Just Like The Rest Of Them Quotes & Sayings

Studying in countries like China isn't only about your prospects in the global marketplace. It's not just about whether you can compete with your peers in other countries to make America stronger. It's also about whether you can come together and work together with them to make our world stronger. It's about the friendships you make, the bonds of trust you establish and the image of America that you project to the rest of the world. — Michelle Obama

This is what the path of Dharma is like. It's not that you have to do all the practices. It is sufficient to take just one of them, whichever one you really have an affinity with, and through practicing that one alone, for the rest of your life, you will achieve enlightenment. Whichever practice you choose doesn't matter; they are all valid methods for achieving enlightenment - if you practice. The key is to practice with diligence for the rest of your life. — Dhomang Yangthang

Through, but my shoulders were too big to follow. This wasn't going to work. Unless I swam through on my side ... I tried again, coming at the bars sideways. But it was no good. I couldn't squeeze my face through the gap. I never realized my nose stuck out that much! I held on to the bars, flicking my tail as I thought. Then it hit me. How could I have been so stupid? I turned to face them. Just like before, I edged my head through the bars, as slowly and carefully as I could. All I needed to do now was flip onto my side and pull the rest of my body through. But what if I got stuck - my head on one side, my body on the other, caught forever with my neck in these railings? Before I had time to talk myself out of it, I swiveled my body onto its side. — Liz Kessler

I like to read books one after another. Immerse myself in a book, and then immerse myself in the next book, and just keep going until there aren't any more books left to swim in. That's why I hate when authors die. I cannot stand it. There will be no more books forthcoming from that person. Their future books died with them. In the past I have found a series of books and loved it so much that all I wanted to do was read and read and read those books for the rest of my life. Then I would find out that the author was dead. Had in fact been dead for many a year. This has happened to me several times. — Alison McGhee

Rebellion? I don't like hearing such a word from you," Ivan said with feeling. "One cannot live by rebellion, and I want to live. Tell me straight out, I call on you
answer me: imagine that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature, that same child who was beating her chest with her little fist, and raise your edifice on the foundation of her unrequited tears
would you agree to be the architect on such conditions? Tell me the truth."
"No, I would not agree," Alyosha said softly.
"And can you admit the idea that the people for whom you are building would agree to accept their happiness on the unjustified blood of a tortured child, and having accepted it, to remain forever happy?"
"No, I cannot admit it. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Then we talked a lot about our parents and how we didn't want to become them, but we had no other role models
or "maps," Alex kept saying. "My father is a terrible map, mostly because he doesn't ever lead me anywhere." And I thought about my parents being maps that led to places I didn't want to go
and it made a shocking amount of sense, using the word maps to describe parents. If almost made you feel like you could fold Mom and Dad up and lock them away in the glove compartment of your car and just joyride for the rest of your life maybe. — Matthew Quick

There's two or three kids out there trying to make good music, and the rest of them sound like it's been strained through some kind of white toast or something. It all sounds just too neat and perfect, with no surprise to it at all. No story, no nothing. It's like building cars, like an assembly line. It doesn't sound like anything that came from a guitar. — Merle Haggard

But the words die away on his lips, as he is caught in a smile as sudden and bright and paralysing as a prison searchlight ...
God, those eyes! Just looking at them is like being kissed - or, no, like being magicked off to another world, where it's just the two of them alone, the rest of the universe mere tinselled scenery, orbiting in a slow waltz around them- — Paul Murray

Go badly wrong. Sex, she thought. That is what is going to go wrong here. And she was right. "This woman," Mma Gabane Gabane went on, "this foolish, foolish woman met a young man who worked in the same office. He wasn't an accountant - nothing like that - he was a trainee, Mma Ramotswe, just a trainee. He was eighteen." There was a sharp intake of breath from Mma Phumele, who looked at Mma Ramotswe to gauge her reaction. She would be every bit as shocked as the rest of them, she imagined. And Mma Ramotswe was shocked. — Alexander McCall Smith

I have a library room with four desks in it. On one of them is a spec, on one of them is a present work, on one of them is reading for a future work, on another desk is a novel I'm not doing until I'm a hundred and fifty, and things like that. But, contractually speaking, you just do one at a time when it's on and paid and live. You do your real day on one project and the rest is just literary life. Or intrusions. — William Monahan

I was always the girl growing up who just wasn't quite like the rest of them. I liked working hard. I liked contorting my body until I could feel the ache inside my bones, until I could feel the pain in my teeth. I liked to wear lipstick and nothing else and found myself fascinated with the shape of my lips and the different colors I could make them. I ate too little. Slept too much. Masturbated far too often and at far too young an age. I enjoyed the feeling of being naked alone behind closed doors, exploring my deepest secrets within my imagination, as I put my hand over the rapid pace of my heart to feel how nervous it made me. I blushed at the faintest mention of my name and almost perished when complimented. I loved to find the answers behind someone's eyes. There's nothing quite like the feeling of when someone REALLY looks at you. And I read. Every chance I got. — R.B. O'Brien

