Quotes & Sayings About It Not Working Out

My brain is already scrambled enough.""Cracked," I said, not thinking.
"Yeah." Moses scowled.
"Well, it's working for you." I turned and looked at my walls. "Cracks and all. In fact, if your brain wasn't cracked, none of the brilliance could spill out. Do you realize that? — Amy Harmon

If I'm not working, I really have nothing to do with it - I'm not hanging out and mixing with film people. Not that I have anything against film people; they're some of the best people around and some of the worst people around, just like in any business ... they just gesticulate a little bit more. — Christian Bale

It's not just the music. When we develop a working AI or upload minds, we'll need a way of defending it against legal threats. That's what Gianni pointed out to me ... — Charles Stross

You're not safe to go back there," he said.
"I'm going," I returned.
"We'll see."
Jeez, there was just no shaking this guy.
"You do know that there's this little thing called the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote?" I asked.
"I heard of that," he said and there was a smile in his voice.
"And there's this whole movement called fem ... in ... is ... im." I said it slowly, like he was a dim child. "Where women started working, demanding equal pay for equal work, raising their voices on issues of the day, taking back the night, stuff like that."
He rolled into me, which made me roll onto my back.
"Sounds familiar."
"Do you have an encyclopedia? Maybe we can look it up. If the words are too big for you to read, I'l read it out loud and explain as I go along."
He got up on his elbow. "Only if you do it naked." I slapped his shoulder. — Kristen Ashley

being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the great kitchen, where every prisoner's dinner was in course of being set out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred ever dined half so well. But I learned that the 'system' required high living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found that on that head and on all others, 'the system' put an end to all doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered. — Charles Dickens

The idea of vaudeville clowns and court jesters is always to show the flaw, to point out what's not working and why it's not coherent. — John Baldessari

When I photograph, I do not think much. If you looked at my contacts you would ask yourself: "What is this guy doing?" But I keep working with my contacts and with my prints, I look at them all the time. I believe that the result of this work stays in me and at the moment of photographing it comes out, without my thinking of it. — Josef Koudelka

I focus on a simple message: when you leave the two-thirds of Americans without college degrees out of your vision of the good life, they notice. And when elites commit to equality for many different groups but arrogantly dismiss "the dark rigidity of fundamentalist rural America,"6 this is a recipe for extreme alienation among working-class whites. Deriding "political correctness" becomes a way for less-privileged whites to express their fury at the snobbery of more-privileged whites. I don't like what this dynamic is doing to America. There are two reasons I think we have to try to replace it with a healthier one. The first is ethical: I am committed to social equality, not for some groups but for all groups. The second is strategic: the hidden injuries of class7 now have become visible in politics so polarized that our democracy is threatened. A few words — Joan C. Williams

- Every time someone cries out in prayer and I can't answer, I feel guilty about not being God. - That doesn't sound good. - I understand that I have a problem, and I know what I need to do to solve it, all right? I'm working on it. Of course, Harry hadn't said what the solution was. The solution, obviously, was to hurry up and become God. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I like to think I'm making films in the film business where movies are making enough numbers for the studios to let me keep working, but you also want those films to have content that makes you proud you made the film. That's not easy, but it's a fun puzzle to figure out. — Wes Craven

I didn't mind working in the clubs, but I resented it being a club where pimps hang out. Because the music that I create is of a higher intellect than that. It not only encompasses pimps, but whores, ballplayers, executives ... everybody. — Barry White

On the upside, yesterday I taped a Ziploc bag to the inside of my skirt so I'd have someplace to store my everything-that-didn't-fit-in-my-bra and it worked really well, so now I'm working on a cape made solely from stapled-together Ziploc bags. It'll be awesome because I'll be able to see all the stuff in my Ziploc pockets (unlike my purse, which just eats everything, like a tiny black hole). And it'll also double as a rain poncho. And I can put a stiletto knife and a "How to Stab People" pamphlet in it so assholes know not to fuck with me and I don't even have to pull it out and threaten them. There is no downside to this. — Jenny Lawson

Work addiction seems to be an addiction we are proud of. We almost seem to brag with mock displeasure that we are "overwhelmed" with busyness, sometimes as an excuse for not really being able to do what we really want to be doing. Work addiction is a symptom not of working your brains out but of your brain working you out. Why are you doing what you're doing for a career and how do you like doing it? Do you like your answer? — Paul Pearsall

You've got to believe in yourself, you've got to have a very clear vision, and you've got have the fire in the belly and go out and not be shy with working because it takes a lot of work. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

