It Never Worked Out Quotes & Sayings

I've never really worked out this thought, and I don't know if I'm really conscious of it, but I can see there's an attraction about writing about a period that's over and isn't going to change colour while you look at it. — Tom Stoppard

I just know that he's Robbie Williams - he's massive, that's all I know! He nailed it. Working in the studio with him was cool. I got there at about six in the afternoon and then stayed until six in the morning. We only worked for like two hours, the rest of the time we were just chilling out the back. The way Robbie handles everything ... he's a star, but there were never any pretensions, no ego. He put effort in. — Dizzee Rascal

I was determined to get it right on the pitch. Then, if I had to leave at the end of the season, so be it. I never felt threatened or isolated by the arrangement. We worked together and it worked out. — Bryan Robson

It was never the poverty that deterred me, never the disease, unsanitary conditions, bugs or garbage, those things were never even a thought in my head as a reason for not staying. I kept looking for the good and always found it each day. I was happy on the reservation.
It would have all worked out if Chief could have been a little nicer to me. The only thing I was missing was love and respect from my partner. Maybe he had changed. — Little White Bird

My mom's in jail right now for assault with a deadly weapon, which was pretty stupid of her, I admit. But she took good care of us growing up. She worked her ass off before she blew out her back and started drinking. Chronic pain, you know? But she never would have tried to run over that cop if she'd stuck it out in the anger management program. I'm still not sure why she went after that second guy, he's not the one who wrote the parking ticket ... . Horse burst out laughing, biting it back quick. — Joanna Wylde

Someday someone will walk into your life and make you realize why it never worked out with anyone else. — Anonymous

It was the uniform of a time and place, of a nearly extinct species - the belligerent middle-American redneck who had fought in Korea, come back with his faith unshaken, and then watched the 1960s unfold the way he might watch his house burn down. There had never been any Summer of Love for Arthur Schuler. He had no interest in Civil Rights, hippies or liberals - or Democrats for that matter. I heard him say once that it might have worked out very well if we had indeed brought all the planes back from Vietnam, just in time to napalm the Woodstock festival. But the man had lived. He had been an orphan of the Great Depression and seen the country and the world. He had made his way, been a barroom fighter and - he hinted - a womanizer at some distant point in the twentieth century, and had come away with an instinct for life, for the things that people do and their base and predictable motivations. We — Matthew Louis

The imposter syndrome is at the core off every human being's soul. We're born with it. It's why human beings are alive today. It's an innate sense you're born with. It's why our ancestors avoided the saber-toothed tiger, because they doubted themselves. They were scared of certain things. That's why they worked hard to learn how to build fire, and taking it all through the generations, that impostor syndrome is always going to be there. Instead of being afraid and letting it get you down, be that 1% who embraces the impostor syndrome and realizes that it's never going away. Because the impostor syndrome exists, it weeds out the 99% of people who cannot get over it and cannot get over their fear. It puts the people who do, into the top 1%, and anyone can join us here, when you just embrace the impostor syndrome. — Harry Duran

It's worth pointing out that [Herman Melville] worked in [the New York Custom House] as a deputy customs inspector between 1866 and 1885. Nineteen years, and he never got a raise - four dollars a day, six days a week. He was by then a washed-up writer, forgotten and poor. I used to find this subject heartbreaking, a waste: the greatest living American author was forced to spend his days writing tariff reports instead of novels. But now, knowing what I know about the sleaze of the New York Custom House, and the honorable if bitter decency with which Melville did his job, I have come to regard literature's loss as the republic's gain. Great writers are a dime a dozen in New York. But an honest customs inspector in the Gilded Age? Unheard of. — Sarah Vowell

I always imagine later on these songs I could've played with a band, but it never worked out that way. — Nuno Bettencourt

The free market has never worked in agriculture and it never will. The economics of a family farm are very different from a firm's ... the demand for food isn't elastic; people don't eat more just because food is cheap. Even if I go out of business this land will keep producing corn. — Michael Pollan

I've done four videos for older people under my new brand, Prime Time, and the missing link was yoga. I'm aiming it for older people - people who have never worked out or who are recovering from a surgery and have to start slow. It's easy, you can't get hurt, it's very doable, and I've done it in ten-minute segments. — Jane Fonda

I'm never letting you do my laundry. Again."
"I didn't know the red towel was in there," Prophet protested.
"You did it on purpose to get out of doing laundry."
"Maybe. But it worked."
"Fucking impossible. — S.E. Jakes

It never really worked out for me in my own country. They said, 'You're not famous enough for the lead roles, and you're too present for the supporting roles - you'd overpower the lead.' — Antje Traue

I remembered what Dad said once, that some people have all of life's answers worked out the day they're born and there's no use trying to teach them anything new. "They're closed for business even though, somewhat confusingly, their doors open at eleven, Monday through Friday," Dad said. And the trying to change what they think, the attempt to explain, the hope they'll come to see your side of things, it was exhausting, because it never made a dent and afterward you only ached unbearably. It was like being a Prisoner in a Maximum-Security Prison, wanting to know what a Visitor's hand felt like (see Living in Darkness, Cowell, 1967). No matter how desperately you wanted to know, pressing your dumb palm against the glass right where the visitor's hand was pressed on the opposite side, you never would know that feeling, not until they set you free. — Marisha Pessl

