Is All About Me Quotes & Sayings

Sometimes I think this is all a horrible nightmare and I'm going to wake up and she's gonna laugh at me. It's like I didn't know her and the thing that makes me the angriest is I can't confront her about it all, and then I feel like a bastard for feeling that way. — Maddie Wade

There is something about Game 7 that there's a memory there for you for sure. You want to be a coach or a manager or a player or a goaltender that gets it done, because to me, that's all part of sports. That's what you dream about when you're a little kid - scoring the winning goal. — Mike Babcock

I'm not sure what I am. I just know there's something dark in me. I hide it. I certainly don't talk about it, but it's there always, this Dark Passenger. And when he's driving, I feel alive, half sick with the thrill of complete wrongness. I don't fight him, I don't want to. He's all I've got. Nothing else could love me, not even ... especially not me. Or is that just a lie the Dark Passenger tells me? Because lately there are these moments when I feel connected to something else ... someone. It's like the mask is slipping and things ... people ... who never mattered before are suddenly starting to matter. It scares the hell out of me. — Jeff Lindsay

You can't imagine fame. You can only ever see it from an outsider and comment on it with the rueful wisdom of a non participant. When it happens to you, it doesn't matter what age or how, it is a very steep learning curve. The imprtanot thing to realize in all of it is that life is short, to protect the ones you love, and not expose yourself to too much abuse or narcissistic reflection gazing and move on. If fame affords me the type of ability to do the kind of work I'm being offered, who am I to complain about the downsides. It's all relative. And this are obviously very high class problems. The way privacy becomes an every shrinking island is inevitable but also manageable and it doesn't necessary have to get that way ... — Benedict Cumberbatch

The whole concept of dividing it up into 'value' and 'growth' strikes me as twaddle. It's convenient for a bunch of pension fund consultants to get fees prattling about and a way for one advisor to distinguish himself from another. But, to me, all intelligent investing is value investing. — Charlie Munger

People tell me I look good these days. I look good because I feel good. I know people who are older than I am who are twenty-five ... It's all about attitude. To me, age is just a number. — Rita Moreno

When people ask me about my dialogue, I say, 'Don't you hear people talking?' That's all I do. I hear a certain type of individual, I decide this is what he should be, whatever it is, and then I hear him. Well, I don't hear anybody that I can't make talk. — Elmore Leonard

You'd think people had better things to gossip about," said Ginny as she sat on the common room floor, leaning against Harry's legs and reading the Daily Prophet. "Three Dementor attacks in a week, and all Romilda Vane does is ask me if it's true you've got a Hippogriff tattooed across your chest."
Ron and Hermione both roared with laughter. Harry ignored them.
What did you tell her?"
I told her it's a Hungarian Horntail," said Ginny, turning a page of the newspaper idly. "Much more macho."
Thanks," said Harry, grinning. "And what did you tell her Ron's got?"
A Pygmy Puff, but I didn't say where. — J.K. Rowling

Feeling good about yourself and your life is very important. I'm a happy woman, happy with my husband, my daughters, my grandchildren. We all get along quite well, and that keeps me centered. — Carolina Herrera

She talks. People talk easily to me. They think a bald albino hunchback can't hide anything. My worst is all out in the open. It makes it necessary for people to tell you about themselves. They begin out of simple courtesy. Just being visible is my biggest confession, so they try to set me at ease by revealing our equality, by dragging out their apparent deformities. That's how it starts. But I am like a stranger on the bus and they get hooked on having a listener. They go too far because I am one listener who is in no position to judge or find fault. They stretch out their dampest secrets because a creature like me has no values or morals. If I am "good" (and they assume that I am), it's obviously for lack of opportunity to be otherwise. And I listen. I listen eagerly, warmly, because I care. They tell me everything eventually. — Katherine Dunn

I cry all the time. It's more like when didn't you cry. My friends are like, 'Oh God, she's sobbing again.' I cry if I'm happy, sad, normal ... What really gets me is when I read a sad story about a child in the paper, especially at the moment with my hormones raging. — Sara Cox

Resurrection. In the crude form in which it is preached to console the weak, it is alien to me. I have always understood Christ's words about the living and the dead in a different sense. Where could you find room for all these hordes of people accumulated over thousands of years? The universe isn't big enough for them; God, the good, and meaningful purpose would be crowded out. They'd be crushed by these throngs greedy merely for the animal life.
But all the time, life, one, immense, identical throughout its innumerable combinations and transformations, fills the universe and is continually reborn. You are anxious about whether you will rise from the dead or not, but you rose from the dead when you were born and you didn't notice it. — Boris Pasternak

The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home. — David Foster Wallace

I think that storytelling and creation are very close to what the center of what magic is about. I think not just for me, but for most of the cultures that have had a concept of magic, then the manipulation of language, and words, and thus of stories and fictions, has been very close to the center of it all. — Alan Moore

