Last Line Quotes & Sayings

The real issue in the Christian community was that it was conditional. You were loved, but if you had questions, questions about whether the Bible was true or whether America was a good country or whether last week's sermon was good, you were not so loved. You were loved in word, but there was, without question, a social commodity that was being withheld from you until you shaped up. By toeing the party line you earned social dollars; by being yourself you did not. If you wanted to be valued, you became a clone. These are broad generalizations, and they are unfair, but this is what I was thinking at the time. — Donald Miller

We tend to use prayer as a last resort, but God wants it to be our first line of defense. We pray when there's nothing else we can do, but God wants us to pray before we do anything at all.
Most of us would prefer, however, to spend our time doing something that will get immediate results. We don't want to wait for God to resolve matters in His good time because His idea of 'good time' is seldom in sync with ours. — Oswald Chambers

Evening had fallen. A rim of the young moon cleft the pale waste of sky line, the rim of a silver hoop embedded in grey sand: and the tide was flowing in fast to the land with a low whisper of her waves, islanding a few last figures in distant pools. — James Joyce

It's the first line in your book. I always thought there was a lot of truth in that. Or maybe that's what my English teacher said. I can't really remember. I read it last semester."
- Your parents must be so proud you can read."
- They are. They bought me a pony and everything when I did a book report on Cat in the Hat. — Nicholas Sparks

Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I don't want any money."
I put the wallet away.
She said: "What are you going to do about last night?"
"What should I do?"
"Kill that son of a bitch."
"And fry?"
"You're too smart to fry."
"Maybe," I said. "But, lady, I've been drawing the line at murder lately."
She lay against the pillow, watching me. Her skin was dead white and it made the black eyes look big. She wasn't young, but she was still good-looking. Her shoulders were round and firm. As far as I could tell she was naked under the sheet. I sat down on a rocking-chair. It creaked under my weight.
"But you want to get him, don't you?" she asked.
"I wouldn't mind."
"Neither would I," she said.
"He's pretty tough for a gal to tackle."
"He knocked out my teeth."
The way she said it, it sounded like a good reason for bumping off a man. Maybe it was, at that. A girl likes to hold on to her teeth. — Jonathan Latimer

That's one component: rather than creating job-training pipelines that put these kids at the back of the line for the last century's pollution-based jobs, we need to be creating opportunities for them to be at the front of the line for the new clean and green jobs. — Van Jones

Your total ignorance of that which you profess to teach merits the death penalty. I doubt whether you would know that St. Cassian of Imola was stabbed to death by his students with their styli. His death, a martyr's honorable one, made him a patron saint of teachers. Pray to him, you deluded fool, you "anyone for tennis?" golf-playing, cocktail-quaffing pseudo-pedant, for you do indeed need a heavenly patron. Although your days are numbered, you will not die as a martyr - for you further no holy cause - but as the total ass which you really are. ZORRO A sword was drawn on the last line of the page. — John Kennedy Toole

The bottom-line, you just have to. You do it because you want to do it and need to do it. You live life just one time. Why sit around and wait for the phone to ring? Even though I'm in a hit phenomenal show and it happens once every ten years - a show this big and popular - the last thing I want to do as an artist is feel comfortable and bide my time. Now is the time, more than ever, in this artistic explosion to do as much as we can! — J. Robert Spencer

If Christianity is true, this changes EVERYTHING. Christ's very last words to us in scripture were: "Behold, I make all things new." (Rev. 21:5) I hope you remember that most moving line in the most moving movie ever made, The Passion Of The Christ, when Christ turns to His mother on the way to Calvary, explaining the need for the Cross and the blood and the agony: "See, Mother, I make all things new." I hope you remember that line with your tear ducts, which connect to the heart, as well as with your ears, which connect to the brain. Christ changed every human being he ever met. In fact, He changed history, splitting it open like a coconut and inserting eternity into the split between B.C. and A.D. If anyone claims to have met Him without being changed, he has not met Him at all. When you touch Him, you touch lightning. — Peter Kreeft

And what can we do to silence these Christian athletes who thank Jesus whenever they win, never mention his name when they lose? Not a word. You never hear them say "Jesus made me drop the ball." "The good lord tripped me up behind the line of scrimmage." According to these guys Jesus is undefeated, meanwhile these assholes are in last place. Must be another one of those "miracles." — George Carlin

In hockey, nearly everyone plays with a partner. The offense forward line is made up of a left wing, a center, and a right wing. The defense skates in pairs. Only the goalie is alone and he's always weird. Always.