Why do the Fascists want violence?" Ethel asked rhetorically. "Those out there in Hills Road may be mere hooligans, but someone is directing them, and their tactics have a purpose. When there is fighting in the streets, they can claim that public order has broken down, and drastic measures are needed to restore the rule of law. Those emergency measures will include banning democratic political parties such as Labour, prohibiting trade union action, and jailing people without trial - people such as us, peaceful men and women whose only crime is to disagree with the government. Does this sound fantastic to you, unlikely, something that could never happen? Well, they used exactly those tactics in Germany - and it worked." She went on to talk about how Fascism — Ken Follett

The two men had a conversation. Brief, cryptic, to the point. As though they had exchanged numbers and not words. No explanations seemed necessary. They were not friends, Comrade Pillai and Inspector Thomas Mathew, and they didn't trust each other. But they understood each other perfectly. They were both men whom childhood had abandoned without a trace. Men without curiosity. Without doubt. Both in their own way truly, terrifyingly adult. They looked out at the world and never wondered how it worked, because they knew. They worked it. They were mechanics who serviced different parts of the machine. — Arundhati Roy

Being alone was the best thing I ever did for myself. I've always gone from one relationship to another, hoping the other person would help me figure out who I was or complete me and make me feel whole. But it never worked out that way. When the other person didn't make me feel whole, I was left with an even bigger emptiness inside. It took the pain of the last year to realize that I needed to stop being a half trying to find my other half, but to be a whole on my own. I had to learn how to love myself. I had to learn to value myself. And I had to learn that I mattered. I'm not sure if I'm whole yet, but I'm more complete. And — Neil Strauss

Beatrix tilted her head back to look at him. Perspiration had given his skin the sheen of polished metal, strong masculine features worked in bronze. His expression was engrossed, as if her body fascinated him, as if she were made of some precious substance he had never encountered before. She felt the soft, hot shock of his breath as he bent to kiss the inside of her wrist. He let the tip of his tongue rest against a tiny pulse. So new, this intimacy with him, and yet it was as necessary as the beat of her own heart.
She never wanted to be out of his arms again. She wanted to be with him always. — Lisa Kleypas

Pandora grinned. "I rarely walk in a straight line," she confessed. "I'm too distractible to keep to one direction - I keep veering this way and that, to make certain I'm not missing something. So whenever I set out for a new place, I always end up back where I started." Lord St. Vincent turned to face her fully, the beautiful cool blue of his eyes intent and searching. "Where do you want to go?" The question caused Pandora to blink in surprise. She'd just been making a few silly comments, the kind no one ever paid attention to. "It doesn't matter," she said prosaically. "Since I walk in circles, I'll never reach my destination." His gaze lingered on her face. "You could make the circles bigger." The remark was perceptive and playful at the same time, as if he somehow understood how her mind worked. — Lisa Kleypas

Exactly what she was doing - tears leaked from the corners of her eyes and wove crooked paths down her cheeks. How could she have been so insensitive to her own sister? Chapter 24 All week Cassie had worked feverishly to put Steve out of her mind, but it hadn't worked. She couldn't wait to see him, and a week had never dragged on for so long. Nothing felt the same without him at the construction site, running the project. Saturday morning, Cassie was up early. The Hoedown was being held in an airport hangar, and a lot of work had to be done in order to get the space ready. Several other volunteers arrived to work off their hours by putting up long folding tables and chairs, placing red-and-white checkered plastic tablecloths across the tables, and then setting the tables, lining each place setting up perfectly. To the front of the hangar was a mechanical bull quartered off with stacks of hay. In the middle of the room were tables displaying — Debbie Macomber

Personally, I liked working for the university. They gave us money and facilities. We didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector ... they expect results! — Dan Aykroyd

There was indeed a caste system in Maycomb, but to my mind it worked this way: the older citizens, the present generation of people who had lived side by side for years and years, were utterly predictable to one another: they took for granted attitudes, character
shadings, even gestures, as having been repeated in each generation and refined by time. Thus the dicta No Crawford Minds His Own Business, Every Third Merriweather Is Morbid, The Truth Is Not in the Delafields, All the Bufords Walk Like That, were simply guides to daily living: never take a check from a Delafield without a discreet call to the
bank; Miss Maudie Atkinson's shoulder stoops because she was a Buford; if Mrs. Grace Merriweather sips gin out of Lydia E. Pinkham bottles it's nothing unusual - her mother did the same. — Harper Lee

I've never quite worked out how to do holidays. I've got a house in France which I suppose is a kind of holiday house. But it's really only so I can go on drawing when I get there. I'm never far away from the feeling that I want to be getting on with something. — Quentin Blake

I've never worked a day in my life. The joy of writing has propelled me from day to day and year to year. I want you to envy me, my joy. Get out of here tonight and say: 'Am I being joyful?' And if you've got a writer's block, you can cure it this evening by stopping whatever you're writing and doing something else. You picked the wrong subject. — Ray Bradbury

I have concluded that most PhD economists under appraise the power of the common-stock-based "wealth effect", under current extreme conditions.. "wealth effects" involve mathematical puzzles that are not nearly so well worked out as physics theories and never can be ... what has happened inJapan ... has shaken up academic economics, as it obviously should, creating strong worries about recession from "wealth effects" in reverse. — Charlie Munger