How are you?" Charlie asks. She's turned to me wearing this grave expression, her features all set in a row. I expected her to be pissy about my being nonresponsive all weekend, or at least about my being late this morning, but if she is, she's not acting like it.
"Um, fine. Are we going?"
Charlie glances back at Olivia.
"He's an asshole," Olivia says.
"She's a bitch," Charlie says. — Rebecca Serle

Reading all my old love letters was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can't TOUCH those feelings. Its like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don't even know. I'm aware, in an intellectual way. That I felt all those things about him, but this emotions are far away now.
What's so strange to me is that I can't even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who WAS I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now? — Bill Shapiro

People make the mistake of assuming far too many things about armies,' Lefevre told me one evening. 'They assume, for a start, that generals know what they are doing and know what is going on. They assume that orders pass down from top to bottom in a smooth and regulated fashion. And above all they assume that wars start only when people decide to start them.' 'You are going to tell me that is not the case?' 'Wars begin when they are ready, when humanity needs a bloodletting. Kings and politicians and generals have little say in it. You can feel it in the air when one is brewing. There is a tension and nervousness on the face of the least soldier. They can smell it coming in a way politicians cannot. The desire to hurt and destroy spreads over a region and over the troops. And then the generals can only hope to have the vaguest notion of what they are doing. — Iain Pears

It's, it's like I'm in the fourth dimension and somebody is asking me to describe it verbally and that's what the fourth dimension is all about, is no words, no symbols, no images, all pure, real energy and vibrations. And, and if I thought about how cruel of a world this is, I would probably just commit suicide after a while, if that was what I spent my energy thinking about. I would definitely not have any strength left to create music. — John Frusciante

For me, Glasgow is all about the people and the spirit of the place. You have enough Gregg's bakers, though, I'll say that. The opening of the 1977 'Star Wars' movie was possibly the only time I've seen a longer queue round the block than in Glasgow for sausage rolls. That was quite an eye-opener. — Darren Boyd

The new light above my table is a great improvement. With all this darkness around me I feel less alone. (Pause.) In a way. (Pause.) I love to get up and move about in it, then back here to ... (hesitates) ... me. (Pause.) — Samuel Beckett

So that's what we want is a secure and sovereign nation and, you know, I don't know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me. I don't know that. [Note: its the Hispanic Student Union. The whole room is Hispanic teenagers.] What we know, what we know about ourselves is that we are a melting pot in this country. My grandchildren are evidence of that. I'm evidence of that. I've been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly. — Sharron Angle

Augustus Waters was the Mayor of the Secret City of Cancervania, and he is not replaceable", Isaac began.
"Other people will be able to tell you funny stories about Gus, because he was a funny guy, but let me tell you a serious one: A day after I got my eye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. I was blind and heartbroken and dind't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, 'I have wonderful news!' And I was like, 'I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now' and Gus said, 'This is wonderful news you want to hear' and I asked him, 'Fine, what is it?' and he said, 'You're going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet!'"
Isaac couldn't go on, or maybe that was all he had written. — John Green

Well, let's all get maudlin, shall we? George, stop on the way and get us some red-hot pokers to put out our eyes. Oh, and while you're at it, I think we should see about adding salt for our wounds, too. (Solin)
Quite good, sir. Is there any particular place you'd care for me to stop? I've heard the market is a good place for pokers. That is, if you're agreeable to a short detour. (George)
What do you two think? Run-of-the-mill pokers, or a better quality. Oh hell, why not use rusty spoons. They'd hurt more. (Solin) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I don't get particularly precious about things like this, though. Like the record company said, "We need a radio edit that delivers the hook" - I don't even know what they consider the hook in that song ["Oh No"] - "that delivers the hook sooner." So I'm like, "Okay. I see that." And they were all walking on eggshells, like is this going to be sacrilegious to me or something, to mess with this art I've created? And I'm like, "Great. I get to tinker with it, I get to mess with my song some more." — Andrew Bird

One of the great things about an open system like Android is it addresses all ends of the spectrum. Getting great low-cost computing devices at scale to the developing world is especially meaningful to me. — Sundar Pichai

I don't want to sound arrogant and say that I know everything about directing and I've got it cracked, but it was just all in all a joyous experience. To me, the key to directing, to be honest, is just surround yourself with brilliant people and let them do their thing — Dan Mazer

Mississippi is like my mother. I am allowed to complain about her all I want, but God help the person who raises an ill word about her around me, unless she is their mother too. — Kathryn Stockett

First of all is the fact that I have some rather good turns of phrase. I don't say that pridefully ... it's just that when a line I forgot about smacks me in the face and says, "Look at me! Aren't I lovely?" I have to notice. — Rachel Heffington

I made numerous attempts to find a way to do it all, to be a creative singer, songwriter, producer, and to be the mother, daughter, sister, lover, wife. And the thing about music is, with me, that she's a harsh mistress. She does not come to me in the midst of stress. — Anita Baker

