It Been A Good Year Quotes & Sayings

I learned years ago, I adore acting and I think it's the most alive I know how to be - almost - but I really want a good life. I've been married for 17 years - I know, they call us the last couple. I have a 13-year-old daughter. I have a lovely home life with good friends who aren't in the business ... and I have no desire to cost my whole life in pursuit of the career alone. — Kathleen Turner

Christmas was just another workday, just as it had been growing up in Alabama. In a good year back then, little Robert got a handkerchief and an orange. One year his father fashioned a little cart - although come to think of it that was in the spring, not at Christmastime - and the children took turns being pulled around the yard by the family goat. Then he died. His father and the goat. — Robert M. Edsel

Have a good time"
Yesterday it was my birthday.
I hung one more year on the line.
I should be depressed.
My life's a mess.
But I'm having a good time.
I've been loving and loving and loving.
I'm exhausted from loving so well
I should go to bed.
But a voice in my head says,
"Ah, what the hell — Paul Simon

I'm a woman; in so many ways I've been programmed to please. I took the job and spent time hunkered over figures, budgets, charts, and fiscal-year projections. I tried, but I hated it.
"Working at a job you don't like is the same as going to prison every day," my father used to say. He was right. I felt imprisoned by an impressive title, travel, perks, and a good salary. On the inside, I was miserable and lonely, and I felt as if I was losing myself. I spent weekends working on reports no one read, and I gave presentations that I didn't care about. It made me feel like a sellout and, worse, a fraud.
Now set free, like any inmate I had to figure out what to do with the rest of my life. — Kathleen Flinn

On this perfect day, when everything is ripening and not only the grape turns brown, the eye of the sun just fell upon my life: I looked back, I looked forward, and never saw so many and such good things at once. It was not for nothing that I buried my forty-fourth year today; I had the right to bury it; whatever was life in it has been saved, is immortal. The first book of the Revaluation of All Values, the Songs of Zarathustra, the Twilight of the Idols, my attempt to philosophize with a hammer - all presents of this year, indeed of its last quarter! How could I fail to be grateful to my whole life? - and so I tell my life to myself. — Friedrich Nietzsche

A second Homeland Security official has been arrested, a 49-year-old guy named Frank Figueroa, he was caught exposing and fondling himself to a teenage girl in a shopping mall in Florida. Do you realize? If Osama bin Laden was a 14-year old girl, we would have had him by now ... Who is going to start protecting us from the Department of Homeland Security? ... It kind of makes you long for the good old wholesome days of the Clinton administration. — Jay Leno

Good questions are those that show that you not only want the job, you are prepared to knock the ball out of the park once you have it. So ask, "What would a successful year in the job look like?" or "What did you most value in the person who left?" You've done a Google search of the field and the company, of course, and one of your questions could be about emerging trends. Interviewers love it when questions relate to them and their accomplishments ("I've heard you made some exciting changes recently. What has the outcome been?"). — Kate White

Maps. I was less clueless about the basics of English, though I didn't realise at the time that I was assuming that English grammar was the same as the Latin grammar I had been taught so well. (I remember that the first week I was there, a boy asked me during prep whether ager was second or third declension and I was able to tell him without pausing for thought that ager - a field - was second declension, so it went like annus, but that it dropped the "e," as opposed to agger - a rampart - which was third declension, and retained the "e." "My God," I thought as he walked away, "Captain Lancaster did a good job." My next thought was, "Lucky the boy didn't ask me what a rampart was. ... ") But given that I was teaching ten-year-olds, Geoffrey Tolson's advice to "stay a page ahead" seemed perfectly sound. So I had no reason to believe, as I strode purposefully into the classroom to teach Form III their first history — John Cleese

When I was 15, I left school to start a magazine, and it became a success because I wouldn't take no for an answer. I remember banging on James Baldwin's door to ask for an interview when he came to England. Then I got Jean-Paul Sartre's home phone number and asked him to contribute. If I'd been 30, he might have said no, but I was a 15-year-old with passion and he was charmed. Making money was always just a side product of having a good time and creating things nobody'd seen before. — Richard Branson