Kenny Simms, who graduated last year, was one of the greatest goalies at Briar and probably the reason we won three Frozen Fours in a row, but that guy had the strangest fucking habits. He talked to himself more than he talked to anyone else, sat in the back of the bus, preferred to eat alone. On the rare occasion that he came out with us, he'd argue the entire time. I once got into it with him over whether there was too much technology available to children. We argued about that topic for the entire three hours we were knocking back beers at the bar.

Sabrina reminds me of Simms. — Elle Kennedy

He hung up on me.
I stared at the phone in disbelief, then ripped a clean sheet of paper from my notebook. I scribbled Jerk on the first line. One the line beneath it, I added, Smokes cigars. Will die of lung cancer. Hopefully soon. Excellent physical shape.
I immediately scribbled over the last observation until it was illegible. — Becca Fitzpatrick

She had to get used to her new name, The Drummer. Twelfth, and last in line, but on a good note, she had the most money, and more importantly, she was alive. — Dayna S. Rubin

The last line of defense in support of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of the dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them. — Ron Paul

Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet - so deadly sad - that to read one line of it would dissolve any courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank: something like the world when the deluge was gone by. — Charlotte Bronte

To Poetry"

Don't desert me
just because I stayed up last night
watching The Lost Weekend.

I know I've spent too much time
praising your naked body to strangers
and gossiping about lovers you betrayed.

I've stalked you in foreign cities
and followed your far-flung movements,
pretending I could describe you.

Forgive me for getting jacked on coffee
and obsessing over your features
year after jittery year.

I'm sorry for handing you a line
and typing you on a screen,
but don't let me suffer in silence.

Does anyone still invoke the Muse,
string a wooden lyre for Apollo,
or try to saddle up Pegasus?

Winged horse, heavenly god or goddess,
indifferent entity, secret code, stored magic,
pleasance and half wonder, hell,

I have loved you my entire life
without even knowing what you are
or how - please help me - to find you. — Edward Hirsch

And above all, above all, honest work must be rewarded by a fair and just tax system. The tax system today does not reward hard work: it penalizes it. Inherited or invested wealth frequently multiplies itself while paying no taxes at all. But wages on the assembly line or in farming the land, these hard-earned dollars are taxed to the very last penny. — George McGovern

One weekend in the vacation, I was invited to meet her family. They lived in Kent, out on the Orpington line, in one of those suburbs which had stopped concreting over nature at the very last minute, and ever since smugly claimed rural status. — Julian Barnes

I've always thought that there are no couples in love nor any love triangles, only an Indian file where you love the person in front of you and that person in turn loves the one in front of him, and so on, and where the one behind me loves me and that one is loved by the one behind him and so on, but always loving the one whose back is turned to us. And the last one in line isn't loved by anyone — Jorge Franco

Since when," he asked,
"Are the first line and last line of any poem
Where the poem begins and ends? — Seamus Heaney

I've always known when I start a story what the last line is. It's always been the case, since the first story I ever wrote. I don't know how it's going to get there, but I seem to need the destination. I need to know where I end up. It never changes, ever. — Amy Hempel

Just as the sailor yearns for port, the writer longs for the last line. — Alix Christie

There was a certain feminine satisfaction in having the last word, delivering her line smartly, and breaking the connection between them quickly and decisively. — Christine Feehan

