Missing An A Quotes & Sayings

Lena is sure that other people don't have many selves. She is terrified that she doesn't have a core self, an essential Lena. She feels that she used to but that she lost it along the way, that at some point it became buried, suffocated, and died, because when she looks beneath the chattering of the selves, nothing is there. Maybe the fractured feeling is taking hold because something is dead inside her, or missing. — Haley Tanner

It is strange that an absence can feel like presence. A missing so complete that if it were to go away, I would turn around, stunned, to see that the room is empty after all when before it had something. — Ally Condie

A boy's mind is not so easily sullied as a girl's ... Undesirable knowledge is not an equal shock to the moral nature. — Elizabeth Missing Sewell

And then the darkness gives way to white neon. An Art Deco font, burning into the night, announces our arrival at the CINEMA LE CHAMPO. The letters dwarf me. Cinema. Has there ever been a more beautiful word? My heart soars as we pass the colorful film posters and walk through the gleaming glass doors. The lobby is smaller than what I'm used to, and though it's missing the tang of artificially buttered popcorn, there's something in the air I recognize, something both musty and comforting. — Stephanie Perkins

Across the road from my cabin was a huge clear-cut
hundreds of acres of massive spruce stumps interspersed with tiny Douglas firs
products of what they call "Reforestation," which I guess makes the spindly firs en masse a "Reforest," which makes an individual spindly fir a "Refir," which means you could say that Weyerhauser, who owns the joint, has Refir Madness, since they think that sawing down 200-foot-tall spruces and replacing them with puling 2-foot Refirs is no different from farming beans or corn or alfalfa. They even call the towering spires they wipe from the Earth's face forever a "crop"
as if they'd planted the virgin forest! But I'm just a fisherman and may be missing some deeper significance in their nomenclature and stranger treatment of primordial trees. — David James Duncan

It was an excellent coat. It was long, grey, suspiciously blotched, smelt faintly of dust and old curries, went all the way down to my knees and overhung my wrists even when I stretched out my arms. It had big, smelly pockets, crunchy with crumbs, it boasted the remnants of a waterproof sheen, was missing a few buttons, and had once been beige. It was the coat that detectives down the ages had worn while trailing a beautiful, dangerous, presumably blond suspect in the rain, the coat that no one noticed, shapeless, bland and grey - it suited my purpose perfectly. — Kate Griffin

An inch in a miss is as good as an ell. — William Camden

No matter how much he talked, she never answered him, but he knew she was still there. He knew it was like the soldiers he had read about. They would have an arm or a leg blown off, and for days, even weeks after it happened, they could still feel the arm itching, the leg itching, the mother calling. — Pat Cunningham Devoto

Some field days can be tough. I've worked inside fuel tanks with 3 foot ceilings, in -42 to +42 Celsius temperatures, in snow and smoke and hail, and I've dug through snow and ice and pavement to find legal evidence. I've worked clear through the night by headlamp, and I've flown in a rickety long-islander with propane tanks strapped into the other seats. I've jury-rigged missing equipment, broken into my own truck, and cut out an emergency helicopter pad with a machete. I've been hungry, cold, tired, lost, injured, and downright hopeless! — Mark Mason

With so many part-time people on - and not on - the job, corporate America has started to feel like it's on a permanent maternity leave. Colleagues are an amorphous, free-floating army of rotating waifs whose voicemails are clogged with plaintive requests from their own offices for missing information. — Tina Brown

The Buddha's insight into the middle way is not simply about a balance between extremes. This conventional understanding misses the deeper revelation of the middle way as being the very nature of unexcelled enlightenment. The middle way is an invitation to leap beyond nirvana and samsara and to realize the unborn Buddha mind right in the middle of everywhere. — Adyashanti

Do remember, though, that unless you're a playwright, the result [dialogue] isn't what you want; it's only an element of what you want. Actors embody and re-create the words of drama. In fiction, a tremendous amount of story and character may be given through the dialogue, but the story-world and its people have to be created by the storyteller. If there's nothing in it but disembodied voices, too much is missing. — Ursula K. Le Guin

The Light in the Labyrinth is a beautifully written book, a gem. I savoured every word; words written with so much 'colour'. Even though I know the story of Queen Anne Boleyn, Dunn's perspective on her last days is missing in so many other books of the genre. Dunn gives grace to the history and an honest, and very compassionate look at Anne's last days. I cried in the end, shedding tears for the young Kate, Anne and her little Bess. I have not yet read a Tudor book that has moved me to tears, as this wonderful journey does. Dunn's dedication and research shines through in this unforgettable book, a book not just for young readers, but also for all." - Lara Salzano, avid Tudor reader. — Wendy J. Dunn