So, very early reports are that Obamacare exchanges are, as expected, having some technical glitches on the first day - maybe even a bit worse than expected, because it appears that volume has been much bigger than predicted. Here's what you need to know: this is good, not bad, news for the program. Lots of people logging on and signing up on the very first day is an early indication that it's going to be fine, that plenty of people will sign up for the first year of health reform. — Paul Krugman

I'd come home from school alone with those teenage blues and I'd put on Frank Sinatra's It was a very good year. Here was this mature man singing about the cycle of his life, and as a kid I felt the emotions of it already. It has since been a touchstone for me whenever I want to experiment musically. — Iggy Pop

Upon looking back from the end of the last chapter and surveying the texture of what has been wrote, it is necessary, that upon this page and the five following, a good quantity of heterogeneous matter be inserted, to keep up that just balance betwixt wisdom and folly, without which a book would not hold together a single year. — Laurence Sterne

There was one knight," said Meera, "in the year of the false spring. The Knight of the Laughing Tree, they called him. He might have been a crannogman, that one." "Or not." Jojen's face was dappled with green shadows. "Prince Bran has heard that tale a hundred times, I'm sure." "No," said Bran. "I haven't. And if I have it doesn't matter. Sometimes Old Nan would tell the same story she'd told before, but we never minded, if it was a good story. Old stories are like old friends, she used to say. You have to — George R R Martin

During the last 17 years ... I have been working at the restoration of a once exhausted hillside. Its scars are now healed over, though still visible, and this year it has provided abundant pasture, more than in any year since we have owned it. But to make it as good as it is now has taken 17 years. If I had been a millionaire or if my family had been starving, it would still have taken 17 years. It can be better than it is now, but that will take longer. For it to live fully in its own responsibility, as it did before bad use ran it down, may take hundreds of years. — Wendell Berry

My philosophy has always been that I hope I have a good enough day to give me another one, I hope that I have a good enough year to give me another year. I know that's cliched, but it's the truth in how I approach my career. — David Nail

His view of me and my ways were expressed with some degree of force to our family physician who, when at the age of a hundred and fifty-three I came down with the mumps, having summoned the whole family and said that I would burst before morning, was met by a reassuring observation from Adam that he wouldn't believe I was dead even if I had been buried a year. "It is the good who die young, Doctor," he said. "On that principle this young malefactor will live to be the oldest man in the world. — John Kendrick Bangs

If an eighty-six-year-old woman has been clear-seeing from a young age, she will have gone through a lot of life developing a keen eye for snares and pitfalls, an ear for deceit, and a good nose for knavery. And by such an age, a smart woman with no illusions is one to whom courage comes far more readily than it does to those young people who don't yet know the world for what it is. — Dean Koontz

Before we light the Yule log, I want to give you this. You have been a very good girl this year, and a wonderful daughter." He held something out to her. Jaclyn hadn't noticed he was carrying anything. She looked down to see he was holding a branch with green leaves and white berries. She gasped, "It's beautiful!" and took the branch from his hand. "The berries reminded me of the winter snow," her father said softly. Jaclyn nodded. "But the green leaves belong in the summer!" She looked up at him. "The trees have long since lost their leaves. Where did you find it?" "I had to travel very far to find it." he told her, leaning in to add, "It's magical. — Laurel O'Donnell

Her boys were growing up, too. William would start nursery school in January of 1987 at four and a half. The most exciting part for William was the uniform, "which he is thrilled to bits about, especially as Harry is very envious of his big brother!" The next year would find Diana and Charles in Portugal, Spain, and Germany. "It never stops and it's certainly no holiday package tour!" How true. I'd seen that for myself in Washington.
I had been thrilled to catch a television documentary on the royal couple and had said so in my letter. Diana wrote, "An awful lot of money was raised for very worthy causes so that made the intrusion much more worthwhile!" This comment exemplified the conflict Diana faced between her desire for privacy and her desire to do good. — Mary Robertson