What's happening here?" This last bit was hissed to Ronan and Noah.
"Noah took a personal day."
"I lost..." Noah struggled for words. "There wasn't air. It went away. The - the line!"
"The ley line?" Gansey asked.
Noah nodded once, a sloppy thing that was sort of a shrug at the same time. "There was nothing ... left for me." Releasing Ronan, he shook out his hands.
"You're welcome, man," Ronan snarled. He still couldn't feel his toes.
"Thanks. I didn't mean to ... you were there. Oh, the glitter."
"Yes," Ronan replied crossly. "The glitter. — Maggie Stiefvater

Lea, I want to lick him up like a freaking cherry ice pop, let him melt in my mouth, get all sticky and lick my fingers clean. But so does every other girl he meets. And I'm like the last girl in line, a line that freaking wraps around the corner. — Christine Zolendz

I dispute the right of conservatives to be automatically complacent on these points. My own Marxist group took a consistently anti-Moscow line throughout the 'Cold War,' and was firm in its belief that that Soviet Union and its European empire could not last. Very few people believed that this was the case: The best known anti-Communist to advance the proposition was the great Robert Conquest, but he himself insists that part of the credit for such prescience goes to Orwell. More recently, a very exact prefiguration of the collapse of the USSR was offered by two German Marxists, one of them from the West (Hans Magnus Enzensberger) and one from the East (Rudolf Bahro, the accuracy of whose prediction was almost uncanny). I have never met an American conservative who has even heard of, let alone read, either of these authors. — Christopher Hitchens

There was to be no further talk of damning her eyes or of her interfering with his riding his own line. He was only too anxious to pilot her again if she would allow it. She for her part had no doubt that there at last she had found, at least so far as crossing a country went, the man she was looking for. — John Welcome

Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He's convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt. — Pablo Picasso

As your training integrates Mind, Body and Spirit, enjoy the process. Your journey to the marathon finish will last a few hours. Your journey to the start will influence a lifetime. — Gina Greenlee

I believe Triumvirate Holdings wants to control all the ancient Oracles. And I Believe the most ancient Oracle of all, the Grove of Dodona, is right here at Camp Half-Blood"

I WAS A DREAMATIC GOD.

I thought my last statement was a great line, I expected gasps, perhaps some organ music in the background. Maybe the lights would go out just before I could say more. Moments later I would be found dead with a knife in my back. That would be exciting!

Wait. I'm a mortal. Murder would kill me. Never mind — Rick Riordan

Any newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a web of horrors, I cannot understand how an innocent hand can touch a newspaper without convulsing in disgust. — Charles Baudelaire

What happens if you are the last (the very, very last) of your species, and you die - and humans notice? We live, increasingly, at a time when extinctions are recorded, remembered, and the last animal (or plant) in its line, by virtue of its being last, becomes a kind of celebrity. Its finality becomes a thing to honor. — Robert Krulwich

But is it an honest living?" Alec persisted, clinging to his last shred of resolve.
"Most of those who employ me are great lords or nobles."
"It sounds like a pretty dangerous line of work," Alec remarked, aware that once again Seregil had side-stepped the question.
"That's the spice of it, though," cried Seregil. "And you can end up rich!"
"Or on the end of a rope?"
Seregil chuckled. "Have it your way. — Lynn Flewelling

As for the momentary madness which had fallen upon him on the eve of his marriage, he had trained himself to regard it as the last of his discarded experiments. The idea that he could ever, in his senses, have dreamed of marrying the Countess Olenska had become almost unthinkable, and she remained in his memory simply as the most plaintive and poignant of a line of ghosts.
But all these abstractions and eliminations made of his mind a rather empty and echoing place, and he supposed that was one of the reasons why the busy animated people on the Beaufort lawn shocked him as if they had been children playing in a grave-yard. — Edith Wharton

You can't drag people from understanding to action. A customer isn't actually at the last mile if you're the one dragging her to the finish line. — Thomas P.M. Barnett

You said yourself that the people of Luna need a revolutionary." She lifted her chin, holding his gaze. "So I'm going to Luna, and I'm going to start a revolution. — Marissa Meyer

When it comes to two of the big social earthquakes in the last fifty years - which are the gay movement and the women's movement - I think there is a direct line from Kinsey to those. — Bill Condon