Like all her friends, I miss her greatly ... But ... I am sure there is no case for lamentation ... Virginia Woolf got through an immense amount of work, she gave acute pleasure in new ways, she pushed the light of the English language a little further against darkness. Those are facts. — E. M. Forster

No, books. She would have maybe twenty going at a time, lying all over our house
on the kitchen table, by her bed, the bathroom, our car, her bags, a little stack at the edge of each stair. And she'd use anything she could find for a bookmark. My missing sock, an apple core, her reading glasses, another book, a fork. — Kami Garcia

It wasn't until I moved to Nashville that I realized what an amazing community it is. It's the thing I've been missing my whole career, the feeling of being able to sit around with a guitar and have people know each other's songs and know songs from people who've influenced all of us. When I moved here pretty early on Vince Gill started calling me to do guitar pulls, and I thought, gosh, this is just like heaven on earth down here. — Sheryl Crow

...our low regard for nostalgia often seems not to rest on some substantive standard of excellence, in light of which a preference for the past is seen as missing the mark, but rather expresses idolatry of the present. This kind of "forward-thinking" is at bottom an apologetic species of conservatism, as it defers to and celebrates whatever is currently ascendant. — Matthew B. Crawford

Kaushik, what about a picture?" my father suggested. I shook my head. I had left my camera, my father's old Yashica, at school. "But you always have it with you." That look of irritated disappointment, the one that had appeared the day my mother died and was missing now that he'd married Chitra, passed briefly across my father's face. "I forgot it," I said. It was true, I did always have the camera with me. Even on quiet weekends when I came home and my father and I saw no one I would bring it, taking it with me on walks. This time I had left it behind, knowing that I would not want to document anything. "I don't understand," my father said. "Neither do I," I replied. "You haven't wanted a picture of anything in years." "That's not true." "It is." We were stating facts and at the same time arguing, an argument whose depths only he and I could fully comprehend. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Like a missing tooth, sometimes an absence is more noticeable than a presence. — Jodi Picoult

Most of the institutions that come in to offer help after disaster don't have the resources to provide concrete help. . . . Donor communities invest billions funding peace talks and disarmament. Then they stop. The most important part of postwar help is missing: providing basic social services to people. Not having those resources might have been a reason men went to war in the first place; they crossed a border and joined an armed group because they didn't have jobs. In Liberia right now, there are hundreds of thousands of unemployed young people, and they're ready-made mercenaries for wars in West Africa. You'd think the international community would be sensible enough to know they should work to change this. But they aren't. — Leymah Gbowee

Sometimes HR transformations have been definitions. Just because someone does an e-HR system or puts in a new talent system or changes the HR function does not mean an HR transformation has occurred. We identified four phases of HR transformation. Missing any of the four phases would be an incomplete effort. — Dave Ulrich

He was looking at me like I was a very nice thing of his that wasn't working quite like it should, like he'd found a defect, a defect that was extremely disappointing because he had spent a lot of time doing his research and believed he had gotten a thing that was guaranteed against these kinds of defects, and maybe there was some kind of glitch in the system and maybe he needed to have a professional assess the situation, give him an estimate. — Catherine Lacey

There's no winning or losing in this game, only playing, endless playing, you want your adversary to be strong not weak, smart not dumb, you're delighted to trick him and delighted to be tricked by him, boy learns from girl, white learns from black, old learns from young, the teaching is the doing is the beauty is the grace is the humor, endlessly you go on learning, smiling, moving, feinting, never missing a beat. Gingare, the dance of life: the controlled, prolonged, sustained, ineffable excitement of capoeira is like an endless climax. — Nancy Huston

But you're so easy to sneak up on." He crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. "You should be honored that I bother, since there's no challenge to it."
"Right," I said dryly.
Tybalt has never made a secret of his contempt for changelings in general and me in particular. Not even the years I spent missing could change that. If anything, it made things worse, because when I came back, I promptly removed myself from all the places he was accustomed to finding me. Hating me suddenly took effort - an effort he's proved annoying glad to make. On the other hand, it's actually been something of a relief, because it is something I can count on. Dawn comes, the moon rises and Tybalt hates me. — Seanan McGuire

The extrovert assumption is so woven into the fabric of our culture that an employee may suffer reprimands for keeping his door closed (that is, if he is one of the lucky ones who has a door), for not lunching with other staff members, or for missing the weekend golf game or any number of supposedly morale-boosting celebrations. Half. More than half of us don't want to play. We don't see the point. For us, an office potluck will not provide satisfying human contact - we'd much rather meet a friend for an intimate conversation (even if that friend is a coworker). For us, the gathering will not boost morale - and will probably leave us resentful that we stayed an extra hour to eat stale cookies and make small talk. For us, talking with coworkers does not benefit our work - it sidetracks us. — Laurie A. Helgoe