If you don't put 99 percent of yourself into the writing, there will be no publishing career. There's the writer and there's the author. The author - you don't ever think about the author. Just think about the writer. So my advice would be, find a way to not care - easier said than done. Accept that the world may never notice this thing you worked so hard at. And instead, do it for it, find a job, find a way of living that gives you an hour or two or three a day to do it, and then work your ass off sending out, trying to get out there, but do not put the pressure on the work to do something for you. Because then you're going to be writing dishonestly and for the market instead of for the characters and your story. — Andre Dubus III

I guess we're supposed to have faith."
"I never really took you for the faith-having kind," Quentin said.
"I didn't either. But it's worked out so far. We've got five of the seven keys. You can't argue with results."
"You can't," Quentin said, "but that's actually not the same thing as having faith."
"Why do you always try to ruin everything?"
"I'm not ruining it. I just want to understand it."
"If you had faith you wouldn't have to understand. — Lev Grossman

Columbus's real achievement was managing to cross the ocean successfully in both directions. Though an accomplished enough mariner, he was not terribly good at a great deal else, especially geography, the skill that would seem most vital in an explorer. It would be hard to name any figure in history who has achieved more lasting fame with less competence. He spent large parts of eight years bouncing around Caribbean islands and coastal South America convinced that he was in the heart of the Orient and that Japan and China were at the edge of every sunset. He never worked out that Cuba is an island and never once set foot on, or even suspected the existence of, the landmass to the north that everyone thinks he discovered: the United States. — Bill Bryson

Maezr smiled. A hundred years ago, Ender, we found out some things. That when a commander's life is in danger he becomes afraid, and fear slows down his thinking. When a commander knows that he's killing people, he becomes cautious or insane, and neither of those help him do well. And when he's mature, when he has responsibilities and an understanding of the world, he becomes cautious and sluggish and can't do his job. So we trained children, who didn't know anything but the game, and never knew when it would become real. That was the theory, and you proved that the theory worked. — Orson Scott Card

It was a curious sort of friendship, the one she shared with the Johnson twins. They were known for their unerring taste; consequently, they never failed to steer Jane wrong. But they did it so nicely, it was almost a pleasure to be laughed at by them. As Jane wanted to be steered astray, she welcomed their efforts. They lied to her; she lied to them. Since Jane wanted to be an object of ridicule, it worked out delightfully for all concerned. — Courtney Milan

I've never run into a guy who could win at the top level in anything today and didn't have the right attitude, didn't give it everything he had, at least while he was doing it; wasn't prepared and didn't have the whole program worked out. — Ted Turner

Back in 1995, Munger had given a talk at Harvard Business School called "The Psychology of Human Misjudgment." If you wanted to predict how people would behave, Munger said, you only had to look at their incentives. FedEx couldn't get its night shift to finish on time; they tried everything to speed it up but nothing worked - until they stopped paying night shift workers by the hour and started to pay them by the shift. Xerox created a new, better machine only to have it sell less well than the inferior older ones - until they figured out the salesmen got a bigger commission for selling the older one. "Well, you can say, 'Everybody knows that,'" said Munger. "I think I've been in the top five percent of my age cohort all my life in understanding the power of incentives, and all my life I've underestimated it. And never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes my limit a little farther." Munger's — Michael Lewis

He did not smile at his employees, he did not take them out for drinks, he never inquired about their families, their love lives or their church attendance. He responded only to the essence of a man: to his creative capacity. In this office one had to be competent. There were no alternatives, no mitigating considerations. But if a man worked well, he needed nothing else to win his employer's benevolence: it was granted, not as a gift, but as a debt. It was granted, not as affection, but as recognition. It bred an immense feeling of self-respect within every man in that office. — Ayn Rand

It's very funny because every time I make a movie, and I've heard this re-echoed by other filmmakers and actors I have worked with, you kind of feel like you're naked again. You have to figure it all out from scratch, as if you had never done it before. — Todd Haynes

I never worked at painting as if it were a job; it was always out of interest or for fun, a desire to try something. — Gerhard Richter

I'm so surprised it's worked out that way. I was just thinking the whole time that I've never had the personality to fit into that. I'm not really afraid of it, because I don't even know how to play up that aspect. — Robert Pattinson

What made me maddest was the media treatment of the BPP, which gave the impression that the Party was racist and violent. And it worked. The pigs would burst into a Panther office, shoot first, and ask questions later. The press always reported that the police had "uncovered" a large arsenal of weapons. Later, when the "arsenal" turned out to be a few legally registered rifles and shotguns, the press never printed a word. The same thing goes on today. — Assata Shakur

He smiled. I was unprepared for my reaction to the most potent weapon Haden had in his arsenal - a real smile, one that reached his eyes.
One genuine emotion was enough to unravel my life from the security of everything I'd ever known.
For seventeen years, I'd tried to live Father's way. Each step measured, my words carefully chosen. In his fortress of fears, I grew up - but not strong. I yearned to replace the hole in his heart left by my mother, so my life never belonged to me. My own heart was my weakest muscle, never exercised, never even flexed.
Suddenly, I understood that it still miraculously worked. And it was full. So full it felt like rays of sunshine were bursting through my chest, poking out of me in radiant splendor. Haden spellbound me and life changed to Technicolor. In his smile, I felt the bindings that tethered my spirit rip away. — Gwen Hayes

