Kept It Real Quotes & Sayings

Last night I had a nightmare. That me and someone I cared a lot about were playing a game in a pool. We'd take turns submerging ourselves under the water while the other person kept time.
At one point it felt like the other person might be drowning, so I jumped in to pull her up. She smiled and laughed and pushed me away. Then she turned blue and died. I could not resuciate her.
I woke up at 3, sweating, in shock and pain. Frightened. But then I realized it was only a dream. But then I realized it was just like real life ...
Sometimes people we care about play risky games and then don't want our help. There is nothing we can do for them, no matter how much we care ... — Jose N. Harris

When I first discovered the moon, he said, I gave it a different name. But everyone kept calling it the moon. The real name never caught on. — Brian Andreas

In reality, Lacy realized, this dividing line between her and Peter had been
there for years. If you kept your chin up, you might even be able to convince yourself there was
nothing separating you. It was only when you tried to cross it, like now, that you understood how
real a barrier it could be. — Jodi Picoult

There is no privacy that cannot be penetrated. No secret can be kept in the civilized world. Society is a masked ball where everyone hides his real character, then reveals it by hiding — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Stanley forced a smile to his lips at the memory of the onesided romance; it was silly, after all, a stupid childhood crush. Who'd fall in love with a fictional character? That was the kind of thing you laughed about as an adult. Or at least Harriet had thought so. He couldn't quite do it, though. Couldn't quite see it as a joke. It had felt too real, too raw and wild and fierce, for him to
dismiss it even now. It was love, of a sort, stunted and unformed as it was. For a time, it had kept him sane. — Amelia Mangan

He would have been perfectly at home living in a cave and dragging his woman around by the hair when he wasn't busy throwing rocks at his enemies. He was the sort of man whose response is only completely predictable when he is confronted with superior strength and authority. Confrontations of this kind didn't happen often, but when they did, he bowed to the superior force almost at once. Although he did not know it, it was this characteristic which had kept him from simply running away from the Flying Corson Brothers in the first place. In men like Ace Merrill, the only urge stronger than the urge to dominate is the need to roll over and humbly expose the undefended neck when the real leader of the pack puts in an appearance. — Stephen King

I sometimes rented a car and drove from event to event in Europe; a road trip was a great escape from the day-to-day anxieties of playing, and it kept me from getting too lost in the tournament fun house with its courtesy cars, caterers, locker room attendants, and such - all amenities that create a firewall between players and what you might call the 'real' world - you know, where you may have to read a map, ask a question in a foreign tongue, find a restaurant and read the menu posted in the window to make sure you're not about to walk into a joint that serves only exotic reptile meat. — Patrick McEnroe

Maybe real-life Mom didn't vacuum the house flawlessly arrayed in pearls and a pleated shirt like the mother on leave it to beaver. Maybe she flirted with the milkman or waited for the kids to go to bed so she could hammer back a couple of mugs of vodka pretending it was tea. But she was there to greet us when we came home from school in the afternoon. She made us dinner, kept watch on us through the kitchen window, put Band-Aids on our scrapes and bruises.
She was Mom and that was no small thing. — Andrew Klavan

Her mother said that three great powers kept the universe going. The first and the strongest was God. Each of the two additional powers was as strong as the other: love and imagination. OF the three, God and love were always good. Imagination, however, could be good or bad. Mozart imagined great music into existence. Hitler imagined death camps and built them. Imagination was so powerful that you had to be careful because you could imagine things into existence that you might regret, Everything in the universe was an idea before it was real. — Dean Koontz

When Christ said: I was hungry and you fed me, he didn't mean only the hunger for bread and for food; he also meant the hunger to be loved. Jesus himself experienced this loneliness. He came amongst his own and his own received him not, and it hurt him then and it has kept on hurting him. The same hunger, the same loneliness, the same having no one to be accepted by and to be loved and wanted by. Every human being in that case resembles Christ in his loneliness; and that is the hardest part, that's real hunger. — Mother Teresa

I was selling real estate at the time, in Pacific Palisades, California, so imagine that: getting a note and a bottle of champagne from Jack Nicholson when I'd barely made a dime as an actor. It really kept me going. — Kurt Fuller

But the truly brilliant geocachers?"
"Yeah?" he says. "What about us?"
"They know it by its real name. Terra Firma."
"Terra Firma," he repeats. At last, he slips his backpack off his shoulder. I know what he's looking for.
I take a breath. "You don't need your GPS for this cache."
His eyes don't move off mine; he's watching me so carefully. "You don't, huh?"
"Nope," I say.
Some things are meant to be kept - what you learn from experiences good or bad, smiles from an orphaned girl, a boy who is your compass pointing to your True North. So I look at Jacob full in the face with nothing obscuring him. Or me. And then I step closer to him. And closer. And closer yet.
"Here I am," I tell him. "Here I am. — Justina Chen