Following the pattern offered a kind of comfort, a quiet balance to working in the field during the day. The farmwork was coarse, exhausting, and largely a matter of faith - a farmer threw everything he had into the earth, but ultimately it wasn't up to him whether it rained or not. Sewing was different. Mabel knew if she was patient and meticulous, if she carefully followed the rules, that in the end when it was turned right-side out, it would be just how it was meant to be. A small miracle in itself, and one that life so rarely offered. — Eowyn Ivey

What have we fallen in love with that's not as effective as it used to be? What do we love doing that's not really working? What's off limits for discussion? Do we have any "old couches" that need to be thrown out? — Andy Stanley

Athletes train 15 years for 15 seconds of performance. Ask them if they got lucky. Ask an athlete how he feels after a good workout. He will tell you that he feels spent. If he doesn't feel that way, it means he hasn't worked out to his maximum ability.
Losers think life is unfair. They think only of their bad breaks. They don't consider that the person who is prepared and playing well still got the same bad breaks but overcame them. That is the difference. His threshold for tolerating pain becomes higher because in the end he is not training so much for the game but for his character. Alexander Graham Bell was desperately trying to invent a hearing aid for his partially deaf wife. He failed at inventing a hearing aid but in the process discovered the principles of the telephone. You wouldn't call someone like that lucky, would you?Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation. Without effort and preparation, lucky coincidences don't happen. — Shiv Khera

Life is a process of working out what's not working for you and disentangling yourself from it and trying then not walk into the same thing again. Watching your patterns and correcting them if you can. — Siobhan Fahey

I've been working with Operation Smile for a number of years, and $240 changes and saves, in many cases, saves a child's life. But one of the things I'm super excited about is my partnership with Boston Market this holiday season and we've partnered up not only to help everybody out during the holidays because we know how crazy it gets. — Kate Walsh

I have charity work that I do. I started my own charity, the Friends of the Prostate, and I'm also working on awareness of the deviated septum. I do this because not many people are interested in it. There's also Save the Funnel-web - they're dying out. — Barry Humphries

I'm not a dieter. I have the palate of a 7-year-old boy, although I'm working on it. I order off the kids' menu! I'm working hard to eat more fruit and veggies and round it all out, but I'm a big pretzels and Diet Coke kind of girl. — Allison Williams

When you learn, you grow. You have to stretch, and it's not easy. You know, if you're working out your muscles, if you're doing whatever, it's gonna hurt a little bit. — Don Lemon

The goal - at least the way I think about entrepreneurship - is you realize one day that you can't really work anyone else. You have to start your won thing. It almost doesn't matter what the thing is. We had six different business plan changes, and then the last one was PayPal.
If that one didn't work out, if we still had the money and the people, obviously we would not have given up. We would have iterated on the business model and done something else. I don't think there was ever clarity as to who we were until we knew it was working. By then, we'd figured out our PR pitch and told everyone what we do and who we are. But between the founding and the actual PayPal, it was just like this tug-of-war where it was like, "We're trying this, this week." Every week you go to investors and say, "We're doing this, exactly this. We're really focused. We're going to be huge." The next week you're like, "That was a lie. — Jessica Livingston

More importantly, I didn't know then that one day I would genuinely be free. That freedom came out of a thousand small steps of obedience, most of which I took during the waiting or limbo time. The more I learned to lean into Him on a daily basis and simply live out my faith in the everyday elements, the more I was prepared for the bigger steps when they arrived. Not only that, I was given the gift of living my life fully in the present, rather than being fixated and frustrated over some distant time or hope. In the crossroads called limbo, you do arrive at mile markers. You become more mature. More healed. Less surprised by or resistant to or unprepared for the good things God is giving you in the ordinary. Your challenge is to begin to embrace the waiting times as part of the overall journey. Limbo is a key part of the healing process! As you are faithful daily, He is working in you powerfully, and it all counts. Every single moment! — Suzanne Eller

The worst way to fire somebody is to let it drag out. It's not good for that person because they're not succeeding in their role. And it's not good for the organization because it's just not working. — Nick Woodman

Each moment life is new and you have to respond from your inner newness, you have to be available to the new as the new. And you have to respond, not out of your knowledge, but out of your present awareness. Only then life works, otherwise life stops working. If your life is not working, remember, it is the ego that is hindering, the mechanical has encroached upon the organic. To be free from the mechanical is to be in God, because it is to be in the organic unity of existence. — Rajneesh

You must either make a tool of the creature, or a man of him. You cannot make both. Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions. If you will have that precision out of them, and make their fingers measure degrees like cog-wheels, and their arms strike curves like compasses, you must unhumanize them. All the energy of their spirits must be given to make cogs and compasses of themselves ... .On the other hand, if you will make a man of the working creature, you cannot make him a tool. Let him but begin to imagine, to think, to try to do anything worth doing; and the engine-turned precision is lost at once. Out come all his roughness, all his dulness, all his incapability; shame upon shame, failure upon failure, pause after pause: but out comes the whole majesty of him also; and we know the height of it only when we see the clouds settling upon him. — John Ruskin