Life would happen to him, and he would have to try to answer it, just like the rest of them all. — Hanya Yanagihara

I still don't like my freckles," I said desperately, trying to stop myself from falling completely under his spell. "Angel kisses." Corbin dropped a soft, open-mouthed kiss on my bare shoulder where there was a cluster of freckles. "That is what we used to call them. They're beautiful, just like the rest of you, Addison. — Evangeline Anderson

The rest of the letters were pretty much the same as I got every day now. Two hundred and forty-six proposals, a number of them for marriage. Almost five hundred photographs taken in various stages of undress, the majority in the last. Several invitations to strange places where they wring the necks of chickens and take turns beating each other with whips, etc. (In case any of these correspondents may chance to read my book, I'd like to just say this to them: Doubtless you are sincere in what you do, but it does strike me that more useful pursuits could be found for grown people to spend their time at.) — Kenneth Patchen

Oh, Frith help me!" said Fiver, trembling. "I can smell him from here. He terrifies me." "Oh, Fiver, don't be absurd! He just smells the same as the rest of them." "He smells like barley rained down and left to rot in the fields. He smells like a wounded mole that can't get underground." "He smells like a big, fat rabbit to me, with a lot of carrots inside. But I'll come with you. — Richard Adams

Normality is like a home to us and everyday life a mother. After a long incursion into great poetry, into the mountains of sublime aspiration, the cliffs of the transcendent and the occult, it is the sweetest thing, savouring of all that is warm in life, to return to the inn where the happy fools laugh and joke, to join with them in their drinking, as foolish as they are, just as God made us, content with the universe that was given us, and to leave the rest to those who climb mountains and do nothing when they reach the top. — Fernando Pessoa

JASON: 'Intended wings.' How depressing.
MICHAEL: Yes. Makes them into suicides, really, the pigeons.
JASON: No - no, it doesn't. It could mean the wings were 'intended' to carry them upwards, out of the darkness, but they were defective in some way, these wings, so the pigeons aren't suicidal, not at all, just badly equipped for flying. Like the rest of us. — Simon Gray

Others of them employ outward marks ... They style themselves Gnostics. They also possess images, some of them painted and others formed from different kinds of material. They maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world, such as Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honoring these images just like the Gentiles. — Irenaeus Of Lyons

An eerie aspect of social media is the way the dead's account lingers in digital space as a floating memorial. Friends post emotional farewells as if the departed will read them. But we all know that those words are for the rest of the world as if to flaunt their bond with the deceased like a new car or engagement ring. Just like any material possession that ceases production, a person's value amplifies when they are dead. They have no future. They have no present. Their past becomes a limited resource that everyone is desperate to snag a piece of. — Maggie Young

He didn't reply but by then she'd found something else to occupy her attention. His eyes.
Though she'd expected them to be as serviceable as the rest of him, they were a smoky blue-gray fringed in dark lashes. Pretty eyes. Even when he stared her down like a cop might a perp. And not just any perp. One who was heavily armed and an imminent flight risk. — Cari Quinn

A Last Word
Let us go hence: the night is now at hand;
The day is over worn, the birds all flown;
And we have reaped the crops the gods have sown;
Despair and death; deep darkness o'er the land,
Broods like an owl; we cannot understand
Laughter or tears, for we have only known
Surpassing vanity: vain things alone
Have driven our perverse and aimless band..
Let us go hence, some whither strange and cold,
To Hollow Lands where just men and unjust
Find end of labor, where's rest for the old,
Freedom to all from love and fear and lust.
Twine our torn hands! O pray the earth enfold
Our life-sick hearts and turn them into dust — Ernest Dowson

It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning; or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words - in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston? It was B.B.'s idea originally, of course,' he added as an afterthought. A — George Orwell

For anyone who wonders what it's like to have a tragedy shatter your existence, this is what I would tell them: it's like going through the motions of everyday life in a zombified state. It's having outbursts of anger for what seems like no apparent reason, for even the smallest of offenses. It's forgetting how to be your once cheerful, perky self, and having to relearn basic social skills when mingling with new people (especially if those people are ignorant, or just plain terrible at showing sympathy). It takes a while to re-learn all those basic skills. Maybe...it's possible. Maybe you have to want your life back first, before it can start repairing itself But then you also have to accept that the mending process may take the rest of your life. I don't think there's a set time limit for it. — Sarahbeth Caplin

As far as I'm concerned, there are two types of people in this world: people like Queeg who, when life gives them lemons make lemonade, and everyone else. And although those smug lemonade-makers think the rest of us just sit around all day day bitching about not getting oranges, they're wrong. It's all about volume. When you're ass-deep in lemons, you start looking for a shovel, not a pitcher and a cup of sugar — Melissa DeCarlo

