Making It Last Quotes & Sayings
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Top Making It Last Quotes

At her easiest, she was hard, because her brain was always working, working, working - I had to exert myself just to keep pace with her. I'd spend an hour crafting a casual e-mail to her, I became a student of arcana so I could keep her interested: the Lake poets, the code duello, the French Revolution. Her mind was both wide and deep, and I got smarter being with her. And more considerate, and more active, and more alive, and almost electric, because for Amy, love was like drugs or booze or porn: There was no plateau. Each exposure needed to be more intense than the last to achieve the same result.
Amy made me believe I was exceptional, that I was up to her level of play. That was both our making and undoing. Because I couldn't handle the demands of greatness. I began craving ease and averageness, and I hated myself for it, and ultimately, I realized, I punished her for it. I turned her into the brittle, prickly thing she became. — Gillian Flynn

I think this is irresponsible preaching and very dangerous, and especially when it is slanted toward children, I think it's totally irresponsible, because I see nothing biblical that points up to our being in the last days, and I just think it's an outrageous thing to do, and a lot of people are making a living - they've been making a living for 2,000 years - preaching that we're in the last days. — Charles M. Schulz

It is as if the mission of modernity was to squeeze every drop of variability and randomness out of life - with the ironic result of making the world a lot more unpredictable, as if the goddesses of chance wanted to have the last word. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

But at last I came to understand that I was making it too complicated. For you, this is no mingling at all; for you the Book of Revelation, the ramblings of Hermes Trismegistus, and Principia Mathematica are all signatures torn from the same immense Book. — Neal Stephenson

Last night ... I'm sorry if I was too forward with you." He paused. "Celaena, you're grimacing."
Had she been making a face? "Er- sorry."
"It did upset you, then!"
"What did?"
"The kiss!"
... "Oh, it was nothing," she said, thumping her chest as she cleared her throat. "I didn't mind it. But I didn't hate it, if that's what your thinking!" She immediately regretted saying it.
"So, you liked it?" He grinned lazily.
"No! Oh, go away!" She flung herself onto her pillows, pulling the blankets over her head. She was going to die from embarrassment. — Sarah J. Maas

When an orphan is depressed," wrote Wilbur Larch, "he is attracted to telling lies. A lie is at least a vigorous enterprise, it keeps you on your toes by making you suddenly responsible for what happens because of it. You must be alert to lie, and stay alert to keep your lie a secret. Orphans are not the masters of their fates; they are the last to believe you if you tell them that other people are also not in charge of theirs. When you lie, it makes you feel in charge of your life. Telling lies is very seductive to orphans. I know," Dr. Larch wrote. "I know because I tell them, too. I love to lie. When you lie, you feel as if you have cheated fate
your own, and everybody else's. — John Irving

One of the tours we had scheduled - the gaslight tour of Jack the Ripper's haunts, and on Halloween, no less, was canceled at the last minute. I recommend making sure you know the numbers of your tours and destinations so you can confirm your schedule along the way. Also, though we laugh about it now, the Eiffel Tower was on strike so we couldn't go up! — Andrea Phillips

But technology is the real skin of our species. Humanity, correctly seen in the context of the last five hundred years, is an extruder of technological material. We take in matter that has a low degree of organization; we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels, space shuttles. This is what we do. We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects. All our tool making implies our belief in an ultimate tool. That tool is the flying saucer, or the soul, exteriorized in three-dimensional space. — Terence McKenna

There's so much I wish for these days, but most of all, I wish you were here. It's strange, but before I met you, I couldn't remember the last time that I cried. Now, it seems that tears come easily to me ... but you have a way of making my sorrows seem worthwhile, of explaining things in a way that lessens my ache. You are a treasure, a gift, and when we're together again, I intend to hold you until my arms are weak and I can do it no longer. My thoughts of you are sometimes the only things that keep me going. — Nicholas Sparks

Without the heavy set aristocratic man snoring away on his side of the bed, without the fresh-eyed child whose hair ribbon needs retying; without the conversation at meals and the hearty appetites and getting dressed for church on time; without the tears of laughter or the worry about making both ends meet, the unpaid bills, the layoffs, both seasonal and unexpected; without the toys that have to picked up lest somebody trip over them, and the seven shirts that have to be washed and ironed, one for every day in the week; without the scraped knee and the hurt feelings, the misunderstandings that need to be cleared up, the voices calling for her so that she is perpetually having to stop what she is doing and go see what they want - without all this, what have you? A mystery: How is it that she didn't realize it was going to last such a short time? — William Maxwell

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

The black panic, that's what woke me; that all too familiar blend of terror and heinousness that buzzed beneath my skin where no eye could detect it and no scalpel could dig it out, where it would remain until I exorcised it out of me. Last night's memories were making their entrance. — Alistair Cross

When something real is about to happen to you, you go toward it with a transparent surface parallel to your own front that hums and bisects both your ears, making eyes very alert. The light bends toward chalky blue. Your skin aches. At last: something real. — Thomas Pynchon