I put my arm around her and said, Jas, I have found that when you are troubled, it is often better to think of others rather than yourself. I think you would feel much better if you got me some milky coffee and jammy dodgers and I told you all about me. — Louise Rennison

Mom and I were walking onteh beach and I was explaining to her how I wantd to "GET OVER all my INSECURITIES" and "La La ... La.." ... and she looked at me and said "Sabrina, does anyone realy feel good about themselves for MORE than 5 minutes?" We both laughed. I was releaved to know she felt that way becuae she seems SO graceful, calm and beautiful, which she is.. but also full of so much more. Auestions, doubts + WONDER. I think that if we can aim for just five minutes a day of complete acceptance of ourselves, we are doing very well! — Sabrina Ward Harrison

I look out again at the sun-my first full gaze. It is blood-red and men are walking about on rooftops. Everything above the horizon is clear to me. It is like Easter Sunday. Death is behind me and birth too. I am going to live now among the life maladies. I am going to live the spiritual life of the pygmy, the secret life of the little man in the wilderness of the bush. Inner and outer have changed places. Equilibrium is no longer the goal-the scales must be destroyed. Let me hear you promise again all those sunny things you carry inside you. Let me try to believe for one day, while I rest in the open, that the sun brings good tidings. Let me rot in splendor while the sun bursts in your womb. I believe all your lies implicitly. I take you as the personification of evil, as the destroyer of the soul, as the maharanee of the night. Tack your womb up on my wall, so that I may remember you. We must get going. Tomorrow, tomorrow ... — Henry Miller

Nobody even mentioned the word losing, losing games. We know we've been a losing franchise. He just wanted to say something back like he's always running his mouth. That's what he does. He runs his mouth all the time. Nobody was blaming him for anything. For him to come back at me was a personal attack. I feel that if there is anything that he is unsure about, tell him I would be more than happy to say it in his face, or any kind of other way, that would make him understand. — Carl Crawford

You can do anything you put your mind to. I believe in all of you. Never doubt yourself, even if everyone around you is doubting you. Stand tall. Prove them all wrong.Each and every one of you have something amazingly special about you and don't let anyone tell you any different. Thank you for being my fans.. and my friends. Thank you for giving me a reason to sing. Thank you for being you. — Carrie Underwood

It's been a harder book to write for personal reasons too. What gets me most are not the scary scientific studies about melting glaciers, the ones I used to avoid. It's the books I read to my two-year-old. Looking For a Moose is one of his favorites. It's about a bunch of kids that really, really, really want to see a moose. They search high and low - through a forest, a swamp, in brambly bushes and up a mountain, for "a long legged, bulgy nosed, branchy antlered moose." The joke is that there are moose hiding on each page. In the end, the animals all come out of hiding and the ecstatic kids proclaim: "We've never ever seen so many moose! — Naomi Klein

Everything is always my fault. I touch things and they crumple into shit, like the opposite of King Midas and his gold finger. If I was in a fairy tale, I would be called "PooFinger", and everyone would shun me and make me go live in some naff shack under a bridge, telling scary stories to all the children in the kingdom about the wench who turns everything to shit, just by touching it. — Holly Bourne

I always prayed the same way at night: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Please bless my mother, father, sister, everyone in the word, and me. And please make my father quit drinking."
As a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism, this is what I know: Something bad is coming; it always does. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed. I can't talk about our secrets; no one understands. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Questions bounced off my self-constructed wall of values
a barricade I'd made from the fears I'd pushed into my darkness.
How could Ryan, a professional baseball player, really resist all those women? How could I really trust Jerry, my childhood friend? I'd barely awakened to sex and already boys were the seventh wonder of the world. Did anyone really trust another person? I needed proof. That proof hadn't revealed itself ... yet. — Pamela Taeuffer

My all-time low is 62 at Bel-Air, but it was in match play, and I had two putts given to me from four feet. I'm playing only about once or twice a month. Full-time job. Full-time father. Full-time blonde. — Jack Wagner

You realize I had half my guard out searching for you?" Eddard Stark said when they were alone. "Septa Mordane is beside herself with fear. She's in the sept praying for your safe return. Arya, you know you are never to go beyond the castle gates without my leave."
"I didn't go out the gates," she blurted. "Well, I didn't mean to. I was down in the dungeons, only they turned into this tunnel. It was all dark, and I didn't have a torch or a candle to see by, so I had to follow. I couldn't go back the way I came on account of the monsters. Father, they were talking about killing you! Not the monsters, the two men. They didn't see me, I was being still as stone and quiet as a shadow, but I heard them. They said you had a book and a bastard and if one Hand could die, why not a second? Is that the book? Jon's the bastard, I bet. — George R R Martin

But there is one whom you do not deceive, and that is Christ, our Lord. He knows all. Personally, I have felt that nobody need keep much of a record about me, except what I keep myself in my mind, which is a part of my spirit. I often question in my mind, whether it is going to require very many witnesses in addition to my own wrongdoing. — J. Reuben Clark

