Most Pinned Quotes & Sayings

No hunter of the sky should end his days as prey. Better to die on the wing than pinned to the ground. [Saphira] — Christopher Paolini

Hadrian dismounted and began unloading Dancer. "How long were we on the road?" He paused to look up at the moon.
"What? Five, six hours? Not a damn word. Getting chilly out, don't you think, Hadrian? The moon looks like a fingernail, ain't that right, Hadrian? The tree looks like a goddamn bear, don't it, Hadrian? Nothing. By the way, in case you haven't noticed, I was attacked by a goshawk and a pig-riding dwarf that shot eggs at me with a sling. I was knocked from my horse and wrestled with the dwarf, the hawk, and the pig for what had to be half an hour. The dwarf kept smashing eggs in my face, and the ruddy pig pinned me down, licking them off. I only got away because the dwarf ran out of eggs. Then the hawk turned into a moth that became distracted by the light of the moon."
Royce shifted to his side, hood up.
"Yeah, well ... thank Maribor and Novron I didn't need your help THAT time. — Michael J. Sullivan

He had given work to a nightwalker named Dorothy Evans and gradually became beguiled by her. She was a plump, pretty, cattleman's daughter, pale as a cameo, with the sort of overripe body that always seems four months pregnant. Her long brown hair was braided into figure eights and pinned up over her ears in the English country-girl style. Grim experience was in her eyes, many years of pouting shaped her lips, but everything else about her expression seemed to evince an appealing cupidity, as if she could accept anything as long as it was pleasing. — Ron Hansen

At the entrance of this street, a Janissary was pinned to a wooden door by an eight-foot-long spear, which Jack looked on as proving that Yevgeny had passed by there recently. — Neal Stephenson

Ben gave an exasperated sigh. Then he strode toward her, seized her arm, and dragged her to the nearest table. "Who's coming?" she asked, too surprised by his actions to resist. "Lieutenant Wolfe and his assistant." Ben plopped onto the bench. Before she knew what was happening, he'd tugged her down, leaving her little choice but to land upon his lap. "Mr. Ross!" She gasped. "Whatever is the meaning of such familiarity?" He slid one arm around her and at the same time began unbuttoning his waistcoat. Heat crept up her neck into her cheeks. She pushed against his shoulders and attempted to rise. "Stay put." His arm around her waist pinned her, holding her prisoner. — Jody Hedlund

We are such small, stupid things. For most of my life I thought of nature as the stupid thing: Blind, animal, destructive. We, the humans, were clean and smart and in control: we had wrestled the rest of the world into submission, battered it down, pinned it to a glass slide and the pages of The Bool of Shhh. — Lauren Oliver

I had married an environmentalist and didn't know it.
I knew without having to look that there was no tree hugging indemnity clause even in the fine print of our marriage certificate. But we'd been manacled together in the Catholic Church. I wondered if I could get some leverage with the religious institution if I pinned my wife with the label of nature-worshipping Wiccan or possibly even Druid. — Michael Gurnow

Graphic designers are idea embalmers, loving undertakers preserving bits of data like to many butterflies pinned to felt in a jewel box. — Paul Saffo

Good luck to you," he said, and she remembered how he had looked at her as she pinned Yah Tayyib, as if she was some kind of monster.

Maybe she was. — Kameron Hurley

So now you know why I think all talk of borders and colors and nationalities is absurd. People try to pin you down on a map and paint you a certain color to make everything simple. But the world is far from simple, and intelligent human beings don't like to be pinned down and painted by some hand in the sky, whether it belongs to a god, a priest, or a politician. — Anne Fortier

Scarlet found herself pinned beneath his gaze, intense and terrified. He was still breathing hard. She was still shaking, couldn't stop shaking. Her mind emptied of everything but the gusting wind and how fragile Wolf looked in that heartbeat, like one movement could break him open. "I'm all right," she assured him again, wrapping her free arm around his back and pulling him toward her until she could curl up beneath the shelter of his body, burying her head against his neck. She felt his gulp, then his arms were around her, crushing her against his chest. — Marissa Meyer

Dylan, in her skintight black jeans, safety-pinned shirt, and bulky armbands, with her hair sticking out in every direction and that black freshly smeared around her eyes, doesn't just smile, doesn't just walk toward Maddy and put her arms around her. No. Instead, every muscle in her whole body seems to lose all tension, her step forward resembles a skip, and she lets out a hey that might as well say, I love you, you are so beautiful, no one in the world is as amazing as you are. — Nina LaCour