She twisted her hair as if the question made her uncomfortable. "Seeing the past is simple magic. Seeing the present or the future - that is not." "Yeah, well," Leo said. "Watch and learn, Sunshine. I just connect these last two wires, and - " The bronze plate sparked. Smoke billowed from the sphere. A flash of fire raced up Leo's sleeve. He pulled off his shirt, threw it down, and stomped on it. He could tell Calypso was trying not to laugh, but she was shaking with the effort. "Not a word," Leo warned. She glanced at his bare chest, which was sweaty, bony, and streaked with old scars from weapon-making accidents. "Nothing worth commenting on," she assured him. "If you want that device to work, perhaps you should try a musical invocation." "Right," he said. "Whenever an engine malfunctions, I like to tap-dance around it. Works every time. — Rick Riordan

The widening gap between technology and human needs can only be filled by ethics. We have seen in the last thirty years many examples of the power of ethics. The worldwide environmental movement, basing its power on ethical persuasion, has scored many victories over industrial wealth and technological arrogance. The most spectacular victory of the environmentalists was the downfall of the nuclear industry in the United States and many other countries, first in the domain of nuclear power and more recently in the domain of weapons. It was the environmental movement that closed down factories for making nuclear weapons in the United States, from plutonium-producing Hanford to warhead-producing Rocky Flats. Ethics can be a force more powerful than politics and economics. — Freeman Dyson

In fact, it seems to me that making strategic alliances across national borders in order to treat HIV among the world's poor is one of the last great hopes of solidarity across a widening divide. — Paul Farmer

My style is about making things last forever. When you're on a budget, it can be daunting to spend $300 on a pair of boots or a coat. But such basics are the building blocks from which your look is crafted. — Nina Garcia

It's a confidentiality clause. No doubt you'll be familiar with these from your days in the City. In signing, you consent by law not to disclose sensitive information pertaining to school affairs, including what we have discussed here today.'
Howard gapes back at him stupidly. 'Are you serious?'
'Merely a precaution, Howard, making sure we've got all our angles covered. No need to rush into it right away. Take it home with you, think it over. If you want to turn it down, do the honorable thing, I can't stop you. I'm sure you'll find a position elsewhere easily enough. Gather there are vacancies in St Anthony's at the moment. Teacher got stabbed there just last week. — Paul Murray

What kind of husband would I be if I bet against my own marriage?'
I smiled. 'The stupid kind. Didn't you listen to your dad when he told you not to bet against me? — Jamie McGuire

If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, then the last thing one would want to do is to hold a vote: a public contest which someone will be seen to lose. Voting would be the most likely means to guarantee humiliations, resentments, hatreds, in the end, the destruction of communities. What is seen as an elaborate and difficult process of finding consensus is, in fact, a long process of making sure no one walks away feeling that their views have been totally ignored. — David Graeber

I just want choices. It's not about making money and having a lot of friends in Hollywood; that's the last thing I want. — Bojana Novakovic

TV, a Pioneer in the series they had to stop making because it was too expensive, too good for the price they commanded. Truls had got the last one, bought with money he had earned by burning evidence against a pilot who had been smuggling heroin for Asayev. — Jo Nesbo

Texts between Dr. Stayner & Livie(with a little help from Kacey)
Dr. Stayner: Tell me you did one out-of-character thing last night
Livie: I drank enough Jell-O shots to fill a small pool, and then proceeded to break out every terrible dance move known to mankind. I am now the proud owner of a tattoo and if I didn't have a video to prove otherwise, I'd believe I had it done in a back alley with hepatitis-laced needles. Satisfied?
Dr. Stayner: That's a good start. Did you talk to a guy?
Kacey(answering for Livie): Not only did I talk to a guy but I've now seen two penises, including the one attached to the naked man in my room this morning when I woke up. I have pictures. Would you like to see one?
Dr. Stayner: Glad you're making friends. Talk to you on Saturday — K.A. Tucker

Well, possibly," I said, feeling my lips twitch again. "But maybe first you would tell us why you chose to manifest yourself in the form of Shirley Temple as last seen on the 'Good Ship Lollipop'?"
The demon twirled around, its big pink sash fluttering as it smoothed down its dress and frilly little petticoat. "My grotesque form isn't making you sick with fright?"
We both shook our heads, Noelle with a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. "Shirley Temple at her pinnacle was frightening," I finally told it, "but not in the sense I think you mean. — Katie MacAlister

Christmas is like candy; it slowly melts in your mouth sweetening every taste bud, making you wish it could last forever. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Oz suddenly looked very guilty. "About that. Um, that's because I marked you last night."
My smile froze on my cheeks, making my face ache. "What?"
He suddenly found the half-eaten pancakes on his plate fascinating. "While you were sleeping on the couch, I rolled you over and ... "
The blood left my face. "What exactly does marking someone entail?"
"Nothing so bad. I just bit your back."
"You bit me?"
"Yeah. I injected some venom into your bloodstream that would make you feel better around me. I like holding your hand but I didn't think it was very practical."
I lifted my shirt, pulled down my pants, and almost fell over. My lower back looked ... it looked ... "You gave me a festering tramp stamp?" I shrieked.
"You don't think it's cute? — Katherine Pine

