Word choice and the organization of material gave the game away. — Arthur F. Holmes

The feelings I had for my sister were jumbled together, like the monkeys in a barrel game we'd had as children. All the brightly colored monkeys with their curved arms tangled and entwined, so convoluted that it was almost impossible to separate them. — Karen White

Anybody who can belive six impossible things before breakfast wins hands down in this game. — Agatha Christie

Youth. Murder (Biko). Slavery. Freedom. We are all creatures of ignorance at the end of the day. The natural order of the hierarchy of life states that we are creatures. Creatures of habit whether it is normal (following the status quo and all of that jazz). Creatures of marching orders and almost sanitary routine. Creatures of the abnormal. Our leaders are coldly obliterating the past. It is impossible to destroy nations, tribes, individuals without their permission. Many lessons learned from the past come to life like the connect the dots game of a child in a museum. We are swift to forget history. Bury the past like yesterday's newspaper, our infirm and elderly in nursing homes. — Abigail George