She was a sentinel for a reason - she was fit, lethal, and well able to take down most men twice her size. Not including Riley. Her teeth bared at the way he'd pinned her - maybe she'd enjoyed it last night, but if the wolf tried to use that to change the balance of power in the sentinel-lieutenant relationship between them, things would get seriously ugly. Her mind filled with images of him blocking her punches, trying not to hurt her. She squelched the tiny tendril of warmth that threatened to rise to the surface — Nalini Singh

Someone was coming through the velvet.
He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrel's balcony - close, closer still as she turned and the curtain swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet against frame. He held the sweep of it high, at the level of his gray eyes, which were silver in the shadows.
He was here. He had come.
Arin. — Marie Rutkoski

Lovers find their way by such insights and confidences: they're the stars we use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky. Somewhere — Gregory David Roberts

Buildings don't exist to be pinned, like brooches, on the front of bigger structures to which they bear only the most distant of relationships. — Paul Goldberger

None of the harvest tales started out as parasites. They were the most powerful pieces of the narrative, once upon a time. We fought back, turned them tame, gave them names and labels that pinned them like butterflies in the textbooks of religious studies professors and folklore teachers all around the world. — Seanan McGuire

Love is Not All
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Rose's work of art took her all day, including two playtimes, story time, and most of lunch.
At the end of school it was stolen from her by the wicked teacher who had pretended to be so interested.
"Beautiful- what-is-it?" she asked as she pinned it high on the wall, where Rose could not reach.
"They take your pictures," said Indigo, ... when he finally made out what all the roaring and stamping was about. "They do take them ... Why do you want that picture so much?" he asked Rose.
"It was my best ever," said Rose furiously. "I hate school. I hate everyone in it. I will kill them all when I'm big enough."
"You can't just go round killing people," Indigo told her ... — Hilary McKay

The office Halloween party was at the Royalton last week and I went as a mass murderer, complete with a sign painted on my back that read MASS MURDERER (which was decidedly lighter than the sandwich board I had constructed earlier that day that read DRILLER KILLER), and beneath those two words I had written in blood Yep, that's me and the suit was also covered with blood, some of it fake, most of it real. In one fist I clenched a hank of Victoria Bell's hair, and pinned next to my boutonniere (a small white rose) was a finger bone I'd boiled the flesh off of. As elaborate as my costume was, Craig McDermott still managed to win first place in the competition. He came as Ivan Boesky, which I thought was unfair since a lot of people thought I'd gone as Michael Milken last year. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Home Abortion Kits. — Bret Easton Ellis

She settled into a crouch, wings pinned tightly to her back. "Come on then, angel boy." She kept her eyes on the muscles in his shoulders, saw the instant one tensed. A split second later, they were moving in a wicked, dangerous dance of steel and bodies. She'd never really had a chance to spar with Raphael like this, and damn if it wasn't the most fun she'd ever had. — Nalini Singh

I'd learned more about her in that exhausted, murmuring hour than in all the many months before it. Lovers find their way by such insights and confidences: they're the stars we use to navigate the ocean of desire. And the brightest of those stars are the heartbreaks and sorrows. The most precious gift you can bring to your lover is your suffering. So I took each sadness she confessed to me, and pinned it to the sky. — Gregory David Roberts

Stop!" I pinned him with a serious look. "No more. Get it out of your head, Kai! We are not running. This is happening whether you like it or not. It's time to get your game face on and get ready to kick some ass. — Wendy Higgins

I know about Trina. You bitch."
Shoulders hunched, Peabody carefully pinned up murder. "It's a special night. You'll look really good, and you won't have to do it all yourself. We won't want the NYPSD to fall short of the Hollywood crowd, right? Team pride!"
"Rah fucking rah."
"Really, Dallas, it'll be good, it'll be chilly, and we'll look abso-mag by the time ... " She trailed off again, face lighting up. "We will look mag. And if we take down this killer at the premiere, with cams everywhere, it'll be all over the screen like the flying baby. And we'll look completely frosted."
"It's so good you've got your priorities in place, Detective."
"Catching killers, that's what we do. But if we get to do it at a big celeb event, there's no downside to looking most totally excellent. — J.D. Robb