It was sometimes praised as a noble public endeavor, but nearly all other Atlanteans found more important things to do on any given day than help. Even the Atlantean nobles ignored the prospect of somebody other than themselves obtaining unchallengeable power, which a less experienced cynic might expect to catch their attention. With relatively little support, the tiny handful of would-be makers of this device labored under working conditions that were not so much dramatically arduous, as pointlessly annoying. Eventually time ran out and Atlantis was destroyed with the device still far from complete. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Because work takes up a lot of time, you have to choose your moments for really letting rip. I hang out with my friends and my family and I spend time with my kids when I'm not working. They don't see my being an actor as exotic. For them, it's just an everyday thing. Sometimes it's amusing to them and other times, embarrassing. — Aidan Gillen

Woman was the test, but not every woman seemed to qualify. Black women, of course, were virtually invisible within the protracted campaign for woman suffrage. As for white working-class women, the suffrage leaders were probably impressed at first by the organizing efforts and militancy of their working-class sisters. But as it turned out, the working women themselves did not enthusiastically embrace the cause of woman suffrage. — Angela Y. Davis

Time has to be converted, then, from chronos, mere chronological time, to kairos, a New Testament Greek word that has to do with opportunity, with moments that seem ripe for their intended purpose. Then, even while life continues to seem harried, while it continues to have hard moments, we say, "Something good is happening amid all this." We get glimpses of how God might be working out his purposes in our days. Time becomes not just something to get through or manipulate or manage, but the arena of God's work with us. Whatever happens - good things or bad, pleasant or problematic - we look and ask, "What might God be doing here?" We see the events of the day as continuing occasions to change the heart. Time points to Another and begins to speak to us of God. We — Henri J.M. Nouwen

I think people talk about one love, but there is the need to love and the need to be loved are not the same thing and I suppose that's ... and it's working that out is part of growing up. — Stephen Fry

I think growing up it was never an issue for me to think about working out or having a healthy lifestyle because I danced so much. Then when I stopped dancing and I got into regular life mode, I didn't realize how much diet and nutrition and being active was so important. Not only for my physical state, but for my mental state, too. I think that's just as important as working out for your physical state. — Julianne Hough

Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in poverty by restricting the output of goods. This happened to a great extent during the final phase of capitalism, roughly between 1920 and 1940. The economy of many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity. But this, too, entailed military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable. The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. The — George Orwell

did I not tell you to tell your father and mother that you were to set out for the court? And you know that lies to the north. You must learn to use far less direct directions than that. You must not be like a dull servant that needs to be told again and again before he will understand. You have orders enough to start with, and you will find, as you go on, and as you need to know, what you have to do. But I warn you that perhaps it will not look the least like what you may have been fancying I should require of you. I have one idea of you and your work, and you have another. I do not blame you for that - you cannot help it yet; but you must be ready to let my idea, which sets you working, set your idea right. Be true and honest and fearless, and all shall go well with you and your work, and all with whom your work lies, and so with your parents - and me too, Curdie,' she added after a little pause. — George MacDonald

With crazy [working] hours, it's not easy to find balance. However, the one silver lining is that you really find out who your friends are and who's really interested in you for you, because the schedule is challenging for any relationship. — Jenna Lee

Ever feel like you're always winding up and never throwing it out? You might blame it on perfectionism or procrastination or preparation. You may even call it prudent. But whatever it is...IT'S NOT WORKING. I call this phenomenon "petrified performance." Where you're busy, busy, busy (on the wrong activities or the right activities for too long), and never accomplishing the idea or task you set out to do. You're stuck. Like a tree that once was lively is now dead and immovable like a stone. What once was a fluid idea is now frozen in time. How do you overcome petrified performance? With practice, silly. Everything you do should be considered a "project" because projects have a beginning and an end with a timeline. No more dreaming. Wake up and put those dreams to work by putting the steps necessary to make them happen on the calendar. Are you willing to practice? That's my prescription. — Richie Norton

I'm doing the exact same thing and adding a little bit more flexibility. I'm going to bench here. I'm not a kicker who's just going to hang out at practice. I'm going to be in the weight room pushing linebackers, defensive ends, tight ends. I'm going to push everyone. whatever I'm doing, I'm putting up numbers that someone else would do. Not only do I love working out, but at the same time it's able for others to maximize their potential. — Kyle Brindza

I've chosen not to live in Hollywood, and instead I live in Brooklyn, New York. It's how I like to live. I'd rather hang out with my kids and family when I'm not working. Going to premieres is not my idea of a fun night out. — Jennifer Connelly

