Mind Bending Quotes & Sayings

Three old women were bending in the fields. What use is it to question us? they said. Well it shortly became clear that they knew everything there is to know about the snowy fields and the blue green shoots and the plant called "audacity", which poets mistake for violets. I began to copy out everything that was said ... I will do anything to escape boredom. It is the task of a lifetime. You can never know enough, never work enough, never use the infinitives and participles oddly enough, never impede the movement harshly enough, never leave the mind quickly enough. — Anne Carson

It was hard to imagine the icy water thawed and re-sealing, or the sky returning to a lively blue. She had a sense of contraction, of huddling against the weather. Later, it figured in her mind as Stalinist classicism, the wind tunnel of the vast and inhuman Karl-Marx-Allee, and the shapes of people in padded jackets bending against the cruel air. A scene from Eisenstein, perhaps, with a gelid lens and the special effects of monumental vision, swollen by an aerial view and historical misery. Black outlines on white snow, impersonality, extinguishment. Exaggeration of this kind was irresistible. In that early, fierce cold, Berliners coped better. — Gail Jones

Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting.
Isn't that a sin?" I asked Mom.
Not exactly," Mom said. "God doesn't mind you bending the rules a little if you have a good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering. — Jeannette Walls

Much bending breaks the bow; much unbending the mind. — Francis Bacon

What will it do to Jimmy's state of mind if he opens his eyes and sees three of his former beloveds bending over him like the three Fates? Demanding his everlasting love, his apologies, his blood in a cat food saucer? — Margaret Atwood

The primacy of the word, basis of the human psyche, that has in our age been used for mind-bending persuasion and brain-washing pulp, disgraced by Gobbles and debased by advertising copy, remains a force for freedom that flies out between all bars. — Nadine Gordimer

First, they set the hook with mind-bending kinky shit. Then a year later you're living in a Talking Heads song, dressed like Teddy Ruxpin, living with a strange woman in a big house full of frilly throw pillows, experiencing the frequency of sex that can only be charted by Halley's Comet. and you're wondering: How did I get here? — Tim Dorsey

I discovered what a mental stimulant physical labor could be; not mere physical labor, I should add, but absolutely spine-bending, lung-racking, gut-ripping, ligament-tearing, and ball-breaking physical labor. But as long as the task is both onerous and repetitive, I discovered, the mind is not only free to wander to more imaginative climes, it actually flees to higher planes. — Dan Simmons

It kept him from reaching that place that he hit so, so often in his life, the mind-bending, sob-inducing limit where he said to himself, I just cannot endure any more motherfucking death. No more! Order. Put everything in order. Serve order. That was the why and what of it. Order. — Christopher Moore

Erienne stared up at him, and when she spoke it was almost in awe. "And what of you, Christopher? If I were to yield myself to you, would you, then, honor me?"
"Honor you?" he breathed. "Sweetest Erienne, how could I not? You are ever in my thoughts, bending me, twisting me, plucking at the fibers of my mind. The man inside me trembles whenever you're near, and I groan in agony for the touch of your hand laid upon me in a soft caress. I am beset with my desire for you, and if I thought for one moment that you would not loathe me forever, I would ease my lusts this very night, be you willing or nay. But I'd rather hear my name fall from your lips with words of love than snarled in tones of hate. 'Tis the one thing that keeps you safe from me, Erienne. 'Tis the only thing."

-Erienne & Christopher — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

He was submitting, submitting because of his fathers, bending his mind in a most perfect slavery to this conflagration. — Stephen Crane

Here I am baking cookies and looking all over the house for you," she turned her attention to Gabe and uncovered his eyes, "hoping to bring my man something to munch on, and instead I walk in on your crazy monkey sex! Thanks you two, now I'm officially scarred for life." She swatted the air in front of her, as if she could shoo away the images, and darted over the broken dishes and cookies, up the staircase, with a flustered string of expletives.
Gabe watched her ascend the stairway and let out another amused cackle. "Oh don't mind her. She's acting like she just witnessed her parents in the act." Bending down, he snatched a cookie and gave us a thumbs-up. "You look hot, kids. Carry on. — Rachael Wade