It is pretty tough for a goalie when you look at it. You're always the last line of defense. If you let a goal in, you can't go to the bench and hide between the guys or anything — Kirk McLean

I have assumed, for the present purpose, that Jesus of Nazareth did and said more or less what the four gospels in the New Testament say he did and said. I have written about all that, in debate with those who take radically different viewpoints, in considerable detail elsewhere. Likewise, I have assumed that St. Paul wrote Ephesians and Colossians, something which many scholars in the last century or so have doubted. Actually, the argument of the book doesn't depend on either of these assumptions, and for that reason, in addition to the risk of clogging up the present line of thought, I won't refer to these questions again. — N. T. Wright

Norah, understand that I won't be able to go back from this. Once we cross this line, there will never be anyone else for me. You are the last person I ever want to be with. — Angela Richardson

Massive, massive mentality. The mental strength, you've just got to have that because you get a lot of stick, as a goalkeeper you're the last line of defence. When a goal goes in everyone looks at you, you've got to be able to deal with that. If you make a mistake, it could be a bad mistake, how are you going to recover? Are you going to react positively or are you just going to cave in? — David Seaman

Keep up," said an irritable voice in her ear. It was Jace, who had dropped back to walk beside her. "I don't want to have to keep looking behind me to make sure nothing's happened to you."
"So don't bother."
"Last time I left you alone, a demon attacked you," he pointed out.
"Well, I'd certainly hate to interrupt your pleasant night stroll with my sudden death."
He blinked. "There is a fine line between sarcasm and outright hostility, and you seem to have crossed it. — Cassandra Clare

World's freakiest bloodsucker, right here," I went on. "And you know what? If it makes some of you uncomfortable, too bad. If it makes some of you so uncomfortable you want to start shit with me about it, step right up and see if I don't eat the hell out of you next!"
I'd meant that last part as a threat, but somewhere in my impassioned declaration of independence from hiding what I was, I'd neglected to think through my phrasing. I saw Bones raise a brow, a muffled snicker broke out from Ian, and then Vlad laughed loud and hearty.
"With that sort of invitation, Reaper, you might want to suggest the line form to your right."
"That's not ... I meant eat them in a bad way," I sputtered. — Jeaniene Frost

Publishing has no onus to be representative, but a fourth of America lives in conditions close to or below the poverty line. Think about the last time you read a novel in which someone went to cash a benefit check or paid for food in food stamps, or got off a double-shift at a retail store and were having their home or car repossessed. These are the conditions in which much of this country lives and it is a dereliction of capability (not duty) to ignore it in literature. — John Freeman

Having exhausted every possibility at the moment when he was coming full circle, Antonino realised that photographing photographs was the only course that he had left - or, rather, the true course he had obscurely been seeking all this time. (Last line of the story The Adventure of a Photographer ) — Italo Calvino

I know this year hasn't gone as we'd all like it. But please, please, everyone do not forget about that 2013 season - the worst to first, the tragedy of the Boston Marathon, everyone rallying around the city, the finish line, the duck boats, everything, celebrating at home. Might be down a little bit in the win/loss column right now, but do not let that erase any of those memories from last year that I get to wear a ring on my finger for. I'm proud to be a Red Sox for those times. — Jonny Gomes

We sold more iPads in the last quarter alone than any PC manufacturer sold in their entire line. — Tim Cook

Pat Fox out to the forty(yard line) and grabs the sliothar(ball), I bought a dog from his father last week. Fox turns and sprints for goal, the dog ran a great race last Tuesday in Limerick. Fox to the 21 fires a shot, it goes to the left and wide ... and the dog lost as well. — Micheal O Muircheartaigh

There [DreamTigers by Jorge Luis Borges] were these little fablesque things, you know, dream tigers, beautiful, beautiful pieces that when you read them had the power of a long piece, but they were prose, and they had the power of poetry, in that the last line wasn't the end, it was a reverberation, like when you tap on a glass made of crystal, and it goes ping. — Sandra Cisneros