In a sense, New World conquest was about men seeking a way around one of life's basic rules - that human beings have to work for a living, just like the rest of the animal world. In Peru, as elsewhere in the Americas, Spaniards were not looking for fertile land that they could farm, they were looking for the cessation of their own need to perform manual labor. To do so, they needed to find large enough groups of people they could force to carry out all the laborious tasks necessary to provide them with the essentials of life: food, shelter, clothing, and, ideally, liquid wealth. Conquest, then, had little to do with adventure, but rather had everything to do with groups of men willing to do just about anything in order to avoid working for a living. Stripped down to its barest bones, the conquest of Peru was all about finding a comfortable retirement. — Kim MacQuarrie

When did my house turn into a hangout for every grossly overpaid, terminally pampered professional football player in northern Illinois?"
"We like it here," Jason said. "It reminds us of home."
"Plus, no women around." Leandro Collins, the Bears' first-string tight end emerged from the office munching on a bag of chips. "There's times when you need a rest from the ladies."
Annabelle shot out her arm and smacked him in the side of the head. "Don't forget who you're talking to."
Leandro had a short fuse, and he'd been known to take out a ref here and there when he didn't like a call, but the tight end merely rubbed the side of his head and grimaced. "Just like my mama."
"Mine, too," Tremaine said with happy nod.
Annabelle spun on Heath. "Their mother! I'm thirty-one years old, and I remind them of their mothers."
"You act like my mother," Sean pointed out, unwisely as it transpired, because he got a swat in the head next. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I had heard this dog barking over the music earlier, but this was the first time I had seen him. He was a giant, brown Great Dane who was either annoyed or excited by everything that was going on. He made a beeline for the girls who had just stepped back onto the sidewalk. Ruby was the first of them to spot him coming at them and began to scream and run backwards. The rest of the group froze in place. The dog was barking like crazy as it charged at them. He circled Ruby once and then pounced on her. Ruby screamed and swatted at the dog with her bucket and then took off down the sidewalk.
"Ruby!" I screamed, "Don't run!"

- The Stable House — Laura Smith

It's just how love gets described in the movies. Like in Sleepless in Seattle ... " This is the movie they showed us last night. "Tom Hanks's character is musing about why he fell in love with his dead wife, and he says that it was because she could peel an apple in one long strip, or something like that. And I was reading something similar in a book recently, only that was about peeling an orange ... anyway ... I've just never felt like the way someone peels fruit would be a reason to spend the rest of your life with them. — Catherine McKenzie

She stands under the hand dryers in the rest room, because she likes the feeling of wind whooshing through her hair, as though she's leaning her head out a car window on the highway, or like she's Superman, circling the Earth. How does the hand dryer know to start as soon as you stick your hands out? It's amazing, this, but the women in the restroom don't notice, and just stare, panicked, into the mirror, trying to work out what's wrong with them before anyone else does. — Brooke Davis

Friends. People you know. People you used to know. People you think you once knew, but you probably never did. You probably just knew a part of them, the part of them that was your friend. And the rest, the parts of them that you didn't know -the twisted parts, the untrue parts, the parts you're seeing now -well, back then you just ignored them. But now you can't. Because now you can see it all, and now you know that 'back then' wasn't all wonderful and innocent. It was just a time and a place, just like every other time and place. — Kevin Brooks

... and that's why they leave, isn't it? Because they have to see themselves in the context of something larger than just the two of them. It's like that Faiz poem, you know, mujh say pehli si muhabat, when you've seen the sorrows of the rest of the world you can't go on pretending none of it matters, you can't pretend two people can really live in isolation telling themselves their love is all that matters in the world. And that two of them, when they come back to the city, that's when they find out that their love was imperfect because it couldn't bear the knowledge of everything that lies outside ... — Kamila Shamsie

I don't think Indian actors are good. A couple of them are, like Anupam Kher, but not many are there like him in the industry. There are thousand of actors and actresses in the industry, but you can count on hand how many of them are really good; the rest of them are just pretty faces. — Russell Peters

I remember the period in the 1980s where the Beatles were terminally uncool, and it seemed to me then like they were just my little secret, and the rest of the world didn't know anything about them. — Alasdair MacLean

When I decided to follow Jesus that night in Atlanta, I assumed that becoming a Christian would make life easier. I thought the rest of my life would be smiling and smooth sailing. I assumed I wouldn't be tempted by women and partying and acceptance and all the things that I'd been a slave to for so many years. I thought I would walk around with a continual inner peace and serenity like Gandhi or something. This turns out to be a lie that too many people believe. You'll actually experience more temptation, not less, after you become a Christian. Following Jesus doesn't mean you'll start living perfectly overnight. It certainly doesn't mean that your problems will disappear. Rather than ridding you of problems or temptations, following Jesus just means that you have a place - no, a person - to run to when they come. And the power to overcome them. — Lecrae Moore