What I remember most clearly is how it felt. I'd just finished painting a red fire engine-like the one I often walked past near my grandparents' house. Suddenly the teachers, whose names I've long forgotten, closed in on my desk. They seemed unusually impressed, and my still dripping fire engine was immediately and ceremoniously pinned up. I don't know what they might have said, but their unexpected attention and having something I'd made given a place of honor on the wall created an overwhelming and totally unfamiliar sense of pride inside me. I loved that feeling, and I wanted to feel it again and again. That desire, I suppose, was the beginning of my career.
I have no idea where my fire engine painting ended up, but I never forgot the basic layout. Several decades later, it served as the inspiration for this sketch for an illustration in a book called Why the chicken crossed the Road. — David Macaulay

Our poor world aspires simply to point out where Christians have gone wrong, and that is pretty much where it goes wrong. It is as though many of us, when of the world, are actually all the more judgmental: for we are stuck on a bad Christian while the Christian is pinned to a good Christ. — Criss Jami

Widen your vision of what beauty is. Realize and keep close the fact that a beauty standard has been created by the very people who sell it, and that it is no accident that the accepted "beauty standard" can easily be described as "perfect." Flaws are not tolerated if you want to be perfect. But the models that we see most often--even the tallest and thinnest and most doe-eyed--are still pinned and sprayed and pulled into place. Then they are manipulated digitally until, literally, everything that might be perceived as a "flaw" is erased. This is a way to sell product. It has nothing to do with real life. It has nothing to do with you. We are made of so-called "flaws." They are the thread that stitches our parts together and keeps us from being generic cut-out paper dolls. You are beautiful. You are enough, now and always. You have always been enough. — Lindsey Gates-Markel

My reflexes were now quicker than my emotion, and it was only after I had pinned her that I felt some dark, primordial excitement pulse through me. I made eye contact with her, and whatever she saw in them made her flinch. I could feel my anger growing, feeding on itself. "You're right Doris." I spoke low so only she could hear me. "I am a freak. But I'm also a predator, and you, Doris, are most definitely prey. Just remember that next time you want to pick a fight. — Laura Thalassa

He has me pinned on my back in record time, his mouth crashing against mine as we frantically devour one another. "Awesome speech," he murmurs, pushing my sweater up and planting his hot mouth against my equally hot skin. "Very motivational. — Siobhan Davis

It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Bradley opened his mouth and then snapped it shut. Finally he chuckled, I find myself with so many arguments and witty replies begging to be used in response to your statement, that I simply cannot choose which would serve my purpose best. Therefore, I'll use none of them and instead ask how you came to be pinned beneath the rubble of thirty bent on your destruction. — Nicole Sager

The Hanging Man
By the roots of my hair some god got hold of me.
I sizzled in his blue volts like a desert prophet.
The nights snapped out of sight like a lizard's eyelid:
A world of bald white days in a shadeless socket.
A vulturous boredom pinned me in this tree.
If he were I, he would do what I did. — Sylvia Plath

That's it. I had enough of your abuse," Tristan said, wrapping his arm around my waist and pulling me back down on the bed. I screamed as he tackled me. We wrestled back and forth, laughing. I found his tickle spot giving me the advantage, but he was fast and kept getting the upper hand. He had me pinned with my arms above my head and his body pressing down on mine. I stopped resisting, but he didn't let go. He was panting and smiling over his victory. He stared deep into my eyes making my heart race. — Jessica Miller

Looked around for Grandma, spotting her and Dougie hiding behind a car on the opposite side of the street. They were wearing Super Suits and they had bath towels pinned around their necks like capes. — Janet Evanovich

As she looked in the full-length mirror in her dressing room, she added a few ropes of pearls, pinned a white silk camellia, and draped the Chantilly lace shawl. In that moment, Dana thought of fashion's most enduring icon who created this elegant and alluring style, and the happy personal life that eluded her. Mademoiselle Chanel died in 1971 at the age of eighty-eight while working on her spring collection, but her passion for work did not fill the void of marriage and children. Her success was costly, but clearly the choice of an uncompromising woman determined to achieve greatness on her own. She once said, I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird. — Lynn Steward

People used to recordings believed every piece of music had a definitive sound, its emotional context trapped in amber, a butterfly pinned to a board; beautiful, but dead. Live music was just that. Alive. — Tanya Huff

I didn't know I was about to be left with her idea of me; with her idea of my goodness pinned onto me like a badge and no chance to throw it back at her (as would have been the normal course of affairs with a mother and a daughter - if she'd lived, as I'd grown older). — Margaret Atwood