The geology of Staten Island is the most complex of the city's boroughs, containing the terminal moraine of the last ice age, a fault line from 470 million years ago, the southern tail of the Palisades formation, and sediments collected over the millennia. — Sergey Kadinsky

The Europeans look down on raising your hands. They don't like the end-zone dance. I think that's unfortunate. That feeling - the finish line, the last couple of meters - is what motivates me. — Lance Armstrong

I show up on the injury report as much as the statsheet, but if I'm healthy, I'm going to be a late-round steal in most leagues. Last year I had more than 1,000 yards on the ground despite my injuries, and I had six rushing touchdowns despite Andre Brown vulturing my goal line duties around mid-season. Now I'm in Indianapolis, and my new offensive coordinator is implementing a West Coast offense that should get me plenty of carries and a few catches each game. Plus, I'll be the goal line guy. If I'm not wearing a boot. — Ahmad Bradshaw

There's nothing on Earth like really nailing the last line of a big book. You have 200 pages to tickle their fancy, and seven words to break their heart. — Alex De Campi

Sitting cross-legged on her bed, I watch her take out her gear. She's been smoking so much the room stinks of it. Over the last few weeks, I've seen her do it so often I've resisted the urge. It's surreal, like I'm watching me from outside my body. My willpower is fragile at the best of times, but my resolve is always weaker in the evening.
I feel a dread and a revulsion for what I'm about to do, but there's a stronger feeling, an unutterable longing. I crack.
'Give us a line,' I say. — Christine Lewry

Crossing the Finish Line is a must-read for anyone concerned with the disturbing fact that Americans can no longer count on each generation being better educated than the last. Focusing on public institutions that educate more than three-fourths of U.S. students, Bowen, Chingos, and McPherson provide compelling arguments that institutions and policymakers must find new ways to overcome deeply entrenched patterns if our country is to regain its position as the most educated. — Molly Corbett Broad

The last thing a chef wants in a line cook is an innovator, somebody with ideas of his own who is going to mess around with the chef's recipes and presentations. Chefs require blind, near-fanatical loyalty, a strong back and an automaton-like consistency of execution under battlefield conditions. — Anthony Bourdain

As you get older, you realize it's work. It's that fine line between love and companionship. But passionate love? I'd love to know how to make that last. — Tracey Ullman

There are a lot of bad things out there. Things the Hounds of Heaven were
created to destroy." He trailed his finger down the side of my face. "I can't be the hero you want
me to be
at least not in that way. But you can, Grace. You don't have to become one of the dark
ones. You can fight it. You can turn this curse into a blessing. You can become the hero. You
can become truly divine. — Bree Despain

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish. — Steven Wright

When I'm in the grocery store, I'll do lunges up and down the aisles. In the checkout line, you could do squats. I used to worry about what people thought of me, but I don't care anymore. I know I'm going to get the last laugh. — Ali Vincent

The brilliant escape, the funny line to cap it, despite the lack of timing. And the girl was still dead. The last act had not materialised. The world, and himself, remained so far from what they should be: so imperfect. — Paul Cornell

The universal line of distinction between the strong and the weak is that one persists; the other hesitates, falters, trifles, and at last collapses or caves in. — Edwin Percy Whipple

Where the hell did this come from? Alex flipped through a Pondimin package insert he had found in another box and saw the last line: Revised June 20, 1996. A similar warning for Redux, a nearly identical drug, was dated April 29, 1996. — Alicia Mundy

She held his stare, waiting for a clue to his intentions - a smile, a nod, even a frown. But he just looked straight at her, his eyes boring holes in her, reaching inside and lighting a fuse line of heat down to her belly. It seemed to last an eternity, that stare. — Maggie LaCroix

The opening line of her last column was: You know you really don't fit in with the other housewives you meet when the only way you can contribute to a discussion about babies is by saying, "Yes, that's what my mother used to do." It went on to talk about how a woman could climb Everest, teach schoolchildren in Cambodia and win the Booker Prize but some people would still think she had good news only when she produced progeny. — Shweta Ganesh Kumar