If for no other reason she hated the Yankees because they kept her from having real coffee with sugar and thick cream in it. — Margaret Mitchell

Religion has ever filled the mind of man with darkness, and kept him in ignorance of his real duties and true interests. It is only by dispelling the clouds and phantoms of Religion, that we shall discover Truth, Reason, and Morality. Religion diverts us from the causes of evils, and from the remedies which nature prescribes; far from curing, it only aggravates, multiplies, and perpetuates them. — Paul Henri Thiry D'Holbach

Once in a while, though, he went on binges. He would sneak into bookstores or libraries, lurk around the racks where the little magazines were kept; sometimes he'd buy one. Dead poets were his business, living ones his vice. Much of the stuff he read was crap and he knew it; still, it gave him an odd lift. Then there would be the occasional real poem, and he would catch his breath. Nothing else could drop him through space like that, then catch him; nothing else could peel him open. — Margaret Atwood

The world will not be free of me who will establish religion secretly and openly in order that the proofs of God are not obliterated. They will be few in number but they will be great in honour. They will be lost openly, but their pictures will reign in hearts. God will preserve His religion through them. They will leave the religion for their successors and they will plant it in the hearts of the young. The real nature of knowledge will be disclosed with their help. They will get good news from the life of sure faith. They will make easy what the rich think difficult and they will make clear what the heedless think obscure. They will keep company with the world witht their bodies, but their souls will be kept hanging in lofty places. They are servants of God among His people, His trustees and deputies on the earth. Then he wept and said: How eager I am to meet them. — Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali

It wasn't surprising and it wasn't quite real. I kept thinking it was a bizarre mistake or a made-up story, until I called her mother, who told me how beautifully made up Marine's corpse was and urged me to see her at the funeral chapel. This with her cigarettes still in my ashtray, her hair still in my brush, her clothes still in my car, her voice still in my ears, so soon after we'd been looking at ourselves together in my mirror and she the more lithe, the more fluidly beautiful of the two — Rebecca Solnit

Of those of us who comprise the real clan of the book, who read not to judge the reading of others but to take the measure of ourselves. Of those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about jewelers. The silence about this was odd, both because there are so many of us and because we are what the world of books is really about. We are the people who once waited for the newest installment of Dickens's latest novel and who kept battered copies of Catcher in the Rye in our back pockets and backpacks. We are the ones who saw to it that Pride and Prejudice never went out of print. — Anna Quindlen

... I kept trying to run away. And I almost did. But it seems that reality compels you to live properly when you live in the real world. — Kenzaburo Oe

I focus on my favorite daydream, the one where I return from London at the end of the summer and am all glamorous and drop-dead gorgeous and every girl in my school is completely jealous when Quinn McKeyan asks me to Fall Homecoming because he can't resist my charm.
Hey, it's my daydream. I can dream what I want to.
The thing is, Quinn's face keeps getting replaced in my head by Dante's.
Since I've had a mad crush on Quinn from the time we started kindergarten all the way through our junior year last year, that's saying something.
Every daydream I've had for eleven years has been of him. I'm a very loyal daydreamer. And I suddenly feel like I'm cheating on my imaginary boyfriend, a boy who happens to be real, but who has been dating my best friend Becca for the past two years. And no. Becca has no idea that I'm secretly in love with her boyfriend. It's the one secret that I've kept from her. — Courtney Cole

[ ... ] a given text may seem fictional or actual depending on the context in which we encounter it. The same is true for oral performances. [Thomas] Pavel takes the example of a theatrical scene wherein an actor mimics the gestures of a priest and pretends to bless the audience. There is nothing effective about this blessing in most contexts, but it can become effective in certain circumstances: imagine, for example, a dictatorship in which religion is banned and in which a theater audience, having kept the old faith, experiences the actor's gesture as authentic, transforming this fictional scene in a scene of real life. — Pierre Bayard

I just kept it real and had the freedom to do what I want. It's not designed for any age group. It's not made for radio. There are no edits. The whole album contains explicit lyrics but that's because you need it. — Vanilla Ice

The film kept me from working as a secretary. It was a real stroke of luck. A miracle. — Victoria Abril

The philosophy of Atheism represents a concept of life without any metaphysical Beyond or Divine Regulator. It is the concept of an actual, real world with its liberating, expanding and beautifying possibilities, as against an unreal world, which, with its spirits, oracles, and mean contentment has kept humanity in helpless degradation. — Emma Goldman

Eager watch was
kept for the first appearance of the legendary creature in the village, and it may be said that as far as
appearances went Basil Blake was all that could be asked for. Little by little, however, the real facts
leaked out. Basil Blake was not a film star, not even a film actor. He was a very junior person, rejoicing
in the position of about fifteenth in the list of those responsible for set decorations at Lenville Studios,
headquarters of British New Era Films. The village maidens lost interest and the ruling class of censorious
spinsters took exception to Basil Blake's way of life. — Agatha Christie

Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'
'Does it hurt?' asked the Rabbit.
'Sometimes,' said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. 'When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.'
'Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,' he asked, 'or bit by bit?'
'It doesn't happen all at once,' said the Skin Horse. 'You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand. — Margery Williams

Abe's face came back into focus. "Greetings, Zmey," I said weakly. Somehow, him being here didn't surprise me. "Nice of you to slither on in." He shook his head, wearing a rueful smile.
"I think you've outdone me when it comes to sneaking around dark corners. I thought you were on your way back to Montana."
"Next time, make sure you write a few more details into your bargains. Or just pack me up and send me back to the U. S. For real."
"Oh," he said, "that's exactly what I intend to do."
He kept smiling as he said it, but somehow, I had a feeling he wasn't joking. — Richelle Mead

Katie James kept waking up. It was nothing unusual; it was just how she was. A noise here, an internal thought there, a nightmare that seemed so real she could touch it, kept hammering away. She finally rose, got some water and settled in an armchair, flicked on a reading light, and picked up the latest Lee Child thriller. — David Baldacci

I just kept moodling. I came up with hundreds of ideas. Most of them were too small, but I kept at it and after a while I moodled up a few big ones. With some tinkering, I turned those big ideas into real possibilities and from there I created my masterpiece..." -Dill — Paige Britt

Then do it. Do this thing with me. For real." For keeps. That wish he kept tight inside his chest, not ready to trust it with breath yet. — Annabeth Albert

Weeks later, she said: 'The guy was about middle-aged. All his things right there in his yard. No lie. We got real pissed and danced. In the driveway. Oh, my God. Don't laugh. He played us these records. Look at this record-player. The old guy gave it to us. And all these crappy records. Will you look at this shit?'
She kept talking. She told everyone. There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying — Raymond Carver

Any closer would unravel her mystery, the very thing which made her so truly beautiful ... It was her mystery that he adored. He was in love with everything that he did not know about her ... No real sexual encounter could ever match the secret one that he could nurture in his imagination ... No living flesh could ever be the erotic equal of flesh kept private, untouchable and unknowable — Ben Elton

No one wants to carry someone when they're heavy from life. I read a book about that once. A bunch of drivel about two people who kept coming back to each other. The lead male says that to the girl he keeps letting get away. I had to put the book down. No one wants to carry someone when they're heavy from life. It's a concept smart authors feed to their readers. It's slow poison; you make them believe it's real, and it keeps them coming back for more. Love is cocaine. — Tarryn Fisher

The streets respect me because I kept it real with me. You gotta be real with yourself, and the streets recognize game. — Mary J. Blige

I'd long since learned that no difference in viewpoint should ever be allowed to cause the least break in love. Indeed, it cannot, if it's real love.
... But relationships can be kept intact without compromising one's own beliefs. And if we do not keep them intact, but give up and allow the chasm, we're breaking the second greatest commandment. — Catherine Marshall

I have dreamed of that song, of the strange words to that simple rhyme-song, and on several occasions I have understood what she was saying, in my dreams. In those dreams I spoke that language too, the first language, and I had dominion over the nature of all that was real. In my dream, it was the tongue of what is, and anything spoken in it becomes real, because nothing said in that language can be a lie. It is the most basic building brick of everything. In my dreams I have used that language to heal the sick and to fly; once I dreamed I kept a perfect little bed-and-breakfast by the seaside, and to everyone who came to stay with me I would say, in that tongue, "Be whole," and they would become whole, not be broken people, not any longer, because I had spoken the language of shaping. And, — Neil Gaiman

The hermeneutic consciousness, which must be awakened and kept awake, recognized that in the age of science philosophy's claim of superiority has something chimerical and unreal about it. But though the will of man is more than ever intensifying its criticism of what has gone before to the point of becoming utopian or eschatological consciousness, the hermeneutic consciousness seeks to confront that will with something of the truth of remembrance: with what is still and ever again real. — Hans-Georg Gadamer

Marxism rejected the family and the state, but in practice it kept these institutions. Every pure religion disapproved of man's worrying about this world, but as the ideology of living people, it accepted the struggle for social justice and a better world. Marxism has had to accept some degree of individual freedom and religion some use of force. It is obvious in real life that man cannot live according to a consistent philosophy. — Alija Izetbegovic

The chords in 'Light My Fire' are based on [John] Coltrane's version of this song. He just solos over A minor and B minor, which is exactly what we did. Coltrane had played with Miles on Kind of Blue and took the idea of modal soloing over one or two chords farther out than anybody. He was a real pioneer - he just kept evolving, going where no one had ever gone. He could always attain this state of ecstasy when he played. Live, there was so much energy, you couldn't believe it. He would play for hours. It was indescribable. — Robby Krieger