Hunter's dead," Taylor said without preamble. "It was these . . . these things. They came crawling up out of him and were eating him, oh God, I mean, it was like . . . I mean he was crying and Dekka prayed with him and he tried to fry his own brain just like he did with Harry only I guess it didn't work, I guess he couldn't do it, so Sam . . ." She swallowed. "Anyone have some water?"
"What about Sam?" Astrid demanded.
"He did it for him. Sam. I mean, he . . . Hunter was, you know . . . so Sam." She pantomimed raising her hands, like Sam, like he would do when using his power.
Astrid closed her eyes and crossed herself.
"Rest in peace," Edilio said and crossed himself as well.
"Sam burned the boy?" Howard asked. Then, bitterly sarcastic said, "Yeah, you all pray to Jesus. Because Jesus is really providing a lot of help here. Sounds to me like Sam was the one doing what had to be done. — Michael Grant

I also believe that man's continued domestication (if you care to use that silly euphemism) of dogs is motivated by fear: fear that dogs, left to evolve on their own, would, in fact, develop thumbs and smaller tongues, and therefore would be superior to men, who are slow and cumbersome, standing erect as they do. This is why dogs must live under the constant supervision of people ... From what Denny has told me about the government and its inner workings, it is my belief that this despicable plan was hatched in a back room of none other than the White House, probably by an evil adviser to a president of questionable moral and intellectual fortitude, and probably with the correct assessment - unfortunately, made from a position of paranoia rather than of spiritual insight - that all dogs are progressively inclined regarding social issues. — Garth Stein

As I watched all the problems you were struggling with, I realized how much you meant to me. It changed everything. I was worried about you - so, so worried. You have no idea. And it became useless to try to act like I could ever put any Moroi life above yours. It's not going to happen, no matter how wrong others say it is. And so I decided that's something I have to deal with. Once I made that decision ... there was nothing to hold us back." He hesitated, seeming to replay his words as he brushed my hair from my face. "Well, to hold me back. I'm speaking for myself. I don't mean to act like I know exactly why you did it."
"I did it because I love you," I said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. And really, it was. — Richelle Mead

Talking of being eaten by dogs, there's a dachshund at Brinkley who when you first meet him will give you the impression that he plans to convert you into a light snack between his regular meals. Pay no attention. It's all eyewash. His belligerent attitude is simply - "
Sound and fury signifying nothing, sir?"
That's it. Pure swank. A few civil words, and he will be grappling you ... What's the expression I've heard you use?"
Grappling me to his soul with hoops of steel, sir?"
In the first two minutes. He wouldn't hurt a fly, but he has to put up a front because his name's Poppet. One can readily appreciate that when a dog hears himself addressed day in and day out as Poppet, he feels he must throw his weight about. Is self-respect demands it."
Precisely, sir."
You'll like Poppet. Nice dog. Wears his ears inside out. Why do dachshunds wear their ears inside out?"
I could not say, sir."
Nor me. I've often wondered. — P.G. Wodehouse

We don't have all the answers. A few months ago, that would have driven me crazy. Now I know sometimes you have to just take life for what it is instead of worrying about what might happen. — Amy Patrick

He looks up and the loss in his Noise is so great it feels like I'm standing on the edge of an abyss, that I'm about to fall down into him, into blackness so empty and lonely there'd never be a way out.
"Todd," I say again, a catch in my voice. "On the ledge, under the waterfall, do you remember what you said to me? Do you remember what you said to save me?"
He's shaking his head slowly. "I've done terrible things, Viola. Terrible things-"
"We all fall, you said." I'm gripping his hand now. "We all fall but that's not what matters. What matters is picking yourself up again. — Patrick Ness

Mark raised his eyebrows, 'you don't know the half of it,' he further mumbled, more to himself than in reply to Frankie. 'But listen up; because this isn't about me anyway; this is about you, about how you need to sort it out, yeah? This is all about you getting yourself a girl, and settling down, right?'

Frankie offered up a wistful kind of sigh, supping his pint as those heavily suggestive words immediately grated: settle down and never settle up. — Tom Conrad

I grew up in airports and on air bases. I know what flying and airports can be. And most airports make me feel like we're about three per cent better than ants. Especially U.S. airports. They're zoos. All civility is gone. — Douglas Coupland

And there it is again -- that profound lesson about choices. Once we make them, we're tied to them, and consequences will follow us. But we also need to know that each day we get the chance to choose all over again. And believe me, there's hope in that — Christi Paul

Even though there are so many teachings, so many meditations, so many instructions, the basic point of it all is just to learn to be extremely honest and also wholehearted about what exists in your mind - thoughts, emotions bodily sensations, the whole thing that adds up to what we call "me" or "I". — Pema Chodron