A man should orient his will and all his works to God and having only God in view go forward unafraid, not thinking, am I right or am I wrong? One who worked out all the chances before starting his first fight would never fight at all. And if, going to someplace, we must think how to set the front foot down, we shall never get there. It is our duty to do the next thing: go straight on, that is the right way. — Meister Eckhart

Every relationship I've been in becomes long-distance because of work. It's never worked out. It puts an intense strain on the relationship, and at a certain point, it becomes too difficult. — Anton Yelchin

Well, I've just played a midwife but never for a second would I think that I could ever deliver a baby! So, to that essence, it's still pretending. But it's worked out ok so far, touch wood, because you're doing so many different things - if you're playing a lawyer or someone medical, you can dip your toe into a lot of different things. — Christine Bottomley

I wanted to tell him that I will never be sorry for loving him. That in a way I still do - that maybe I always will. I'll never regret one single thing we did together because what we had was very special. Maybe if we were ten years older it would have worked out differently. Maybe. I think it's just that I'm not ready for forever. — Judy Blume

The other night I took her on-out of pity-and what do you think the crazy bitch had done to herself? She had shaved it clean ... not a speck of hair on it. Did you ever have a woman who shaved her twat? It's repulsive, ain't it? And it's funny, too. Sort of mad like. It doesn't look like a twat any more: it's like a dead clam or something." He describes to me how, his curiosity aroused, he got out of bed and searched for his flashlight. "I made her hold it open and I trained the flashlight on it. You should have seen me ... it was comical. I got so worked up about it that I forgot all about her. I never in my life looked at a cunt so seriously. — Henry Miller

But what Andy never understood about him was this: he was an optimist. Every month, every week, he chose to open his eyes, to live another day in the world. He did it when he was feeling so awful that sometimes the pain seemed to transport him to another state, one in which everything, even the past that he worked so hard to forget, seemed to fade into a gray watercolor wash. He did it when his memories crowded out all other thoughts, when it took real effort, real concentration, to tether himself to his current life, to keep himself from raging with despair and shame. He did it when he was so exhausted of trying, when being awake and alive demanded such energy that he had to lie in bed thinking of reasons to get up and try again, — Hanya Yanagihara

This doctor had no point whatsoever. Medicine was just to make money and never for love of his profession or of the sick. He was careless and thought poverty was ugly. He worked for the poor while hating having to deal with them. For him they were the rejects of a very high society to which he too didn't belong. He knew he was out-of-date with medicine and clinical novelties but it was good enough for poor people. His dream was to have money to do exactly what he wanted: nothing. — Clarice Lispector

People who wear their religion on their sleeves talk a lot about going to Sunday school, reading the Bible, and doing good works. And I suppose there's no harm in that. But if I'd gone to the trouble to pull all this together ... and people never paid any attention to it, never bothered to try to find out how the world worked, then I think I'd get annoyed. — Jack McDevitt

And it's funny because it was my grandpa who painted it shut (window) in the first place, and he had a whole storage shed full of just about every tool you could imagine. He was one of those guys who thought he could fix anything, but it never worked out quite as well as he planned. He was more of a visionary than a nuts -and bolts kind of guy. — Nicholas Sparks

And yet there are other days, when I'm downtrodden or morose, when I find myself at my desk late at night, unable to sleep, flipping through (of all things) Oscar's dog-eared copy of Watchmen. One of the few things that he took with him on the Final Voyage that we recovered. The original trade. I flip through the book, one of his top three, without question, to the last horrifying chapter: "A Stronger Loving World." To the only panel he's circled. Oscar - who never defaced a book in his life - circled one panel three times in the same emphatic pen he used to write his last letters home. The panel where Adrian Veidt and Dr. Manhattan are having their last convo. After the mutant brain has destroyed New York City; after Dr. Manhattan has murdered Rorschach; after Veidt's plan has succeded in "saving the world." Veidt says: "I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out in the end." And Manhattan, before fading from our Universe, replies: "In — Junot Diaz

Adeline was really rather charming, she always had a man in her life, but it never worked out: either they were nice but she didn't find them very exciting; or they were exciting but she didn't find them particularly nice, or they were neither nice nor exciting and she wondered why she was with them at all. She found a way of making the exciting men nicer and that was by leaving them. But then, they weren't exciting anymore either. — Francois Lelord

Ever since, in the U.K. they banned smoking in public places, I've never enjoyed a drinks party ever again. And the reason, I only worked out just the other day, is when you go to a drinks party and you stand up and you hold a glass of red wine and you talk endlessly to people, you don't actually want to spend all the time talking. It's really, really tiring. Sometimes you just want to stand there silently, alone with your thoughts. Sometimes you just want to stand in the corner and stare out of the window. Now the problem is, when you can't smoke, if you stand and stare out of the window on your own, you're an antisocial, friendless idiot. If you stand and stare out of the window on your own with a cigarette, you're a fucking philosopher. — Rory Sutherland

You had an elaborate system that you thought would keep us out of bed: you sat on the other side of the room, you didn't let me crack your knuckles, you never stayed more than fifteen minutes. It never really worked, did it? — Junot Diaz