In the center of the sofa were two oblong companion pillows, shouldered so closely together that they looked like the Decalogue tablets. They were white, or had been white, and painfully stitched upon them with blue thread were companion mottoes, companion pictures. In the left pillow lies a girl, her long blue hair asprawl about her face, her eyes innocently shut, asleep. The motto: I SLEPT AND DREAMED THAT LIFE WAS BEAUTY. But the story continued, and on the next pillow her innocence is all torn away: there she stands, gripping a round broom; her hair now is pinned up severely and behind her sits a disheartening barrel churn. I WOKE AND FOUND THAT LIFE WAS DUTY. The pillows sat, stuffed and stiff as disapproving bishops; they could, he thought, serve as twin tombstones for whole gray generations. — Fred Chappell

Was it just that? She was to be content to weave a steady life with him, all one fabric, but perhaps brocaded with the occasional flower of an adventure. But how could she know what she would feel next year? How could one ever know? How could one say Yes? for years and years? The little yes, gone on a breath! Why should one be pinned down by that butterfly word? Of course it had to flutter away and be gone, to be followed by other yes's and no's! Like the straying of butterflies. — D.H. Lawrence

Riker's gaze shifted down. To her throat. Then his mouth shifted down. To her throat. Boris's face flashed in front of her eyes, and panic squeezed her heart in a cold fist. Like she had so many years ago, she tried to fight, but Riker held her easily, pinned to the wall with his weight. As his lips closed over her skin, she stopped breathing and waited for the rip of his teeth. Instead, there was only a warm sweep of his tongue and, with it, the most bizarre and disturbing sense of pleasure. — Larissa Ione

He blows out a breath, takes a step toward me. The hallway is so narrow that I'm pinned between the wall and his body, heat rolling off him in waves. "Yeah," he says, voice low. "I feel things." His green eyes burn. It's the most emotion I've seen from him so far, and I have trouble taking a full breath, my lungs compressed with tension. "That's the whole point, Ivy. I want you to feel them, too. — Amy Engel

Still, though no one is an island, most are peninsulas. Our lives wouldn't make sense without personal memories pinned like butterflies against the velvet backdrop of social history. — Diane Ackerman

Cooper had been at a scene once where a car had collided with an agent and pinned him against a metal barrier, shattering everything from the ribs down, severing both legs at midthigh. Massive physical damage, unsurvivable. What had haunted him most, though, was that the man was calm. He didn't scream, didn't seem to feel any pain. Some wounds were too enormous to feel. — Marcus Sakey

For the very first time Andrew realized that life, real life, had no connection with the way people spent their days, whose lips they kissed, what medals were pinned on them, or the shoes they mended. Life, real life went on soundlessly ... ultimately there was no difference between Queen Victoria and the most wretched beggar in London: both were complex machines made up of bone, organ, and tissue, whose fuel was the breath of God. — Felix J. Palma

I mean, in the last few months alone, I've been pinned in a big set of white-water rapids, been bitten by an angry snake in a jungle, had a close escapewith a big mountain rockfall, narrowly avoided being eaten by a huge croc in the Australian swamps, and had to cut away from my main parachute and come down on my reserve, some five thousand feet above the Arctic plateau.
When did all this craziness become my world?
It's as if - almost accidentally - this madness had become my life. And don't get me wrong - I love it all.
The game, though, now, is to hang on to that life.
Every day is the most wonderful of blessings, and a gift that I never, ever take for granted.
Oh, and as for the scars, broken bones, aching limbs and sore back?
I consider them just gentle reminders that life is precious - and that maybe, just maybe, I am more fragile than I dare to admit. — Bear Grylls

All creative art is magic , is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind , pinned down by the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most insignificant tides of reality . — Joseph Conrad

Sleep is a patch of death, but three in the morn, full wide-eyed staring, is living death! You dream with your eyes open. God, if you had the strength to rouse up, you'd slaughter your half-dreams with a buckshot! But no, you lie pinned to a deep well-bottom that's burned dry. — Ray Bradbury

Fright is something one can never get over. When a warrior is caught in such a tight spot he would simply turn his back to the ally without thinking twice. A warrior cannot indulge thus he cannot die of fright. A warrior allows the ally to come only when he is good and ready. When he is strong enough to grapple with the ally he opens up his gap and lurches out, grabs the ally, keeps him pinned down and maintains his stare on him for exactly the time he has to, then he moves his eyes away and releases the ally and lets him go. A warrior, my little friend, is the master at all times — Carlos Castaneda

