Quotes & Sayings About Looking Over Your Shoulder

Her dad brought his hands together and popped a knuckle.
"Trevor," Frances said soothingly, rubbing her hand on his back. But she was looking hard at me over her glasses, telling me upstanding citizens did not act this way.
When we were kids, that look from Frances could make Lori and her brother behave, and sometimes even my brothers, but I never seemed to get the message.
"I saw you coming out of the woods," Lori's dad shouted at me. "Together!"
"We weren't rolling in the leaves or anything. Look, no evidence." I put my other hand on Lori's other shoulder and turned her around backward, hoping against hope
she didn't have scratches from the tree on her bare back, or bark on her butt.
"Get your hands off my daughter. — Jennifer Echols

His blue eyes brightened with a smile. 'I did.' He looked over his shoulder, as if making sure her mom wasn't looking. The he pulled her against him and kissed her. A soft kiss.
'I got you something,' He whispered, his lips breathing words against hers.
He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a ring. A gold ring with a large diamond. A beautiful, teardrop-shaped diamond that looked like an engagement ring. Kylie's breath caught.
'It was my grandmother's ring. In her letter she wrote you should have it. And before you start panicking, let me say that I know maybe we're too young to call it an engagement, That's why I got you this too.' He pulled out a gold chain 'I want you to wear it around your neck. Call it a promise- A promise that when you do slip a ring on that finger ... ' He ran his hand down to her left hand. 'That it'll be my ring.'
Emotion rose in her chest 'You don't have to give me anything for me to give you that promise. — C.C. Hunter

I keep warning and warning, and nobody seems willing to listen. One of these days someone is going to wake up to the fact that I'm serious when I say never to attack my sister without looking over your shoulder for me. (Rhoan) — Keri Arthur

It was a long time before I realized that you don't have to start right, you just have to start. Put pen to paper, allow yourself the freedom to write badly, to get it wrong, stop looking over your own shoulder. — Abigail Thomas

I'm an escapist. I'm not a planner; I've never made a decision about anything in my life. The good thing about Africa is that you can escape forever. You can do what you want without someone looking over your shoulder. — Peter Beard

Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God's approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That's not morality, that's just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base though. — Richard Dawkins

And one of the things she had learned early in her life
was that if you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn
more about it. If you simply ignored the feeling, you would never know what might happen, and
in many ways that was worse than finding out you were wrong in the first place. Because if you
were wrong, you could go forward in your life without ever looking back over your shoulder and
wondering what might have been — Nicholas Sparks

Going your own way shouldn't stop them from being happy with you."
"My brother and my sisters, they're clerks and parents and settled sort of people. I'm a puzzle, and sooner or later when you can't solve a puzzle, you have to think there's somthing wrong with it. Else there's something wrong with you."
"You ran away," she murmured.
He wasn't sure he liked the phrase, but nodded. "In a sense, I suppose, and as fast as I could. What's the point in looking back?"
But he was looking back, Keeley thought. Looking back over his shoulder, because he was still running away. — Nora Roberts

I come out of journalism, and then book writing. There, it's just you and your editor and maybe a copy desk, looking over your editor's shoulder, and that's the story. It's right there. I can show it to you because it's on paper. — Wendell Pierce

From Kari Gregg's "What Rough Beast"

{Elliot} blinked when a blade speared neatly through the master's chest from the rear. "Got him," Garrick shouted over the master's shoulder. "Set, Elliot."
Set what?
He didn't care.
He channeled his rage and pierced the dark master through, impaling him on his blade.
Garrick slid his free.
Malachi yanked him down a split second before Garrick's sword severed his head as well as the dark master's. Chest heaving, he sprawled in the dust, blinking at the fuzzy image of the head bouncing across the floor. It came to rest at the bottom spoke of a crumbling ladder, the vampyr's teeth still gnashing.
His new partner dragged him upright and, looking in his eyes, squeezed his shoulder. "Set means your blade will set the enemy for your partner's killing blow" Malachi grinned at him, chuckled. "It also means duck. — Kari Gregg

I feel the weight of just telling the truth. There really is no weight to telling the truth. It's a little scary sometimes, but if you tell the truth, you don't have to be looking over your shoulder. — Jussie Smollett

It was also lazy parenting, he thought. Teach them to do the right thing because it's the right thing - not because Mom and Dad are looking over your shoulder. — Harlan Coben

It evolved out of the idea to make a kids TV show. And it actually turned out to be a bit dull and a bit regulated and too many people looking over your shoulder and it wasn't really. — Dave Rowntree

Yelena." I halted in the doorway, looking back over my shoulder.
"You once said I wasn't ready to believe your reason for killing Reyad. I'll believe you now."
"But I'm not ready to tell you," I said and left the room. — Maria V. Snyder

