Life Spin Quotes & Sayings

What do you find in the average middle-aged man of woman? You're likely to see disharmony and unequal spin rates in the chakras. The slower ones would be causing parts of the body to deteriorate, while the faster ones would be causing nervousness, anxiety, and exhaustion. In short, chakras spinning either too quickly or too slowly produce ill health. From this we gather that the Five Rites coordinate, even enhance, the spinning of the seven energy centers of the human body; they help distribute pure life force energy to the endocrine glands and in turn to the body's organs and processes. When this happens, the result is longevity and rejuvenation. — Peter Kelder

When you're mortal, life is nothing more than a drawn-out game of Russian Roulette. Every moment is the spin of a gun cylinder, every decision pointing the barrel at your head. Over and over, again and again, you pull the trigger, hoping it won't be your last turn in the game. — J.M. Darhower

The process of experiencing is well described by Goethe when he says that our life is made up of our connections with the world about us, and that we must each spin our own web and sit at the centre to catch what we can.[21] The web itself is made up of past experiences, and each new connection with the world about us, in so far as it is fully known and understood, is an addition to that web, and so an added means of experiencing. — Michael Oakeshott

My life was such a careful balance, a fragile nexus of work and attention and preparation and planning, like the old vaudeville trick of spinning plates on poles all over a stage, running from one to another to another, not letting any of them fall. I'd been so good at it, the running and the spinning. I'd been getting up before dawn and staying late after school and running and spinning the plates for as long as I could remember. I was getting so tired. I didn't want to run and spin anymore. But I didn't know what would happen, I didn't know who I would be, if one of the plates broke. — Katherine Howe

... have poets write about you as if you are alive. Scientifically, it is absolutely true, you are alive. You have a pulse, the waves, and a metabolism, the food chain. A personality, a character, a consciousness, and a sense of purpose ... try this- turn into spray, spin rainbows ... wear down entire mountains and dump them in layers ... gently surround marina sea grass twice a day, protecting and feeding thousands of crabs, ducks, and geese ... fill human eyes with warm salt brine at least once a month ...
Becoming Water — Susan Zwinger

Each thread of life that you leave, will spin around your deeds and dictate your needs. — Don McLean

If I'd learned anything from writing this book, it was that no matter how you might read characters in a book, real life was always different. It was easy for a writer to spin a story to make the hero or heroine seem smart and intelligent, for them to make the right moves, take the correct steps toward their future, but when it came to real life, it didn't quite happen that easily. People were constantly making mistakes and showing insecurities, even when they didn't realize it, and being so imperfect that it actually made them perfect . . . because they were human. Those — Meghan Quinn

My models were oral, were storytellers. Like my grandmothers and my aunts. It's true, a lot of people in my life were not literate in a formal sense, but they were storytellers. So I had this experience of just watching somebody spin a tale off the top of her head. I loved that. — Edwidge Danticat

A game. That's all life is, that's all it feels like. Everyone waiting for their turn to spin the bottle or for the bottle to finally choose them. Who would you rather is real. We can be erased, that's real too. — Alexis Bass

Simply put, a woman's brain is not her friend when it comes to confidence. We think too much and we think about the wrong things. Thinking harder and harder and harder won't solve our issues, though, it won't make us more confident, and it most certainly freezes decision making, not to mention action. Remember, the female brain works differently from the male brain; we really do have more going on, we are more keenly aware of everything happening around us, and that all becomes part of our cognitive stew. Ruminating drains the confidence from us. Those negative thoughts, and nightmare scenarios masquerading as problem solving, spin on an endless loop. We render ourselves unable to be in the moment or to trust our instincts because we are captive to those distracting, destructive thoughts, which gradually squeeze all the spontaneity out of life and work. We have got to stop ruminating. — Katty Kay

As a writer, my mission is to represent the perceptible world in such a way that readers can see the extraordinary that lives all around them. I want to converse on the page. I want to squash the humdrum, the mendacity that arrives due to too many overworked routines and overfed expectations. I want to entertain and awaken. I want to imagine and observe. I want to spin my fiction from an honest, curious place. — Jen Knox

With every morn my life afresh must break
The crust of self, gathered about me fresh;
That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shake
The darkness out of me, and rend the mesh
The spider-devils spin out of the flesh-
Eager to net the soul before it wake,
That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake.
George MacDonald — George MacDonald