Um ,sorry. I cant read the last line."
"Fish. Have you stolen any fish from the holy lakes?"
"I lived in Kansas..So ..no — Rick Riordan

Suppose that you didn't make your Easter duty and it's Pentecost Sunday, the last day, and you're on a ship at sea. And the chaplain goes into a coma! But you wanted to receive. And then it's Monday, too late ... But then you cross the International Date Line! Would that then be a sin then, Father? — George Carlin

DOCTOR AIN WAS recognized on the Omaha-Chicago flight. A biologist colleague from Pasadena came out of the toilet and saw Ain in an aisle seat. Five years before, this man had been jealous of Ain's huge grants. Now he nodded coldly and was surprised at the intensity of Ain's response. He almost turned back to speak, but he felt too tired; like nearly everyone, he was fighting the flu.

The stewardess handing out coats after they landed remembered Ain too: A tall thin nondescript man with rusty hair. He held up the line staring at her; since he already had his raincoat with him she decided it was some kooky kind of pass and waved him on.

She saw Ain shamble off into the airport smog, apparently alone. Despite the big Civil Defense signs, O'Hare was late getting underground. No one noticed the woman.

- 'The Last Flight of Doctor Ain — James Tiptree Jr.

I'm the last in the line of Russells and Chamberlains. — Shaquille O'Neal

In the superman Nietzsche gave the world a conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. But there still remained a problem and it was this: When the superman at last appears on earth, what then? Will there be another super-superman to follow and another super-super-superman after that? In the end, will man become the equal of the creator of the universe, whoever or whatever He may be? Or will a period of decline come after, with return down the long line, through the superman down to man again, and then on to the anthropoid ape, to the lower mammals, to the asexual cell, and, finally, to mere inert matter, gas, ether, and empty space? — H.L. Mencken

Movements for animal rights are not irrational denials of human uniqueness; they are a clear-sighted recognition of connection across the discredited breach of nature and culture. Biology and evolutionary theory over the last two centuries have simultaneously produced modern organisms as objects of knowledge and reduced the line between humans and animals to a faint trace re-etched in ideological struggle or professional disputes between life and social science. Within this framework, teaching modern Christian creationism should be fought as a form of child abuse. — Donna J. Haraway

Painter"
"I said you are only keeping me here
in the hospital, lying to my parents
and saying I am madder than I am,
because you only want to keep me here,
squeezing my last dollar to the pennies
I'm saner than anyone in the hospital.
I had to say what every madman says
a black phrase, the sleep of reason mothers monsters ...
When I am painting the canvas is a person;
all I do, each blot and line's alive,
when I am finished, it is shit on the canvas ...
But in his sketches more finished than his oils,
sketches made after he did those masterpieces,
constable can make us see the breeze ... — Robert Lowell

In a thousand years," Alessandro said, "this incident will be remembered. By then, of course, we will have become angels, devils, or a dragon that breathes fire ... but we have given this rock a story that will be passed on."
"What good is that?"
"It isn't to our advantage, if that's what you mean. However, it's pleasurable to cast a line into the future, no matter how tenuously. You never know, the line may be unbroken all the way to the last judgment. — Mark Helprin

I once heard somebody express surprise that instead of following it onward one should not take a cut across Time to secure a moment which, stretching out in line with oneself, would last indefinitely. — Mina Loy

Russell piped in singing, "Four pounds of back bacon, three French toasts, two turtlenecks, and a beer ... ." He leaned his body over Ellis. On the last line, Rob joined him. " ... in a tree!" They stopped, and Russell asked, "How does the beer stay in the tree? Wouldn't it fall out? — Wade Kelly

Buddhas can take you to the boundary line of meditation and samadhi. That is the only difference between meditation and samadhi. If your mind has become utterly quiet and silent, but only the master is there, then it is meditation. If your mind has become so quiet that even the master has disappeared, it is samadhi. The last barrier is going to be the master. He will take you out of the world, but one day you will have to leave him too. And the real master will always keep you alert that you have to leave him one day, at the final stage. — Rajneesh