I hate turkeys. If you go to the grocery store, you start to get mad at turkeys. You see turkey ham, turkey bologna, turkey pastrami. Somebody just needs to tell the turkeys, "Man, just be yourselves!" I already like you, little fella. I used to draw you. If you had a couple of fingers missing, you would draw a really messed-up turkey. That turkey was in an accident! — Mitch Hedberg

Douglas, you have an incredible capacity for missing the point. Will you listen to me, just for once? The debate does not matter. It's not about the issues. Albie might have been naive or ridiculous or pompous or all of those things, but you apologized. You said you were embarassed by him. You took the side of a bunch of arms-dealers! Bloddy bastard arms-dealers against your son - our son - and that was wrong, it was the wrong thing to do, because in a fight you side with the people you love. That's just how it is. — David Nicholls

Irresolution is a worse vice than rashness. He that shoots best may sometimes miss the mark; but he that shoots not at all can never hit it. Irresolution loosens all the joints of a state; like an ague, it shakes not this nor that limb, but all the body is at once in a fit. The irresolute man is lifted from one place to another; so hatcheth nothing, but addles all his actions. — Owen Feltham

As we've discovered, we're wired for story and in the absence of data we will rely on confabulations and conspiracies. When our children sense something is wrong - maybe a sick grandparent or a financial worry - or when they know something is wrong - an argument or a work crisis - they quickly jump to filling in the missing pieces of the story. And because our well-being is directly tied to their sense of safety, fear sets in and often dictates the story. It's important that we give them as much information as is appropriate for their developmental and emotional capacity, and that we provide a safe place for them to ask questions. Emotions are contagious and when we're stressed or anxious or afraid our children can be quickly engulfed in the same emotions. More information means less fear-based story-making. — Brene Brown

And it was there that I saw the most appealing creature in the whole shop. He had a slight chink out of one foot and his 'topknot' was missing (a 'topknot' is on the top of a dragon's head and looks a bit like a shark's fin) but I bought him in an instant. — Chris D'Lacey

Am I missing something because of my lack of education? Being an intellectual - I'm not. So I hire him as a corner man, like a boxer; he watches me and tells me what I do wrong before I go in for the next round. Barry thought he was going to write what became Executioner's Song, and I told him he wasn't going to. And Barry's closest friend was Joan Didion. — Lawrence Schiller

Something is missing: that's as close as I can come to naming the sensation, an awareness of missed or thwarted connections, or of a great hollowness left where something lovely and solid used to be ... There is something fundamentally insatiable about being human, as though we come into the world with a kind of built-in tension between the experience of being hungry, which is a condition of striving and yearning, and the experience of being fed, which may offer temporary satisfaction but always gives way to new strivings, new yearnings. — Caroline Knapp

I have an amino acid missing that you can only get from certain kinds of eggs. So, I've been eating a few eggs. — Bryce Dallas Howard

I was lingering out on the pavement. There was a missing person inside of myself and I needed to find him ... I felt done for, an empty burned-out wreck ... Wherever I am, I'm a '60s troubadour, a folk-rock relic, a wordsmith from bygone days, a fictitious head of state from a place nobody knows. — Bob Dylan

On the other side of that big-ass mirror, a video camera was watching us. In about ten seconds, it was going to start spitting static at itself, and everything it saw was going to break up into a fuzzy, gray-white wash, rolling up and down, that wouldn't be admissible as evidence on Judge Judy. Those missing frames would last a little less than a quarter of a minute, consolidate themselves back
into a semblance of reality, and then I would theoretically go walking right back out of here.
Between now and that moment, there stretched an infinite ocean of potential
time. Time enough to walk around the world. Time enough to fall in love, get
married on a white beach under purple stars, write a book of poems about
truest passion, have a few good and bloody screaming matches, get divorced in a court of autumn elves and gypsy moths, then set the ink-stained, tear-streaked pages of your text ablaze. — Clinton Boomer

To my way of thinking there's something wrong, or missing, with any person who hasn't got a soft spot in their heart for an animal of some kind. With most folks the dog stands highest as man's friend, then comes the horse, with others the cat is liked best as a pet, or a monkey is fussed over; but whatever kind of animal it is a person likes, it's all hunkydory so long as there's a place in the heart for one or a few of them. — Will James

When you talk about an injury and the kind of depression you go through, it's not just because you're out of shape and you can't go out and play. You're missing a part of you. That's what's painful. That's what hurts. — Jamila Wideman

Like any collection of family photographs, it was a random selection that told only fragments of a story. The real tale would be revealed by the pictures that were missing or never even taken at all, not the ones that had been so carefully framed or packed away neatly in an envelope. — Victoria Hislop