Life is a circle. It spins you around. — Ljupka Cvetanova

You live long enough in a world spinning on its axis, you learn to spin in the same direction. — Robert Breault

The way Misha tells it, he drove like a blind man, giving the car almost full independence to feel its way along, bumping off things, only giving the wheel a spin with the tips of this fingers when the situation verged on life threatening. — Nicole Krauss

FASTER - don't talk down to the audience, take us for a spin, don't spell everything out for us, we're as smart as you - assume we can keep up; FUNNIER - entertain us, help us see how ridiculous and beautiful life can be, give us a reason to feel better about our flaws; LOUDER - deliver the story in the appropriate size, DON'T be indulgent or keep it to yourself, be generous - you're there to reach US." Barney takes a few gulps of air and beats his fist just once on his chest. "There you go, my dear. It might SOUND simple, but if I know you, you'll spend your life dedicated to getting it right. And that's it, my dear. THAT'S the whole banana. — Lauren Graham

It all seems so worthless. Such a waste of lives. We've spent hundreds of years since the Return buffering the Dark City and trying to maintain it - scraping out a life that will soon be wiped out.
And what of the rest of the world that's already fallen? Stars blinking away, their light slowly fading? Somewhere out there a star's just dying and we'll never know about it. Somewhere another's being born whose light we'll never see.
The Earth will spin, the stars will rearrange themselves around one another and the world will crawl with the dead who one day will drop into nothing ness: no humans left for them to scent, no flesh for them to crave. Everything-all of us-will simply cease to be. — Carrie Ryan

He can hum the music in his old man's quivering voice, but he prefers it in his head, where it lives on in violins and reedy winds. If he imagines it in rehearsal he can remember every step of his three-minute solo as if he had danced it only yesterday, but he knows, too, that one time, onstage in Berlin, he had not danced it as he had learned it; this much he knows but cannot recreate, could no recreate it even a moment after he had finished dancing it. While dancing he had felt blind to the stage and audience, deaf to the music. He had let his body do what it needed to do, free to expand and contract in space, to soar and spin. So, accordingly, when he tries to remember the way he danced it on stage, he cannot hear the music or feel his feet or get a sense of the audience. He is embryonic, momentarily cut off from the world around him. The three most important minutes of his life, the ones that determined his fate and future, are the three to which he cannot gain access, ever. — Evan Fallenberg

They were as unexpected as a mirage, those dancers on the Pont des Arts. Strictly speaking, the bridge is for pedestrians only, but waltzing is allowed on special nights like this. A guitar, a violin, an accordian -- a tune everyone knows -- and the dancers begin to twirl, spin, soar and glide all around us, in love with life at 3/4 time.



Did I say waltzing was allowed?


Under these circumstances, it's mandatory. — Vivian Swift

Teach them a spider does not spin a web. Spiders spin meaning. Cut one strand and the web holds. Cut many, the web falls. With the web's fall, so too falls the spider. Break the web. Break the spider. So breaks the circle of life. — Frederic M. Perrin

If the universe is movement, it will not be in one direction only. We think of our lives as linear but it is the spin of the earth that allows us to observe time. Walk with me. — Jeanette Winterson

But like a gambler at a slot machine, hoping the next spin would change her life for the better, she closed in before she lost her nerve. Taking his hand, she pulled him toward her, near enough to feel his body against her. She looked up at him, tilting her head slightly as she leaned in. Mike, recognizing what was happening but still having trouble believing it, tilted his head and closed his eyes, their faces drawing near. — Nicholas Sparks

What had happened wasn't supposed to have happened and yet, they still rendered the predictable media spin of potential squandered, the gift of education sacrificed to the allure of thug life, etc. Not only simplistic, but also offensively so. — Jeff Hobbs

The Earth never ceases to spin. All life is dancing : The trees, the wind, the sea. Keep dancing for the rest of your life. — Daisaku Ikeda

Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,
Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin ... Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to Lawyers,
nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,
her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,
that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,
not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,
rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common. — Thomas Pynchon

We've seen how beautiful it can be to follow Jesus into this new way of being human. But one of the things I love most about Jesus is how much He loves humanity in its brokenness. If He was surrounded by fractured people then, why would we expect it to be any different now? I actually think it is a larger mistake when we Christians attempt to pretend that our lives are more together than they really are in order to "manage our image" before the broader culture. Come look at our perfect church and our perfect family. And if you join us, maybe one day you, too, can have a perfect life! That kind of spin is a breeding ground for disappointment. — Jonathan Martin