Secrets have power. And that power diminishes when they are shared, so they are best kept and kept well. Sharing secrets, real secrets, important ones, with even one other person, will change them. Writing them down is worse, because who can tell how many eyes might see them inscribed on paper, no matter how careful you might be with it. So it's really best to keep your secrets when you have them, for their own good, as well as yours. — Erin Morgenstern

It's the unbroken calm, both within and without, that is getting to her. Real events happen to people, she thinks, why not me? And then there's her conviction that they are happening, all around her, but that they're being kept from her. — Margaret Atwood

I don't have much time for stories," Vin said.
"Seems that fewer and fewer people do, these days." A canopy kept off the ash, but he seemed unconcerned about the mists. "It makes me wonder what is so alluring about the real world that gives them all such a fetish for it. It's not a very nice place these days. — Brandon Sanderson

For kids stuck in small towns everywhere who feel like you'll never escape, I hear you. We are all connected. We're all in this together. You are not alone.
No matter what happens, never *ever* give up.
Happiness is not limited. There's enough for everyone. You can start right now, today, to move toward a happier life. Your life is shaped by your choices. Make ones that will help you get where you want to go.
Find your place to belong. It may not be a physical place. At least, not yet. Maybe your place is somewhere you let your imagination take you. Maybe it's your vision of the way your ideal life will be.
Eventually, you'll find a real place that feels like home. Your whole world will open up in ways you kept believing were possible. And you'll be so happy you held on long enough to make it there.
So let's do this thing. Let's own what makes up unique. Let's refuse to allow haters to stop us from moving forward. Let's turn our dreams into reality.
Starting now. — Susane Colasanti

Soon our culture's oldest dreams will be made real. Even the thought of sending a kind of flying craft to the moon is no longer nothing more than a child's fantasy. At this moment in the cities below us, the first mechanical men are being constructed that will have the capability to pilot the ship on its maiden voyage. But no one has asked if this dream we've had for so long will lose its value once it's realized. What will happen when those mechanical men step out of their ship and onto the surface of this moon, which has served humanity for thousands of years as our principal icon of love and madness? When they touch their hands to the ground and perform their relentless analyses and find no measurable miracles, but a dead gray world of rocks and dust? When they discover that it was the strength of millions of boyhood daydreams that kept the moon aloft, and that without them that murdered world will fall, spiraling slowly down and crashing into the open sea? — Dexter Palmer

The first building she reached appeared to be an old barn. Only one young guard stood before its bolted door, staring at her with wide eyes, holding up his sword in defense, She heated his sword and he dropped it, his expression barely changing, as if he had been expecting that. She held up her two swords to his throat, but they were two heavy, so she dropped one and held the other with both hands. "Where are the two Bayern boys kept?" The soldier shook his head. BURN HIM, prompted the fire. The excitement of burning was simmering in her, heating her up for more action. — Shannon Hale

I have found that hesitation, more than anything, has been the invisible hitch that has kept me from joy. I've found that the moment with all its meaning
often moves on by the time I've reconsidered whether or not to enter it. I am not saying we should always be impulsive. More to the point, I have discovered, again and again, that I
usually know what I need to do but just deny it, and it is this small hesitation, this small resistance to enter what is real, that makes life feel neutral or out of reach. — Mark Nepo

New York was packed with writers, real writers, because there were magazines, real magazines, loads of them. This was back when the Internet was still some exotic pet kept in the corner of the publishing world
throw some kibble at it, watch it dance on its little leash, oh quite cute, it definitely won't kill us in the night. — Gillian Flynn

It seemed like a mistake. And mistakes ought to be rectified, only this one couldn't be. Between the way things used to be and the way they were now was a void that couldn't be crossed. I had to find an explanation other than the real one, which was that we were no more immune to misfortune than anybody else, and the idea that kept recurring to me...was that I had inadvertently walked through a door that I shouldn't have gone through and couldn't get back to the place I hadn't meant to leave. Actually, it was other way round: I hadn't gone anywhere and nothing was changed, so far as the roof over our heads was concerned, it was just that she was in the cemetery. — William Maxwell

I kept wishing with real regret that I were capable of living in such continued simplicity. But I am not. Sometimes I honestly want to live in a plain room with a narrow bed, a chair, a table. But then I would need a bookcase. I would see a poster I must put on the wall. I would pick up a shell here, a bowl or vase there, another poster, enough books for two bookcases, a soft rug someone might give me--and where would the first plainness be? I cannot fight too hard against it, but I regret it. — M.F.K. Fisher