I miss you, Logan." I touched my fingers to my lips, then to the forehead of the Keeley Brothers skull. "I miss you so much."
Missing Logan was an emptiness, an ache so dull and deep, it was a permanent part of me. I would never truly get over his death, but someday I would find peace.
Missing Zachary, on the other hand, was a searing knife in the gut. I burned to save him from the horrible fates I imagined, and the need to be in his arms again set my skin ablaze.
One boy was gone forever. The other was gone now. — Jeri Smith-Ready

Not quite a room, Jeevan thought now, looking around the stage. It was too transitory, all those doorways and dark spaces between wings, the missing ceiling. It was more like a terminal, he thought, a train station or an airport, everyone passing quickly through. — Emily St. John Mandel

Michael Winter's fiction is a lot like hearing him talk about his life ... harrowing in an after-the-fact hilarious way. Full of wonder and mystery. A hangover you wouldn't miss for the world. — Michael Crummey

Just as I could not imagine a world in stereo depth, an individual with normal normal stereopsis cannot experience the worldview of a person who has always lacked steropsis. This may be surprising because you can eliminate clues from stereopsis simply by closing one eye. What's more, many people do not notice a great difference when viewing the world with one eye or two. When a normal binocular viewer closes one eye, however, he or she still uses a lifetime of past visual experiences to re-create the missing stereo information. — Susan Barry

The world, with all its impossible variegation and the basic miracle of its existence, draws most mourners out of their grief and back into itself. The homosexual forsythia blooms; the young Irish dancers in Killarney dance, their arms as rigid as shovel handles; secret deals are done involving weapons or office space or crude oil or used cars or drugs; new lovers, believing they will never really have to get up, lie down together; the Large Hadron Collider smashes the Higgs boson into view; snow drapes its white stoles on the bare limbs of winter; the crack of the bat swung by a hefty Dominican pulls a crowd to its feet in Boston; bricks for the new hospital in Phnom Penh are laid in true courses; the single-engine Cessna lands safely in an Ohio alfalfa field during a storm. How can you resist? The true loss in only to the dying, and even the won't feel it when the dying's done. — Daniel Menaker

they all stem from the primal fault, which is idolatry, worshipping that which is not God as if it were. Second, they all show the telltale marks of the consequent fault, which is subhuman behavior, that is, the failure fully to reflect the image of God, that missing the mark as regards full, free, and genuine humanness for which the New Testament's regular word is hamartia, "sin." (Sin, we note, is not the breaking of arbitrary rules; rather, the rules are the thumbnail sketches of different types of dehumanizing behavior.) Third, it is perfectly possible, and it really does seem to happen in practice, that this idolatry and dehumanization become so endemic in the life and chosen behavior of an individual, and indeed of groups, that unless there is a specific turning away from such a way of life, those who persist are conniving at their own ultimate dehumanization. This — N. T. Wright

The seed of an idea laying dormant in an old sketchbook is fed the missing ingredient from a new experience. Trying to share some of these experiences, some of the wonders, is one of the reasons why I do books. — Michael Foreman

I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing. If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my walletand check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing. — Janis Ian

One hundred thousand dollars was the bridge that enabled me to go on TV, not miss a beat or miss an opportunity, and raise then my own money to carry me forth. And that's how I got to be the first Democratic woman in the United States Senate's history. — Barbara Mikulski

As soon as we had the music arranged on our stands, Conductor Li tapped his baton on the lectern and called us to attention. "Quiet please, comrades! And as we play just think of the Long March," he said. "I will be at the front, like Chairman Mao. I will beat the time. Try to keep up. If you get lost, skip a few pages. Hopefully, the rest of us will pass your way eventually... The first movement sounded like nothing less than a full-scale military retreat. We were ambushed by missing pages of score, by an impulsive feint by the cellists and double basses, and by a flautist who turned two pages rather than one and played along happily in no man's land for a dozen or so bars until he was rapped on the head with the end of a clarinet (pg 325) — John Sinclair

Every hour spent investigating a drug user or seller is an hour that could have been used to find a missing child. — Randy Barnett

I watch a man shoot pool for an hour. If he misses more than one shot, I know I can beat him. — Luther Lassiter

But what she wanted to do was slip between cool sheets and fall asleep in a breeze from an open window. She wanted to sleep for days on end, and to wake up when the whole sorry business of the inquest and the missing boys had been resolved. She wanted sleep in order to put Mrs. Stone's testimony out of her head, and at the same time she wanted to bind all those words together into a club and hit every man in the room over the head with it. Because they hadn't really understood the story behind the story, and what Mrs. Stone was trying to tell them about Janine Campbell's life. Mrs. Stone had called herself plain-speaking and blunt, but she had wrapped every observation in the language of well-brought-up women, with the result that none of the men had any real sense of the anger and frustration that drove Janine Campbell. — Sara Donati