The horses came thundering toward Margaret. "Get down!" Daniel tackled her to the dusty ground.
The breath puffed out of her. She struggled to free herself, but his strong body kept her pinned beneath him. She could smell the clean scent of soap underneath the scent of his skin.
Never in her life had she felt so helpless and dependent. And protected. The word whispered through her brain with a gentle allure. — Colleen Coble

He was really trying to be my friend, without all the emotional baggage we both carried - mine still with me, but carefully folded in vacuum bags so they'd occupy as little room as possible and his, hangin on his shoulders like lead armor, making him slouch sometimes. And yet, as pinned down as he was, he was the one comforting me, supporting not only his weight but mine, too. It wasn't fair. — Diana T. Scott

Descriptions of my work depress me. They make me feel pinned down. — Thom Mayne

Do I get a kiss before my massage?"
"Since you asked so nice." His lips were smiling when they touched hers, and she'd never guessed until this moment what it was to kiss a man you could laugh with. They smiled through the entire kiss, as he sipped at her, before slicking his tongue over her lips. She danced her own tongue playfully over his, flirting but never delivering. He nipped at her in sensual punishment before taking her mouth with a dominance that was as natural to him as breathing. And through it all, he kept her pinned to the door, his heavier body a delicious source of pressure. — Nalini Singh

Sometimes, in a moral struggle, we discover the right thing to do - just as, on some cold day long ago, we discovered mittens pinned to our coat sleeve. — Robert Breault

Her insanely high Christian Louboutin stilettos made a click-clacking sound on the airport floor. Amber rolled a small Louis Vuitton luggage bag behind her. She wore a baby-blue Chanel skirt suit, which made her look like an elegant celebrity. Her hair was long and blond today and pinned up into a perfectly smooth up-do. A pair of gold earrings in the shape of four-leaf clovers and a matching pendant completed the outfit. — A.O. Peart

Got a hero complex, huh? Wanna be every woman's knight in shining armor?"
"Not every woman's," he murmured.
"Mmm, Pesh, you wanna be my knight in shining armor?" As soon as the words left her lips, she fought the urge to slap her hand over her mouth. Alcohol always had this effect on her-it left her completely without a sensor.
Pesh's jaw clenched, and he didn't reply. Pitching her upper body over the armrest, she got as close to him as she could. "You didn't answer my question."
Taking his eyes momentarily off the road, he pinned her with an intense gaze. "I'd be anything and everything you wanted me to be, if you would give me the chance. — Katie Ashley

She had not yet sensed the pea beneath the pile of mattresses, the pea that belonged to the little brown-skinned girl who used to make up stories to keep her soul pinned down inside her or, at times, to let it fly - stories whose most exciting element was the word "suddenly" at the beginning of every sentence and before each description: Suddenly, suddenly, her heart would leap when she whispered to herself, suddenly. — David Grossman

There was Isola in a mad hat and a purple shawl pinned with a glittering brooch. She was smiling fixedly in the wrong direction and I loved her instantly. — Mary Ann Shaffer

A well-wrapped statistic is better than Hitler's 'big lie'; it misleads, yet it cannot be pinned on you. — Darrell Huff

Melville had to fight, fight against the existing world, against his own very self. Only he would never quite put the knife in the heart of his paradisal ideal. Somehow, somewhere, somewhen, love should be a fulfillment, and life should be a thing of bliss. That was his fixed ideal. Fata Morgana. That was the pin he tortured himself on, like a pinned-down butterfly. — D.H. Lawrence

It's impossible to own a Norin, no matter how many cages you wrap around them. We will always follow our own star. The best you can do is to hope you've pinned your heart to the same constellation. — Gwynn White

the English explorer Richard Burton told the story of an Englishman finding his new wife unconscious on the marital bed, having chloroformed herself. She had pinned a note to her nightdress which read: 'Mama says you're to do what you like. — Sam Miller

The Air Force pinned a medal on me for killing a man and discharged me for making love to one. — Leonard Matlovich

Mal dragged the last few inches of the sword free of his flesh, wincing at the raw pain. She's stabbed him. She'd f**king pinned him to the wall like a bug. She'd fed from him and used his own blood and power against him. He hadn't seen that coming. He was both affronted by - and admiring of - her resourcefulness. — Eve Silver