Are you gonna put your shirt back on?" she blurted out.
Chase froze, looking over his shoulder at her with the most maddening smile. "Why? Is this bothering you?"
"I just ... " Andie sputtered, floundering through her response. "I mean, what if we get pulled over or something?"
"If we get pulled over, this could only work in your favor," he said, running his hands over his chest.
Andie tried to stifle a laugh. "My God, you're insufferable. — Priscilla Glenn

When you devote yourself to achieving your goal, you will not be bothered by shallow criticism. Nothing important can be accomplished if you allow yourself to be swayed by some trifling matter, always looking over your shoulder and wondering what others are saying or thinking. The key to achievement is to move forward along your chosen path with firm determination. — Daisaku Ikeda

There's one good thing about being in the bomb disposal unit: No superior officer is ever looking over your shoulder. — Robert M. Edsel

If you are constantly looking over your shoulder at the competition you are not concentrating on the path ahead — Leonie Mateer

You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write. — Nikki Giovanni

When you drive down Cemetery Road, the angel appears to be looking directly at you. Yet once you pass the monument and look back over your shoulder, the angel is still looking at you. Thus the appellation: the Turning Angel. — Greg Iles

When everything is at its worst, your mind just throws it all into the wastebasket and goes to Florida for a little while. There is a sudden electric what-the-hell glow as you stand there looking back over your shoulder at the bridge you just burnt down. — Richard Bachman

The best time to tell your story is when you have to tell your story. When it's not really a choice. But then, when you get that first, messy, complicated version down, you have to read it over and be very tough on yourself and ask, 'Well what's the story here?' If you're lucky enough to have someone you trust looking over your shoulder, he or she can help you if [you] lack perspective on your own story. — Jeannette Walls

Who do you hang out with? Natalia asks, looking over my shoulder. She's always done that. Wherever you are, whoever you are, she'll always look over your shoulder to see if there's someone more exciting to speak to. It used to make me feel paranoid. — Melina Marchetta

WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE WOMEN THAT HAVE MADE A REAL DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD THROUGHOUT HISTORY, WHAT THEY'VE DONE HAS ALMOST ALWAYS BEEN DEFINED BY FEARLESSNESS. STOP LOOKING OVER YOUR SHOULDER - THERE'S NOBODY WHO MATTERS BACK THERE. — Anna Quindlen

In a way you can feel that the poet actually is looking over your shoulder, and you say to yourself, now, how would this go for him? Would this do or not? — Robert Fitzgerald

I had a tattoo once," said Kaidan. "Last year, just before we left England."
"What do you mean, you had one 'once'?"
"Bloody thing was gone by the morning!" His voice was indignant. "Sheets were black with ink. I put myself through all of that for hours, and my body just pushed it back out!"
And once again we were both in a fit of hysterics, sharing the world's best inside joke. We were doubled over, unable to breathe, and I accidentally snorted. Kaidan pointed at me and laughed harder, clutching his stomach.
"What was your tattoo?" I managed to push the words out.
"You had to ask. It was a deadly-looking pair of black wings on my shoulder blades."
Kaidan and I started roaring again, muscles clenching from the exertion.
We had no way of knowing it would be our last reason to laugh for a very long time. — Wendy Higgins

You can never see yourself the way you are to someone else - to a man looking at you, from behind, when you don't know - because in a mirror your own head is always cranked around over your shoulder. A coy, inviting pose. You can hold up another mirror to see the back view, but then what you see is what so many painters have loved to paint - Woman Looking In Mirror, said to be an allegory of vanity. Though it is unlikely to be vanity, but the reverse: a search for flaws. What is it about me? can so easily be construed as What is wrong with me? — Margaret Atwood

You can spend your life looking over your shoulder or you can look ahead. I choose to look ahead — Pleasant Rowland

I've done my best to work from a place of humility - always looking over your shoulder saying, 'Does this suck?' and I think that's a good way to work. The other way to work is where you start to think, 'I'm on fire, I'm amazing!' and I don't think that's the way to work. — David O. Russell

Someone said that thirty was a significant birthday, and everyone around the table agreed. Someone else said it was the first time you heard the bell.
What bell? someone asked.
But they all knew what bell. It was like you'd already completed a few laps, observed another, but this was the first time you'd properly heard the bell. There had been one at seven, but you hadn't heard it because you were so young; and then one at fourteen but you hadn't heard it because you were too busy looking over your shoulder; then another at twenty-one but you hadn't heard it because you were too busy talking; and then one at twenty-eight which for some reason took two years before you heard it. But they all agreed you did hear that one, eventually.
Your lousy career, said one guest. Babies, said one of the women. Lovers, friends, travel, said another. Parents aging. Bong. All the things you hadn't done. Might not do. Bong. — Graham Joyce