There are times in your life when things line up and Fate takes a hand in your future," Ptolemy remembered Coydog saying. "When that happens, you got to move quick and take advantage of the sitchiation or you'll never know what might have been."
"How do I know when it's time to move quick?" L'il Pea asked.
"When somethin' big happens and then somethin' else come up. — Walter Mosley

Most people give up just when they're about to achieve success. They quit on the one yard line. They give up at the last minute of the game one foot from a winning touchdown. — Ross Perot

First is a poem, a ballad, out of Scotland. You may say there is no king in it, and of course there isn't, which is what makes it so sad. The last line of the third verse, 'O he might hae been a king' is so sad that I don't like to look at it with both eyes at once. — William Mayne

When I was in my teenage years, I went to sign up as a cadet entrant to the police force but was at the very last moment rejected, just as I was about to sign my name on the dotted line. I won't get into why that happened, but it was a moment where it could've been predetermined then that I was off to become a policeman. — Ian Anderson

Kolya rose to a crouch and crept to the front door, keeping his head below the window line. I followed. We kneeled with our backs against the door. Kolya checked his pistol one last time. I pulled the German knife from my ankle sheath. I knew I looked silly holding it, the way a young boy looks holding his father's shaving razor. Kolya grinned at me as though he was about to start laughing. This is all very strange, I thought. I am in the middle of a battle and I am aware of my own thoughts, I am worried about how stupid I look with a knife in my hand while everyone else came to fight with rifles and machine guns. I am aware that I am aware. Even now, with bullets buzzing through the air like angry hornets, I cannot escape the chatter of my brain. — David Benioff

It was shockingly weird to touch another person after a whole life - because the last three months were my whole life - of avoiding any kind of contact. Like touching a sparking downed power line, only to find out that it felt nice. — Stephenie Meyer

Cassidy's heart tried to leap out through his taught skin and hop into his wet hands. But outwardly it was all very calm, very serene, just as always, and it seemed to last a tiny forever, just like that, a snapshot of them all on the curved parabola of a starting line, eight giant hearts attached to eight pairs of bellows-like lungs mounted on eight pairs of supercharged stilts. They were poised on the edge of some howling vortex they had run 10,000 miles to get to. Now they had to run one more — John L. Parker Jr.

A capable, clear-eyed sovereign, she knew how to build a fleet, suppress an insurrection, control a currency, alleviate a famine. An eminent Roman general vouched for her grasp of military affairs. Even at a time when women rulers were no rarity she stood out, the sole female of the ancient world to rule alone and to play a role in Western affairs. She was incomparably richer than anyone else in the Mediterranean. And she enjoyed greater prestige than any other woman of her age ... Cleopatra descended from a long line of murderers and faithfully upheld the family tradition but was, for her time and place, remarkably well behaved. She nonetheless survives as a wanton temptress, not the last time a genuinely powerful woman has been transmuted into a shamelessly seductive one. — Stacy Schiff

He tried his luck again, and things went so smoothly that with no more noise or disturbance than the last time, he found himself rid of the burden that had caused him so much grief. But since Don Quixote had a sense of smell as acute as his hearing, and Sancho was joined so closely to him, and the vapors rose up almost in a straight line, some unavoidably reached his nostrils, and as soon as they did he came to the assistance of his nostrils and squeezed them closed between two fingers, and in a somewhat nasal voice, he said: It seems to me, Sancho, that you are very frightened. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Your head is pounding with voices of confession and revelation. You followed the rails of white powder across the mirror in pursuit of a point of convergence where everything was cross-referenced according to a master code. For a second, you felt terrific. You were coming to grips. Then the coke ran out; as you hoovered the last line, you saw yourself hideously close-up with a rolled twenty sticking out of your nose. The goal is receding. Whatever it was. You can't get everything straight in one night. — Jay McInerney