Winter denial: therein lay the key to California Schadenfreude
the secret joy that the rest of the country feels at the misfortune of California. The country said: "Look at them, with their fitness and their tans, their beaches and their movie stars, their Silicon Valley and silicone breasts, their orange bridge and their palm trees. God, I hate those smug, sunshiny bastards!" Because if you're up to your navel in a snowdrift in Ohio, nothing warms your heart like the sight of California on fire. If you're shoveling silt out of your basement in the Fargo flood zone, nothing brightens your day like watching a Malibu mansion tumbling down a cliff into the sea. And if a tornado just peppered the land around your Oklahoma town with random trailer trash and redneck nuggets, then you can find a quantum of solace in the fact that the earth actually opened up in the San Fernando Valley and swallowed a whole caravan of commuting SUVs. — Christopher Moore

I know the evil that exists. I know the terrible things people do to each other. I've lived it. I've survived it. But just because I've seen the palette of dark colors doesn't mean I have to paint the rest of my world that way. I can choose the bright colors instead. I can see them, paint them, draw them, surround myself with them like a loud, glorious song drowning out all the darkness in the world. — Rachel Morgan

They come into white people's lives like that in sudden sharp black trickles that isolate white facts for an instant in unarguable truth like under a microscope; the rest of the time just voices that laugh when you see nothing to laugh at, tears when no reason for tears. They will bet on the odd or even number of mourners at a funeral. A brothel full of them in Memphis went into a religious trance ran naked into the street. It took three policemen to subdue one of them. Yes Jesus O good man Jesus O that good man. The — William Faulkner

He acted like he didn't hear me. "He will let you down, because that's what he does. That's who he is."
For the rest of my life, I was going to remember those words. Everything Jeremiah said to me that day, our wedding day, I would remember. I would remember the words Jeremiah said and the way he looked at me with them. With pity, and with bitterness. I hated myself for being the one who made him bitter, because that was one thing he'd never been.
I reached up and laid my palm on his cheek. He could have pushed my hand away, he could have recoiled at my touch. He didn't. Just that one tiny thing told me what I needed to know - that Jere was still Jere and nothing could ever change that. — Jenny Han

When Peeta holds out his arms, I walk straight into them. It's the first time since they announced the Quarter Quell that he's offered me any sort of affection. He's been more like a very demanding trainer, always pushing, always insisting Haymitch and I run faster, eat more, know our enemy better. Lovers? Forget about that. He abandoned any pretense of even being my friend. I wrap my arms tightly around his neck before he can order me to do push-ups or something. Instead he pulls me in close and buries his face in my hair. Warmth radiates from the spot where his lips just touch my neck, slowly spreading through the rest of me. It feels so good, so impossibly good, that I know I will not be the first to let go.
And why should I? — Suzanne Collins

The indie kids, huh? You've got them at your school, too. That group with the cool-geek haircuts and the charity shop clothes and names from the fifties. Nice enough, never mean, but always the ones who end up being the Chosen One when the vampires come calling or when the alien queen needs the Source of All Light or something. They're too cool to ever, ever do anything like go to prom or listen to music other than jazz while reading poetry. They've always got some story going on that they're heroes of. The rest of us just have to live here, hovering around the edges, left out of it all, for the most part. — Patrick Ness

Jews, I know you're God's chosen people and the rest of us are just 'whatever', but when Israel behaves like a violent, psychopathic bully and someone mentions it, that doesn't make them anti-Semitic. — Marcus Brigstocke

I actually loved to dress like a boy, and I still kind of do and try to sneak boy's pieces into my wardrobe. I have Levi's boot cut jeans that actually might be from the boy's department, but I love them. Those jeans and flannel are my favorites. If I could choose anything to wear for the rest of my life, I'd just want a boy's outfit. — Analeigh Tipton

Oh Senor" said the niece. "Your grace should send them to be burned (books), just like all the rest, because it's very likely that my dear uncle, having been cured of the chivalric disease, will read these and want to become a shepherd and wander through the woods and meadows singing and playing and, what would be even worse, become a poet, and that, they say, is an incurable and contagious disease. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

I'm partial to telling all the sharks they're not as cool as they think they are, and that it's people like them who bankrupt the tooth fairy and don't leave any tooth money for the rest of us. Or we can make out some more. I'm planning on moaning, 'oh, Salty! You bad sea demon!' next time. Just so you're prepared."
Kat grins. "Who says we can't do both?"
"I knew I loved you." I lean in and kiss her. And then a shark swims by and I shake my fist at it and ask it where all my quarters are. — Chelsea M. Campbell

Epictetus told his students, when they'd quote some great thinker, to picture themselves observing the person having sex. It's funny, you should try it the next time someone intimidates you or makes you feel insecure. See them in your mind, grunting, groaning, and awkward in their private life - just like the rest of us. — Ryan Holiday

Telling me I'm pretty is nice and all, but if you really want to make my day, tell me I inspired you to read a book. Say you picked up a novel I've raved about and that you fell in love with it, too. Or tell me the time we spent reading aloud together was one of your favorite moments. Ask me to read to you, and beg for another chapter. This will fill me with indescribable joy and purpose.
And if you really want to make me speechless with wonder, tell me it was MY words and MY story you enjoyed. Tell me you shed tears over the things my characters went through, and that you're just a little bit in love with them, too. I might never recover. I will carry those words around in my heart for the rest of my life, like a talisman against all past and future criticisms.
That's how important stories are to me. — J.M. Richards