I don't understand. She's always been so friendly toward me."
"Yes, so long as your work consisted of updating calendars and photocopying golf club bylaws."
"But there was no danger of my taking her place!"
"She was never afraid of that."
"Then why denounce me? Why would it upset her if I went to work for you?"
"Miss Mori struggled for years to get the job she has now. She probably found it unbearable for you to get that sort of promotion after being with the company only ten weeks."
"I can't believe it. That's just so ... mean."
"All I can say is that she suffered greatly during the first few years she was here."
"So she wants me to suffer the same fate? It's too pathetic. I must talk to her."
"Do you really think that's a good idea?"
"Of course. How else are we going to work things out if we don't talk?"
"You just talked to Mister Omochi. Does it strike you that things have been worked out? — Amelie Nothomb

Nanny Ogg scowled and said, "Granny never said as she was better than others. She just got on with it and showed 'em and people worked it out for themselves. — Terry Pratchett

They were not friends, Comdrade Pillai and Inspector Thomas Matthew, and they didn't trust each other. But they understood each other perfectly. They were both men whom childhood had abandoned without a trace. Men without curiosity. Without doubt. Both in their own way truly, terrifyingly, adult. They looked out into the world and never wondered how it worked, because they knew. They worked it. They were mechanics who serviced different parts of the same machine. — Arundhati Roy

They wanted you to grow up into some helpless combination of old person and infant. They wanted you to have a house and a family and a refrigerator and a TV, and not know how any of it worked. They wanted you to spend your life working on something that was never concrete, never anything you could see or hold in your hands, and if you didn't do that they wanted to put you in jail. Cutting down forests, poisoning the earth - it was a country driven by stupid, blind impulse. It was a country where nobody knew where their food came from or where their garbage went, they just flushed the bowl, kept eating it and throwing it away, building bombs and computers, cars and TVs, sending people off to Vietnam so they could set it on fire. It was a country that had turned against everyone he knew, cast them out like garbage, and all they could do was smile to themselves at all they'd learned and wait patiently for the fires to start here at home. — Zachary Lazar

I think that DDT holds a lot of promise. It hasn't been banned everywhere - obviously it has in the U.S. In fact, about 10 years ago, the WHO came out with a statement promoting it for public health interventions in many countries. It's cheap. It's very, very effective. We've never had an insecticide that has worked so well since. It's also safe. A lot of people don't realize that its toxicity profile for humans is low. — Laura Harrington

I never felt pretty. I don't feel pretty now. I'm not a pretty person. I don't like pretty. So I don't feel badly. And I think it worked out well, because I found that all the girls I know who got by on their looks, as time went on and they faded, they were nothing. And they were very disappointed. When you're somebody like myself, in order to get around and be attractive, you have to develop something, you have to learn something, you have to do something. So you become a bit more interesting. — Iris Apfel

The truck looked just like a Civil War truck if they'd had trucks back in those times. But the truck ran, even though it didn't have a gas tank.
There was an empty fifty-gallon gasoline drum on the bed of the truck with a smaller gasoline can on top of it, and there was a syphon leading from that can to the fuel line.
It worked like this. Lee Mellon drove and I stayed on the back of the truck and made sure everything went all right with the syphon, that it didn't get knocked out of kilter by the motion of the truck.
We looked kind of funny going down the highway. I'd never had the heart to ask Lee Mellon what happened to the gas tank. I figured it was best not to know. — Richard Brautigan

Above all, it's never blind chance: it's a chance that is always planned, but also always surprising. And I need it in order to carry on, in order to eradicate my mistakes, to destroy what I've worked out wrong, to introduce something different and disruptive. I'm often astonished to find how much better chance is than I am. — Gerhard Richter

I've always been a sci-fi geek, and I've always loved it. It's my favorite genre of all. The irony of ironies is that, in my early career, I just really never worked in it. "Star Trek" was very interested in me, partially because I did "From the Earth to the Moon," and I was really interested in them, but the timing just never worked out. — Remi Aubuchon

A piano tuner used to come over to our house when I was young. He was a blind man, his eyes burnt-out holes in his head, his body all bent. I remember how strange he looked against the grandeur of our lives, how he stooped over that massive multitoothed instrument and tweaked its tones. The piano never looked any different after he'd worked on it, but when I pressed a C key or the black bar of an F minor, the note sprung out richer, as though chocolate and spices had been added to a flat sound. This was what was different. It was as though I'd been visited by a blind piano tuner who had crept into my apartment at night, who had tweaked the ivory bones of my body, the taut strings in my skull, and now, when I pressed on myself, the same notes but with a mellower, fuller sound sprang out. — Lauren Slater

This other man he could never see in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal. The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men's fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end. — Cormac McCarthy

As to the Divine Design, is it not an instance of incomprehensibly and infinitely marvellous Wisdom and Design to have given certain laws to matter millions of ages ago, which have surely and precisely worked out, in the long course of those ages, those effects which He from the first proposed. Mr. Darwin's theory need not then to be atheistical, be it true or not; it may simply be suggesting a larger idea of Divine Prescience and Skill. Perhaps your friend has got a surer clue to guide him than I have, who have never studied the question, and I do not [see] that 'the accidental evolution of organic beings' is inconsistent with divine design - It is accidental to us, not to God. — John Henry Newman

I think I became more productive through not having children. I never really had the desire to have them. My husband didn't want them either, so it worked out well. — Dolly Parton