The time of minor poets is coming. Good-by Whitman, Dickinson, Frost. Welcome you whose fame will never reach beyond your closest family, and perhaps one or two good friends gathered after dinner over a jug of fierce red wine ... While the children are falling asleep and complaining about the noise you're making as you rummage through the closets for your old poems, afraid your wife might've thrown them out with last spring's cleaning.
It's snowing, says someone who has peeked into the dark night, and then he, too, turns toward you as you prepare yourself to read, in a manner somewhat theatrical and with a face turning red, the long rambling love poem whose final stanza (unknown to you) is hopelessly missing. — Charles Simic

with you, the sense i have lost my place in a book
or simply lost - misplaced the memory
which isn't in the last place where I looked.
a thought that the clouds don't move - that it is we
who thunder past - there it is! an old vacation,
a train ride - sense of immobility.
as sky and forest scroll past in relation,
we are not moved, pretend to love the view,
resort at length to scripted conversation
by a poet-turned-screenwriter who
didn't want this job, career gone grossly wrong
and now drafts action film scripts wholly two-
dimensional unless you choose to don
the 3d glasses that do not stay on - — Joshua Ip

I feel excitingly ... free. Things were going to happen to me last night that I did not like - and I stopped them. I have never prevented my own doom before. I have never stood in the path of certain unhappiness and told myself - lovingly, like a mother to myself - "No! This unhappiness will not suit you! Turn around and go another way!"
I have previously been resigned to any and all fates ahead - mute and compliant, worried about seeming weird or unfuckable, or about making a fuss. But now things have changed: it seems I am now the kind of girl who can instigate a threesome - then cancel a threesome, then order a cab. I am in charge of me. I can change fates! I can reorder evenings! I can say "Yes" - and then "No!" This is new information to me. I like this information. I like all information about me. I am compiling a dossier. I am my own specialist subject. — Caitlin Moran

When you're making TV, the last thing you want to do is watch TV. It's too much. — Kerr Smith

You will say that it is vulgar and contemptible to drag all this into public after all the tears and transports which I have myself confessed. But why is it contemptible? Can you imagine that I am ashamed of it all, and that it was stupider than anything in your life, gentlemen? And I can assure you that some of these fancies were by no means badly composed . . . . It did not all happen on the shores of Lake Como. And yet you are right - it really is vulgar and contemptible. And most contemptible of all it is that now I am attempting to justify myself to you. And even more contemptible than that is my making this remark now. But that's enough, or there will be no end to it; each step will be more contemptible than the last . . . — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I talked to Zrakovi this afternoon," Alex said, giving me an undecipherable look. "He's putting me back on sentinel duty for the next few weeks while you handle a special assignment."
Special assignment had an ominous ring to it.
"What kind of special assignment? And why am I hearing it from you instead of Zrakovi?" Elder Z was my boss, not Alex, however Mr. Bossy liked to think otherwise.
"You're going to be babysitting Jean Lafitte and making sure he doesn't try to take revenge on anyone for what happened last month."
At my horrified, speechless gape, Alex gave me a grim smile and held his glass of port up in salute as my dessert congealed into a lump in my stomach. "Good luck with that, Jolie. — Suzanne Johnson

This is ridiculous," she said, then changed her mind. The last time she had confessed her real feelings to this man, it hadn't gone well. "Our lines, I mean, in this play. But I hope you will choose to enjoy it a little."
"Of course. It would be uncivil to say I will not enjoy making love to you tonight."
Jane's mouth was dry. "Wh-what?"
"Tonight as we perform the play," he said, completely composed. "My character professes love to your character, and to say that such a task is odious would be an insult to you."
"Ah," she said with a little laugh. "All right then." She had forgotten for a moment that "making love" did not mean to Austen what it meant today. Of course, Mr. Nobley the twenty-first-century actor knew that, and she squinted at him to see if he had been playing with her. — Shannon Hale

RHAPAW ran not on gasoline, but on the inexhaustible fuel of human hope. You would sit on the blisteringly hot vinyl seat and hope she would start, and then Ben would turn the key and the engine would turn over a couple times, like a fish on land making its last, meager, dying flops. And then you would hope harder, and the engine would turn over a couple more times. You hoped some more, and it would finally catch. — John Green

The funny thing is, last summer we were golfing together, me, him and Alonzo [Mourning]. I don't know how to golf, but it's an unbelievable opportunity to go out and golf with one of the greats. And he's out there making fun of my swing - I can't hit the ball - and I'm getting frustrated because I'm a competitor. So Alonzo pulled me aside and said, 'Man, you're getting the chance to golf with Bill Russell. How many people can say they've done that?' And I looked at him and said, 'You know what? You're right.' — Dwyane Wade