When we got to the Lock-Horne Building on Park Avenue - again Win's full name is Windsor Horne Lockwood III, so you do the math - Dad said, "You want me to just drop you off?" Sometimes my father leaves me awestruck. Fatherhood is about balance, but how can one man do it so well, so effortlessly? Throughout my life he pushed me to excel without ever crossing the line. He reveled in my accomplishments yet never made them seem to be all that important. He loved without condition, yet he still made me want to please him. He knew, like now, when to be there, and when it was time to back off. "I'll be okay." He — Harlan Coben

The key to good worldbuilding is leaving out most of what you create. You, as the author, had damn well better know the where all that dragon food comes from, but that doesn't mean that I, as a reader, want to read a five thousand word essay about you explaining it to me. I don't need to see the math, but I can tell by the details you provide whether or not you've thought these things through to their logical conclusions. — Patrick Rothfuss

This age is truly crooked, perverse, and adulterous; it is full of fornication and immorality. People talk about immorality without one bit of shame. Who can stand in such a generation? Not one of us is able to stand. We all have a fallen nature within us, the same evil nature that all men have. We need grace. We must come to the throne of grace boldly and say, Lord, I am here. I need Your grace. I am not coming to ask You to give me good things. I am coming to find grace to meet my need. Lord, I cannot go to work or to school without Your presence. Lord, I cannot go to a department store without Your presence. Lord, I need You to stand with me. Come to be my strength. Lord, uphold me and sustain me. — Witness Lee

For me, family means the silent treatment. At any given moment, someone is always not speaking to someone else.'
Really,' I said.
We're passive-aggressive people,' she explained, taking a sip of her coffee. 'Silence is our weapon of choice. Right now, for instance, I'm not speaking to two of my sisters and one brother ... At mine [my house], silence is golden. And common.'
To me,' Reggie said, picking up a bottle of Vitamin A and moving it thoughtfully from one hand to the other, 'family is, like, the wellspring of human energy. The place where all life begins.' ...
Harriet considered this as she took a sip of coffee. 'Huh,' she said. 'I guess when someone else does something worse. Then you need people on your side, so you make up with one person, jsut as you're getting pissed off at another.'
So it's an endless cycle,' I said.
I guess.' She took another sip. 'Coming together, falling apart. Isn't that what families are all about? — Sarah Dessen

I loved my time on All My Children. That show was a family to me. I am so sad that daytime is slowly fading away. I owe so much to daytime. I learned so much about my craft and I made so many wonderful friends there and I am so sad that it is all going away. — Eva LaRue

A man walks fast along the forecourt of the station towards a gate, moving towards a train that's about to leave. I get shivery all over as I watch the back of his head, which is about Yuan's height, with hair and a neckline just like his. My eyes tell me what my mind knows cannot be true. I follow him along seeking the one thing that would confirm him as someone else. The man turns his head slightly to talk to a train official. I can see his nose in profile. My eyes sting. — Dayo Forster

That's what it felt like. Passed through is the only way I can express it. Like my body had passed clean through a stone wall. At what exact point I felt like I'd made it through, I can't recall, but suddenly I noticed I was already on the other side. I was convinced I'd made it through. I don't know about the logic or the process or the method involved - I was simply convinced of the reality that I'd passed through.
After that, I didn't have to think anymore. Or, more precisely, there wasn't the need to try to consciously think about not thinking. All I had to do was go with the flow and I'd get there automatically. If I gave myself up to it, some sort of power would naturally push me forward. — Haruki Murakami

What really interests me about capturing and suspending movement is that I get to experience something invisible and inaudible, as elusive and fleeting as thought itself, and give it form ... Maybe my paintings are all just little fragments of the Cosmic Dance suspended in time. — James Nares

I feel completely safe in my house but all my friends are scared for me. And of course I can tell my parents panic a little. The best thing about living alone is being able to have my friends come over whenever. — Vanessa Hudgens

Friendship for me is made from a tapestry of personalities, each of whom shares a part of all I care about. — Jacquelyn Mitchard

You're both perfectly all right," she informed them. "And we will get Aurimere back, and our magic back, and our town back, and then we will have everything we need."

"We have some important stuff already," Ash offered tentatively.

Lillian frowned. "What do you mean?"

Jared surrendered himself to the strangeness of this situation, sank back onto the pillows himself with his head near Lillian's hip, and sighed heavily to attract his aunt's attention. "He wants to know you love him more than that stupid house."

"It is a very nice house," Aunt Lillian said, sounding offended. "Your ancestors are buried in the crypt of that house."