I want to be remembered as a person who kept it real, who did what he wanted to do, but never did nothing stupid and never tried to offend nobody else. I'm always being myself. — Edgerrin James

Look at your heart! It tells the story of why you were made. It is not perfect in shape and contour, like a Valentine Heart. There seems to be a small piece missing out of the side of every human heart. That may be to symbolize a piece that was torn out of the Heart of Christ which embraced all humanity on the Cross. But I think the real meaning is that when God made your human heart, He found it so good and so lovable that He kept a small sample of it in heaven. He sent the rest of it into this world to enjoy His gifts, and to use them as stepping stones back to Him, but to be ever mindful that you can never love anything in this world with your whole heart because you have not a whole heart with which to love. In order to love anyone with your whole heart, in order to be really peaceful, in order to be really wholehearted, you must go back again to God to recover the piece He has been keeping for — Fulton J. Sheen

To reclaim a real political agency means first of all accepting our insertion at the level of desire in the remorseless meat-grinder of Capital. What is being disavowed in the abjection of evil and ignorance onto fantasmatic Others is our own complicity in planetary networks of oppression. What needs to be kept in mind is both that capitalism is a hyper-abstract impersonal structure and that it would be nothing without our co-operation. The most Gothic description of Capital is also the most accurate. Capital is an abstract parasite, an insatiable vampire and zombie-maker; but the living flesh it converts into dead labor is ours, and the zombies it makes are us. There is a sense in which it simply is the case that the political elite are our servants; the miserable service they provide from us is to launder our libidos, to obligingly re-present for us our disavowed desires as if they had nothing to do with us. The — Mark Fisher

It was hard to have a good crisis when real life kept asking to be lived. — Charlaine Harris

No wonder, he thought, that the panhandle people were a godly lot, for they lived in sudden, violent atmospheres. Weather kept them humble.
... it was real muggy earlier, hot enough to cook a bear. Anyway, you get used a rapid weather change. — Annie Proulx

Four hundred forty-six," Cole whispered.
"What?" she asked.
He kept his head down in what seemed to be a prayer. "He counts. You've smiled at him four hundred and forty-six times as of a few minutes ago. He announces the number every time I see him."
"I'm ashamed to admit that I didn't think you were real. Considering my line of work, I should have more faith in humanity." Cole shook his head. "I think it was smile two hundred eighty-six that drove me the most crazy. It was the night train. Blake was so sick, feverish. Honestly, I was considering taking him to the hospital. But no. He didn't want to miss a smile. He wouldn't even let me drive him. Blake walked the whole way in the pouring rain for number two eighty-six. — Debra Anastasia

Empirically speaking, we are made from star stuff. Why aren't we talking more about that? Materials never leave this world. They just keep recycling, recombining. That's what you kept telling me when we met
that in a real, material sense, what is made from where. I didn't have a clue what you were talking about, but I could see you burned for it. I wanted to be near that burning. I still don't understand, but at least now my fingers ride the lip. — Maggie Nelson

Having dealt with a lot of real firefighters, I know there are a lot of guys who, for lack of a better term, become addicted to the grief because it has kept them connected to these guys that they felt responsible for having lost. — Denis Leary

Then the silence came back, that awful silence that seemed to just take over.
In that silence I kept hearing what I had said
heard it repeating itself over and over again like a stuck record. I wanted it to stop. I didn't want to say things like that anymore. I was sick of that kind of lying. I wished I could say something real.
But the silence was too big. — Avi

Then she laughed for real, and put her hands around my neck. 'I am never, ever going to make things easy for you Seaweed Brain. Get used to it.'
When she kissed me, I had the feeling my brain was melting right through my body.
I could've stayed that way forever, except a voice behind us growled, 'Well it's about time!'
Suddenly the pavilion was filled with torchlight and campers. Clarisse led the way as the eavesdroppers charged and hoisted us both onto their shoulders.
'Oh, come on!' I complained. 'Is there no privacy?'
'The lovebirds need to cool off!' Clarisse said with glee.
'The canoe lake!' Conner Stoll shouted.
With a huge cheer, they carried us down the hill, but they kept us close enough to hold hands. Annabeth was laughing, and I couldn't help laughing too, even though my face was completely red.
We held hands right up to the moment they dumped us in the water. — Rick Riordan

Jesus always kept it real: He always responded in a way that led one to the end of ones self and presented one with a clear choice: Will I walk away feeling challenged or will I walk with Him being changed. — R. Alan Woods

I kept thinking about the uneven quality of time--the way it was almost always so empty, and then with no warning came a few days that felt so dense and alive and real that it seemed indisputable that that was what life was, that its real nature had finally been revealed. But then time passed and unthinkably grew dead again, and it turned out that that fullness had been an aberration and might never come back. — Elif Batuman