It's not that introverts aren't good team players. We just don't need to be in the same room as the rest of the team at all times. We would much prefer to have part of the project carved out for us to squirrel away with it in our offices, consulting as necessary but working independently. — Sophia Dembling

In the context of the English language, there were many more important words than "in." There were fancy words, historic words, words that meant life or death. There were multi-syllabic tongue-twisters that required a sort out before speaking, and mission-critical pivotals that started wars or ended wars ... and even poetic nonsensicals that were like a symphony as they left the lips. Generally speaking, "in" did not play with the big boys. In fact, it barely had much of a definition at all, and, in the course of its working life, was usually nothing but a bridge, a conduit for the heavy lifters in any given sentence. There was, however, one context in which that humble little two-letter, one-syllable jobbie was a BFD. Love. The difference between someone "loving" somebody versus being "in love" was a curb to the Grand Canyon. The head of a pin to the entire Midwest. An exhale to a hurricane. — J.R. Ward

When I look for the next project, it's always about, 'Is it going to push me out of my comfort zone? Am I doing something different? Am I working with people who are passionate about what they're doing?' At the end of the day, if I'm going to be bored on set, then I'm not gonna be happy. — Amanda Crew

Well technology has changed a lot of things, making it possible for just about anyone to make music. But not everybody is a songwriter, so that puts me in a completely different ballpark than the other DJs out here that are writing and producing tracks. I don't stop at tracks, I try to complete the whole package with the song. So working at that level has put me in a completely different place. — Frankie Knuckles

You know, I'm not really any good at working out when people are flirting with me. And I think I'm too flirtatious with people I'm trying not to flirt with! What I am good at is making people feel uncomfortable. I don't want to but it always ends up happening! — Josh Hartnett

Taking drugs on a recreation level is one thing. But taking them while you're working on a stage is, I don't think it was that great. It's the control factor. And the thing about being on stage, you really want to feel that you're sort of in control a lot. It's not a place where you want to be out of control. — Mick Jagger

I work out because that's my job, but what I enjoy about it, beyond the vanity, is the Zen of it. I like getting out of my head, and one great way to do that is to sweat your face off. And to know that, if you're thinking of anything else, you're not working intensely enough. — Chris Pine

It was late morning when he woke and found the telephone beside his bed in the hotel tolling frantically, and remembered that he had left word to be called at eleven. Sloane was snoring heavily, his clothes in a pile by his bed. They dressed and ate breakfast in silence, and then sauntered out to get some air. Amory's mind was working slowly, trying to assimilate what had happened and separate from the chaotic imagery that stacked his memory the bare shreds of truth. If the morning had been cold and gray he could have grasped the reins of the past in an instant, but it was one of those days that New York gets sometimes in May, when the air of Fifth Avenue is a soft, light wine. How much or how little Sloane remembered Amory did not care to know; he apparently had none of the nervous tension that was gripping Amory and forcing his mind back and forth like a shrieking saw. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Mr. Lawrence drank from his beer. Do you know how I figure out what to do? I look under rocks for slime. I lick the slime with my own tongue. I see the problem for what it is, not what a consultant's methodology says it should be. I find people who are working on something that no one told them to work on, who solve a problem because they can't let it stay unsolved, who don't eat or bathe because it takes too much time. I find the ones selling their ideas to customers without going through the marketing department first. I've gotten good at picking molds off cheeses and turning them into penicillin. People used to wonder where my ideas came from. It was simple: I looked for slimy rocks and moldy cheese, and I watched the bank account like a hawk. It worked well for this company for a long time. — Charlie Close

Never was it [Capitalism] imposed on life as a system, or at all. It grew out of life, not all at once but gradually, and is therefore one of the great natural designs. When it was found and identified by such men as Adam Smith, who wrote its bible, and Karl Marx, who wrote its obituary too soon, it was already working. — Garet Garrett

long. Trade has always traveled and the world has always traded. Ours, though, is the era of extreme interdependence. Hardly any nation is now self-sufficient. In 2011, the United Kingdom shipped in half of its gas. The United States relies on ships to bring in two-thirds of its oil supplies. Every day, thirty-eight million tons of crude oil sets off by sea somewhere, although you may not notice it. As in Los Angeles, New York, and other port cities, London has moved its working docks out of the city, away from residents. Ships are bigger now and need deeper harbors, so they call at Newark or Tilbury or Felixstowe, not Liverpool or South Street. — Rose George

The secret to recruiting is not in convincing people, but in sorting people. You can wear yourself out and become discouraged, working with the same "empty oysters." Your job as a professional recruiter is only to sort through the prospects until you find one who wants to be a distributor. It is ten times easier to locate a prospect who wants to work, than to convince an unwilling disinterested prospect to work. — Tom "Big Al" Schreiter