Read this morning of a black family - husband and wife both work in govt. printing office. They live in a nice house near U. of Maryland. They have been harassed and even had a cross burned on their lawn. It was all on the front page of the "Post." I told Mike & Jim I'd like to call on them. We cleared the last part of the afternoon schedule & Nancy & I went calling. They were a very nice couple with a 4 year old daughter - grandma (a most gracious lady) lived with them. Their home was very nice & tastefully furnished. They were very nice about our coming & expressed their thanks. The whole neighborhood was lining the street - most of them cheering and applauding us. I hope we did some good. There is no place in this land for the hate-mongers & bigots. — Ronald Reagan

In the last year my wife has noticed me struggling to get downstairs on a Sunday morning. I've two young children and football has been so good to me over the years I don't want to spoil it. — Graeme Le Saux

Action is hope. At the end of each day, when you've done your work, you lie there and think, Well, I'll be damned, I did this today. It doesn't matter how good it is, or how bad-you did it. At the end of the week you'll have a certain amount of accumulation. At the end of a year, you look back and say, I'll be damned, it's been a good year. — Ray Bradbury

I've been a politician long enough to know that every year will find us living in a situation that one couldn't have imagined a year previously. Sometimes it's better than we imagined, sometimes it's not as good. — Wolfgang Schauble

I believe that the many administration officials, lawmakers, and regulatory policymakers - and their staffs - who poured a year and a half of prodigious work into the legislation had been guided, knowingly or not, by a simultaneously high-minded and pragmatic sentiment that Woodrow Wilson voiced before he launched the effort that would establish the Federal Reserve System. "We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be," Wilson said in his first inaugural address. Wilson's words continued to make good sense a century later. — Ben S. Bernanke

If you've been around as long as I have, watching the literary scene, then you know that who's in and who's out changes by the year. It's really a very fluid situation that requires that the person who is having the good luck now isn't having it a year or two from now. — Jennifer Egan

I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no lucture comparable to that of the garden. Sucha a variety of subjeccts, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the succes of another, and instead of one harvest a continued one through the year. Under a total want of demand except for our family table, I am still devoted to the garden. — Thomas Jefferson

That year I was going to take you up in the Rockies. No more of that. We'll have to choose Old Flat Top because I don't want Violet getting all tired out with a long climb. And I don't want me getting all tired out either. The rest of you are tough enough." Grandfather looked up to see that every Alden was looking at him. The four shining faces answered him. There were four nods. "You do have the strangest ideas, Benny," said Jessie. "What put that into your head?" "Well," said Benny, "I've been reading about that place in school." "About Flat Top?" asked Violet. "Oh, you have, have you?" said Henry. "You chose Flat Top yourself?" "Right," said Benny. "I don't want to climb too much myself. I get lame." Mr. Alden said, "Well, my answer is yes. Old Flat Top is easy enough for all of us, and yet it is interesting all the way up. And we'll all be able to get a good rest on the smooth top." "Just like airplanes landing on an airplane carrier," said Benny. — Gertrude Chandler Warner

I am proud to have been born in Iowa. Through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy, it was a place of adventure and daily discoveries - the wonder of the growing crops, the excitements of the harvest, the journeys to the woods for nuts and hunting, the joys of snowy winters, the comfort of the family fireside, of good food and tender care. — Herbert Hoover

What are your thoughts on finding Rose a husband? She said something about a Lord Burkham." Her smile faded. "The viscount is not right for Rose." With a dismissive gesture, she added, "He would bore her within a year." Good, Iain thought. He was glad to hear it. Though he supposed he had no right to feel possessive of Rose, he couldn't deny that her kiss had affected him. It had been an impulse, misguided by the need to touch a beautiful woman. The moment he'd tasted her lips, he'd known how forbidden this was. And perhaps that was why the memory lingered. But more than that, he liked Rose. She had wit and humor that made her easy to be around. He genuinely wanted to help her walk again, though he knew how difficult it would be. Every time she stood, her face brightened with such joy and wonder, he felt the echo of pride in her accomplishment. Being around her made him feel that he could have a purpose, and she had never once made him feel inferior. "What — Michelle Willingham