You better get over here with my car," Grandad says. "Before I call the cops and tell them you stole it." "Sorry," I say contritely. Then the rest of what he said sinks in and I laugh. "Wait, did you just threaten me with calling the police? Because that I'd like to see. — Holly Black

So why did poor artists originally hang around in cafes?"
"I don't know. Inspiration from the atmosphere."
"Ha! No, you've been tricked, too, just like the rest of us. Cafes didn't have inspirational atmosphere at first. That only came later, when you knew artists had been hanging around in them. — Arthur Phillips

I realized that I was alone, and might remain alone for the rest of my life. Even though I was only eight years old, it seemed like it was already too late to change and to prove to the other children that I was just like them. — Paulo Coelho

A word contains its opposite in itself. Take "good", for instance. If you have a word like "good", what need is there for a word like "bad"? "Ungood" will do just as well - better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of "good", what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like "excellent" and "splendid" and all the rest of them? "Plusgood" covers the meaning; or "doubleplusgood" if you want something stronger still. — George Orwell

What is your least favorite part of the male anatomy?" "Uh ... what?" "Come on." I nudged her shoulder. "You have to have a least favorite part." Marie stared at me for a beat then blinked rapidly. "Really? I just pour out my heart to you and ... ." "Balls," Ashley announced unceremoniously from her place on the floor. Elizabeth snickered. "Oh, my lord." Marie covered her face with her hands and shook her head. I ignored her and leaned closer to Ashley. "I know, right? I mean, shouldn't those things be on the inside?" Janie's thoughtfully distracted voice chimed in. "I feel like the rest of the male body makes a lot of sense. And then ... balls." "Yes!" "It makes me think maybe God is an alien or ran out of alluring parts before he got to the male reproductive system." "They never look nice; it's basically impossible. You can't dress them up, and I've seen a lot of balls in the ER. I've never seen a man's balls and thought to myself, Now that guy has a great set of testicles — Penny Reid

I drift off for a while. I don't know how long, but when I open my eyes, the Oscars are still on and Alex tells me that Sid has gone and this makes me a little sad. Whatever the four of us had is over. He is my daughter's boyfriend now, and I am a father. A widower. No pot, no cigarettes, no sleeping over. They'll have to find inventive ways to conduct their business, most likely in uncomfortable places, just like the rest of them. I let him and my old ways go. We all let him go, as well as who we were before this, and now it's really just the three of us. I glance over at the girls, taking a good look at what's left. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

He pulled her close and kissed her. Happiness and joy settled around them like a warm cloak. And gentleness spurred passion. His kiss deepened and a soft, low moan eased out of his throat.
He wiggled on the bed beneath her, letting her feel the resurgence of his passion inside her.
"I'm ready to do it again," he said plainly.
"You can't do it twice," she answered, giggling.
"Why not?"
"You just can't," Althea told him. "Men do it one time and then they rest up for a day or two."
"I think I'm rested up enough," he told her.
"Jesse, I know what I'm talking about," she said with confidence. "I was married for over two years. And I know all about it. You can't be ready to do it again."
He proved her wrong. — Pamela Morsi

From a distance,' he says, 'my car looks just like every other car on the freeway, and Sarah Byrnes looks just like the rest of us. And if she's going to get help, she'll get it from herself or she'll get it from us. Let me tell you why I brought this up. Because the other day when I saw how hard it was for Mobe to go to the hospital to see her, I was embarrassed that I didn't know her better, that I ever laughed at one joke about her. I was embarrassed that I let some kid go to school with me for twelve years and turned my back on pain that must be unbearable. I was embarrassed that I haven't found a way to include her somehow the way Mobe has.'
Jesus. I feel tears welling up, and I see them running down Ellerby's cheeks. Lemry better get a handle on this class before it turns into some kind of therapy group.
So,' Lemry says quietly, 'your subject will be the juxtaposition of man and God in the universe?'
Ellerby shakes his head. 'My subject will be shame. — Chris Crutcher

I am not depressed; my life is just shit. As a consequence of my not being depressed, I am not like them. You need to know this from the very off. You need to know I, Arch Fry, will not allow myself to be neatly pigeonholed, erroneously labelled or closed off in some tidy little box - one to be shelved away and conveniently forgotten about.
No, I am not depressed: NOT. DEPRESSED.
You see, I'm just not stuck in some deep unassailable chasm like all the rest, like all these other poor fuckers who've so readily accepted that noose of a word. — Tom Conrad

It wasn't about how she looked, which was pretty, even though she was always wearing the wrong clothes and those beat-up sneakers. It wasn't about what she said in class
usually something no one else would've thought of, and if they had, something they wouldn't have dared to say. It wasn't that she was different from all the other girls at Jackson. That was obvious.
It was that she made me realize how much I was just like the rest of them, even if I wanted to pretend I wasn't. — Kami Garcia