Sometimes people have a wild past because they have an essentially wild nature, and that's how they plan to go through life. Sometimes such people settle into happy monogamy, and can be content there because they never have to wonder, "What did I miss?" — Emily Yoffe

Miss Marilyn Monroe calls to mind the bouquet of a fireworks display, eliciting from her awed spectators an open-mouthed chorus of ohs and ahs ... — Cecil Beaton

According to Keltar legend, each Druid born into the clan was destined for a soul mate, a perfect match in heart and mind, as well as body, coming together with an explosive, incendiary passion that could not be denied. If the Keltar male exchanged the sacred Druid binding vows with his true love, and his mate willingly returned them, they could bind their souls together for all eternity, in this life and forever beyond. The vows linked them inextricably. 'Twas said if a Keltar gave the vows and they were not returned, he would be forever incomplete, missing a part of his heart, aching for the love of a woman he could never have, eternally bound to her, through this life and all his future existence, whether in the cycle of rebirth, heaven, hell, or even an eternal Unseelie prison. If aught must be lost ... the legendary vows began, 'twill be my life for yours ... — Karen Marie Moning

More and more, it was beginning to be borne in upon me what a particularly difficult chap Gussie was to help. He seemed to so marked an extent to lack snap and finish. With infinite toil, you manoeuvred him into a position where all he had to do was charge ahead, and he didn't charge ahead, but went off sideways, missing the objective completely. — P.G. Wodehouse

If you have a belief and you come against an experience which the belief says is not possible, or, the experience is such that you have to drop the belief, what are you going to choose - the belief or the experience? The tendency of the mind is to choose the belief, to forget about the experience. That's how you have been missing many opportunities when God has knocked at your door. — Osho

If someone can produce the law that keeps guns out of the hands of criminals but protects the right of law-abiding citizens to possess them, and doesn't infringe on those rights, I would consider that. But all the proposals I've seen do not achieve that goal. And we are missing a golden opportunity to have an important debate about violence in the USA. Violence in our society is the problem. — Marco Rubio

I'm no Buddhist monk, and I can't say I'm in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I've written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn't want or need, not all I did. — Pico Iyer

There are a lot of people missing in Iraq. Just the other day I heard of somebody asking $250,000 ransom for an Egyptian. Can you imagine? An Egyptian. That's inflation. This war," he said, leaning closer to her, "is all about money. — Leslie Cockburn

What is the disease which manifests itself in an inability to leave a party
any party at all
until it is all over and the lightsare being put out? ... I suppose that part of this mania for staying is due to a fear that, if I go, something good will happen and I'll miss it. Somebody might do card tricks, or shoot somebody else. — Robert Benchley

Something is not yet right and ripe in our human society at the beginning of the 21st century and third millennium: missing is an unprecedented vision, boldness and courage to fashion a new, promising, better future. Our beliefs, society, ways of life, institutions and future goals must be reviewed and reappraised fundamentally from scratch. — Robert Muller

People are always waiting around for that magical person who'll walk into their life and fix them, who'll offer up some vital piece they've been missing and make them complete. They spend years trying to fit their broken edges against another person's and call themselves whole and healed. The only problem with this, of course, is that expecting anyone else to fix you is an unequivocal disaster.

You can't wait for a man to come around and put you back together. You have to put yourself back together first, and become the kind of woman who deserves a good man. — Julie Johnson

Gus flipped open the egg carton and handed Isaac an egg. Isaac tossed it, missing the car by a solid forty feet.
"A little to the left," Gus said.
"My throw was a little to the left or I need to aim a little to the left?"
"Aim left." Isaac swiveled his shoulders.
"Lefter," Gus said. Isaac swiveled again.
"Yes. Excellent. And throw hard."
Gus handed him another egg, and Isaac hurled it, the egg arcing over the car and smashing against the slow-sloping roof of the house. "Bull's-eye!" Gus said.
"Really?" Isaac asked excitedly.
"No, you threw it like twenty feet over the car. Just, throw hard, but keep it low. And a little right of where you were last time."
Isaac reached over and found an egg himself from the carton Gus cradled. He tossed it, hitting a tailing.
"Yes!" Gus said. "Yes! TAILLIGHT! — John Green

Now you can all have a wish
the Moomin family first!"
Moominmamma hesitated a bit. "Should it be something you can see?" she asked, "or an idea? If you know what I mean, Mr. Hobgoblin?"
"Oh, yes!" said the Hobgoblin. "Things are easier of course, but it will work with an idea too."
"Then I want to wish that Moomintroll will stop missing Snufkin," said Moominmamma.
"Oh, dear!" said Moomintroll going pink, "I didn't know it was so obvious!"
But the Hobgoblin waved his cloak once, and immediately the sadness flew out of Moomintroll's heart. His longing just became an expectancy, and that felt much better. — Tove Jansson