Most of the time you don't even know they're there. Now, that's the scary thing. It's really strange and invading, but I'm still working it all out. I try to not let it bother me. And if I
want to swim naked in my pool, I'm still going to do it. I certainly don't want to feel that I have to change everything in my life that I do to cater to them. I just won't let it happen. — Heath Ledger

Critics do not have the satisfaction of working on things that actually exist, like sick dogs or dental cavities. So they are tempted to pluck a virtue out of necessity and claim that they toil in an altogether superior realm, that of the imagination. This implies, rather oddly, that things which do not exist are inevitably more precious than those that do, which is a fairly devastating comment on the latter. What kind of a world is it in which possibility is unquestionably preferable to actuality? — Terry Eagleton

People get themselves all steamed up about weather they're in love or not. They ought to realize that the love part is perfectly easy; the hard part is working out, not about love, but about what they're going to do. The difference is that they can get their brains going on that, instead of taking the sound of the word "love" as a signal a signal for switching them off. They can get somewhere instead of indulging in a sort of orgy of emotional self-catechising about how you know you're in love, and what love is anyway, and all the rest of it. — Kingsley Amis

I, too, had set out to be remembered. I had wanted to create something permanent in my life- some proof that everything in its way mattered, that working hard mattered, that feeling things mattered, that even sadness and loss mattered, because it was all part of something that would live on. But I had also come to recognize that not everything needs to be durable. the lesson we have yet to learn from dogs, that could sustain us, is that having no apprehension of the past or future is not limiting but liberating. Rin Tin Tin did not need to be remembered in order to be happy; for him, it was always enough to have that instant when the sun was soft, when the ball was tossed and caught, when the beloved rubber doll was squeaked. Such a moment was complete in itself, pure and sufficient. — Susan Orlean

So you open your mouth and listen to yourself say, "I want eight thousand a day. Plus expenses."
This is the polite, industry-standard way of saying "piss off, I'm not interested." You did the math over your morning coffee: You want to earn 100K a year, what with those bonuses you've been pulling on top of your salary. (Besides, a euro doesn't buy what it used to.) There are 250 working days in a year, and a contractor works for roughly 40 per cent of the time, so you need to charge yourself out at 2.5 times your payroll rate, or 1000 a day in order to meet your target. Not interested in the job? Pitch unrealistically high. You never know ...
"Done," says Mr. Pin-Stripe, staring at you expressionlessly. And it is at that point that you realize you are well and truly fucked. — Charles Stross

When things fall apart and we can't get the pieces back together, when we lose something dear to us, when they whole thing is just not working and we don't know what to do, this is the time when the natural warmth of tenderness, the warmth of empathy and kindness, are just waiting to be uncovered, just waiting to be embraced. This is our chance to come out of our self-protecting bubble and to realize that we are never alone. This is our chance to finally understand that wherever we go, everyone we meet is essentially just like us. Our own suffering, if we turn toward it, can open us to a loving relationship with the world. — Pema Chodron

The only choice I make is to write about what interests me in a way that interests me, that gives me pleasure. It may not look like pleasure, because the difficulties can make me morose and distracted, but that's what it is - the pleasure of telling the story I mean to tell as wholly as I can tell it, of finding out in fact what that story is, by working around the different ways of telling it. — Alice Munro

I learned that unless you start working, if you're frozen out of work, you will never learn the habits, the discipline, the values of cooperation and improvement unless you get a job, and that's what statistic show. It's, unless you get a job and keep it, you will not get out of poverty. If you do, you have a very good chance of working out of poverty. — Charles Koch

I gather," he added, "that you've never had much time to study the classics?"
"That is so."
"Pity. Pity. You've missed a lot. Everyone should be made to study the classics, if I had my way."
Poirot shrugged his shoulders.
"Eh bien, I have got on very well without them."
"Got on! Got on? It's not a question of getting on. That's the wrong view all together. The classics aren't a ladder leading to quick success, like a modern correspondence course! It's not a man's working hours that are important
it's his leisure hours. That's the mistake we all make. Take yourself now, you're getting on, you'll be wanting to get out of things, to take things easy
what are you going to do then with your leisure hours? — Agatha Christie

The whole bible is the working out of the relationship between God and man. God is not a dictator barking out orders and demanding silent obedience. Were it so, there would be no relationship at all. No real relationship goes just one way. There are always two active parties. We must have reverence and awe for God, and honor for the chain of tradition. But that doesn't mean we can't use new information to help us read the holy texts in new ways. — A. J. Jacobs