The wine must have eradicated every last atom of common sense I possessed, because I reached up to give him a hug in the same way I would have done with Tom or one of Dane's other friends. A buddy hug. But every nerve from head to toe screamed "Mistake!" as soon as the front of my body met his, adhering like wet cottonwood leaves.
Jack's arms went around me, clasping me against a wall of muscle, and he was so big and warm, and it felt so scary-good that I stiffened all over.
The hot drift of his breath against my cheek made my heartbeat go crazy, and instant arousal filled the space between every thump.
I gasped, ducking away, my face crammed against his shoulder. "Jack ... " I could hardly speak. "I wasn't making a pass at you."
"I know." One hand slid to the back of my head, fingers lacing through the silky-fine locks. Gripping gently, he guided me to look at him. "It's not at all your fault that I'm taking it that way."
-Ella & Jack — Lisa Kleypas

Jesus," I said. "That was bad."
Seth looked startled - and then hurt. "Bad?"
"No, not performance bad - more like dirty, wicked bad. The kind of stuff that gets an R rating."
"What, we can't do that?" He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around my waist, nuzzling my neck.
"Well, yeah ... er, well, damn it. We're not supposed to be. Not at all. It's just that last time, it was like ... I don't know. It was making love. This time it was ... "
"Fucking?" he supplied.
"Oh God," I groaned. "Seth Mortensen just said 'fucking' out loud. The end times are near. — Richelle Mead

If someone was making a movie about F1 in the last six months, they wouldn't need to add a Hollywood ending. If they do make that movie, it's got to be 'The Curious Case Of Jenson Button,' where I've lived my life backwards. I'd like Johnny Depp to play me but he wouldn't be quite right. — Jenson Button

Carroting, you must understand, was a process by which animal fur is bathed in a solution of mercury nitrate, in order to render the hairs more supple, thus producing a superior felt." At this last word, he threw a significant glance in my direction. "Felt," I repeated. "You mean, for the making of hats?" "Precisely. The solution is of an orange colour, hence the term carroting. However, this process had rather severe side effects on those who worked with it, which is why its use today is much reduced. When mercury vapours are inhaled over a long enough period of time - particularly, for our purposes, in the close quarters of a hat-making operation - toxic and irreversible effects almost inevitably follow. One develops tremors of the hands; blackened teeth; slurred speech. In severe cases, dementia or outright insanity can occur. Hence the term mad as a hatter. — Douglas Preston

What was missing, I've come to believe, were the two postures that are most characteristically biblical -- the two postures that have been least explored by Christians in the last century. They are found at the very beginning of the human story, according to Genesis: like our first parents, we are to be creators and cultivators. Or to put it more poetically, we are artists and gardeners. ... after the contemplation, the artist and the gardener both adopt a posture of purposeful work. They bring their creativity and effort to their calling. ... They are acting in the image of One who spoke a world into being and stooped down to form creatures from the dust. They are creaturely creators, tending and shaping the world that original Creator made. — Andy Crouch

The consumer society, directed at making us happy, achieves the opposite. It encourages us to spend money we do not have, to buy things we do not need, for the sake of a happiness that will not last. — Jonathan Sacks

I drove to Liberty Park, just south of downtown, and within minutes, Henry had his kite out and was urging LeBron James into the air.
"He's done this before," I said in surprise.
"Not in forever. I can't remember the last time, actually," Millie replied. "Is he doing it?"
"Listen," I said. "Can you hear it?" I listened with her, straining for a sound that would connect her to the visual. Then the kite dipped, caught the wind again, and lifted, making a soft, wop wop in the air, like laundry on a clothes line, flapping in the breeze.
"I hear it!"
"That's Henry's kite. He's a natural."
"Will you help me get mine in the air? I could take off running, but that might be dangerous. I don't want to run head first into the pond. There is a pond, isn't there?"
"Just run away from the sound of the ducks. — Amy Harmon

At the very last moment, just before its lips claimed hers, its grip on her face relaxed slightly and she did the only thing she could think of: She head-butted it. Snapped her head back, then forward again, and bashed it square in the face as hard as she could. So hard, in fact, that it made her woozy and gave her an instant migraine, making her wonder how Jean-Claude Van Damme always managed to coolly continue fighting after such a stunt. Obviously, movies lied. — Karen Marie Moning

Manage me, I am a mess, swept under the rug of yesterday's home improvement, a whimsical urge tossed aside for the easy reassurance of home and comfort. I am the photograph tucked away as a book-mark, in a book left half unread, once reopened to find memories crawling back into peripheral sight, faded, creased and lonely. I long to be admired, long to be held, torn and laughed at, laughed with, like a distant relative or an old friend breathing in their last breath. I missed the moment when time collapsed and memory was erased, replaced by finicky social experiments, lost in the blur of intoxication, sucked through multi-colored bendy-straws, making way for a spinning world where hub-caps stood still, but our vision didn't. If I could leave you with only one thing, it would be small, foldable, and made from trees, with a few careless words, scribbled in blue; Take a minute to learn me, take a moment to love me, because I need your love to live,and without it, I am nothing. — Alex Gaskarth

If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.' At first there can be a friction between our expectations of time and Tarkovsky-time and this friction is increasing in the twenty-first century as we move further and further away from Tarkovsky-time towards moron-time in which nothing can last - and no one can concentrate on anything - for longer than about two seconds. — Geoff Dyer