"Sure. Okay. We'll get our lovely creepy house back. When they bury me in that crypt, I want 'Jared, very inbred, deeply uncomfortable about it' on my tombstone. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I prefer to connect with fans from the stage. Like, I don't have a Twitter page, or anything like that. So for me, that's what the show is about. For me - is a way to interact with fans; being up onstage and showing them, through music - which is all I really know - the best way to say thank you. — Nate Ruess

When I talk about money. All you see is the struggle. When I tell ya, I'm livin' large, you tell me, its trouble. — Tupac Shakur

I actually don't have any fear of people reading Wild and going out unprepared. Because one of the best things that ever happened to me was that I went out unprepared. And when you really think about it, all I did wrong was that I took too much stuff, which is the most common backpacker mistake. The part that I wasn't prepared for is the part you can't prepare for. — Cheryl Strayed

He pulled her mirror out of his other pocket. "You left your mirror on my table." He extended it toward her.
"You can keep it," she said quietly. "We have lots of mirrors here."
"I'll keep it, then."
"Good. I'm glad."
He'd never rushed headlong into a battle, but he figured this time, it might be the best approach. "I spent a lot of time studying it. The back is real pretty with all the gold carving. Took me about an hour to gather up the courage to turn it over and look at the other side."
"And what did you see?"
" Aman who loves you more than life itself."
Closing her eyes, she dropped her chin to her chest.
"I wouldn't blame you if you hated me. I haven't held your feelings as precious as I should have."
"I don't hate you," she whispered hoarsely. "I tried to, but I can't."
-Houston and Amelia — Lorraine Heath

It always did bother me that the American public were more interested in me than in my work. And after all there is no sense in it because if it were not for my work they would not be interested in me so why should they not be more interested in my work than in me. That is one of the things one has to worry about in America. — Gertrude Stein

Most Americans take their freedom very seriously, but they don't realize that not everyone is free. The repressed are not free to do what they want. That's what 'Star-Crossed' was all about for me. — Johnathon Schaech

What if the purpose of my life is not about me? Am I willing to give up all my dreams, my aspirations and comfort to find it/ Are you willing to pay the cost? This is the pearl of great price, the abundant life we are all seeking and, at the same time, petrified to find. — Jeff Goins

Sometimes it seems to me that I shall never write out all the books I have in my head, because of the strain. The devilish thing about writing is that it calls upon every nerve to hold itself taut. This is exactly what I cannot do
— Virginia Woolf

Then is courtesy a turncoat. But it is certain I am loved of all ladies, only you excepted: and I would I could find in my heart that I had not a hard heart; for, truly, I love none.
Beatrice: A dear happiness to women: they would else have been troubled with a pernicious suitor. I thank God and my cold blood, I am of your humour for that: I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me. -Much Ado About Nothing — William Shakespeare

Is what how it is for me?" "Do you still know everything, all the time?" She shook her head. She didn't smile. She said, "Be boring, knowing everything. You have to give all that stuff up if you're going to muck about here." "So you used to know everything?" She wrinkled her nose. "Everybody did. I told you. It's nothing special, knowing how things work. And you really do have to give it all up if you want to play." "To play what?" "This, — Neil Gaiman

Let me give you a piece of advice: Leo Tolstoy is not the only human being on this planet. Yet all I ever hear you talking about is Leo Tolstoy ...
(tr Benjamin Sher) — Leo Tolstoy

He was not such a special person. He loved to read very much, and also to write. He was a poet, and he exhibited me many of his poems. I remember many of them. They were silly, you could say, and about love. He was always in his room writing those things, and never with people. I used to tell him, What good is all that love doing on paper? I said, Let love write on you for a little. But he was so stubborn. Or perhaps he was only timid. — Jonathan Safran Foer

It is many years ago and at times I know nothing about her anymore who was once all things to me but all things pass. (The Eleventh Psalm) — Bertolt Brecht

Like my peers, I believed that the Bible was God's Word written down for me, answering all my questions about who God is and what God wants for my life, from the mundane to the ultimate. Or at least I knew that was what I needed to believe. But that was not what I found when I actually opened the Bible up and looked around inside. — Timothy Beal

One of the things that gives me a lot of pleasure about both the solo show and the book is that it tells people about my dad. He really was an important man. He was a kind of pioneer of regional theater. He was the first American producer to ever produce all of Shakespeare plays. — John Lithgow

I started the first drafts of the book during my sophomore year of college. I wasn't thinking at all about kids at the time. But I was thinking. A lot. About everything. I wish I could capture that head-space again; everything meant something to me in college. Every leaf, every sound, every lecture, every textbook. It's like I was on drugs, 24/7. I am glad I was able to pair that ceaseless pondering with plenty of time to write. What came of that time was the first draft of the novel, a lengthy, unnecessarily angst-driven pile of crap. Years later, with Zoloft, I approached the novel with a more level head, and came away with a much, much better novel. My advice to writers, I suppose, is write your novel when you feel like shit; edit when you feel great. — Caleb J. Ross

From the beginning, of course, I had known that the pure forcefulness of my argument would not penetrate deep enough to effect any change. It almost never does. It's never worked for me when I've been in therapy. Only when one feels an insight in one's bones does one own it. Only then can one act on it and change. Pop psychologists forever talk about "responsibility assumption," but it's all words: it is extraordinarily hard, even terrifying, to own the insight that you and only you construct your own life design. Thus, the problem in therapy is always how to move from an ineffectual intellectual appreciation of a truth about oneself to some emotional experience of it. It is only when therapy enlists deep emotions that it becomes a powerful force for change. And powerlessness was — Irvin D. Yalom