I was skiing fast in training, but that really doesn't count for anything until you actually do it in a race. So to finally get to prove how fast you are skiing is an added bonus that goes along with winning the first race of the year. Any race win is a good win. I don't really care where it is. I've been on the podium a bunch of times here, but it's always good for your confidence to start off the year with a victory. — Ted Ligety

Bastien rolled his eyes, "Calm down, Hauk. All you're going to do is hurt yourself."
He glared at Bastien. "If you want to see exactly how angry someone can get, tell them to calm down when they're already pissed off!" Bellowing, he tried his best to break free.
"Is that helping? I just gotta know."
"When I get loose, Cabarro, your ass is the first one I'm kicking."
"Oh good. Hope you get out soon. Been awhile since I had a good ass-kicking." Bastien made a kissy face at him.
"Says the man who's so bruised, he looks like a two-year old banana."
"Now that's just mean and hurtful."
"Telise! He's awake again."
She moved forward and kicked Hauk in the face. "I wouldn't do that," Bastien warned. "Don't motivate the Andarion for murder. It ain't going to work out well for any of us. 'Specially me, since mine's the first ass he's planning to come after. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

If money titles meant anything, I'd play more tournaments. The only thing that means a lot to me is winning. If I have more wins than anybody else and win more majors than anybody else in the same year, then it's been a good year. — Tiger Woods

Jenks snickered. "Yeah, Rache. Why bother? I mean, this could be good. Ivy could invite her mom over for a housewarming. We've been here a year, and the woman is dying to come over. Well, at least she would be if she were still alive."
Worried, I looked up from the phone book.
Alarm sifted over Ivy. For a moment it was so quiet I could hear the clock above the sink, and then Ivy jerked, her speed edging into that eerie vamp quickness she took pains to hide.
"Give me the phone," she said, snatching it. — Kim Harrison

It feels kinda weird being back in a high school cause I haven't been in a high school for about a year. So um, it's kinda interesting coming back, and y'know seeing the lockers, with all the signs, the handmade signs, so being in high school again is a little bit strange but in a good way. — Taylor Swift

Evie hadn't always felt that way. For a year after James had died, she'd cupped his half-dollar pendant between her pressed palms and prayed fervently for a miracle, for a telegram that would say GOOD NEWS! IT WAS A TERRIBLE MISTAKE, AND PRIVATE JAMES XAVIER O'NEILL HAS BEEN FOUND, SAFE, IN A FARMHOUSE IN FRANCE. But no such telegram ever arrived, and whatever possible faith might have bloomed in Evie withered and died. Now she saw it as just another advertisement for a life that belonged to a previous generation and held no meaning for hers. — Libba Bray

Ivanov- "Up to now , all revolutions have been made by moralizing diletantes. They were always in good faith and perished because of their dilettantism. We for the first time are consequent ... "
"Yes," said Rubashov. "So consequent, that in the interests of a just distribution of land we deliberately let die of starvation about five million farmers and their families in one year. So consequent were we in the liberation of human beings from the shackles of industrial exploitation that we sent about ten million people to do forced labour in the Artic regions and the jungles of the East, under conditions similar to those of antique galley slaves. So consequent that, to settle a difference of opinion, we know only one argument: death, whether it is a matter of submarines, manure, or the Party line to be followed in Indo-China ... — Arthur Koestler

Commenting on playoffs to determine a national champion: I'm not in favor of 15 games either. I think that's way too much football. The thing that I feel good about is that these guys hung together through 15 games and played hard every week. That's a marvelous tribute to the kids. We just hung in there today and kept playing. It's just been a special feeling all year long. — LaVell Edwards

The funds are good at the moment," said the treasurer, with the bankbook in front of him. "The firms have been generous of late. Max Linder & Co. paid five hundred to be left alone. Walker Brothers sent in a hundred; but I took it on myself to return it and ask for five. If I do not hear by Wednesday, their winding gear may get out of order. We had to burn their breaker last year before they became reasonable. Then the West Section Coaling Company has paid its annual contribution. We have enough on hand to meet any obligations." "What — Arthur Conan Doyle

As he filled the mug with coffee, Michael waited for Shane to make some sense. Which Shane finally did, holding up the cheaply printed white flyer. It curled around the edges from where it had been rolled up to fit in the mailbox. "What have I always wanted in this town?" he asked.