He pulled out at the last minute, rising above her, his shoulders blocking the spray of the shower. Grabbing his erection, he was even more brutal with himself than he had been with her, yanking at his sex, making himself come. So that he covered her. It was the marking of a bonded male, a practice done so that any other male in her presence would be fully warned that if he approached her, he had best beware. She was another's. Not as property. But as something far too precious for others to toy with. - — J.R. Ward

When you're talking about who is doing the most exciting and interesting horror films of the last 20 years, it's Japan. I mean, they are making amazing films. — Drew Goddard

Children, only animals live entirely in the Here and Now. Only nature knows neither memory nor history. But man - let me offer you a definition - is the storytelling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories. He has to go on telling stories. He has to keep on making them up. As long as there's a story, it's all right. Even in his last moments, it's said, in the split second of a fatal fall - or when he's about to drown - he sees, passing rapidly before him, the story of his whole life. — Graham Swift

I am coming. I can't be coming. I'm fighting it, and that's making it worse. I am trying to fake not having an orgasm. I wonder if he can tell ...
I feel a little sick to my stomach when I realize exactly what sensation has brought me to this unfortunate climax: the friction of a very fat man's matted belly hair on my clit. This man I am on top of is the most repulsive person I've ever allowed to touch me. Sheer physics won't allow him to be on top of me. In fact, I am not entirely sure how it is that he will get back up from his supine position.
This man is my john. This orgasm and the wave of revulsion that follows quickly on its heels and makes my skin turn cold makes him my last client in my short career as an escort. — Audacia Ray

Ruprecht can build another pod though, right? I mean it was mostly just tinfoil.'
'The problem is that he has no blueprint. From the original design he keeps making changes, but these he does not write down. So it is impossible to replicate exactly.'
Later that day, Ruprecht approaches Skippy. His expression is feverish. 'I've devised a foolproof plan to get my pod back from St Brigid's,' he says. 'I call it, "Operation Falcon".'
Skippy looks dubious.
'This is your chance to get in on the ground floor!'
'No way, Ruprecht, not after how that last one went.'
'That was Operation Condor. This is Operation Falcon. It's a totally different operation.'
'Sorry. — Paul Murray

Stanley Hopkins was speechless with amazement. "I don't know what to say, Mr. Holmes," he blurted out at last, with a very red face. "It seems to me that I have been making a fool of myself from the beginning. I understand now, what I should never have forgotten, that I am the pupil and you are the master. Even now I see what you have done, but I don't know how you did it or what it signifies. — Arthur Conan Doyle

You think your show of defiance will save you from my dominance? From my wrath? Trust me, you haven't seen my worst. There are ways of torturing a vampire that can drive them literately insane. I know ways of making you suffer that will last for months or years - not seconds. I want you to test me so that I can teach you who your master is. Now get the fuck up and follow me. If I have to tell you again, I'm going to cut off your hand and send it to the werewolves."
Theoden to Noel — Nicholas Bella

My job is writing. I get paid to do it. When was the last time you heard someone challenge a doctor for making money off of cancer? — Joyce Maynard

Think Easy, Light, Smooth, and Fast. You start with easy, because if that's all you get, that's not so bad. Then work on light. Make it efforthless, like you don't give a shit how high the hill is or how far you've got to go. When you've practiced that so long, that you forget you're practicing, you work on making it smooooooth. You won't have to worry about the last one - you get those three, and you'll be fast. — Christopher McDougall

No matter how soft you try to grow it, if the soil is full of stones it won't flourish. It would rather grow in ugly patches, here and there, making a mockery of your gardening effort. Better remove the stones first; the spring is not going to last long. Next would be next year; who lives till then? — Ashfaq Saraf

You may not realize this, brother, but Izzy is loyal to me. So don't make me unleash her on you."
"And now you're making fun of me," Izzy complained.
"No. It's a serious threat," Celyn admitted. "Used by many in the family. Especially Briec. He loves threatening those who annoy him - "
"Which is everyone," Brannie stated while grabbing the last loaf of bread and tearing it into three pieces.
" - with his beautiful eldest daughter who will rip the scales from your back and tear the still-beating heart from your chest before spitting on your corpse."
Izzy put her hand to her chest, her voice trembling as she fought tears. "That is the sweetest thing I've ever heard. — G.A. Aiken

It happens that over a long period you are promised a great success, in which from the very start you do not believe, so dissimilar is it from the rest of fate's offering, and if from time to time you do think of it, then you do so as it were to indulge your fantasy - but when, at last, on a very ordinary day with a west wind blowing, the news comes - simply, instantaneously and decisevely destroying any hope in it - then you are suddenly amazed to find that although you did not believe in it, you had been living with it all this time, not realizingt he constant, close presence of the dream, which had long since grown fat and independent, so that now you cannot get it out of your life without making a hole in that life. — Vladimir Nabokov

We ourselves are the last to notice that we are not making any headway. It is brought to our notice from the outside; former students suddenly emerge as our superiors. As we grow older, the respect we receive diminishes: the disproportion between our age and our position becomes evident, first to other people and finally to ourselves. Then it is time to retreat. — Ernst Junger