They made us believe that each one of us is the half of an orange, and that life only makes sense when u find that other half.
They did not tell us that we were born as whole, and that no-one in our lives deserve to carry on his back such responsibility of completing what is missing on us: we grow through life by ourselves. If we have a good company it's just more pleasant. — John Lennon

Only, it's not an it. It's a her. A zombie. A woman. A zombie woman. She's older than Janine, closer to my age, maybe early thirties, missing a little bit of her face, but otherwise sort of pretty in a melancholy way. — Charles Yu

Carol and I have found that unless God baptizes us with fresh outpourings of love, we would leave New York City yesterday! We don't live in this crowded, ill-mannered, violent city because we like it. Whenever I meet or read about a guy who has sexually abused a little girl, I'm tempted in my flesh to throw him out a fifth-story window. This isn't an easy place for love to flourish. But Christ died for that man. What could ever change him? What could ever replace the lust and violence in his heart? He isn't likely to read the theological commentaries on my bookshelves. He desperately needs to be surprised by the power of a loving, almighty God. If the Spirit is not keeping my heart in line with my doctrine, something crucial is missing. I can affirm the existence of Jesus Christ all I want, but in order to be effective, he must come alive in my life in a way that even the pedophile, the prostitute, and the pusher can see. — Jim Cymbala

You are an ... animal? A talking animal?"
Without missing a beat, Teela said, "Of course not. She's much, much harder to train. — Michelle Sagara West

A politician weakly and amiably in the right is no match for a politician tenaciously and pugnaciously in the wrong. You cannot, by tying an opinion, to a man's tongue, make him the representative of that opinion; and at the close of any battle for principles, his name will be found neither among the dead nor among the wounded, but among the missing. — Edwin Percy Whipple

In the early 20th century the need to find this missing link became so desperate that an elaborate hoax was created. Piltdown Man ("discovered" in 1912) was believed to be genuine for over 40 years. In fact is was faked using a Medieval human skull, the jaw bone of an orangutan and fossilized teeth from a chimpanzee, and then "aged" by soaking it in acid and staining it with an iron solution. — Ellis Silver

Men, to exist, to become complete and mature, need to feel the joy of fatherhood. When a man does not have this desire, something is missing in this man, it is like an incomplete life: a life that stops half way. The grace of fatherhood; of giving life to others, of pastoral paternity, of spiritual paternity is a gift from God. — Pope Francis

A comic book in mint condition is an offense against the multiverse. I only collect damaged comics with torn covers and missing pages. — Stephen Evans

They read a little bit, write a little, and especially agree with themselves on important moves, important information, important awards, important writers that they plan to enthrone forever in history through a variety of memberships and numerous prizes awarded under the influence of top bureaucrats who know everything, not only about literature, but also about secret conspiracies, the Masons that lurk in every corner to crucify someone, steal someone's soul and sell it to an unknown devil, about whom only the chief bureaucrat possesses secret knowledge that he doesn't share; about history, ghosts, missing continents; about who said what to whom in confidence. — Dejan Stojanovic

I miss having someone to cuddle up and have an early night with. But I'm looking. Meanwhile, I'm having a few relationships that don't mean much. — Robbie Williams

Denial protected us, screening out certain experiences & feelings until we grew strong enough to relate to them...Yet it also dropped a curtain over our experience, obscuring it, leaving us with a sense of missing pieces. For instance, when we achieved something, we felt like an imposter. Or, though we had a relationship with a significant other, we often felt alone and unrelated to anyone. — Maureen Brady

Reality has no security and that is its beauty. Life has no security and that is its beauty. Because there is no security, there is adventure. Because the future is unknown, nobody knows what is going to happen the next moment. That's why there is challenge, growth, adventure. If you miss adventure, you miss all. If your life is not that of an adventure, of a search into the unknown, then you are living in vain. — Rajneesh

When religion does not move people to the mystical or non-dual level of consciousness9 it is more a part of the problem than any solution whatsoever. It solidifies angers, creates enemies, and is almost always exclusionary of the most recent definition of "sinner." At this level, it is largely incapable of its supreme task of healing, reconciling, forgiving, and peacemaking. When religion does not give people an inner life or a real prayer life, it is missing its primary vocation. Let me sum up, then, the foundational ways that I believe Jesus and the Twelve Steps of A.A. are saying the same thing but with different vocabulary: We suffer to get well. We surrender to win. We die to live. We give it away to keep it. This counterintuitive wisdom will forever be resisted as true, denied, and avoided, until it is forced upon us - by some reality over which we are powerless - and if we are honest, we are all powerless in the presence of full Reality. — Richard Rohr