"A strip club that would let in fifteen year olds?" Michael said.

"When I was fifteen. No, seriously, what?"

"Guns 'R Us?"

Shane made a harsh buzzer sound. "Okay, to be fair, yeah, that's a good alternate answer. But no. I always wanted a place to seriously train to fight, right? Someplace that didn't think aerobics was a martial art? And look! — Rachel Caine

Are you going to dance with me tonight?" I ask.
"Hell, yeah."
"Colin never wanted to dance with me."
"I'm not Colin, querida, and never will be."
"Good. I've got you, Alex. I realize it's all I need and I'm ready to share it with the world."
Inside the club, Alex immediately heads for the dance floor with me. I ignore the gawking stares from Fairfield students from my side of town as I pull Alex close to me and we move as one to the beat.
We move together as if we've been a couple forever, every movement in sync with each other. For the first time I'm not afraid of what people think of me and Alex together. Next year, in college, it won't matter who came from what side of town. — Simone Elkeles

I'm not big on dark chocolate, but I do have a sweet tooth, so it gets me in trouble. I love warm chocolate chip cookies with ice cream. Then there's this chocolate pie my mom makes for me every year for my birthday. She's been making it since I was younger, and there's nothing like it. It's really so, so good! — Phillip Phillips

He asked what I made of the other students, so I told him. They were OK, but they were all very similar; they struggled to have different opinions because they'd never failed at anything or been nobodies, and they thought they would always win. But this isn't most people's experience of life. He asked me what could be done about it. I told him the answer was to send them all out for a year to do some dead-end job like working in a chicken-processing plant or spreading muck with a tractor. It would do more good than a gap year in Peru. He laughed and thought this tremendously witty. It wasn't meant to be funny. — James Rebanks

At the ponds that evening I said to Antonio: "It's always been like that, since we were little: everyone thinks she's bad and I'm good."
He kissed me, murmuring ironically, "Why, isn't that true?"
That response touched me and kept me from telling him that we had to part. It was a decision that seemed to me urgent, the affection wasn't love, I loved Nino, I knew I would love him forever. I had a gentle speech prepared for Antonio, I wanted to say to him: It's been wonderful, you helped me a lot at a time when I was sad, but now school is starting and this year is going to be difficult, I have new subjects, I'll have to study a lot; I'm sorry but we have to stop. I felt it was necessary and every afternoon I went to our meeting at the ponds with my little speech ready. But he was so affectionate, so passionate, that my courage failed and I put it off. — Elena Ferrante

(It's a weird thing, depression. Even now, writing this with a good distance of fourteen years from my lowest point, I haven't fully escaped. You get over it, but at the same time you never get over it. It comes back in flashes, when you are tired or anxious or have been eating the wrong stuff, and catches you off guard. I woke up with it a few days ago, in fact. I felt its dark wisps around my head, that ominous life-is-fear feeling. But then, after a morning with the best five- and six-year-olds in the world, it subsided. it is now an aside. Something to put brackets around. Life lesson: the way out is never through yourself.) — Matt Haig

We have had more sales for this year's grand prix than any other, and we have been helped in that by the fact that Jenson had 10 podiums last season and looks like a winner. It is good for British motor racing if he is there and doing well. — Jackie Stewart

I'm sorry. I don't know how many times to tell you this for you to know it," I continued. "Francesca ... the night you stayed with me was the best night of my life. I've never felt more alive, more loved, happier, than when I hold you in my arms. Seeing your face makes my heart beat faster, in a good way, and I feel this calmness come over me. I don't know why, but it's always been this way with you. I understand if you can't forgive me, and I know you could do better, but I'm going to try my damnedest to make it up to you when I get out of here. I don't care if it takes a year, or ten, or even twenty. I will make you see how much I care. — Felicia Tatum