I have found great power in taking my 'difference' out for a spin in a very public way. And usually, the worst, most personally embarrassing thing you imagine in your mind is often not anywhere near as bad in real life. — Aimee Mullins

I guess it really didn't even dawn on me that you could be a rock critic as a job until I was maybe almost out of college. I knew criticism existed. I read Rolling Stone and Spin. Siskel and Ebert were on television. But I had absolutely no idea how to get that kind of life. And moreover, it didn't interest me that much. I just sort of read normal books growing up. I wasn't that media-conscious. I felt like the one thing I was able to do was to listen to a record and decide whether I liked it. — Chuck Klosterman

Like caterpillars our metamorphosis begins with what comes from our mouth. Caterpillars spin silk cocoons from the mouth. We speak life or death, success or failure. All transformation starts with what comes from our mouth. — Brandi L. Bates

Of those that spin out trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that they are every day adding some improvement to human life. — Samuel Johnson

And I wonder, in my last moments, if the planet does not mind that we wound her surface or pillage her bounty, because she knows we silly warm things are not even a breath in her cosmic life. We have grown and spread, and will rage and die. And when all that remains of us is our steel monuments and plastic idols, her winds will whisper, her sands will shift, and she will spin on and on, forgetting about the bold, hairless apes who thought they deserved immortality. — Pierce Brown

When you keep a secret from those closest to you, even with the best of motives, there is a danger that you will create a smaller life within your main life. The first secret will spin off other secrets that also must be kept, complicated webs of evasion that grow into elaborate architectures of repressed truths and subterfuge, until you discover that you must live two narratives at once. Because deception requires both bold lies and lies of omission, it stains the soul, muddies the conscience, blurs the vision, and puts you at risk of headlong descent into greater darkness. — Dean Koontz

Change is when new selves come into the foreground while others recede into forgotten landscapes. Maybe definition of having lived a full life is when every citizen in the hall of selves gets to take you for a spin, the commander the lover the coward the misanthrope the fighter the priest the moral guardian the immoral guardian the lover of life the hater of life the fool the judge the jury the executioner.. — Steve Toltz

I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures, for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavour to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be. — Lord Chesterfield

The gene 'klotho' was named after the Greek Fate purported to spin the thread of life, because it contributes to longevity. — Craig Venter

I was young at Myna, that first time. When had the change come? He had retreated to here, to Collegium, to spin his awkward webs of intrigue and to lecture at the College. Then, years on, the call had come for action. He had gone to that chest in which he stored his youth and found that, like some armour long unworn, it had rusted away.
He tried to tell himself that this was not like the grumbling of any other man who finds the prime of his life behind him. I need my youth and strength now, as never before. A shame that one could no husband time until one needed it. All his thoughts rang hollow. He was past his best and that was the thorn that would not be plucked from his side. He was no different from any tradesman or scholar who, during a life of indolence, pauses partway up the stairs to think, This was not so hard, yesterday. — Adrian Tchaikovsky

In my fairly disorganized life, yellow stickies are too easily lost, and as for software, I try to avoid using my computer as much more than a typewriter and a post office. I rely on my lifelong habit of daydreaming to spin my stories. — Julia Glass

Bugs, Thumper, Roger, Peter, Velveteen. I name them after their storied counterparts and then I try my best to brain them. Because they remind me of where I am, marooned out here in this life I never planned. And then I get pissed at Hailey, and then I get sad about being pissed at her, and then I get pissed about being sad, and then, never one to be left out, my self-pity kicks in like a turbine engine, and it's like this endless, pathetic spin cycle where all the dirty laundry goes around and around and nothing ever gets clean. — Jonathan Tropper

May there only be peaceful and cheerful Earth Days to come for our beautiful Spaceship Earth as it continues to spin and circle in frigid space with its warm and fragile cargo of animate life. — Thant Myint-U

It soared, a bird, it held its flight, a swift pure cry, soar silver orb it leaped serene, speeding, sustained, to come, don't spin it out too long long breath he breath long life, soaring high, high resplendent, aflame, crowned, high in the effulgence symbolistic, high, of the ethereal bosom, high, of the high vast irradiation everywhere all soaring all around about the all, the endlessnessnessness ... — James Joyce