Lure him out. Send in a 'customer' with a message from me needing to meet him. I'm not the kind of person he can ignore-well, that he used to not-never mind. Once he's out, we can get him to a place we choose."
I nodded. "I can do that."
"No," said Dimitri. "You can't."
"Why not?" I asked, wondering if he thought it was too dangerous for me.
"Because they'll know you're a dhampir the instant they see you. They'll probably smell it first. No Strigoi would have a dhampir working for him-only humans."
There was an uncomfortable silence in the car.
"No!" said Sydney. "I am not doing that! — Richelle Mead

The ultimate test is always your own serenity. If you don't have this when you start and maintain it while you're working you're likely to build our personal problems right into the machine.
The machine responds to your personality. It's just that the personality that it responds to is your real personality, the one that genuinely feels and reasons and acts, rather than any false, blown up personality images your ego may conjure up. These false images are defaulted so rapidly and completely you're bound to be very discouraged very soon if you've derived your gumption from ego rather than Quality.
The real machine you're working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be out there and the person that appears to be in here are not 2 separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together. — Robert M. Pirsig

Visible alternatives shatter the sense of inevitability, that the system must, necessarily, be patched together in the same form
this is why it became such an imperative of global governance to stamp them out, or, when that's not possible, to ensure that no one knows about them. To become aware of it allows us to see everything we are already doing in a new light. To realize we're all already communists when working on a common projects, all already anarchists when we solve problems without recourse to lawyers or police, all revolutionaries when we make something genuinely new. — David Graeber

What a sad and frightening time it was. Thousands of firefighters and other rescue workers swarmed the sixteen-acre disaster zone, searching for survivors. The area, which became known as Ground Zero, was extremely dangerous. Underground fires smoldered, and the smoke was a toxic mix of melted plastic, steel, lead, and many poisonous chemicals. Few of the rescue workers had on proper protective clothing or masks. And as it quickly became clear, there were not very many survivors to find. Only fourteen people were pulled out of the rubble alive, all within the first twenty-four hours of the collapse. About 50,000 people had been working in the buildings that day. Two thousand and sixteen died. Also among the dead: 343 firefighters and 60 police officers who were in or near the — Lauren Tarshis

It's not hard work that wears you out, but the repression of your true personality, and I've found a way of working that does not demand that. — Frances Hesselbein

How are you feeling, man?" he asks me.
"Great," I tell him, and it is purely the truth. Doves clatter up out of a bare tree and turn at the same instant, transforming themselves from steel to silver in the snow-blown light. I know at that moment that the drug is working. Everything before me has become suddenly, radiantly itself. How could Carlton have known this was about to happen? "Oh," I whisper. His hand settles on my shoulder.
"Stay loose, Frisco," he says. "There's not a thing in this pretty world to be afraid of. I'm here."
I am not afraid. I am astonished. I had not realized until this moment how real everything is. A twig lies on the marble at my feet, bearing a cluster of hard brown berries. The broken-off end is raw, white, fleshly. Trees are alive.
"I'm here," Carlton says again, and he is. — Michael Cunningham

I'm trying to break myself of that habit [of not writing out a first draft ] because I'm working on a couple novels and I know if I tried to write those books the way I wrote the stories it would take me years to finish. — Donald Ray Pollock

You may thank God you didn't want to be an actor, Tom, because you would have been a very bad one. You worked it out at Thanksgiving, I guess, when you were all together. And it's working smooth as butter. I see Will's hand in this. Don't tell me if you don't want to."
"I wasn't in favor of it," said Tom.
"It doesn't sound like you," his father said. "You'd be for scattering the truth out in the sun for me to see. Don't tell the others I know." He turned away and then came back and put his hand on Tom's shoulder. "Thank you for wanting to honor me with the truth, my son. It's not clever but it's more permanent. — John Steinbeck

The choral group. I have even begun to master the organ, not so different from Monsieur's piano. I strained to hear the whisper, as Sister Agnes went on with her thought. The audiences prefer children who are young, too young to be out working for themselves. It pleases them to feel as though they're donating to — Lisa Wingate

I feel any time you enter a dream world it's like you're working out things, it's all inside your mind and you're working it out, be it Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, or the kids in Narnia, they go through this weird journey that's not real, and they're going through this journey psychologically. It's that journey of discovery, of getting onself together, that fantasy and fairy tales are so good at. And while some people still look upon them as completely unrealistic, for me they're more real than most things that are perceived as real. — Tim Burton

I can get a tune out of most things with strings, but I'm not really sure I'm what could be called a musician. I find it fascinating working with people who can play other instruments and sing. — Withered Hand