I observed an eighteen-year-old friend of one of our daughters talking to his mother on the telephone. As he hung up the phone in frustration he said, "She makes me so angry, she's always telling me what to think and where to go and how to do things." He was obviously upset and filled with anger. I told him he had one of two choices. He could either continue to practice being right, or practice being kind. If you insist on being right you will argue, get frustrated, angry, and your problem will persist with your mom, I explained. If you simply practice being kind, you can remind yourself that this is your mom, she's always been that way, she will very likely stay that way, but you are going to send her love instead of anger when she starts in with her routine. A simple statement of kindness such as, "That's a good point, Mom, I'll think about it," and you have a spiritual solution to your problem. — Wayne W. Dyer

Although, fanciful's origin circa 1627 made me still love the word, even if I'd ruined its applicability to my connection with Snarl. (I mean DASH!) Like, I could totally see Mrs. Mary Poppencock returning home to her cobblestone hut with the thatched roof in Thamesburyshire, Jolly Olde England, and saying to her husband, "Good sir Bruce, would it not be wonderful to have a roof that doesn't leak when it rains on our green shires, and stuff?" And Sir Bruce Poppencock would have been like, "I say, missus, you're very fanciful with your ideas today." To which Mrs. P. responded, "Why, Master P., you've made up a word! What year is it? I do believe it's circa 1627! Let's carve the year
we think
on a stone so no one forgets. Fanciful! Dear man, you are a genius. I'm so glad my father forced me to marry you and allow you to impregnate me every year. — Rachel Cohn

I have decided to keep a record of my inmost real-self thoughts. Perhaps it will help me to find out what I really am like: horrid, I know: selfish, conceited, and material-minded. For instance, lately whenever I've tried to concentrate on anything serious or beautiful, I've started thinking about the Spencers' dance next week. I am ashamed of my pettiness. I'm going to try to do better this year
develop my character more and not always be thinking about enjoying myself. I've always been so happy, I dread disappointment and unhappiness, but they would be good for me. But I don't want them. — Rosamond Lehmann

Wyatt was, in fact, finding the Christian system suspect. Memory of his fourth birthday party still weighted in his mind. It had been planned cautiously by Aunt May, to the exact number of hats and favors and portions of cake. One guest, no friend to Wyatt (from a family "less fortunate than we are"), showed up with a staunchly party-bent brother. (Not only no friend: a week before he had challenged Wyatt through the fence behind the carriage barn with - Nyaa nyaa, suckinyerma's ti-it-ty ... ) Wyatt was taken to a dark corner, where he later reckoned all Good works were conceived, and told that it was the Christian thing to surrender his portion. So he entered his fifth year hatless among crepe-paper festoons, silent amid snapping crackers, empty of Christian love for the uninvited who asked him why he wasn't having any cake. — William Gaddis

I haven't been a good guest in Hugo's life. I access his memories and discover that he and Austin first became boyfriends at this very celebration, a year ago this weekend. They'd been friends for a little while, but they'd never talked about how they felt. They were each afraid of ruining the friendship, and instead of making it better, their caution made everything awkward. So finally, as a pair of twentysomething men passed by holding hands, Austin said, "Hey, that could be us in ten years."
And Hugo said, "Or ten months."
And Austin said, "Or ten days."
And Hugo said, "Or ten minutes."
And Austin said, "Or ten seconds."
Then they each counted to ten, and held hands for the rest of the day.
The start of it.
Hugo would have remembered this.
But I didn't. — David Levithan

I know, you've been here a year, you think these people are normal. Well, they're not. WE'RE not. I look in the library, I call up books on my desk. Old ones, because they won't let us have anything new, but I've got a pretty good idea what children are, and we're not children. Children can lose sometimes, and nobody cares. Children aren't in armies, they aren't COMMANDERS, they don't rule over forty other kids, it's more than anybody can take and not get crazy. — Orson Scott Card

The Jews celebrate Passover by eating unpalatable food to remind them what will happen to their people if they ever leave New York City. The traditional meal often includes gefilte fish. For those of you who don't know what gefilte fish is, it strongly resembles a ball of tuna fish that has been passed nasally. It's not good. During Passover, the angel of death passed over the Jews - an event that, up until the late 1950s, was re-enacted every year by Ivy League colleges and suburban country clubs. — Jon Stewart