Waltz across lifetimes with me
Spin through the stars in my arms
When I look in your eyes
I know love never dies
Please waltz through these lifetimes with me.
Drift down life's river with me
Inhale the moon's secret charms
We know love never dies
as we say our good-byes
Please waltz beyond heartbreak with me. — Sheila Turnage

People shouldn't look at me and think life is one big piece of glamour. That's the marketing, the spin. Life is challenging. But I have courage, strength, and enough good health to see the positive. — Carmen Dell'Orefice

Sense About Science is much more than an innocent fact-checking service. It is a spin-off of a bizarre political network that began life as the ultra-left Revolutionary Communist Party and switched over to extreme corporate libertarianism when it launched 'Living Marxism' magazine in the late eighties. — Zac Goldsmith

Yellow decided to risk for a butterfly.
For courage she hung right beside the other cocoon and began to spin her own.
'Imagine, I didn't even know I could do this. That's some encouragement that i'mon the right track. If I have the stuff inside me to make cocoons - maybe the stuff of butterflies is there too. — Trina Paulus

It's getting closer," Tristan said.
Ayden nodded.
"So let's track it."
"No," Ayden snapped. "She's our priority."
"I know, but it's following her, so," Tristan held one hand up, "find the demon," he held up the other, "find Aurora. It could work."
The itching intensified. Invisible claws grazed up the back of my neck, wrenching every nerve to painful attention. Another hungry screech sent spikes piercing my brain. Lights shattered my vision. I couldn't breathe. I burst out of the suffocating space just as the engine roared to life and gunned the car forward.
With a violent curse, Ayden slammed on the brakes but not before the Maserati rammed my hip. I hurtled into the air and rolled a fast spin onto the hood.
"Or you could just hit her with the car," Tristan said.
"Real smooth. — A&E Kirk

If nothing else, school teaches that there is an answer to every question; only in the real world do young people discover that many aspects of life are uncertain, mysterious, and even unknowable. If you have a chance to play in nature, if you are sprayed by a beetle, if the color of a butterfly's wing comes off on your fingers, if you watch a caterpillar spin its cocoon
you come away with a sense of mystery and uncertainty. The more you watch, the more mysterious the natural world becomes, and the more you realize how little you know. Along with its beauty, you may also come to experience its fecundity, its wastefulness, aggressiveness, ruthlessness, parasitism, and its violence. These qualities are not well-conveyed in textbooks. — Michael Crichton

Is it not folly, Spider-like to spin
The Thread of present Life away to win-
What? for ourselves, who know not if we shall
Breathe out the very Breath we now breathe in! — Omar Khayyam

When it comes to life, we spin our own yarn, and where we end up is really, in fact, where we always intended to be. — Julia Glass

I just can't imagine my life without Dostoevsky and The Brothers Karamazov. I can spin off of that and talk about Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy. I could talk about other novels, but for me it's Dostoevsky. His sheer size and grandeur, his sacramentality, his ecclesiology, and his sense of the human predicament are as powerful as it gets. Can't imagine not reading the Russians. — Gordon T. Smith

Sunflowers, Not Facing the Sun (A Poem)
I stand tall
As gracious as one could be
Blooming to my best
As slender as it touches my being
Everyone else is facing the sun
Bending towards its unfathomable galore
They and I are both undoubtedly
Grown on the benevolence of life's essence
The brighter side mercilessly feeding desires unbound
By daunting the "courage to know" with each spin
Though, I am not able to face the sun the way they do
Yet, I learn from the knowledge bred within me
Beyond achievement markers, but an adverse ability
An opportunity to exercise my special self
From the cherubic attire of my blessed soul
To the unfathomable mystery the drape of this world hides
That I, by not facing the sun
Hunt the gems in the milieu of the human existence — Annie Ali

...life's big. If you can't fix it, give it a spin. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Hey you know what they say you should do when life gives you lemons?"
The sudden change in topic made my head spin, "Make lemonade?" I answered weakly.
"Lemonade? Who the fuck do you hang out with, Girl Scouts? No, when life gives you lemons, you add vodka and make a lemon drop. — Cardeno C.

Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it will drop them and they will form a pile. — John Hersey

At times, the confident lose confidence, the patient lose their cool, the generous act selfish, and the knowledgeable second guess what they know. And guess what? We're all human. We all make mistakes, we lose our tempers, and we get caught off guard. We stumble, we slip, and we spin out of control sometimes. But that's usually the worst of it. We all have our moments. Most of the time, we're remarkable. So stand beside the people you love through their trying times of imperfection, and offer yourself the same courtesy. For more tips on how to live a productive life, read "The Angel Affect" and join the mission. — Anonymous

I believe that the yarn we spin is capable of mending the broken warp and woof of our life! — Mahatma Gandhi

It's okay to spin around and around in the same place. Just so long as you're singing your heart out.
THAT's what life's all about. — Chica Umino

'Spin City' was a really wonderful time for me. I made friends for life on that show. I made friends with Richard Kind, Michael Boatman, Barry Bostwick, Sandy Chaplin. We're all close. It was a really wonderful time. — Alan Ruck

...why not let nature show you a few things? Cutting grass and pulling weeds can be a way of life... Lilacs on a bush are better than orchids. And dandelions and devil grass are better! Why? Because they bend you over and turn you away from all the people and the town for a little while and sweat you and get you down where you remember you got a nose again. And when you're all to yourself that way, you're really yourself for a little while; you get to thinking things through, alone. Gardening is the handiest excuse for being a philosopher. Nobody guesses, nobody accuses, nobody knows, but there you are, Plato in the peonies, Socrates force-growing his own hemlock. A man toting a sack of blood manure across his lawn is kin to Atlas letting the world spin easy on his shoulder. As Samuel Spaudling, Esquire, once said, 'Dig in the earth, delve in the soul.' Spin those mower blades, Bill, and walk in the spray of the Fountain of Youth. — Ray Bradbury

I glare at him and sigh. "Don't you understand what a book is?"
"Obviously."
"Then how can it be boring? It's not just twenty-six little letters all mushed together to make words that link together to tell a story. It's the creation of another world where anything can happen and anyone can be whoever they want to be. It's a crazy, special kind of magic that can transport you out of the real world, to anywhere you want to go. It doesn't matter if it's a made-up universe or it's written in a city you can drive to within an hour. It's what happens within the pages that makes reading so...not boring."

-Emma Hart "Dirty Little Rendezvous (The Burke Brothers Spin-Off #1). — Emma Hart

So it isn't I who am master of my life, I am just one of the threads to be woven into life's calico! Well then, even if I cannot spin, I can at least cut the thread in two. — Soren Kierkegaard

There are many in public life who deserve only our praise and admiration. But there are too many who are products of a class that knows little other than spin and the machinations of politics. Little wonder that leadership of the transforming sort is so hard to come by. The danger is that this may be permanent. Where our best people shun politics because the profession isn't honoured as it once was, this only serves to make the profession even less honoured. — Tim Soutphommasane

Lose my life, lose my freedom, lose my soul. A spin of the chamber and pull the trigger, see what it'll be. — C.M. Stunich

I am still stunned by my capacity to spin Scripture, see what I wanted, ignore what I didn't, and use the Word to defend my life rather than define it. — Jen Hatmaker

The short span of life forbids us to spin out hope to any length. Soon will night be upon you, and the fabled Shades, and the shadowy Plutonian home. — Horace

Do you know anything about hearts, Jona? The Senta know hearts. Hearts are not one organ. Inside a mother's womb, two pulsing bags of blood seek their eternal mate."
Her hand reached out to his. She opened his palm, and traced a finger down his lifeline, then his loveline. She lifted it up to her own face. She placed it on her cheek.
"Lungs are fine apart," she said, "Hands do not need another but to clap. Brains gnarl like roots in the nothing of soul, and guts spin in knots around the nothing of hunger. But hearts are made by two complete parts merging together. Once the two pieces sense each other in the blood flow, they cross every bloody cliff inside of us. The arteries bind the halves close. The veins make love to each other in the life pulse that makes all life from love entwined. — J.M. McDermott

People don't change. The world carries on spinning inexorably around but people don't spin with it. They dig their heels into the shifting sand and cling on for dear life. — Tamar Cohen

Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March.
...
I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world ... I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.
I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness ... Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.
I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.
I am thawing. — Laurie Halse Anderson

What they say is, life goes on, and that is mostly true. The mail is delivered and the Christmas lights go up and the ladders get put away and you open yet another box of cereal. In time, the volume of my feelings would be turned down in gentle increments to a near quiet, and yet the record would still spin, always spin. There was a place for Rose so deeply within myself that it was another country, another world, with its own light and time and its own language. A lost world. Yet its foundations and edges were permanent-the ruins of Pompeii, the glorious remnants or the Forum. A world that endured, even as it retreated into the past. A world visited, imagined, ever waiting, yet asleep — Deb Caletti