Our firefighters are our last line of defense, baby. — Jack Scalia

And because they had mass, they became simpler," said Beatty. "Once, books appealed to a few people, here, there, everywhere. They could afford to be different. The world was roomy. But then the world got full of eyes and elbows and mouths. Double, triple, quadruple population. Films and radios, magazines, books leveled down to a sort of paste pudding norm, do you follow me?" "I think so." Beatty peered at the smoke pattern he had put out on the air. "Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending." "Snap ending." Mildred nodded. "Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. — Ray Bradbury

I'll join you, sir. You'll need help finding your way about the estate."
His lips tightened into a disapproving line. "Begging your pardon, Lady Rosalind, but I didn't have a nursemaid when I was three, so I certainly don't need one now. I'm perfectly capable of navigating an estate alone."
"I'm sure you are - indeed, you demonstrated a remarkable proficiency for it last night, and in a strange house, too. — Sabrina Jeffries

Sure, this will probably end up being another in a long line of emotionally crippling misadventures ... but let's try to have some fun along the way. — Brian K. Vaughan

Robertson called his ship the Titan; the White Star Line called its ship the Titanic. This is the story of her last night. — Walter Lord

There is nothing we should be quite so grateful for as the last line of the poem that goes, 'When your own heart asks. — Tsunetomo Yamamoto

Let's see if I can synopsize our situation," he said. "I never give interviews. You want an interview. No, strike that. You need an interview, because the rabid jackal you work for has made it clear your job is on the line. Am I close?"
The sizzle receded to a tingle. "You're in the ballpark."
"I'm not just in the ballpark, babe. I'm Josh Beckett on the mound at Fenway. If I don't give you what you need, you're hiding behind palm trees waiting for drunk pop stars to pop out of their Wonderbras."
And that pretty much killed the last of the lingering tingle. "Payback's a bitch and all that, right, Joe?"
The dimples flashed. "Isn't it? — Shannon Stacey

Healthcare is growing now at about 10 per cent per annum in the U.S. top line, versus 3 per cent for the economy. As someone with a sharp pencil and an eye for this kind of thing, this can't last. — James Chanos

This budget is a Sanjeevani (new life) and an Arunoday (sunrise) for the last man in the line. This budget converts hopes and aspirations of the people into trust. It adds a new ray of hope for the poor and downtrodden sections of the society. — Narendra Modi

I write the last line, and then I write the line before that. I find myself writing backwards for a while, until I have a solid sense of how that ending sounds and feels. You have to know what your voice sounds like at the end of the story, because it tells you how to sound when you begin. — John Irving

He cleared his throat and held up one hand dramatically.
"Green grass breaks through snow.
Artemis pleads for my help.
I am so cool."
He grinned at us, waiting for applause.
"That last line was four syllables." Artemis said.
Apollo frowned. "Was it?"
"Yes. What about I am so bigheaded?"
"No, no, that's six syllable, hhhm." He started muttering to himself.
Zoe Nightshade turned to us. "Lord Apollo has been going through this haiku phase ever since he visited Japan. Tis not as bad as the time he visited Limerick. If I'd had to hear one more poem that started with, There once was a godess from Sparta-"
"I've got it!" Apollo announced. "I am so awesome. That's five syllables!" He bowed, looking very pleased with himself. — Rick Riordan

As we joined the line of people getting off at the last stop before Sofia, I looked once more at the little boy, whom I felt I would never forget, though maybe it wasn't exactly him I would remember, I thought, but the use I would make of him. I had my notes, I knew I would write a poem about him, and then it would be the poem I remembered, which would be both true and false at once, the image I made replacing the real image. Making poems was a way of loving things, I had always thought, of preserving them, of living moments twice; or more than that, it was a way of living more fully, of bestowing on experience a richer meaning. But that wasn't what it felt like when I looked back at the boy, wanting a last glimpse of him; it felt like a loss. Whatever I could make of him would diminish him, and I wondered whether I wasn't really turning my back on things in making them into poems, whether instead of preserving the world I was taking refuge from it. — Garth Greenwell

So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine,


And mine in his was wound, and whirl'd
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,


Aeonian music measuring out
The steps of Time - the shocks of Chance--
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt. — Alfred Tennyson