I have fought for what I believed in for a year now. If we win here we will win everywhere. The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.
And you had a lot of luck, he told himself, to have had such a good life. You've had as good a life as any one because of these last days. You do not want to complain when you have been so lucky.
I wish there was some way to pass on what I've learned, though. Christ, I was learning fast there at the end. — Ernest Hemingway,

The timepiece had been a birthday gift from Arian, his nineteen-year-old cousin in Tehran. It was plastered with pastoral steel and had the Faravahar hieroglyph sketched on it. This ancient pictogram was the symbol of a guardian angel. A remnant of a primeval daemon designed to protect the Persians. The clock's circumference was decorated with the flowers of life and in the middle there was a scripture written in cuneiform that read Good Deeds, Good Thoughts & Good Words. — Soroosh Shahrivar

It's almost scary how good things are right now. I've been engaged now for about a year, and it's the first time anything like that has happened to me. — Bryan White

[Margaret] went to a talk on parenting at the end of the school year where the speaker had said that doing good things, charitable things, was actually a selfish act, because it made you feel good. She has been mulling that ever since. Should she do something selfless, something good? Should she reach out to someone who really needs her forgiveness? Would this make her feel better? — Janice Y.K. Lee

Your life right now is pretty darn good! Some people wait all day for 5pm, all week for Friday, all year for the holidays, all their lives for happiness. Don't be one of them. Don't wait until your life is almost over to realize how good it has been. The good life begins right now, when you stop waiting for a better one. — Anonymous

Good," she whispered before she slapped him twice on the chest with both hands and pulled out of his hold. "Now, eat your cookies and tell me everything. And don't leave anything out, even if it's juicy. I've been telling the folk around here about you for a year. We all need to get caught up, and we're sick and tired of PG."

"You do know I'm not tellin' you shit that's juicy," Joker replied.

She tossed him a look. "I'm older than you, you'll hardly shock me."

"Wanna bet?" he asked.

"Try me," she shot back. — Kristen Ashley

The raw-foodist Dr. Norman Walker had two series of six colon cleanses done every year in the second half of his life - he lived to be at least 109 (some say older). I've found that one colonic every four to six months has been effective for me - although I am sure that more would do me good. I always recommend starting with a series of four to six sessions even if you think you do not need it. The primary goal of colon hydrotherapy is to empty the bowels completely in order for the lymph system to drain. The secondary goal is to remove encrusted mucus (which feeds unwanted parasites and poisons the system) from the inner intestinal lining. The third goal is to allow the liver to flush and release. — David Wolfe

I got so discouraged, I almost stopped writing. It was my 12-year-old son who changed my mind when he said to me, "Mother, you've been very cross and edgy with us and we notice you haven't been writing. We wish you'd go back to the typewriter. That did a lot of good for my false guilts about spending so much time writing. At that point, I acknowledged that I am a writer and even if I were never published again, that's what I am." — Madeleine L'Engle

In the sunny flats, kudzu from last year had climbed to wrap trees and telephone poles in dry, brown leaves. Whole buildings looked as if they had been bagged. Introduced from Japan in the thirties to help control erosion that had damaged eighty-five percent of the tillable land, kudzu has consumed entire fields, and no one has found a good way to stop it. Kudzu and water hyacinth, another Japanese import, have run through Dixie showing less restraint than Sherman. — William Least Heat-Moon

I'm not a career filmmaker. I just like to do things that I still kind of believe in and because of that you just never know what's going to happen next. It doesn't matter if it's been a good year or a bad year: next year, there's no telling what it will be like. — Peter Mullan

13
NOTES
She hesitated. For two years she had kept as far away from Mikael Blomkvist as she could. And yet he kept sticking to her life like gum on the sole of her shoe, either on the Net or in real life. On the Net it was O.K. There he was no more than electrons and words. In real life, standing on her doorstep, he was still fucking attractive. And he knew her secrets just as she knew all of his. She looked at him for a moment and realized that she now had no feelings for him. At least not those kinds of feelings. He had in fact been a good friend to her over the past year. She trusted him. Maybe. It was troubling that one of the few people she trusted was a man she spent so much time avoiding. Then she made up her mind. It was absurd to pretend that he did not exist. It no longer hurt her to see him. She opened the door wide and let him into her life again. — Stieg Larsson