I think we should probably get Vanessa out of the Quiet Box to help us. What do you guys say?'
'Absolutely,' Newel affirmed. 'Best idea I've heard all day.'
'I'll second that,' Doren said gladly.
Seth gave the satyrs a doubtful scowl. 'Wait a minute. You guys just think she's pretty.'
'I've been around a long time,' Newel said. 'Vanessa Santoro is not jut pretty.'
'He's right,' Doren agreed. 'She's walking dynamite. My pulse is rising just talking about her.'
'She also might be a traitor,' Seth stressed.
'The lethal temptress,' Newel said with relish. 'Even better.'
'It will definitely spice up the adventure,' Doren encouraged.
'I'm obviously talking to wrong guys,' Seth sighed.
'Believe me,' Newel said cockily. 'you're talking to the right guys. We've been chasing babes since the world was flat.'
Seth rolled his eyes. — Brandon Mull

My unlucky star had destined me to be born when there was much talk about morality and, at the same time, more murders than in any other period. There is, undoubtedly, some connection between these phenomena. I sometime ask myself whether the connection was a priori, since these babblers are cannibals from the start - or a connection a posteriori, since they inflate themselves with their moralizing to a height which becomes dangerous for others.
However that may be, I was always happy to meet a person who owed his touch of common sense and good manners to his parents and who didn't need big principles. I do not claim more for myself, and I am a man who for an entire lifetime has been moralized at to the right and the left - by teachers and superiors, by policemen and journalists, by Jews and Gentiles, by inhabitants of the Alps, of islands, and the plains, by cut-throats and aristocrats - all of whom looked as if butter wouldn't melt in their mouths. — Ernst Junger

The Weirdos

On our first date, he bought me a taco, talked at length about the ancients' theories of light, how it streams at all angles to align events in space and time, that it is the source of all information, determines every outcome, how we can reflect it to summon aliens using mirrored bowls of water. — Ottessa Moshfegh

Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary - the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trimtab.
It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trimtab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.
So I said, call me Trimtab. — R. Buckminster Fuller

Come a day there won't be room for naughty men like us to slip about at all. This job goes south, there well may not be another. So here is us, on the raggedy edge. Don't push me, and I won't push you. Dong le ma? — Joss Whedon

I've had opportunities. But winning a major is not only about playing well. It's about having 'winner's luck.' I had winner's luck in 1999 at Medinah, but it didn't take me all the way. — Sergio Garcia

I don't know much about history, and I wouldn't give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today. — Henry Ford

The sad truth is that what I could recall in five seconds all too soon needed ten, then thirty, then a full minute - like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness. There is no way around it: my memory is growing ever more distant from the spot where Naoko used to stand - ever more distant from the spot where my old self used to stand. And nothing but scenery, that view of the meadow in October, returns again and again to me like a symbolic scene in a movie. Each time it appears, it delivers a kick to some part of my mind. "Wake up," it says. "I'm still here. Wake up and think about it. Think about why I'm still here." The kicking never hurts me. There's no pain at all. Just a hollow sound that echoes with each kick. And even that is bound to fade one day. — Haruki Murakami

I don't know what position you're talking about, sir. The Gnomon Society has never questioned the rotundity of the earth. Mr. Jimmerson is himself a skilled topographer."
"Excuse me, Mr. Popper, but I have it right here in Mr. Jimmerson's own words on page twenty-nine of 101 Gnomon Facts."
"No, sir. Excuse me but you don't. Please look again. Read that passage carefully and you'll see what we actually say is that the earth looks flat. We still say that. It's so flat around Brownsville as to be striking to the eye."
"But isn't that just a weasel way of saying that you really believe if to be flat?"
"Not at all. What we're saying is that the curvature of the earth is so gentle, relative to our human scale of things, that we need not bother or take it into account when going for a stroll, say, or laying out our gardens. — Charles Portis

I walk around feeling a sort of existential guilt all the time; and honestly for me this house is a way of feeling less guilty about the universe. — Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Kell had told his brother about the deals he struck in Grey London, and in White, and even on occasion in Red, about the various things he'd smuggled, and Rhy had stared at him, and listened, and when he spoke, it wasn't to lecture Kell on all the ways it was wrong, or illegal. It was to ask why.
"I don't know," said Kell, and it had been the truth.
Rhy had sat up, eyes bleary from drink. "Have we not provided?" he'd asked, visibly upset. "Is there anything you want for?"
"No," Kell had answered, and that had been a truth and a lie at the same time.
"Are you not loved?" whispered Rhy. "Are you not welcomed as family?"
"But I'm not family, Rhy," Kell had said. "I'm not truly a Maresh, for all that the king and queen have offered me that name. I feel more like a possession than a prince."
At that, Rhy had punched him in the face.
For a week after, Kell had two black eyes instead of one, and he'd never spoken like that again, but the damage was done. — Victoria Schwab