She thrusts hurriedly into your hand an extremely hot buttered roll, flashes out a tiny pair of scissors, snips off the second button of your overcoat, meaningly ejaculates the one word, "parallelogram!" and swiftly flies down a cross street, looking back fearfully over her shoulder. That — O. Henry

Come on, man. You can't always be looking over your shoulder, you know? At the good stuff or the bad stuff. You got to look ahead, or else you miss the good stuff that's still coming. — Kristopher Reisz

You don't want to return to the life you had before Stanford, and you don't know if you can remain in this life any longer, but fear should never be the reason why you change. If you're only here because you're afraid of the old way of life, you'll never pay attention and open your soul to learn about the new way. You'll be too busy looking back over your shoulder to make sure the old life isn't creeping up on you. — Anais Torres

I know I just met you, Susan," Ravyn whispered against her ear. "But I think I love you."
She froze her hand on the latch as a wave of anger went through her. Instead of warming her, those words went over her like ice. Looking at him over her shoulder, she glared at him. "You think? You think you love me? You don't know?"
His face baffled, he scowled at her. "Why are you so angry? I'm trying to die here ... for you. Nobly."
"Then you should have just dropped dead and not opened your mouth to piss me of. You think? Think? What is that? — Sherrilyn Kenyon

If God has called you, do not spend time looking over your shoulder to see who is following you. — Corrie Ten Boom

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer. — Barbara Kingsolver

Finding security in mediocrity is an exhausting process. You can work only so many hours, fret only so much. Being a slightly better typist or a slightly faster coder is insufficient. You're always looking over your shoulder, always trying to be a little less mediocre than the guy next to you. It wears you out. — Seth Godin

The past can be a terrible weight bound to you by an unbreakable chain. You can drag it with you, forever looking over your shoulder at what holds you back. Or you can let it go and move forward. It's your choice. — Raymond E. Feist

Back when I lived in Brooklyn, I'd sometimes take the Q train all the way out to Coney Island and back, and work on my laptop. There's something about pushy New Yorkers looking over your shoulder that really makes you produce sentences. — Joshua Foer

Being on the run, having to change the way that you do business, being unable to plan in a safe and secure environment, always looking over your shoulder, knowing that some day somebody's going to knock on your door and it's going to be your last. — John Abizaid

There always seems to be someone looking over your shoulder - just waiting for an opportunity to lecture on The Darker Side of Chocolate — Sandra Boynton

Things have been going too well for me lately. I feel like I have some bad karma headed my way." Tamara frowns at me as she leads me toward the dressing rooms. "That's a pretty dire outlook on life," she says. "What's the point in working to be happy if you're going to be constantly looking over your shoulder, wondering when it's time to pay the bill? — Jonathan Tropper

That wasn't so bad," I decided, after downing the shot. Maybe I was getting my rhythm.
"Because you threw it over your shoulder," Scarface told me, looking smug.
"Did not." I looked behind me, only to see an outraged vamp with fey wine dripping down his face. "Oops."
"It was for luck," Ray said defensively, wrapping both my hands around a glass.
"Drink!"
I drank. — Karen Chance

Once you have made a careful decision based on facts, go into action. Don't stop to reconsider. Don't begin to hesitate, worry, and retrace your steps. Don't lose yourself in self-doubting which begets other doubts. Don't keep looking back over your shoulder. — Dale Carnegie

It feels very, very good to make a film freely, to work without having to wait years for script approval, without looking over your shoulder. — Bahman Ghobadi

If you start becoming withdrawn and looking over your shoulder, being careful about what you say, that's being paranoid. This is an open, accessible team. That's been my trademark for years. — Art Modell

This is Rome. Treachery and opportunism and backstabbing run in her veins like lifeblood, and if you've never had to live your life constantly looking over your shoulder, then you have no idea how dangerous it can be. — Lesley Livingston

This is Bayle's meeting, isn't it?" Kennet asked, looking over his shoulder at the large bronze clock hanging on the wall. "Doesn't he know it's rude to arrive late to your own party?"
"When you arrived late to your own birthday party, you told me that was arriving in style," Linnea reminded him. — Amanda Hocking

I think that if you're doing a new musical, you want to have the opportunity to experiment and try things without the whole city of critics looking over your shoulder. — Idina Menzel