We can't fully appreciate a picturesque sunset if we're wishing it would never rain again. We can't fully enjoy a moment of true connection if we're wishing we'd never feel alone again. We can't fully savor a relaxing day if we're wishing we'd never be busy again. The key to happiness is to focus less on making moments last and more on making the moments count. — Lori Deschene

He pressed another kiss to her lips as he took her hand into his. "I'm sorry for being a jerk last night and almost making the biggest mistake of my life. I was afraid of hurting you. I know what I am and I also know you deserve a guy that can spoil you rotten and take you to all the nice places that you deserve. I-"
"Jason, I don't care about those things," she said softly.
He shook his head stubbornly. "It doesn't mean that you don't deserve them, but if you give me a chance to make up for my past stupidity, and I'm not just talking about with you, I promise that I will do my best to make you happy."
"Jason-"
"I want to try this. You and me, I mean. I know I'll most likely fuck up along the way and you'll want to ring my neck, but I want to try. I'll do my best not to hurt you. — R.L. Mathewson

Look I have somewhere I have to be and I don't particularly love that I have to go, but you freaking out and making a scene is not going to do anything other than piss me off. I hope you had a good time last night and you can leave your number but we both know the chances of me calling you are slim to none. If you don't want to be treated like crap maybe you should stop going home with drunken dudes you don't know. Trust me we're really only after one thing and the next morning all we really want is for you to go quietly away. I have a headache and I feel like I'm going to hurl, plus I have to spend the next hour in a car with someone that will be silently loathing me and joyously plotting my death so really can we just save the histrionics and get a move on it? — Jay Crownover

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

I'm into using acrylic, in a complicated kind of way: Making it just as good as oil paint - better, maybe. It's odd - when I started out, acrylic was for children, pretty much. It was a cheaper paint. It wasn't supposed to look very good or last very long. — Peter Saul

That's a big responsibility, and the details obsess me. And, also, I no longer feel I have to do the Tonight Show every time I open my mouth. Twenty years ago, I told myself I'd rather direct than act, and it's taken me this long. You lose your passion in acting. You make too many mistakes. Maybe that's why I make so many movies; if you don't like this one, another one's opening on Tuesday. But then I spent six months of my life on 'At Long Last Love,' a picture nobody saw. I enjoyed making it, I learned from it, I grew, but that's too much time out of my life. — Burt Reynolds

They spoke to each other in strange, strangulated voices, and lost the knack of making each other laugh, jeering at each other instead in a spiteful, mocking tone.
Their friendship was like a wilted bunch of flowers that she insisted on topping up with water.
Why not let it die instead?
It was unrealistic to expect a friendship to last forever, she had lots of other friends: the old college crowd, her friends from school, and Ian of course.
But whom to could she confide about Ian? Not Dexter, not anymore — David Nicholls

Happiness is not about hiding the past, it's accepting today and making it last, You should not fear who you have become, have pride in yourself for all you have done. Stand tall and be proud to be who you are, Release your fears and brighten your star. — Kylie Abecca

Ruskin's interest in beauty and in its possession led him to five central conclusions. First, beauty was the result of a number of complex factors that affected the mind both psychologically and visually. Second, humans had an innate tendency to respond to beauty and to desire to possess it. Third, there were many lower expressions of this desire for possession (including, as we have seen, buying souvenirs and carpets, carving one's name on a pillar and taking photographs). Fourth, there was only one way to possess beauty properly, and that was by understanding it, by making oneself conscious of the factors (psychological and visual) responsible for it. And last, the most effective means of pursuing this conscious understanding was by attempting to describe beautiful places through art, by writing about or drawing them, irrespective of whether one happened to have any talent for doing so. — Alain De Botton

After the 'Last Waltz' concert, it just seemed very healthy to me to put making a record as far out of my mind as I possibly could. — Robbie Robertson

It's gone, boxing's gone. What is there in boxing? Who is there to talk about, who is there that people go, "Yeah I want to fight him?", and fans go "I wanna see that fight"? There's Floyd Mayweather, and he is 38, 39, he's maybe got one fight left. What else is there? He'll have a last fight or two and a couple of guys will get a few million dollars, but way less than I'm gonna be getting in future. This sport is getting bigger all the time, and I am making it bigger. — Conor McGregor

People talk about nightfall, or night falling, or dusk falling, and it's never seemed right to me. Perhaps they once meant befalling. As in night befalls. As in night happens. Perhaps they, whoever they were, thought of a falling sun. That might be it, except that that ought to give us dayfall. Day fell on Rupert the Bear. And we know, if we've ever read a book, that day doesn't fall or rise. It breaks. In books, day breaks, and night falls.
In life, night rises from the ground. The day hangs on for as long as it can, bright and eager, absolutely and positively the last guest to leave the party, while the ground darkens, oozing night around your ankles, swallowing for ever that dropped contact lens, making you miss that low catch in the gully on the last ball of the last over. — Hugh Laurie

We try to resist it by making things that will last - forever, we say - things that we don't have to wash, things that we don't have to iron. Somehow, in the process of trying to deny that things are always changing, we lose our sense of the sacredness of life. We tend to forget that we are part of the natural scheme of things. — Pema Chodron