It is only path bending. Don't let it be mind bending. — T. Scott McLeod

But I've always been a sucker for externals alone: the shape, the shine, what the surface suggests to my palm. So mechanically disinclined it's verging on criminal, I never understood the beauty of an object's workings until Linny sat my reluctant self down one day and showed me her camera. Within fifteen minutes, I had fallen hard for the whole gadgety, eyelike nature of the thing: a tiny piece of glass slowing, bending, organizing light - light - into your grandmother, the Grand Canyon, the begonia on the windowsill, the film keeping the image like a secret. Grandmother, canyon, begonia tucked neatly into the sleek black box, like bugs in a jar. My mind boggled. — Marisa De Los Santos

The work I'm doing on 'Watchmen' is mind bending and physically just hard. — Jeffrey Dean Morgan

Zachary Jernigan can't write a bad story. He couldn't even if he tried. Each and every time I start one of his inventive, carefully crafted, thoughtful and mind-bending tales I know I'm in for a treat. This collection is sci-fi at its intelligent best. — David Anthony Durham

There are people who might be with you for much of your waking hours for many years, yet when they are gone you find they've left the smallest of marks on you. There are others who will always mark you deeply no matter how little the time they spend with you. Those people leave you with scars and blemishes, with love kisses, with mind-bending alterations of whatever it is inside that makes you who you are. — Cari Silverwood

It's rather nice to think of oneself as a sailor bending over the map of one's mind and deciding where to go and how to go. The great thing to remember is we can do whatever we wish to do provided our wish is strong enough. — Katherine Mansfield

presently I found two things within me, at which I did sometimes marvel (especially considering what a blind, ignorant, sordid and ungodly wretch but just before I was). The one was a very great softness and tenderness of heart, which caused me to fall under the conviction of what by scripture they asserted, and the other was a great bending in my mind, to a continual meditating on it, and on all other good things, which at any time I heard or read of. — John Bunyan

The making of 'Naked' was an absolutely phenomenal, mind-bending experience. That film was life-changing and put my career onto a whole different level. — David Thewlis

I hate SF books that think all you need to make a book is cool technology and mind-bending ideas without a decent plot or characters. And I hate when fantasy books are allowed to ramble off into five hundred page diatribes which don't advance the story one bit. — Chris Wooding

Lily was listening; Mrs. Ramsay was listening; they were all listening. But already bored, Lily felt that something was lacking; Mr. Bankes felt that something was lacking. Pulling her shawl round her Mrs. Ramsay felt that something was lacking. All of them bending themselves to listen thought, "Pray heaven that the inside of my mind may not be exposed," for each thought, "The others are feeling this. They are outraged and indignant with the government about the fishermen. Whereas, I feel nothing at all. — Virginia Woolf

In my mind, MDMA is a mild drug. People who prefer it to the typical psychedelics tend not to do well when stressed, either by life or by taking more potent mind-bending drugs. MDMA is what I like to call a "love and light" drug, one that accentuates the positive and minimizes the negative. If only life were so simple. — Rick Strassman

How should the best parts of psychology and economics interrelate in an enlightened economist's mind? ... I think that these behavioral economics ... or economists are probably the ones that are bending them in the correct direction. I don't think it's going to be that hard to bend economics a little to accommodate what's right in psychology. — Charlie Munger

When you are awake, your mind is limited. When you are dreaming, your mind is unlimited. Creation is a genius. The mind is a powerful aspect to reality, but no one can truly tell you what reality is, or how reality should be. You can only tell yourself. However, what if you can tap into your mental functions, and truly blur the line to the point, that whether you are awake or asleep, your mind makes the world real? What's the difference between bending the world in your dream, and bending the world in reality? The truth is, there is no difference, when you live in imagination. — Lionel Suggs

[P]eople think of compassion as, like, kindness. The image comes to mind of some nice New Age guy bending to something with a look on his face like he's about to cry. And I don't think that's it. I think of it more as a quality of openness that comes with being in a state of unusual attentiveness. — George Saunders