Now we the American working population
Hate the fact that eight hours a day
Is wasted on chasing the dream of someone that isn't us.
And we may not hate our jobs,
But we hate jobs in general
That don't have to do with fighting our own causes.
We the American working population
Hate the nine-to-five, day-in day-out
When we'd rather be supporting ourselves
By being paid to perfect the pastimes
That we have harbored based solely on the fact
That it makes us smile if it sounds dope. — Aesop

Open the GIFTS actually came out of this quest. I ended up going into a pretty deep depression that people don't know about, and now I'm talking about it. I was too focused on, If I'm not working, who am I? Why am I not doing that thing that I want to do the most? Why am I not successful in this moment? — Kim Coles

Don't let people tell you to do it this way. You are on the verge of figuring out hybrid models
with companies and nonprofits, markets, government, crowd-sourced philanthropy. The capitalist system as we know it is not working. — Jacqueline Novogratz

If you're working on something and it's not coming together, it's easy to say, "I don't want to show this, until I've figured it out." But a lot of times you don't really solve the problems, and then you start getting into a bad situation because you don't have the time to fix it. — Lee Unkrich

Theologian and scholar Walter Brueggemann writes beautifully in 'The Prophetic Imagination' that real hope comes only after despair. Only if we have tasted despair, only if we have known the deep sadness of unfulfilled dreams and promises, only if we can dare to look reality in the face and name it for what it is, can we dare to begin to imagine a better way.
Hope is subversive precisely because it dares to admit that all is not as it should be.
And so we are holding out for, working for, creating, prophesying, and living into something better
for the kingdom to come, for oaks of righteousness to tower, for leaves to blossom for the healing of the nations, for swords to be beaten into plowshares, for joy to come in the morning, and for redemption and justice. — Sarah Bessey

Everybody loves music and it's fun - you feel like you're not working out. It makes the time go by quick and you're having fun and, especially if you take a class, there's the energy of other people and you're laughing. — Julianne Hough

Whether it be training, dieting, working out, or work ethic, for every great excuse "Not" to do something, there are 100 "better" reasons for you to do it. — Mark W. Boyer

When we were working on 'Taxi to the Dark Side,' we would purposefully not show it to certain people in the cutting room, because we would include a lot of horrible material and would need a fresh pespective. They would look at us and say, 'Are you out of your minds? You can't include that!' — Alex Gibney

I'm actually not in favour of decriminalizing cannabis
I'm in favour of legalizing it. Tax and regulate. It's one of the only ways to keep it out of the hands of our kids because the current war on drugs, the current model isn't working, — Justin Trudeau

You really work in those conditions?"

She, irritated by the contact, pulled her arm away, protesting: "And how do you work, the two of you, how do you work?"

They didn't answer. They worked hard, that was obvious. And at least Enzo in front of him, in the factory, women worn out by the work, by humiliations, by domestic obligations no less than Lila was. Yet now they were both angry because of the conditions _she_ worked in; they couldn't tolerate it. You had to hide everything from men. They preferred not to know, they preferred to pretend that what happened at the hands of the boss miraculously didn't happen to the women important to them and that - this was the idea they had grown up with - they had to protect her even at the risk of being killed. In the face of that silence Lila got even angrier. "Fuck off," she said, "you and the working class. — Elena Ferrante

You are figuring out how to produce a result that you desire in your life. You are not thinking about losing something or maintaining the status quo. You are working to move your life forward from where it is now, making it better than what it is today, considering how you desire your life to be - and that's exciting! Gain gives you focus, a direction to head toward. — Steve McClatchy

I never think of stories as made things; I think of them as found things. As if you pull them out of the ground, and you just pick them up. Someone once told me that that was me low-balling my own creativity. That might or might not be the case. But still, on the story I am working on now, I do have some unresolved problem. It doesn't keep me awake at nights. I feel like when it comes down, it will be there ... — Stephen King

Circumstances may appear to wreck our lives and God's plans, but God is not helpless among the ruins. God's love is still working. He comes in and takes the calamity and uses it victoriously, working out His wonderful plan of love. — Eric Liddell

If something isn't working out in one aspect of my career, it's not any big neurotic, crazy phase for me, it's just something that I accept, and that's okay. I'm not going to keep banging my head against the wall. — Irene Cara

Courage is called for on a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, even when there's nothing urgent at stake. It is up to us to create our lives consistent with who we know ourselves to be - making what's at stake that which we say is at stake. It's the stand we take on ourselves. That stand then becomes who we are. Saying that something is at stake is always a purely existential act. This business about freedom, this business about power, is really a product of a place to stand - not something that is out in front of us, that we're working on or measuring ourselves against. When we live consistent with what we say, we are being true to ourselves. — Nancy Zapolski