Miss Havisham is a glitch in the smooth functioning of the Patriarchy, enforcing awareness of a moment of social disaster and personal shame, something it seems she would want us to forget (but no one would forget). (Maybe an interesting "discussion question" for readers of Complicated Grief might be, "What do Terry Barton and Miss Havisham have in common?"?) — Laura Mullen

I remember an insight that taught me much about life. One day I felt that I had everything that I really wanted in life. I had a creative and meaningful work as a therapist and course leader, I had a relationship with a beautiful woman, who I loved and who loved me, I had friend that I trusted and I had money to do what I wanted.
But in spite of all this, I still had a feeling that there was something missing in my life. I was not satisfied. The thirst and longing in my heart was still searching for something more. It made me realize that the deepest pain in my heart was that I was still separated from the Whole and that no outer things or relationships could ease this pain. — Swami Dhyan Giten

I missed Eve so much I couldn't be a human anymore and feel the pain that humans feel. I had to be an animal again. — Garth Stein

Time is not an enemy as such, but a missing person, sending cryptic postcards from the past. — Carla H. Krueger

Anyone could buy a green Jaguar, find beauty in a Japanese screen two thousand years old. I would rather be a connoisseur of neglected rivers and flowering mustard and the flush of iridescent pink on an intersection pigeon's charcoal neck. I thought of the vet, warming dinner over a can, and the old woman feeding her pigeons in the intersection behind the Kentucky Fried Chicken. And what about the ladybug man, the blue of his eyes over gray threaded black? There were me and Yvonne, Niki and Paul Trout, maybe even Sergei or Susan D. Valeris, why not? What were any of us but a handful of weeds. Who was to say what our value was? What was the value of four Vietnam vets playing poker every afternoon in front of the Spanish market on Glendale Boulevard, making their moves with a greasy deck missing a queen and a five? Maybe the world depended on them, maybe they were the Fates, or the Graces. Cezanne would have drawn them in charcoal. Van Gogh would have painted himself among them. — Janet Fitch

My dearest friend, Myron Bolitar, though "friend" seems an inadequate word to describe our relationship, worries about this aspect of my personality. He feels there is something "missing" inside of me. He traces it back to what my own mother did to my father. But does the origin matter? This is what I am. I am quite content this way. He claims that I don't get it. He is wrong. I do understand the need for companionship. My favorite times are when he and I sit around together and simply discuss life or watch television or dissect a sporting event - and then, when we are done, I go to bed with a gorgeous body and, uh, gorge. Does — Harlan Coben

On the Eighth Day Adam Slept Alone

It must have been
the eighth day.

A day the scribes and Pharisees conveniently
left out.

Adam was either inspecting goats
or naming the birds

when something pinched
my side.

I had to stop pruning the tree of knowledge
to catch my breath.

God had taken a long weekend.

At first I thought the solitude of gardening
was going to my head.

Was it loneliness?
An omen? A vision?

For a moment I thought I would
ascend.

Then I realized it was just a rib
missing.

How you found your way in
along the banks of the third river

I will never know
but I still shiver to recall

how perfectly your fingers
fell into place

along the ridges
of my ribcage.

Go ahead, Love,
take every last bone.

Make of me
what you will. — Nancy Boutilier

I hold the door to the post office open for a weathered man in a wheelchair. He is gracious, thanking me. One leg is missing, and just as I notice this, I see the sticker on the back of his chair: VIETNAM VETS.

My thoughts jumble as an ache brews in my heart. I think of war and how it destroys, divides, and damages. I see the faces of those in the refugee camp and those who found their names on The List and are now in America. I want to tell this wounded soldier that I am sorry for his loss and for the abandonment he may have felt upon his return. I want to say other things, but right now I'm just honored to hold the door for him. — Alice J. Wisler

Whenever she wasn't with me, there was an emptiness inside me, a feeling that something was missing, which I had never experienced before - as if, once she had entered my life, the world could no longer turn properly without her. — Joel Dicker

However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes - I can't even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there's a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they're missing? Uh huh. — Frank O'Hara

An important attribute of metabolites is their close relationship to both the biological states of interest (i.e. disease status) and relevant genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic variants causally related to the disease state. As such, metabo-profiles can be viewed as an intermediate measure that links pre-disposing genes and environmental exposures to a resulting disease state. Causal metabolites also typically have a stronger relationship (i.e. larger effect size) to the underlying genetics and the disease phenotype. Thus, the integration of metabolomic data into systems biology approaches may provide a missing link between genes and disease states. — Joseph Loscalzo