Life's a wheel of fortune and it's my chance to spin it. — Tupac Shakur

... words have been all my life, all my life
this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out
the silk is her life, her home, her safety
her food and drink too
and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew ... . — A.S. Byatt

He ached for creation. For life to somehow rise from the drawings in his sketching book. For his own energy, his own impressions to swirl and spin on a canvas. For a dream city he had tacked above his bed. — C.S. Richardson

Just as the world spun us into existence, it will spin on long after we are gone. — Crystal Woods

If your subject is an actor, he or she will also be shorter in person than they appear onscreen. This, also, you must keep to yourself. Even if you think you are giving their lack of height a positive spin, you aren't. 'You always seem larger than life in photos, but it's nice to see that in person you're just like us' might seem like a compliment, but what a star hears is 'You're stumpy, and you will lose jobs to taller people. — Jancee Dunn

All the fakeness just rolls right off them, maybe because the nonstop sales job of American life has instilled in them exceptionally high thresholds for sham, puff, spin, bullshit, and outright lies, in other words for advertising in all its forms. — Ben Fountain

How often have I painted a splendid picture of a journey marked by courageous ascents and daring desert crossings when all along all I've really been doing is running? — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The life is a whipping top. When it ends the spin, life ends! — Deyth Banger

The Daughter was weary at her spinning, and reflected aloud, "What if we really could spin coarse straw into fine, pure strands of gold?"
"If you could accomplish that miracle," her mother admonished, "the responsibility it would entail would tax and exhaust you - mind and body - far beyond the demands of the quotidian tasks you have been given. How blessed it is to live a human, limited life. — Isabel Anders

By one delay after another they spin out their whole lives, till there's no more future left for them. — Roger L'Estrange

This is love, I think. A place where people who have been alone may lock together like hawks and spin in the air, dizzy with surprise at the connection. A place you go willingly, and with wonder — Jodi Picoult

The Judge, whose eyes had gone in the general direction, recalled them, leaned back in his seat, and looked steadily at the man whose life was in his hand, as Mr. Attorney-General rose to spin the rope, grind the axe, and hammer the nails into the scaffold. — Charles Dickens

Nine-Line Triolet
Here's a fine mess we got ourselves into,
My angel, my darling, true love of my heart
Etcetera. Must stop it but I can't begin to.
Here's a fine mess we got ourselves into -
Both in spin with nowhere to spin to,
Bound by the old rules in life and in art.
Here's a fine mess we got ourselves into,
(I'll curse every rule in the book as we part)
My angel, my darling, true love of my heart. — Wendy Cope

For leveling really to come about a phantom must first be provided, its spirit, a monstrous abstraction, an all-encompassing something that is nothing, a mirage
this phantom is the public. Only a passionless but reflective age can spin this phantom out, with the help of the press when the press itself becomes an abstraction ... [and] the only thing that can keep life going in the prevailing torpor. — Soren Kierkegaard

To spin the web and not be caught in it, to create the world, to create your own life, to rule your fate, to name the grandmothers as well as the fathers, to draw nets and not straight lines, to be a maker as well as a cleaner, to be able to sing and not be silenced, to take down the veil and appear: all these are the banners on the laundry line I hang out. — Rebecca Solnit

If there is a particular time that defined the clear yet inaudible sound of a life beginning to unwind, this was it, the moment before her life began to spin off course, like the point in a novel at which everything that has come before turns and past events reveal their significance. Yet we didn't see it. — Jill Bialosky

Is it not the singularity of life that terrifies us? Is not the decisive difference between comedy and tragedy that tragedy denies us another chance? Shakespeare over and over demonstrates life's singularity - the irrevocability of our decisions, hasty and even mad though they be. How solemn and huge and deeply pathetic our life does loom in its once-and doneness, how inexorably linear, even though our rotating, revolving planet offers us the cycles of the day and of the year to suggest that existence is intrinsically cyclical, a playful spin, and that there will always be, tomorrow morning or the next, another chance. — John Updike

Suicide is like the ejector button in the cockpit of an F-15. If life goes into a permanent tail spin, it's nice to know the option is there. — Dov Davidoff