When I see someone not performing, I am frank enough to tell the person that it's not working out. I request him or her to leave or change jobs within the group. But I see many of our senior colleagues, including my brothers, sons and nephews, empathetic towards non-performers. They don't want to face the issue. They tend to become comfortable with such people and they get protection. They tend to choose people who become personally loyal to them rather than to the company. I think it's important to be professional about such matters. Protecting a non-performer is not good for the business and also the person being protected. This is unprofessional too. The non-performer may be in the wrong job and thus not doing what he or she is best at doing. Empathy that results in protection would lead to a negative result for the employee as well. He or she might be better off in another job within the group or elsewhere. — Subhash Chandra

I go through phases as far as working out goes. I'll do yoga for a few months or then work out at the gym, and then if I'm not doing either, there are things that I usually try and do something active, whether it's trying to jump in the ocean with the surfboard or go hiking. — Sarah Roemer

To start your working life after you've graduated from school and university, it takes you a long time to get started in the real world. Today, kids are not out into the workforce until 27 or 30 years of age. By the time I was 30, I had six kids and 60 trucks. — Lindsay Fox

It was a Friday morning, and Walmart was populated only by the occasional mom with very young children and the random senior citizen, which made my bathroom makeover less conspicuous. Only one woman came in while I stood in front of the mirror, and she went straight to the toilets. I made sure that when she came out I was no longer standing in front of the mirror but was huddled with my palms stretched out beneath a loud hand dryer, my face completely averted. No one expects to see a celebrity in their local Walmart bathroom. Most of us don't really look at each other anyway. Our eyes glance off without really registering what we're seeing. It's human nature. It's polite society. Ignore each other unless someone is grotesquely fat or immodestly dressed or disfigured in some way - and then we pretend not to see, but we see everything. I was none of those things, and so far human nature was working in my favor. — Amy Harmon

The way Smith sees it, this kind of approach denotes a certain category of writer: the Micro Manager. Authors fall into one of two primary camps, she explained in her 2009 book of essays, Changing My Mind.691 Macro Planners work out the structure of their novels and then write within that structure. Micro Managers, on the other hand, don't rely on an overarching configuration (don't even conceive of one), but rather home in on each sentence, one by one, and each sentence, as they come to it, becomes the only thing that exists. If there is a spectrum starting with Macro Planners on one end and Micro Managers on the other, Smith would be somewhere to the right of the page. Smith's writing is entirely incremental and cumulative. The grand plan is that there is no grand plan; working things out ahead of time ruins everything, "feels disastrous."She prefers the writing of a novel as a process of discovery. "The thinking goes on on the page," not beforehand. — Sarah Stodola

They're still working on the script - they've got to get that nailed down and they want the first movie to come out obviously, not get too ahead of themselves. But yeah, it's looking good. I love the second book a lot as well, so kind of diving into that is awesome. — Josh Hutcherson

So I do not pray. I accept the means at my disposal for working out my destiny. It seems to me that I have been given a mind and will power for that very purpose. — Zora Neale Hurston

I don't think this is working out between us," I told him. "You and I want different things. It's not me, it's you. — T.J. Klune

Imagine what you are writing about. See it and live it. Do not think it up laboriously, as if you were working out mental arithmetic. Just look at it, touch it, smell it, listen to it, turn yourself into it. When you do this, the words look after themselves, like magic. — Ted Hughes

A couple of minutes later I was surprised when the figure that came back was ... not him. It was Arianna, holding something bulky draped over her arm.
She opened my door, and I got out. "Where's Lend? I'm supposed to wait for him."
"Nope." She smiled bigger than I'd ever seen her smile before, and suddenly I was a touch nervous. What if she was working with Nona and the faeries? "You were waiting for me. Now, strip."
"I - What?"
"You heard me. Strip. Take off your coat, shirt, and pants. You can leave your bra, for all the good it does you."
I noticed then that the bulky thing over her arm was a garment bag. Aha! "Ar, listen, I don't feel that way about you. You're not my type."
"Oh, shut up, take your clothes off, and close your eyes."
"Again, not something I was hoping to hear from you tonight."
Her smile was replaced by an annoyed scowl. "DO IT NOW. — Kiersten White

You either go through your life working for someone and getting a paycheck - and it can be a damn good paycheck, and I am not complaining as someone who has always been a salaried employee - or you can go out and become an entrepreneur. — Al Michaels

I don't like talking about my work at all. I find it very difficult. I never know what to say. It's too close to me, and there's so many things happening unconsciously while I'm working that I'm not aware of, and people will point these things out to me, and I'll say, "That's interesting." But I don't know what to make of it. — Paul Auster

I know that if I have been working on one paragraph and I have written it three times, it goes in the bin. Unless it comes straight out, it is wrong, it is awkward, it does not fit. — Robert Rankin