Aiden followed my gaze. "Leon, that one there counts half for me. So that's six and a half." Then he pivoted around, heading toward another daimon who had a Guard pinned on the floor.
Leon shrugged. "That's okay. I have ten, loser. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

A border collie saved me once when I was pinned under a horse in Colorado. And once when I went through the ice, one of my sled dogs saw me go under, and she got the rest of the team, and they pulled me out of 12 feet of water. I think that dogs offer the only form of unconditional love that's available to humans. — Gary Paulsen

She never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm 'i th' bud, feed on her damask cheek. She pinned in thought; and, with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? We men may say more, swear more; but indeed our shows are more than will; for we still prove much in our vows but little in our love. — William Shakespeare

It was dark in the alcove, so dark that Jace was only an outline of shadows and gold. His body pinned Clary's to the wall. His hands slid down along her body and reached the end of her dress, drawing it up along her legs. "What are you doing?" She whispered. "Jace?" He looked at her. The peculiar light in the club turned his eyes an array of fractured colors. His smile was wicked. "You can tell me to stop whenever you want," he said. "But you won't. — Cassandra Clare

The Jackal is pinned, bleeding, and surrounded by my army. His ambush undone. He has lost, but he is not helpless. He is no longer Lucian. It's almost like his hand isn't impaled. His voice doesn't waver. He is not angry, just pissinyourboots scary. He reminds me of me before I go into a rage. Quiet. Unhurried. I wanted my soldiers to see him squirm. He doesn't, so I tell them to leave. — Pierce Brown

And in an instant I was pinned beneath him, which was not an entirely unpleasant experience once I realized it was Ranger. We were groin to groin, chest to chest, with his hands locked around my wrists. A moment passed while we did nothing but breathe. — Janet Evanovich

She can go with us to the lab and keep Myrnin pinned down while we pull the plug, if he's not ... you know, better."
"Define BETTER with that guy."
"Not all fangs and raaaaar. — Rachel Caine

Six years previously, Miss Brodie had led her new class into the garden for a history lesson underneath the big elm. On the way through the school corridors they passed the headmistress's study. The door was wide open, the room was empty.
'Little girls,' said Miss Brodie, 'come and observe this.'
They clustered round the open door while she pointed to a large poster pinned with drawing-pins on the opposite wall within the room. It depicted a man's big face. Underneath were the words 'Safety First'.
'This is Stanley Baldwin who got in as Prime Minister and got out again ere long,' said Miss Brodie. 'Miss Mackay retains him on the wall because she believes in the slogan "Safety First". But Safety does not come first. Goodness, Truth and Beauty come first. Follow me. — Muriel Spark

The black, hungry roses that Redd sent snaking towards the princess were easily squashed, the orbs and and unmanned, airborne blades of effortlessly waved off, and the spears of black energy (Alyss was flattered, her aunt borrowing this idea from her) pinned motionless to the air by Alyss's own white spears with no trouble. — Frank Beddor

Algaliarept varied its shape, sifting through my mind without me even knowing to choose what scared me the most. Once it had been Ivy. Then Kisten - until I had pinned him in an elevator in a foolish moment of vampire-induced passion. It's hard to be scared of someone after you've French-kissed him. — Kim Harrison

Julia Bliss Flaherty, as Ivy now realized, was of the same stripe. Pinned down and obliged to justify herself, she would explain her actions in terms of some altruistic plan. And she might even believe it. But it wasn't that at all. She was like Ivy's grandmother. If you paid fealty to her, she would favor you, and your reputation and power would grow among all the others who did likewise. — Neal Stephenson

I tried to go to sleep with my headphones still on, but then after a while my mom and dad came in, and my mom grabbed Bluie from the shelf and hugged him to her stomach, and my dad sat down in my desk chair, and without crying he said, 'You are not a grenade, not to us. Thinking about you dying makes us sad, Hazel, but you are not a grenade. You are amazing. You can't know, sweetie, because you've never had a baby become a brilliant young reader with a side interest in horrible television shows, but the joy you bring us is so much greater than the sadness we feel about your illness.'
'Okay,' I said.
'Really,' my dad said. 'I wouldn't bullshit you about this. If you were more trouble than you're worth, we'd just toss you out on the streets.'
'We're not sentimental people,' Mom added, deadpan. 'We'd leave you at an orphanage with a note pinned to your pajamas. — John Green

When Harry pulled back his sheets, he found his Invisibility Cloak folded neatly underneath them. There was a note pinned to it: Just in case. — J.K. Rowling