Paganism, it turns out, was the original Icelandic religion before a mass conversion in the year 1000. That was largely seen as a business decision, and Icelanders have never been particularly good Christians. They attend church if someone is born or wed or dies, but otherwise they are, as one Icelander put it, "atheists with good intentions. — Eric Weiner

I'm getting stale. I always do this time of year. I keep my nose to the grindestone and put in long hours and rustle up good meals and do all the chores and run errands and get along with people
and have a fine time doing it and enjoy life. Then I realize, bang, that I'm tired and I don't want to wait on my family for a while and I wish I could go away somewhere and have people wait on me hand and foot, and dress up and go to restaurants and the theater and act like a woman of the world. I feel as if I'd been swallowed up whole by all these powerful DeVotos and I'd like to be me for a while with somebody who never heard the name. — Joan Reardon

Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. How many of your New Year's resolutions have been about fixing a flaw? And how many of those resolutions have you made several years in a row? It's difficult to change any aspect of your personality by sheer force of will, and if it is a weakness you choose to work on, you probably won't enjoy the process. If you don't find pleasure or reinforcement along the way, then - unless you have the willpower of Ben Franklin - you'll soon give up. But you don't really have to be good at everything. Life offers so many chances to use one tool instead of another, and often you can use a strength to get around a weakness. — Jonathan Haidt

Well no, the year's been good enough,' said Hob. 'We grows a lot of food, but we don't rightly know what becomes of it. It's all these "gatherers" and "sharers", I reckon, going round counting and measuring and taking off to storage. They do more gathering than sharing, and we never see most of the stuff again. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The film libraries on some of these channels." Elmina said. "I swear. There was one on last night. I couldn't sleep. After I saw, it, I was afraid ro sleep. Have you seen Black Narcissus, 1947?"
Eddie, who was enrolled in the graduate film program at SC, let out a scream of recognition. He's been working on his doctoral dissertation, "Deadpasn to Demoniac - Subtextual Uses of Eyeliner in the Cinema," and had just in fact arrived at moment in Black Narcissus where Kathleen Byron, as a demented nun, shows up in civilian gear, including eye makeup good for a year's worth of nighmares. — Thomas Pynchon

Gold is a way of going long on fear, and it has been a pretty good way of going long on fear from time to time. But you really have to hope people become more afraid in a year or two years than they are now. And if they become more afraid you make money, if they become less afraid you lose money, but the gold itself doesn't produce anything. — Warren Buffett

It puzzled him that she did not mourn all the things she could have been. Was it a quality inherent in women, or did they just learn to shield their personal regrets, to suspend their lives, subsume themselves in child care? She browsed online forums about tutoring and music and schools, and she told him what she had discovered as though she truly felt the rest of the world should be as interested as she was in how music improved the mathematics skills of nine-year-olds. Or she would spend hours on the phone talking to her friends, about which violin teacher was good and which tutorial was a waste of money. One day, after — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Francisco Garcia could have been a high draft choice last year, probably in the 20s. He's the best wing player I've ever coached. But he's done it the right way. He knew he had to work on his body to become a good pro. When he goes into the pros, he'll be physically ready. — Rick Pitino

I remember all of these things happening and the places we lived in and the fine times and the bad times we had in that year. But much more vividly I remember living in the book and making up what happened in it every day. Making the country and the people and the things that happened I was happier than I had ever been. Each day I read the book through from the beginning to the point where I went on writing and each day I stopped when I was still going good and when I knew what would happen next. The fact the book was a tragic one did not make me unhappy since I believed that life was a tragedy and knew it could have only one end. But finding you were able to make something up; to create truly enough so that it made you happy to read it; and to do this every day you worked was something that gave a greater pleasure than any I had ever known. Beside it nothing else mattered. — Ernest Hemingway,

People forget I started on TV as a 7-stone 12-year-old - I'm bound to have changed. I've just grown up and filled out. I haven't been hammering it in the gym, and I haven't been thinking, 'Right, I need to look good.' — Kelvin Fletcher