I never mind scrubbing floors, vacuuming or bending and carrying stuff. Each time I do it I think, this is instead of going to the gym. — Joanna Lumley

Bending his head, Kai pressed his lips to her knuckles. The plating had no nerve endings, and yet the touch sent a tingle of electricity along her arm.
"Cinder?"
"Mm?"
He lifted his gaze. "Just to be clear, you're not using your mind powers on me right now, are you?"
She blinked. "Of course not."
"Just checking."
Then he slid his arms around her waist and kissed her.
Cinder gasped, pressing her palms against his chest. Kai pulled her closer.
Seconds later, her brain began registering all the new chemicals flooding her system. INCREASED LEVELS OF DOPAMINE AND ENDORPHINS, REDUCED AMOUNTS OF CORTISOL, ERRATIC PULSE, RISING BLOOD PRESSURE ...
Leaning into him, Cinder sent the messages away. Her hands tentatively made their way to his shoulders, before stringing around his neck. — Marissa Meyer

There was quantum mechanics, string theory, and then there was the most mind-bending frontier of the natural world, women. — Marisha Pessl

I think here in America the space programme was such an enticing thing to be going on, that the thought of a family being able to go into space and live up there was really kind of mind-bending at the time. — Angela Cartwright

In China, I witnessed forced abortions and forced sterilizations performed on women who were told that the children they were carrying were 'illegal'. I went with them when they were arrested and remained with them as they were subjected to mind-bending psychological torture. And I accompanied them as they went in tears to the local clinic to have their pregnancies aborted. — Steven W. Mosher

All of us, when we engage in relatedness, fall under the gravitational influence of another's emotional world, at the same time that we are bending his emotional mind with ours. Each relationship is a binary star, a burning flux of exchanged force fields, the deep and ancient influences emanating and felt, felt and emanating. (142) — Thomas Lewis

But I will stretch my toes so that they touch the rail at the end of the bed; I will assure myself, touching the rail, of something hard. Now I cannot sink; cannot altogether fall through the thin sheet now. Now I spread my body on this frail mattress and hang suspended. I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. All is soft, and bending. Walls and cupboards whiten and bend their yellow squares on top of which a pale glass gleams. Out of me now my mind can pour. — Virginia Woolf

Honor you? he breathed. Sweetest Erienne, how could I not? You are ever in my thoughts, bending me, plucking at the fibers of my mind. The man inside me trembles whenever you're near, and I groan with agony for the touch of your hand laid upon me in a soft caress. — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Sometimes the truth is so bizarre and mind bending that it must be presented as fiction to be accepted.
George Saunders
The Bookseller — C. Robert Cales

Lust is a dangerous thing. It can seduce your mind and lead it blindfolded to the cliff that will be its demise. Nathan takes me to that cliff, my body bending and molding beneath his, my heart coming up for air in between soft caresses with his mouth while his cock hammers out a slick, rapid motion. — Alessandra Torre

Maybe it's something to do with the movements: the Cat and then the Cow, the twist to the left and then to the right, the reaching up, and then bending to the ground, the constant training of the body to move one way, and then to move in the opposite way. Hatha: sun, moon opposites, dark and light, yin and yang. This must be key in the way yoga shapes the mind and heart, in the way it helps one to understand that every movement has a counter movement, that every action has an opposing action, that the happy parts of life will be met by the sad, and the sad, in turn will be met by the happy. — Kathryn E. Livingston

Whatever your sexual orientation, whatever your ethnicity, whatever your age or personal experience, it is my hope you will find a hero somewhere here you can relate to, that speaks to the world as you see it. Even better: there is a good chance you will find some heroes who are deeply, fundamentally different from yourself. I don't have much patience with readers who yearn to explore incredible worlds and mind-bending situations but grow cold at the idea of imagining their way into different political ideas, different faiths, a different gender, a different skin, a different life. — Joe Hill

This is a labyrinth of wickedness and destruction and pleasure and, above all, love, because in the end it's all just one big, mind-bending love story, isn't it? — Ted Dekker