If you're good, you're always looking over your shoulder. — Bruce Springsteen

Whiskey was still looking some place past Patrick's shoulder, and suddenly his brown eyes met
Patrick's with a sort of inscrutable intensity. Patrick, this isn't over, okay? You and me? You want to
stay here, you want to keep sleeping in my bed, that's fine. I like you there. You're warm and you're kind,
and it's comfortable, having you there. But I'm going to want you, and you're going to want me, and if you
don't want to follow through on that, that's fine too. But you'll need to decide which way you want it, and
you need to make it clear when you make your decision. I'm, like, twelve years older than you, and I don't
sleep around. I'm not going to hit on you just because you're cute and you're here. I need to know it's
something you want, and it's something you need, and you're not just doing it because you think you need
to put out because I'm being human to you. You don't. All you need to do is be human back. — Amy Lane

The best words I ever heard about making your own reputation," Gram said, looking over her shoulder into the back seat, "is that you come into the world crying while everyone is smiling at the miracle of you, and you should live your life so when you leave it, you're smiling, but everyone else is crying because the miracle of you is gone. — Terri Farley

And then it hit me. One of those evil thoughts siblings get because, well, that's what we do. Looking over my shoulder I said, "You know, since you have some free time, maybe you could ... never mind."
"What?"
"Well it's just that, all those calories you've been drink - I mean - not burning off have kind of settled on your gut. I didn't want to mention anything," I said as Dave's hand stole to his midsection. "But the general pointed out that you'd lost a few steps training-wise." I laughed and waved my hand. "I'm sure it's nothing switching to a light beer won't cure. — Jennifer Rardin

- Dude, it's Jocelyn, I (Jordan) say looking over my shoulder nervously [ ... ]
- This isn't Jocelyn, B.J says sighing. It's Jordan. Dude, try to play a better trick than that. You sound nothing like her. Plus your number came up on my caller ID.
PS: maybe I'm just in a very good mood, but I keep laughing while reading this book, there are plenty of scenes that make me smile, and this is one of them.. it's just hilarious how silly and funny these characters are ;)) — Lauren Barnholdt

When you stop looking over your shoulder, you shall see that the future is way nicer than the past. — Sylvia L'Namira

It's an extreme to go from an artist like myself to a commercial artist with art directors looking over your shoulder, or any other knucklehead telling you what your art should look like. — Raymond Pettibon

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl. — Ernest Hemingway,

Come, my child," I said, trying to lead her away. "Wish good-bye to the poor hare, and come and look for blackberries."
"Good-bye, poor hare!" Sylvie obediently repeated, looking over her shoulder at it as we turned away. And then, all in a moment, her self-command gave way. Pulling her hand out of mine, she ran back to where the dead hare was lying, and flung herself down at its side in such an agony of grief as I could hardly have believed possible in so young a child.
"Oh, my darling, my darling!" she moaned, over and over again. "And God meant your life to be so beautiful! — Lewis Carroll

You will die."
"I guess. I don't know." She shook her head, trying to pick through her feelings. "I used to think I was alive just because I kept getting away. If someone didn't put a bullet in my head, I was winning. I was still breathing, right?" She looked at the blackened land around her, feeling tired and sad and alone. "But now I'm thinking it ain't like that. Now I'm thinking that once you got enough dead looking over your shoulder, you're dead anyway. Don't matter if you're still walking and talking, they weigh you down. — Paolo Bacigalupi

It must make you feel nice and young to say that being a man means nothing and being a woman means nothing and what matters is being a ... person. How about being a spider, Gwyn. Let's imagine you're a spider. You're a spider, and you've just had your first serious date. You're limping away from that now, and you're looking over your shoulder, and there's your girlfriend, eating one of your legs like a chicken drumstick. What would you say? I know. You'd say: I find I never think in terms of male spiders or in terms of female spiders. I find I always think in terms of ... spiders — Martin Amis

Whenever you do anything with Bond, you've got Cubby Broccoli and Sean Connery looking over your shoulder. — Bruce Feirstein

To sink a six-foot putt with thirty million people looking over your shoulder, convince yourself that, if you miss it, you will be embarrassed and poor. — Jack Nicklaus

Nick:"Make me immortal." Ash wasn't charmed. "Look, Nick, I don't like talking about my powers and not a lot of people know what I can do. I'm trusting you with a secret and I expect you to keep it. If you can't ... " He tilted his head down as if he was looking at him over the rim of his sunglasses. "Well, I'm sure your mom's going to miss you." "Not half as much as I'd miss me if you killed me." He blinked like a girl and leaned against Ash's shoulder. "Please don't hurt me, Ash. Please. I don't want to die while I'm still a virgin. At least let me get laid before you kill me - which according to my mom I can't do until I'm married and I can't do that until I finish college. So you have to wait a good ten years before you snuff me. Deal?" Nick, CoN Infinity — Sherrilyn Kenyon

For me, it's better to live without looking over your shoulder, worrying about who is controlling your phone, maybe poisoning your food. — Bahman Ghobadi