Berlin seems like a place of healing to me though: you have both the Holocaust Memorial and Hiroshima Strasse side-by-side there. You have the whole last century libraried and you can see exactly what we did. Now there's lots of artists and musicians moving there because they can't afford the rent in London and New York, and they're having children and making it a gentle place. It seems to be a place of hope now. — Robert Montgomery

Will and George were doing well in business, and Joe was writing letters home in rhymed verse and making as smart an attack on all the accepted verities as was healthful.
Samuel wrote to Joe, sayings, "I would be disappointed if you had not become an atheist, and I read pleasantly that you have, in your age and wisdom, accepted agnosticism the way you'd take a cookie on a full stomach. But I would ask you with all my understanding heart not to try to convert your mother. Your last letter only made her think you are not well. Your mother does not believe there are many ills uncurable by good strong soup. She puts your brave attack on the structure of our civilization down to a stomach ache. It worries her. Her faith is a mountain, and you, my son, haven't even got a shovel yet. — John Steinbeck

We were all the same, it seemed to me, all of us dented and scratched and damaged, held together with pins and duct tape, the walking wounded making one last stand in the dark before giving in to the inevitable". — Greg Gifune

Making Cocoa For Kingsley Amis
It was a dream I had last week
And some kind of record seemed vital.
I knew it wouldn't be much of a poem
But I love the title. — Wendy Cope

I'm noticing a new approach to art making in recent museum and gallery shows. It flickered into focus at the New Museum's 'Younger Than Jesus' last year and ran through the Whitney Biennial, and I'm seeing it blossom and bear fruit at 'Greater New York,' MoMA P.S. 1's twice-a-decade extravaganza of emerging local talent. — Jerry Saltz

The point of the resurrection ... is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die ... What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it ... What you do in the present - by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself - will last into God's future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether (as the hymn so mistakenly puts it ... ). They are part of what we may call building for God's kingdom. — N. T. Wright

I don't deny that impulse drew us together, but while physical gratification began and ended it for you, in making love, dumbo here - - ' she jerked a thumb at her chest ' - was also demonstrating that she cared.'
His tongue moistened his lips. 'You're very up-front, aren't you?'
'You mean none of your other rejects have ever looked you in the eye and complained?' Sian queried. She might have made things easy last night, but she refused to make anything easy for him now. 'I suppose you'd prefer it if I shrugged my shoulders, muttered something about it being nice while it lasted, and filed the experience away under lessons learned? Well, sorry, but for me, and for most women if they're honest, going to bed with someone is a darn sight more complicated than that! — Elizabeth Oldfield

If within the last century art conceived as an autonomous activity has come to be invested with an unprecedented stature the nearest thing to a sacramental human activity acknowledged by secular society it is because one of the tasks art has assumed is making forays into and taking up positions on the frontiers of consciousness (often very dangerous to the artist as a person) and reporting back what's there. — Susan Sontag

In entrepreneurship, you decide to give up your day job at the point where either (A) the hobby/new business is at least making some form of ends meet, or (B) you feel that you need to dedicate yourself for a certain amount of time to it and give yourself the last hoorah. — Daymond John

That $27,000 that a young player will now get just for making the main draw at the Australian Open is huge. It can set them up for a couple of months which at that level you really do need that kind of help. It sounds like a lot of money, but when you're travelling the world trying to make it as a tennis player, it doesn't last long. — Samantha Stosur

Isabelle. Let me just follow up by describing what a big mistake you would be making if you broke up with Alec. The Lightwoods are seriously hot people. some people say the Herondales used to be hot, but think about it-not only do we outnumber them, but we took their last hottie and we made him ours. obviously, we won the victory. — Cassandra Clare

It is my considered opinion that the human race (soi disant) is cruel, idiotic, sentimental, predatory, ungrateful, ugly, conceited and egocentric to the last ditch and that the occasional discovery of an isolated exception is as deliciously surprising as finding a sudden brazil nut in what you know to be five pounds of vanilla creams. These glorious moments, although not making life actually worth living, perhaps, at least make it pleasanter. — Noel Coward

Women in the online gaming community have been harassed, threatened, and driven out. Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist media critic who documented such incidents, received support for her work, but also, in the words of a journalist, 'another wave of really aggressive, you know, violent personal threats, her accounts attempted to be hacked. And one man in Ontario took the step of making an online video game where you could punch Anita's image on the screen. And if you punched it multiple times, bruises and cuts would appear on her image.' The difference between these online gamers and the Taliban men who, last October, tried to murder fourteen-year-old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out about the right of Pakistani women to education is one of degree. Both are trying to silence and punish women for claiming voice, power, and the right to participate. Welcome to Manistan. — Rebecca Solnit

The idea of being close to where pigments were mined - that's the first thing in making a painting, getting the material. And what's the last thing you do in making a painting? You put a frame around it. — Susan Vreeland