Miss Millick wondered just what had happened to Mr. Wran. He kept making the strangest remarks when she took dictation. Just this morning he had quickly turned around and asked, "Have you ever seen a ghost, Miss Millick?" And she had tittered nervously and replied, "When I was a girl there was a thing in white that used to come out of the closet in the attic bedroom when you slept there, and moan. Of course it was just my imagination. I was frightened of lots of things." And he had said, "I don't mean that traditional kind of ghost. I mean a ghost from the world today, with the soot of the factories in its face and the pounding of machinery in its soul. The kind that would haunt coal yards and slip around at night through deserted office buildings like this one. A real ghost. Not something out of books." And she hadn't known what to say. ("Smoke Ghost") — Fritz Leiber

He knew some fear should be respected, as it can keep you out of real
danger. But he realized most of his fears were irrational and had kept him
from changing when he needed to. — Spencer Johnson

Like most others, I was a seeker, a mover, a malcontent, and at times a stupid hell-raiser. I was never idle long enough to do much thinking, but I felt somehow that some of us were making real progress, that we had taken an honest road, and that the best of us would inevitably make it over the top. At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles - a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other - that kept me going. — Hunter S. Thompson

The much-maligned idle rich have received a bad rap: They have maintained their wealth while many There is scarcely an instance of a man who has made a fortune by speculation and kept it. Andrew Carnegie of the energetic rich, aggressive real estate operators, corporate acquirers, oil drillers, etc. have their fortunes disappear. — Warren Buffett

It's more real to me here than if I went up, he suddenly heard himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each other. — Edith Wharton

The real question is whether the brighter future is really always so distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it? — Nick Gillespie

Michael Clarke Duncan and I met at a music festival that was honoring films, and we happened to be seated next to each other at the dinner, and we just hit it off and kept in touch ever since. He was just the gentle giant in real life like you would have expected him to be. — Nikki Blonsky

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

Perimeter greatly reduced the pressure to launch on warning at the first sign of an American attack. It gave Soviet leaders more time to investigate the possibility of a false alarm, confident that a real attack would trigger a computer-controlled, devastating response. But it rendered American plans for limited war meaningless; the Soviet computers weren't programmed to allow pauses for negotiation. And the deterrent value of Perimeter was wasted. Like the doomsday machine in Dr. Strangelove, the system was kept secret from the United States. — Eric Schlosser

Since the first satellites had been orbited, almost fifty years earlier, trillions and quadrillions of pulses of information had been pouring down from space, to be stored against the day when they might contribute to the advance of knowledge. Only a minute fraction of all this raw material would ever be processed; but there was no way of telling what observation some scientist might wish to consult, ten, or fifty, or a hundred years from now. So everything had to be kept on file, stacked in endless airconditioned galleries, triplicated at the [data] centers against the possibility of accidental loss. It was part of the real treasure of mankind, more valuable than all the gold locked uselessly away in bank vaults. — Arthur C. Clarke

I remember him. Jaxton only knew I existed long enough to take the piss out of me. He certainly never liked me." Roman sighed, giving his side of the story, though it was a slanted
one. Only three people knew the real story; him, Jaxton and Ben, and it was far from the tale of bully and victim that Jaxton kept telling people.
"Yeah, that's what he said," Thayer agreed, with a laugh.
Roman wasn't even surprised. Disappointed, but never surprised. — Elaine White

Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept us safe among them ... The animals had rights - the right of man's protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, the right to freedom, and the right to man's indebtedness. This concept of life and its relations filled us with the joy and mystery of living; it gave us reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all. — Chief Luther Standing Bear

The Jeep was parked at the beginning of the causeway when Denny got off the bus. She ignored it and started toward the island.
"Denise . . ."
Denny ignored Mr. Jones's call and kept on walking.
She heard the engine start, and soon the Jeep was rolling along beside her.
"Picked up your mail," said Mr. Jones. He handed some envelopes out the window. Denny grabbed them without a word.
"There's a letter there from some old coot named Jones," Mr. Jones said. "Looks like an apology."
Denny looked down and ruffled through the envelopes. "There is not," she said.
"No?" said Mr. Jones sheepishly. "Well, there should be. Guess he didn't get around to writing it. He feels real bad though. I know that for a fact."
Denny stopped and put her hand on her hip and stared at Mr. Jones. — Jackie French Koller

But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete. — Sarah Dessen

If each side had been frankly contending for its own real wish, they would all have kept within the bounds of reason and courtesy; but just because the contention is reversed and each side is fighting the other side's battle, all the bitterness which really flows from thwarted self-righteousness and obstinacy and from the accumulated grudges of the last ten years is concealed from them by the nominal or official "Unselfishness" of what they are doing or, at least, held to be excused by it. — C.S. Lewis