If you get attached, then it becomes an obsession. If the person is not there, you are unhappy. If you miss the person, you are in misery. And attachment is such a disease that if the person is not there you are in misery, and if the person is there you are indifferent. Then it is okay; it is taken for granted. If the person is there it is okay - no more than that. If the person is not there, then you are in misery. This is attachment. — Rajneesh

It's nontrivial for a company and everyone in it to know "who we are." A little bit easier, however, is to know "who we aren't." When even that knowledge is missing - when there is no basis in the company to say about a given cockamamy scheme "it just isn't us" - the company clearly lacks vision. Vision implies a visionary. There has to be one person who knows in his or her bones what's "us" and what isn't. And it can't be faked. Employees can smell an absence of vision the way a dog can smell fear. — Tom DeMarco

She scanned the room, and her grin broadened when she saw Christian. She then sought me out. Her smile for him had been affectionate; mine was a bit humorous. I smiled back, wondering what she would say to me if she could.
"What's so funny?" asked Dimitri, looking down at me with amusement.
"I'm just thinking about what Lissa would say if we still had the bond."
In a very bad breach of protocol, he caught hold of my hand and pulled me toward him. "And?" he asked, wrapping me in an embrace.
"I think she'd ask,'What have we gotten ourselves into?'"
"What's the answer?" His warmth was all around me, as was his love, and again, I felt completeness. I had that missing piece of my world back. The soul that complemented mine. My match. My equal. Not only that, I had my life back-my own life. I would protect Lissa, I would serve, but I was finally my own person.
"I don't know," I said, leaning against his chest. "But I think it's going to be good. — Richelle Mead

The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star. — Roland Barthes

You're absolutely right. You're absolutely right. It's staggering how you jump straight the hell into the heart of a matter. I'm goosebumps all over ... By God, you inspire me. You inflame me, Bessie. You know what you've done? Do you realize what you've done? You've given this whole goddam issue a fresh, new, Biblical slant. I wrote four papers in college on the Crucifixion - five, really - and every one of them worried me half crazy because I thought something was missing. Now I know what it was. Now it's clear to me. I see Christ in an entirely different light. His unhealthy fanaticism. His rudeness to those nice, sane, conservative, tax-paying Pharisees. Oh, this is exciting! In your simple, straightforward bigoted way, Bessie, you've sounded the missing keynote of the whole New Testament. Improper diet. Christ lived on cheeseburgers and Cokes. For all we know he probably fed the mult - — J.D. Salinger

What the fuck is going on?" "Einstein made out with what he thought was an inanimate droid and with the power of his super tongue - " "Actually, he only used his lips," Bonnie interjected. "And he didn't even grope." " - had a Prince Charming moment and woke the sleeping beauty who happens to be one of the missing cyborg women we've been looking for, — Eve Langlais

One of my Miss America judges called me a "God-clutcher" way back when because I spoke about my faith being an important part of my life during my interview. — Gretchen Carlson

I buy onions every time I'm in the grocery store, not because I need them, but because I fear not having an onion when I do need it. Not having an onion in the kitchen is like working with a missing limb. — Michael Ruhlman

This is the same establishment that all those who want, or rather aspire to, to be literary figures of the century, artists, painters and sculptors want acceptance from and approval. They want to be looked up to. Young and upcoming poets must approach their craft with an almost angelic perspective. So many writers are missing a condensed fusion in their writing, they condescend to their audience, the truth is not spoken in their work, they gabble, their words seem to make a hot fuss on the page. What do they gain? They gain this, simply nothing. Poets must assemble and present their work accordingly to how they see fit and should be careful of advice from other writers and editors. Sometimes there can be too much going on in the words that are meant to be given with the best of intentions. — Abigail George

Oh Beck, I love reading your e-mail. Learning your life. And I am careful; I always mark new messages unread so that you won't get alarmed. My good fortune doesn't stop there; You prefer e-mail. You don't like texting. So this means that I am not missing out on all that much communication. You wrote an "essay" for some blog in which you stated that "e-mails last forever. You can search for any word at any time and see everything you ever said to anyone about that one word. Texts go away." I love you for wanting a record. I love your records for being so accessible and I'm so full of you, your calendar of caloric intake and hookups and menstrual moments, your self-portraits you don't publish, your recipes and exercises. You will know me soon too, I promise. — Caroline Kepnes

... there is also an underlying, less specific fear - what some might call an ontological or existential anxiety - that shrouds our days and seeps into our dreams. We feel empty and seek meaning. We feel empty and seek meaning. We yearn and know not what we yearn for. There is a black hole at the center of our understanding that engulfs and crushes our every attempt to explore it. Something is missing. — Jesse Browner

Fortunately, though she was hungry, she didn't mind missing a meal. Life was full of meals. They took up an enormous proportion of one's time. — Elizabeth Von Arnim