On a second note, though, I have something to say about pain. There are lots of kinds of pain. Pain of smashing your fingers in a car door, pains of loosing a baby, pain of failing a test. But in their own little ways, these pains are all agonizing. Which is sad, and yet, happy, if you really think about it. If we never lost our car keys, or stepped in gum, or had a bad hair day, what kind of people would we be? In a word? Boring. We wouldn't be passionate; we wouldn't know it was exciting to get pregnant, or score an A on a final. So that's why, today at least, I am grateful for pain. Because it's part of what makes me the whacky, goofy, jaded, person that I am. Peace. — Alysha Speer

The only thing that matters to me about my stories is that they're entertaining and they're funny. And I tend to get bored easily, so I generally throw something supernatural in. I would say they're humorous novels that have a supernatural bent, but that's as close as you're going to get to fitting them all in the same basket. — Christopher Moore

There are grander and more sublime landscapes - to me. There are more compelling cultures. But what appeals to me about central Montana is that the combination of landscape and lifestyle is the most compelling I've seen on this earth. Small mountain ranges and open prairie, and different weather, different light, all within a 360-degree view. — Sam Abell

I'm sorry, but why does Claire know how to take a punch? I'm not sure I like where this is going," Carter said nervously.
"Well, last year Jim made us watch Fight Club for like, the ten- thousandth time. And while I'm all for a little shirtless Brad Pitt action, Claire and I decided to take a shot every time Edward Norton talked in third person. By about twenty minutes in, we were trashed. I don't know whose idea it was, but Claire and I started our own fight club in the living room," Liz explained.
"It was your idea, Liz. You stood up in front of me, lifted your shirt and said "Punch me in the stomach as hard as you can, fucker. — Tara Sivec

Every once in a while, I get the urge. You know what I'm talking about, don't you? The urge for destruction. The urge to hurt, maim, kill.
It's quite a thing, to experience that urge, to let it wash over you, to give in to it. It's addictive. It's all-consuming. You lose yourself to it. It's quite, quite wonderful. I can feel it, even as I speak, tapping around the edges of my mind, trying to prise me open, slip its fingers in. And it would be so easy to let it happen.
But we're all like that, aren't we? We're all barbarians at our core. We're all savage, murderous beasts. I know I am. I'm sure you are. The only difference between us, Mr Prave, is how loudly we roar. I know I roar very loudly indeed. How about you? Do you think you can match me? — Derek Landy

No matter how good you think you are as a leader, my goodness, the people around you will have all kinds of ideas for how you can get better. So for me, the most fundamental thing about leadership is to have the humility to continue to get feedback and to try to get better - because your job is to try to help everybody else get better. — Jim Yong Kim

The chef turned back to the housekeeper. "Why is there doubt about the relations between Monsieur and Madame Rutledge?"
The sheets," she said succinctly.
Jake nearly choked on his pastry. "You have the housemaids spying on them?" he asked around a mouthful of custard and cream.
Not at all," the housekeeper said defensively. "It's only that we have vigilant maids who tell me everything. And even if they didn't, one hardly needs great powers of observation to see that they do not behave like a married couple."
The chef looked deeply concerned. "You think there's a problem with his carrot?"
Watercress, carrot - is everything food to you?" Jake demanded.
The chef shrugged. "Oui."
Well," Jake said testily, "there is a string of Rutledge's past mistresses who would undoubtedly testify there is nothing wrong with his carrot."
Alors, he is a virile man ... she is a beautiful woman ... why are they not making salad together? — Lisa Kleypas

for the first time, there burst upon me the idea that there might be real marvels all about us, that the visible world might be only a curtain to conceal huge realms uncharted by my very simple theology. And that started in me something with which, on and off, I have had plenty of trouble since - the desire for the preternatural, simply as such, the passion for the Occult. Not everyone has this disease; those who have will know what I mean. I once tried to describe it in a novel. It is a spiritual lust; and like the lust of the body it has the fatal power of making everything else in the world seem uninteresting while it lasts. It is probably this passion, more even than the desire for power, which makes magicians. — C.S. Lewis

For me, marriage should be about partnership. How can you love someone you have to take care of like a child all the time? A wife is supposed to be a partner, and yes partners help each other when they need it, but they are supposed to be together because they want to in my book, not because one needs the other. — Lynsay Sands

All I want is to mess around, and I don't really care about, if you love me, if you hate me, you can't save me, baby baby, all my life I've been good — Avril Lavigne

My son is 12 now, and is really getting into girls. A lot. But the thing about twelve year old boys is that they don't possess what I like to call that ... discretionary gene yet. We were walking home from the ballfield the other day and there was a woman walking towards us who was ... gifted. I saw them, and I saw him see them. But she was too close for me to go, "Dude, shut up." She hadn't walked two feet behind us and he goes "God dang, did you see the SIZE of those things?" And all I could say was "Yeah, I did!" — Bill Engvall