She kept wandering in and out of the rooms, wondering where she had put things. She went downstairs into the basement for no reason at all except that it amused her to own a basement. It also amused her to own a tree.
Her parents, in Maryland, had been very pleased that one of their children had at last been able to afford real estate, and when she closed on the house they sent her flowers with a congratulations card. — Lorrie Moore

I kept thinking back to all those nights in Connecticut, when I was out the door as soon as dinner was over, yelling my plans behind me as I headed to my car, ready for my real night to begin - my time with my family just something to get through as quickly as possible. And now that I knew that the time we had together was limited, I was holding on to it, trying to stretch it out, all the while wishing I'd appreciated what I'd had earlier. — Morgan Matson

I had a good time that night, too," Michael said, "but I kept thinking, This is forever. This is forever. You will have this good time again and again, a million times over, until it will be like a play in which you and Laura and a few fugitive lives sit around an imaginary fire and talk and sing songs and love each other and sometimes throw imaginary brands at the eyes blinking beyond the circle of imaginary firelight. And then I thought - and this is where I sounded just like a real philosopher - And even when you admit that you know every line in the play and every song that will be sung, even when you know that this evening spent with friends is pleasant and joyful because you remember it as pleasant and joyful and wouldn't change it for the world, even when you know that anything you feel for these good friends has no more reality than a dream faithfully remembered every night for a thousand years - even then it goes on. Even then it has just begun. — Peter S. Beagle

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that a chimpanzee kept in solitude is not a real chimpanzee at all. — Wolfgang Kohler

And now come with me, for I have kept you too long from your gondola: come with me, on an autumnal morning, to a low wharf or quay at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black with stagnation; another glance undeceives us,
it is covered with the black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat and letting her sink into soft vacancy. — John Ruskin

So often this summer I keep thinking: I know I'm holding back. I know I'm waiting. I know I'm afraid to go forward. But I don't know how to get there from here."
He was quiet, so she kept going. "Sometimes I see it as a tricky mountain pass between two valleys. Other times, it's like perilous straits connecting two lands. Partly it's the fear of the trip itself, I think, but partly it's the fear that I won't be able to get back. I'll turn around and the clouds will have settled over the mountaintop. Or the waters will have risen and shifted, and there will be no way home."
Paul nodded. He took her hand again, which she discovered she appreciated.
But that's not even the real fear."
He gave her an odd smile. Short on mirth but affectionate. "What's the real fear?"
The real fear is that I won't want to go home. — Ann Brashares

Unlike me, Renee was not shy; she was a real people-pleaser. She worried way too much what people thought of her, wore her heart on her sleeve, expected too much from people, and got hurt too easily. She kept other people's secrets like a champ, but told her own too fast. She expected the world not to cheat her and was always surprised when it did. — Rob Sheffield

By Saturday night we still didn't have Jeb's body. Mom and I ate dinner quietly, letting the shared pizza and the noise of the TV substitute for the companionship and conversation of a real relationship. The Simpsons was on, but I wasn't really watching - I wanted that body. If the police kept it much longer, we wouldn't be able to embalm it at all, just seal it in a bag and hold a closed-casket funeral. — Dan Wells

I thought about that while he made his next calls, while I kept on with the newsletters. I thought about it during Sunday service at Word of Life, and during study hours in my room, with the Viking Erin and her squeaky pink highlighter. What it meant to really believe in something - for real. Belief. The big dictionary in the Promise library said it meant something one accepts as true or real; a firmly held conviction or opinion. But even that definition, as short and simple as it was, confused me. True or real: Those were definite words; opinion and conviction just weren't - opinions wavered and changed and fluctuated with the person, the situation. And most troubling of all was the word accepts. Something one accepts. I was much better at excepting everything than accepting anything, at least anything for certain, for definite. That much I knew. That much I believed. — Emily M. Danforth

If Amber kept up her act forever, it would only be a matter of time before the broken pieces of her real self were too small to ever be put back together. I didn't know what happened to people once they were unfixable. I only hoped I never had to find out. — Cole Gibsen

But, yeah, it was just the regular audition process. There were a couple people telling me about it and that they were looking for the actors, but my manager is pretty good at sorting that out. And, (casting director) Rene Haynes cast me in Into the West, and she's always kept in touch and been a real big supporter of my career. — Tinsel Korey

Boredom presents a very real, if insidious peril. To quote Blaine Harden from the Washington post:"Boredom kills, and those it does not kill, it cripples, and those it does not cripple, it bleeds like a leech, leaving its victims pale, insipid, and brooding. Examples abound ... Rats kept in comfortable isolation quickly become jumpy, irritable, and aggressive. Their bodies twitch, their tails grow scaly." The backcountry traveler, then, in addition to developing such skills as the use of a map and compass, or the prevention and treatment of blisters, must prepare mentally and materially to cope with boredom, lest his tail grow scaly. — Jon Krakauer

The synopsis looked good,
the cover looked nice,
you opened the book,
and began a new life.
You found a new home,
you met some new friends,
you kept on reading,
hoping it would never end.
You danced through the pages,
you sang out the words,
you felt all their joy,
and all their pain and hurt.