I left Stone Sour in '97 because, by that time, we'd been together for about five years and I was kind of getting to the point where I wanted to do something different. I loved the music that we did and I loved the guys that I was with, but I was 24 and just felt like I needed to go and try something different so I didn't get stuck where I was, you know, just doing the same thing. And, coincidentally, that's when Slipknot came and asked me to join. I'd never done anything like Slipknot up until then, so I was like, "Okay, we'll try this and we'll see what happens." And it worked out. — Corey Taylor

My career seems to have worked out OK, especially since I turned 40. I've always had a character part, mind you - I've never played the princess. But if you're used to doing that, it must be soul-destroying to hit 40 and suddenly find there's nothing for you to do. — Siobhan Finneran

Magnus, you were trying to flirt with your own plate."
"I'm a very open-minded sort of fellow!"
"Ragnor is not," Catarina said. "When he found out that you were feeding us guinea pigs, he hit you over the head with your plate. It broke."
"So ended our love," Magnus said. "Ah, well. It would have never worked between me and the plate anyway. — Cassandra Clare

missions. A moment later she heard the sound of the television start up. The clever little thing had worked out how to use the remote control. 'Not till August,' said Lauren. 'We've got lots to sort out. Visas and so on. We'll have to find an apartment, a nanny for Jacob.' A nanny for Jacob. 'Job for me.' Rob sounded a little nervous. 'Oh, yes, darling,' said Rachel. She did try to take her son seriously. She really did. 'A job for you. In real estate, do you think?' 'Not sure yet,' said Rob. 'We'll have to see. I might end up being a house husband.' 'So sorry I never taught him how to cook,' said Rachel to Lauren, not especially sorry. Rachel had never been much interested in cooking or that good at it; it was just another chore that had to be done, like the laundry. The way people went on these days about cooking. 'That's okay,' beamed Lauren. 'We'll probably eat out a lot in New York. The city that never sleeps, — Liane Moriarty

Anyway, how can you say things like that? You don't know me at all. She wasn't really caught up in this game, but she was enjoying it, as she had enjoyed the dozens of declarations that had been made to her since she was eleven. Her earliest memories were of being told how beautiful she was. Something in her never believed the words, never felt satisfied. It wasn't modesty; it was a craving for more proof than anyone had ever yet given her. Her mind worked constantly at trying to understand for herself exactly what other people saw when they looked at her. She could never grasp it whole and living. Her deepest fantasy was to step outside of her skin and look at herself and find out just what people were thinking about. She spent her life experimenting with people to see how she could make them react, as if, in their response, she could discover herself. — Judith Krantz

She hardly ever began conversations with strangers just to talk. It was not a matter of shyness. For her, a conversation had a straightforward function. How do I get to the pharmacy? or How much does the hotel room cost? Conversation also had a professional function. [ ... ] When she worked as a researcher [ ... ], she had never minded having a long conversation if it was to ferret out facts. On the other hand, she disliked personal discussions, which always led to snooping around in areas she considered private. — Stieg Larsson

She's a-going," he says. "Her mind is set on it." It's a hard life on women, for a fact. Some women. I mind my mammy lived to be seventy or more. Worked every day, rain or shine; never a sick day since her last chap was born until one day she kind of looked around her and then she went and taken that lace-trimmed night-gown she had had forty-five years and never wore out of the chest and put it on and laid down on the bed and pulled the covers up and shut her eyes. "You all will have to look out for pa the best you can," she said. "I'm tired. — William Faulkner

With each of the men I dated, everything ran its natural course, whether it worked out or not. I never felt burnt by any of them. I don't feel resentful. I don't want those years back. I'm not one of those women who thinks men are bastards. I love men: straight men, gay men. I've always had men close to me, from the time I was a child. — Sarah Jessica Parker

I'm not here to solve your problems. I'm here to support you in your own decisions. I'm not going to walk away, Amy. Not now, not when the going gets tough, not ever. I'm right here at your back."
"For how long?"
"For as long as you'll have me. I love you, Amy."
Staggered, she stared at him. "But you don't do love."
"I never said that. I said love hasn't worked out for me. But all it takes is the right one. You're the right one."
No one had ever said such a thing to her before, and it made her heart swell hard against her ribcage. "I love you, Matt. So much."
He smiled like she'd just given him the best gift he'd ever had. She settled against his good side, and they stared up at the star-laden sky. "I knew I'd find something on this journey," she said. "I wasn't sure what, but I knew it'd be something special. — Jill Shalvis

My father cared a lot about me, but he never gave me the satisfaction of really knowing it. Hitting .390 wasn't enough for him. Nothing seemed to be. He was not trying to be mean. He was just seeing to it that I never got self-satisfied, that I worked hard to get the most out of what I had. — George Brett

Jean following close behind. The plan was for them to cover us as we entered. Getting in was easy. The door was unlocked. I went in low, clearing the first visible area. After Bear entered, I moved past the door. I had to trust that Pierre and Jean would act accordingly. A feat more difficult due to the necessary silence. We'd never worked together, but tactics were tactics, and training was training. They'd done this before. Room by room, floor by floor, we investigated the house. And we found it empty. The thought of Bashir al-Sharaa slipping out of my grasp once again gnawed at my gut. — L.T. Ryan