While they read these stories, moreover - and this is a comforting thought for those who believe that the best way for anyone to become a lover of real literature is to be exposed to it early and often - boys and girls are not only gratifying their love for a
stirring tale, they are making the acquaintance of the great story-tellers of the past, taking them into their lives as companions. This early contact gives children an experience which will keep their horizon in after life from being entirely circumscribed by the mediocre and ephemeral. If a boy has sailed the wine dark Aegean, or climbed a height whence he could watch Roland's last heroic stand in the Pass of Roncevaux, some gleam remains, and there is far less likelihood that his adult reading will be entirely commonplace. — Anne Thaxter Eaton

There are two ways of defending a castle; one by shutting yourself up in it, and guarding every loop-hole; the other by making it an open centre of operations from which all the surrounding country may be subdued. Is not the last the truest safety? — Phillips Brooks

Love is both hard and soft. It is the most believable truth and fiction. It is something we fight for and fight with. It is the yin and yang. It is the most contradictory of emotions, making you believe in both the extraordinary existence of heaven and scorches of hell. If you allow it, a saturation of complexities can destroy it and leave you desperately choking for the remnants, clawing for a miniscule flake of ash of what you had . True love is a rare miracle held in the highest veneration. Blessed are those who even come close its illumination. Only those who are selflessly brave can become victorious and claim this exceptional phenomenon, if just for a memory in time. — S.V.C. Ricketts

Ruxs moaned a slutty sound, his hips speeding up and Green eagerly matched him. "Soon I'm going to put that pretty cock in my mouth and suck you until you explode down my throat," he said, licking the shell of Ruxs' ear. "Chris," Ruxs hissed. "I'm not gonna last." Green could feel his own balls tightening. It'd been too long since he'd had something besides his toys and his hand to pleasure him. Ruxs' cock was hot and heavy against his. Pulsing greedily. "You like me talking to you like that?" Green squeezed his fist tighter, making sure to flick the cap of Ruxs' bulging head with every stroke. "Answer me." He bent down and bit Ruxs' nipple, making him jerk so hard he almost fell off of him. "Shit!" Ruxs yelled. Green slowed his movement and raised his head. "Well, look what I found." "You talk too damn much." Ruxs gripped his head and lowered him back to his nipple. Green — A.E. Via

The spread, both in width and depth, of the
multifarious branches of knowledge during
the last hundred odd years has confronted us
with a queer dilemma. We feel clearly that we
are only now beginning to acquire reliable
material for welding together the sum total of all
that is known into a whole; but, on the other
hand, it has become next to impossible for a
single mind fully to command more than a small
specialized portion of it. I can see no other
escape from this dilemma ... than that some of us should venture to embark on a synthesis of facts and theories, albeit with second-hand and incomplete knowledge of some of them -and at the risk of making fools of ourselves. — Erwin Schrodinger

Wonderful art can spring from misery,I'm the last person to deny that.I'd go even further:the best works of art of all time are probably stemmed from the deep human sorrow or hellish frustration,the death of a loved one or a divorce and yes:jealousy.Heartache and impotence as the man-spring for making the unverifiable verifiable and for giving it face.How romantic,beautiful and especially useful pain and misery can be. — Esther Verhoef

I always say one of my favorite things about making movies is finishing on that last day because I get to have my life back and let that go, and hopefully have a real sense of accomplishment at the end of it. — Mark Wahlberg

He'd figured out the body, so now it was on to the brain. Specifically: How do you make anyone actually want to do any of this stuff? How do you flip the internal switch that changes us all back into the Natural Born Runners we once were? Not just in history, but in our own lifetimes. Remember? Back when you were a kid and you had to be yelled at to slow down? Every game you played, you played at top speed, sprinting like crazy as you kicked cans, freed all, and attacked jungle outposts in your neighbors' backyards. Half the fun of doing anything was doing it at record pace, making it probably the last time in your life you'd ever be hassled for going too fast. — Christopher McDougall

I have to say that in 1981, making those decisions, I felt like I was providing enough freedom for 10 years. That is, a move from 64k to 640k felt like something that would last a great deal of time. Well, it didn't. It took about only 6 years before people started to see that as a real problem. — Bill Gates

Enjoy it, kid. Enjoy feeling that you can make a difference.' Floyd flashed him a smile. 'It won't last for ever. — Alastair Reynolds

They saw themselves as rear-guard individualists, making a last-ditch stand against the twentieth century. They gave thanks loudly from morn till eve that they had escaped the soul
destroying commercialism of the city. They were tacky and cheerful and defiantly bohemian, tirelessly inquisitive about each other's doings, and boundlessly tolerant. When they fought, at least it was with fists and bottles and furniture, not lawyers. — Christopher Isherwood

I dug my hand into the small spot and pulled out a key attached to a big black key chain with buttons for locking and unlocking doors. My head jerked up to see his serious expression. Patti covered her mouth, saying nothing.
"No more boys taking you on trips, you hear?" His voice was gravelly. "You can take your own self from now on. Last thing you need is some boy distracting you and making this whole situation even more complicated. Promise me you'll stay away from that son of Pharzuph."
[ ... ]
"I tried that once, John," Patti warned him. "It didn't work out so well for me. — Wendy Higgins

At the end of the day, it's just grape juice. No one needs anything that I make. The last thing we need is another wine on the shelf. So that just makes me grateful for the people who do enjoy it. — Andre Hueston Mack