The pages cut your fingers,
the words cut your heart,
like the author had a knife,
and was tearing your soul apart.
You laughed with the characters,
and with them you cried,
you fell in love with them, too,
and with them you died,
and when the book reached its end,
and your broken heart couldn't heal,
you suddenly realized that
It's not real — Unknown

Unfamiliar insects produced a soft but insistent chirp; a crisp whir like the sound the earth itself might make rolling through the darkness if we all kept quiet enough to hear it. The lights of the condominium complex shone. They were not far away. Still, they looked almost too real and close to touch. They were like holes punched in the night, leaking light from another, more animated world. For a moment I could imagine what it would be like to be a ghost - to walk forever through a silence deeper than silence, to apprehend but never quite reach the lights of home. — Michael Cunningham

The radicals are really always saying the same thing. They do not change; everybody else changes. They are accused of the most incompatible crimes, of egoism and mania for power, indifference to the fate of their own cause, fanaticism, triviality, want of humor, buffoonery and irreverence. But they sound a certain note. Hence the great practical power of consistent radicals. To all appearance nobody follows them, yet everyone believes them. They hold a tuning-fork and sound A, and everybody knows it really is A, though the time-honored pitch is G flat. The community cannot get that A out of its head. Nothing can prevent an upward tendency in the popular tone so long as the real A is kept sounding. — John Jay Chapman

I started DJing soundclashes. I used to go to Jamaica a lot. I was like a hip-hop sound boy, where I took the dancehall culture and mixed it up with the hip-hop as well. I kept going, going, and I got real hot in the streets of Miami - you know, doing pirate radio - then ended up doing 99 Jamz, the big station out there. — DJ Khaled

Hiro's father, who was stationed in Japan for many years, was obsessed with cameras. He kept bringing them back from his stints in the Far East, encased in many protective layers, so that when he took them out to show Hiro, it was like watching an exquisite striptease as they emerged from all that black leather and nylon, zippers and straps. And once the lens was finally exposed, pure geometric equation made real, so powerful and vulnerable at once, Hiro could only think it was like nuzzling through skirts and lingerie and outer labia and inner labia ... It made him feel naked and weak and brave. — Neal Stephenson

I think I have always wanted to tell stories. My mother was the real catalyst. I kept talking about it and so she pulled out a story I wrote (and illustrated) back in elementary school. She used that as proof that I should be writing and had been doing so unconsciously for years. — Kim Smith

He said, " You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
-The Velveteen Rabbit — Margery Williams

If #SpartanSurvived failed in its efforts, no one would be the wiser. There was no risk to her online persona. No backlash from haters. Anonymity's cloak both protected her and kept the torch of Spartan alive. Because as much as fandom knew a fan had created the post, the faceless message held the faint promise of authenticity. And if people believed it, then the magic was real. They could change Spartan's fate, because they thought they could, and tonight's video would cast the first spell. — Danika Stone

Real loved one's aren't afraid, and will suggest to
you, what's in your best interest ... because they wouldn't want too see you suffer the consequences of your, sideways, emotional impulse(s). To see you crash and burn is the gratification of [the] 'yes folk' lurking in your corner. You may not agree, but always consider the voice(s) that have consistently kept it real. — T.F. Hodge

A mutually fulfilled sexual union between two people is the rarest sensation which life can provide. But it is not quite real. It stops when the telephone rings. Such a passion can be kept at its early strength only by adding to it either more and more unhappiness (jealousy, separation, doubt, renunciation), or more and more artificiality (drink, technique, stage-illusions). Whoever has missed this has never lived, who lives for it alone is but partly alive. — Cyril Connolly

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

His eyes drifted shut. without opening them, he murmured, "I like the sound of your laugh. It's real and genuine. A lot of girls have this fake laugh. Not you."
"I like your laugh, too." I whispered, feeling pulled in, cozy in the cacoon of his bed.
"Yeah?"
I flattened my palm over his chest, enjoying the sensation of the firm flesh, even warm as it was. He sighed, like my cool hand offered him some relief.
"I laugh more since you came around," he said quietly, his lips barely forming the words.
He did? I frowned. He must not have laughed at all before, then, because I didn't think he was particularly jovial.
I held him through the night. And he held me back, tucking my head beneath his chin. His arms surrounded me and kept me close to his overly warm body. Almost like I was some kind of lifeline. I felt the moment his fever broke around one in the morning. I finally relaxed and fell asleep. — Sophie Jordan