Josh [Friedman] and I have been friends for years, and he said, "Hey, if you ever want to do a TV show, I can take it over and run it," and I was like, "Yes!" He's always been so busy that I never dared to ask that, but it just worked out, time wise, that this was the season where we could probably do it, so I jumped at it. So, even though I'm busy with other stuff, I'm excited to be writing this. — John August

I had the luxury of knowing what I wanted to do. So I just sat on the bed and came up with a plan for myself:
"I have to go to the Edinburgh Fringe. But I don't have the confidence to do a production there because I've never gone before, and I don't even know how to get there or what to do once I get there. So I will just act as if I do have the confidence to go to the Edinburgh Fringe. I'll just borrow confidence from a future version of myself. Once I've been to the Edinburgh Fringe and performed a show there, then I will have the confidence to go to the Edinburgh Fringe. I will go to the bank manager of confidence (in some part of my brain) and I will borrow that confidence from the future, and then I can wear it like a cloak, and I will talk to everyone with this confidence."
It was out there as a concept, but it worked. — Eddie Izzard

Well, first I tried just telling her the truth. That if you kiss her, you'll die. She started crying hysterically."
"Oh, good thinking," I say, lifting the cup of hot chocolate to my mouth. Why hadn't I thought of that right off?
"Yeeeah, turns out not so much. I thought that might have worked since, you know, she's supposedly in love with you, but then being a total psychopath and all, she started blubbering, 'I'd rather have one perfect passionate kiss with Haden and lose him forever, than to have never kissed him at all.'"
I almost choke on a sip of hot chocolate. It burns my throat. — Bree Despain

We deal with all the production headaches and all that stuff. They just have to come here and be super funny. And it's worked out well. I mean, literally, every day they're all saying things I'd never thought I'd hear before and just some of the funniest discussions I've ever heard. — Jeff Schaffer

I never went to drama school. I went straight into the theater. We had the most extraordinary voice teacher. I worked with her when I was starting out in my career. How to place my voice from a very relaxed position was all wonderfully reminiscent of going back to the basics. But I always like to do that with any role that I do, to dismantle it and put it all back together again. — Ben Kingsley

I think that for a lot of actors - especially American actors - to get line readings and to be told and have your director literally act out the part for you is sort of discouraging in a way. It's a very Eastern European thing to do - a lot of directors that I worked with in Russia did that as well. And, I never took that as an insult, as many actors tend to do. To me, I think it's just offering a certain energy - offering their flavor - and, instead of trying to sort of decode and communicate it to you, they just show you their flavor of what it should be. — Jon Bernthal

Bright were the memories of his childhood at these docks, to which he had been ever drawn by the allure of the stranger traders as they swung into their berths like weary and weathered heroes returned from some elemental war. In those days it was uncommon to see the galleys of the Freemen Privateers ease into the bay, sleek and riding low with booty. They hailed from such mysterious ports as Filman Orras, Fort By a Half, Dead Man's Story, and exile; names that rang of adventure in the ears of a lad who had never seen his home city from outside its walls.
The man slowed as he reached the foot of the stone pier. The years between him and that lad marched through his mind, a possession of martial images growing ever grimmer. If he searched out the many crossroads he had come to in the past, he saw their skies storm-warped, the lands ragged and wind-torn. The forces of age and experience worked on them now, and whatever choices he had made then seemed fated and almost desperate. — Steven Erikson

I expect everything will turn out all right in the end,' said Twoflower.
Rincewind looked at him. remarks like that always threw him.
'Do you really believe that?' he said. 'I mean, really?'
'Well, things generally do work out satisfactorily, when you come to think about it.'
'If you think the total disruption of my life for the last year is satisfactory then you might be right. I've lost count of the times I've nearly been killed
'
'Twenty-seven,' said Twoflower.
'What?'
'Twenty-seven times,' said Twoflower helpfully. 'I worked it out. But you never actually have.'
'What? Worked it out?' said Rincewind, who was beginning to have the familiar feeling that the conversation had been mugged. — Terry Pratchett

The Marshall is supposed to be 200 watts, but mine's never worked right; it peaks out at 80. — Stevie Ray Vaughan

...and of course reconcilliation with England--the country that from the first should have been, given her parallel territorial ambitions, our closest ally--so that some day in the future we can act as one. It remains a mystery to me why that last relationship never worked out. How many more bombs would we have had to drop on their cities before they realized that we were their friends? — Timur Vermes

I have always thought that art is not a category, not a realm covering innumerable concepts and derivative phenomena, but that, on the contrary, it is something concentrated, strictly limited. It is a principle that is present in every work of art, a force applied to it and a truth worked out in it. And I have never seen art as form but rather as a hidden, secret part of content ... A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways - by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art ... You can call it an idea, a statement about life, so all-embracing that it can't be split up into separate words; and if there is so much as a particle of it in any work that includes other things as well, it outweighs all the other ingredients in significance and turns out to be the essence, the heart and soul of the work. — Boris Pasternak

What singing means to me, I never did consider myself a singer, I just let people watch me feel music and how it comes through me. I've worked on it and practiced a lot. I mean, music, I dance to it, and singing is just one way of getting it out of me. — Erykah Badu