Kind of why I can't always go along with everyone's happy attitude all the time. Life sucks sometimes and most people don't get it. They think - well all of the people at this school anyway, they think everything is just handed to them. Real easy, ya know? Like, the day is never something you have to fight through.
I placed my hand on top of Tony's and let it rest there for a moment. What could I say? I was a death giver. Happy to do it. I had been so good at being dead. — Rebecca Maizel

As far as my characters doing what I want them to, I'm afraid I'm not a real writer like the rest of you because I can manage to force them into just about anything. One day I hope my characters lead me around by the nose, talking to me and yelling NO! Or YES! Whatever the case may be. However, until then, I'll keep railroading their asses. — Jessie Chandler

Have you told Eric and the rest of them that - "
"That I'm a vampire? No. It isn't the sort of thing you just drop into casual conversation."
"Maybe not, but they're your friends. They should know. And besides, they'll just think it makes you more of a rock god, like that vampire Lester."
"Lestat," Simon said. "That would be the vampire Lestat. And he's fictional. — Cassandra Clare

Somer reclines in her airplane seat, watching through the window as the glimmering lights of Mumbai recede into the darkness of night. In the seat next to her, Asha is already asleep, her head and pillow resting on Somer's lap, her feet in Krishnan's. They should both try to sleep as well, but she knows Krishnan, like her, is reluctant to disturb Asha. He extends his hand to Somer, and she takes it. They rest their interlocking hands on Asha's sleeping body between them, just as they did the first time they made this journey. — Shilpi Somaya Gowda

While I was fighting, I heard other people speaking in the name of freedom, and the more they defended this unique right, the more enslaved they seemed to be to their parents' wishes, to a marriage in which they had promised to stay with the other person "for the rest of their lives," to the bathroom scales, to their diet, to half-finished projects, to lovers to whom they were incapable of saying "No" or "It's over," to weekends when they were obliged to have lunch with people they didn't even like. Slaves to luxury, to the appearance of luxury, to the appearance of the appearance of luxury. Slaves to a life they had not chosen, but which they had decided to live because someone had managed to convince them that it was all for the best. And so their identical days and nights passed, days and nights in which adventure was just a word in a book or an image on the television that was always on, and whenever a door opened, they would say: "I'm not interested. I'm not in the mood. — Paulo Coelho

Trust me on this. Whatever Prez wants, he'll get. You take one look at him and you're gonna be a goner just like the rest of them. But for now, my brother just wants a dance- Pyro — Crystal Spears

Everybody in this academy, Shadowhunters and mundanes, people with the Sight and without it, every one of them is looking to be a hero. We are all hoping for it, and trying for it, and soon we will be bleeding for it. You're just like the rest of us, Si. Except there's one thing about you that's different: We all want to be heroes, but you know you can be one. You know in another life, in an alternate universe, however you want to think of it, you were a hero. You can be one again. Maybe not the same hero, but you have it in you to make the right choices, to make the big sacrifices. That's a lot of pressure. But it's a lot more hope than any of the rest of us have. Think about it that way, Simon Lewis, and I think you're pretty lucky. — Cassandra Clare

My mother says that when Mrs. Rowley is mean, which is generally the case, it is really because she is just unhappy, and who could blame her with a husband like that ... She says this is really the only reason people are ever mean
they have something hurting inside of them, a claw of unhappiness scratching at their hearts, and it hurts them so much that sometimes they have to push it right out of their mouths to scratch someone else, just to give themselves a rest, a moment of relief. — Laura Moriarty

Most of the members of the convent were old-fashioned Satanists, like their parents and grandparents before them. They'd been brought up to it, and weren't, when you got right down to it, particularly evil. Human beings mostly aren't. They just get carried away by new ideas, like dressing up in jackboots and shooting people, or dressing up in white sheets and lynching people, or dressing up in tie-dye jeans and playing guitars at people. Offer people a new creed with a costume and their hearts and minds will follow. Anyway, being brought up as a Satanist tended to take the edge off it. It was something you did on Saturday nights.
And the rest of the time you simply got on with life as best you could, just like everyone else. — Terry Pratchett

Over and over, I ran at the sea, beating it until I was so tired I could barely stand. And then the next time I fell down, I just lay there and let the waves wash over me, and I wondered what would happen if I stopped trying to get back up. Just let my body go. Would I be washed out to sea? The sharks would eat my limbs and organs. Little fish would feed on my fingertips. My beautiful white bones would fall to the bottom of the ocean, where anemones would grow upon them like flowers. Pearls would rest in my eye sockets. — Ruth Ozeki

At last she interrupted with a harsh rattle of laughter. "Oh, yes, I like this book! Crazy hopes of a glamorous, rich, colorful life and then abduction, rape, slavery. That book, at least, is true."
"It is not true. It is a male sex fantasy."
"And life for most women is just that, a performance in a male sex fantasy. The stupid ones don't notice, they've been trained for it since they were babies, so they're happy. And of course the writer of that book made things obvious by speeding them up. What happens to the Blandish girl in a few weeks takes a lifetime for the rest of us. — Alasdair Gray