The planet was filling up with good-looking young worldlings built entirely of opposites, canceling themselves out and- speaking as a bloke- leaving nothing you'd honestly want to go for a drink with. This new species of guys paired city shoes with backwoods beards. They played in bands but they worked in offices. They hated the rich but they bought lottery tickets, they laughed at comedies about the shittiness of lives that were based quite pointedly on their own, and worst of all they were so endlessly bloody gossipy. Every single thing they did, from unboxing a phone through to sleeping with his athlese, they had this compulsion to stick it online and see what everyone else thought. Their lives were a howling vacuum that sucked in attention. He didn't see how Zoe could ever find love with this new breed of men with cyclonic souls that sucked like Dysons and never needed their bag changed in order to keep on and on sucking. — Chris Cleave

It wasn't through choice that I became a mum at 36. I wanted to be a young mum but things never worked out for me. — Denise Van Outen

I have to figure out why I worked at a job I hated for years. I have to find out why I can't see what everyone else sees in me. I don't feel beautiful. When I look in the mirror, I never saw beautiful. For this to happen to someone like me, it's devastating, Jonas. I don't want you to think it's vanity, it isn't. I can't see me and I need to be able to do that. I need to find out what I'm like and what I want. I have to be comfortable in my own skin before I can be in a relationship the way you want. — Christine Feehan

I'm just sick of being tossed around. He'll forget every word he said to me once he gets married. Before long, an heir will be born and he'll no longer remember the promise he made to me. Just like the former master forgot. It never worked out with anyone. I became intimate with some people. But they never lasted long ... — Shoko Hidaka

I always worked as an individual artist even when Group Material asked me to join the group. There are certain things that I can do by myself that I would never be able to do with Group Material. First of all, they are a totally democratic entity and although you learn a lot from it, and it's very moving, it's very exacting, everything has to be by consensus, which is the beauty of it, but it is much more work. It's worth it 100%. But as an individual artist there are certain things that I want to bring out and express, and the collaborative practice is not conducive to that. — Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Dear Mommy
I'm doing really good,
I get all A's in school
And I don't cry at bedtime anymore,
Though my new mom said I could.
I remember how much you hate tears,
You slapped them out of me
To make me strong,
I think it worked.
I learned to use a microscope
And my hair grew two inches.
It's pretty, just like yours.
I'm not allowed to clean the house,
Only my own room,
Isn't that a funny rule?
You say kids are so much trouble
Getting born, they better pay it back.
I'm not supposed to take care
Of the other kids, only me, I sort of like it.
I still get the hole in my stomach
When I do something wrong,
I have a saying on my mirror
"Kids make mistakes, It's OK,"
I read it every day,
Sometimes I even believe it.
I wonder if you ever think of me
Or if you're glad the troublemaker's gone,
I never want to see you again.
I love you, Mommy. — Karyl McBride

How was is that life never worked out the way it did in his head? — Chris Wooding

I had a great deal of independence from the president and the White House during the entirety of my five years. And I'm not sure exactly what that is, but our friend, Walter Dellinger, has a theory about it, and I think he's probably right. And the theory starts with the fact that I worked in the White House for a year and a half before coming over to the position of SG. And because of that, when I was nominated, there was some chatter out there that, "Oh. They're putting a political hack in. This has never happened before." — Donald Verrilli Jr.

It's all about the relationships; forming them and sustaining them, growing and building a back and forth that will be useful to both parties. Generally speaking, I'm not a fan of the practice so often seen today: a person decides that a particular God or Goddess is suitable for a one off ritual or occasion, calls them up, expects them to grant boons and favours and help out in whatever situation is being worked for, and then is never heard from again. If a complete stranger walked into your house and asked for a favour, however politely - would you be inclined to help? Possibly you would, and sometimes the Powers do too, if there is sufficient offering or perhaps bribery involved. They are not above being bought off. However, most people would be far more inclined to help out when a friend asks a favour, and this follows through with the Gods, in my experience. A give and take relationship is the most effective and respectful way I have found of working with them. — Lora O'Brien

All I've wanted to be is someone people look up to. It's funny - everyone says I'm controversial. I've never worked out what it is about me that's controversial. I've never had a DUI; I've never been in a brawl; you've never seen photos of me walking out of clubs at 5 A.M. — Ruby Rose

I'm not very good at sounding like other people. When you're going through your 20's and trying to get a break and that kind of thing, and you're trying to do something that sounds like film music, your idea of what it would be, it never really worked out for me and it's only really when I learned to trust the fact that I could only really sound like me. — Steven Price

God," he choked out. "This can't happen."
"Oh, yes it can." Breathless, she worked the buttons of his trouser falls. "It will. It must." Having freed the closures of his trousers and smallclothes, she snaked her hand through the opening and brazenly took him in hand. Of course, now that she had him in hand, she wasn't quite sure what to do with him. She tentatively skimmed one fingertip over the smooth, rounded crown of his erection. In return, he pressed a single finger into her aching core.
"Cecily." He shut his eyes and grit his teeth. "If I don't stop this now ... "
"You never will?" She pressed her lips to his earlobe. "That's my fondest hope. You say you're done with fighting, Luke? Then stop fighting this."
He sighed deep in his chest, and she felt all the tension coiled in those powerful muscles release. "Very well," he said quietly, resting his chin on her shoulder. "Very well. To you, I gratefully surrender. — Tessa Dare