For the moment, the jazz is playing; there is no melody, just notes, a myriad tiny tremors. The notes know no rest, an inflexibleorder gives birth to them then destroys them, without ever leaving them the chance to recuperate and exist for themselves ... I would like to hole them back, but I know that, if I succeeded in stooping one, there would only remain in may hand a corrupt and languishing sound. I must accept their death; I must even want that death: I know of few more bitter or intense impressions. — Jean-Paul Sartre

He knew that people were staring at him. He looked different. Even different from other Erasers. He wasn't as - seamless. He didn't look as human as the rest of them did when they weren't morphed. He kind of looked morphy all the time. He hadn't seen his plain real face in - a long time.
"I know who you are."
Ari almost jumped - he hadn't noticed the boy slide onto the bench next to him.
He frowned down at the small, open face. "What?" he growled. This was when the little boy would get scared and probably turn and run. It always happened.
The boy smiled. "1 know who you are," he said, pointing at Ari happily.
Ari just snarled at him.
The boy wiggled with excitement. "You're Wolverine!"
Ari stared at him.
"You look awesome, dude," said the boy. "You're totally my favorite. You're the strongest one of all of them and the coolest too. I wish 1 was like you."
Ari almost gagged. No one had ever, ever said anything like that to him. — James Patterson

...you look the truth in the face - not the truth that has fangs and fur but the hard truth about yourself, that you're just as dangerous as the beings the rest of the people fear but you can't afford to be as honest about it. You can't tell those people that you'll make deals with what they fear in order to keep them sage from the monsters who look just like them. — Anne Bishop

Overcomers are not perfect. They fail just like the rest of us, but they keep on getting up, keep on repenting, and keep on being willing to surrender themselves to Christ and letting Him, who is the only perfect One, work through them. — Nancy Missler

The whole underneath of Paris was an ant nest, Metro tunnels, sewer shafts, catacombs, mines, cemeteries. She'd been down in the city of bones where skulls and femurs rose in yellowing walls. Right down there, win the square before them. through a dinky little entrance, were the Roman ruins like honeycomb. The trains went under the river. There were tunnels people had forgotten about. It was a wonder Paris stood up at all. The bit you saw was only half of it. Her skin burned, thinking of it. The Hunchback knew. Up here in the tower of Notre Dame he saw how it was. Now and then, with the bells rattling his bones, he saw it like God saw it
inside, outside, above and under
just for a moment. The rest of the time he went back to hurting and waiting like Scully out there crying in the wind. — Tim Winton

With all these occurrences of death facing me, I thought about issues of freedom. If government projects the idea that we, as people inhabiting this particular land mass, have freedom, then for the rest of our lives we will go out and find what appear to be the boundaries and smack against them like a heart against the rib cage. If we reveal boundaries in the course of our movements, then we will expose the inherent lie in the use of the word freedom. I want to keep breathing and moving until I arrive at a place where motion and strength and relief intersect. I don't know what's ahead of me in the course of my life and this civilization. I just don't feel I have reached the necessary things inside my history that would ease the pressure in my skull and in my future and in my present. It is exhausting, living in a population where people don't speak up if what they witness doesn't directly threaten them. — David Wojnarowicz

I used to think that the simple good news of Christianity was just for non-Christians. Jesus came to save sinners, but once someone became saved, I figured they'd move on to the advanced material. I saw the gospel as Christianity 101 and the rest of the Christian life as graduate-level courses. But I've come to realize that the gospel isn't the first step in a stairway of truths but more like the hub in a wheel of truth. Once God rescues sinners, He doesn't give them something else to think about or do, He simply gives them more gospel, grace upon grace. All good theology is an exposition of the gospel. — Tullian Tchividjian

Most people live their entire lives with their clothes on, and even if they wanted to, couldn't take them off. Then there are those who cannot put them on. They are the ones who live their lives not just as people but as examples of people. They are destined to expose every part of themselves, so the rest of us can know what it means to be a human.
Most people lead their private lives. They have been given a natural modesty that feels to them like morality, but it's not
it's luck. They shake their heads at the people with their clothes off rather than learning about human life from their example, but they are wrong to act so superior. Some of us have to be naked, so the rest can be exempted by fate. — Sheila Heti

If you want to be a poet, there is no greater mistake you could make than to publish whatever work you have as soon as you can. Why? Well because your debut is the only shot you have. It should be made of dynamite. There is nothing worse - believe me - than to have an oeuvre with a mediocre debut, and likely you wont get that far at all, and you will wait for reviews that wont come, just a horrible idea really. I don't need tell this to the rare and extreme talents - they are like a force of nature - but i am talking to the rest of you. People who love their youth don't make it easy on them - making it easy for them is a way to destroy them, But the representatives of my generation have no clue,or idea about Bildung at all, which is why I am at odds with most of them. — Martijn Benders

This done, they entered the grotto, of which the floor was strewn with bones, the guns were carefully loaded, in case of a sudden attack, they had supper, and then just before they lay down to rest, the heap of wood piled at the entrance was set fire to. Immediately, a regular explosion, or rather a series of reports, broke the silence! The noise was caused by the bamboos, which, as the flames reached them, exploded like fireworks. The noise was enough to terrify even the boldest of wild beasts. — Jules Verne

The verbal patterns and the patterns of behavior we present to children in these lighthearted confections are likely to influence them for the rest of their lives. These aesthetic impressions, just like the moral teachings of early childhood, remain indelible. — Esphyr Slobodkina

My best friend Linda is leaving her husband just because he is unfaithful to her. That is no reason to leave the person. I feel like after that, you should stay with them and make sure that the rest of their life is sheer hell. — Roseanne Barr

What if I ask you to give me everything, Shaw? What if I want it all? Won't that make me just like all the rest of them?"
She made a noise in her throat and then broke into a smile that nearly killed me on the spot. She was just so lovely and pure. "No, because you don't have to ask for anything. All of it is already yours. You're the only one I've ever wanted to give it to. — Jay Crownover

If someone we love dies, normally the experience might create misery for the rest of your life. But the Kundalini can be released so we can see that there is no death, that the person has just gone on like we all must. We will be following them soon. — Frederick Lenz

The government regulates them, or chooses not to, approves or blocks their mergers and acquisitions, and sets their tax policies (often turning a blind eye to the billions parked in offshore tax havens). This is why tech companies, like the rest of corporate America, inundate Washington with lobbyists and quietly pour hundreds of millions of dollars in contributions into the political system. Now they're gaining the wherewithal to fine-tune our political behavior - and with it the shape of American government - just by tweaking their algorithms. — Cathy O'Neil

As a young woman, I schooled my romantic sensibilities on the most impossible examples. "Romeo and Juliet" is one of my favorites. I once plotted out the length of time it took them to conjoin. Four days. Four days for one of the world's greatest stories of love and marriage to play out. I do not see how that is an example for the rest of us. If every marriage on record lasted only four days, then there wouldn't be a word for infidelity. There wouldn't be a word for divorce. There wouldn't be time for anything but sex and adoration. Sounds like a charming recipe. I just have trouble practicing it in extension. — Wendy Plump

And now I realize Lindsay's not fearless. She's terrified. She's terrified that people will find out she's faking, bullshitting her way through life, pretending to have everything together when really she's just floundering like the rest of us. Lindsay, who will bite at you if you even look in her direction the wrong way, like on of those tiny attack dogs that are always barking and snapping in the air before they're jerked backward on the chains that keep them in one place. — Lauren Oliver

The truth was, she hadn't felt much like a cop in a long time. That was a place she never thought she'd get to. Be just like the rest of them after ten years. Angry and drunk. Numb to pretty much everything. That wasn't supposed to be her. But she now knew what they all knew: that the very thing you need to stay strong and keep your head, that daily and deliberate apathy you practice like meditation, is the very thing that, in the end, robs you of your desire to get in the car and catch bad guys. Nobody tells you that, once you put on the armor, you can never take it off. — Scott Frank

While you are sucking her, take two fingers and slide them inside her. Feel how the blood in her skin is hot against your fingers as you do. Feel the weight of her pussy. Reach up inside her, to the spot that would be the back of her clit, and you will find a spot right there that is soft, like the top of a baby's head. Rest your fingers there. You do not need to move. Just press very gently. Notice how the pressure pushes her clit from behind, how it pops forward into your mouth. Suck it as if you were sucking all the juices out of it. — Nicole Daedone

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, [ ... ] and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attilla and a pack of other lovers with queer names [ ... ] I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest ... — Sylvia Plath

Well, he replied, finally letting my hand go so that he could gesticulate with his; you don your khakis, schlep off to some jungle, hang out with the natives, fish and hunt with them, shiver from their fevers, drink strange brew fermented in their virgins' mouths, and all the rest; then, after about a year, they lug your bales and cases down to the small jetty that connects their tiny world to the big one that they kind of know exists, but only as an abstract concept, like adultery for children; and, waving with big, gap-toothed smiles, they send you back to your study - where, khakis swapped for cotton shirt and tie, saliva-liquor for the Twinings, tisane or iced Scotch your housekeeper purveys you on a tray, you write the book: that's what I mean, he said. Not just a book: the fucking Book. You write the Book on them. Sum their tribe up. Speak its secret name. — Tom McCarthy

If I should throw down a thousand beans at random upon a table, I could doubtless, by eliminating a sufficient number of them, leave the rest in almost any geometrical pattern you might propose to me, and you might then say that that pattern was the thing prefigured beforehand, and that the other beans were mere irrelevance and packing material. Our dealings with Nature are just like this. — William James