Never Go Down Quotes & Sayings

And that was the way it was in the old days before the country grew up and men put their guns away. Someday, and I hope it never comes, there may be a time when the Western hills are empty again and the land will go back to wilderness and the old, hard ways. Enemies may come into our country and times will have changed, but then the boys will come down from the old high hills and belt on their guns again. They can do it if they have to. The guns are hung up, the cows roam fat and lazy, but the old spirit is still there, just as it was when the longhorns came up the trail from Texas, and the boys washed the creeks for gold. — Louis L'Amour

I always saw my peers finding some cool passion, but every time I tried one of those things, it never clicked. I would leave school and go to my theater class, and that's when I'd actually sit down and listen. — Liana Liberato

Those then who know not wisdom and virtue, and are always busy with gluttony and sensuality, go down and up again as far as the mean; and in this region they move at random throughout life, but they never pass into the true upper world; thither they neither look, nor do they ever find their way, neither are they truly filled with true being, nor do they ever taste of pure and abiding pleasure. — Socrates

With stand-up, I can have an idea, go down the street to a comedy club and work on it, flesh it out, book a venue, people will come, then film it. I do all that myself; I never have to answer to anybody. — Aziz Ansari

The most important thing in human relationship is conversation.but people don't talk anymore,they don't sit down to talk and listen.They go to theatre,the cinema,watch television,listen to the radio,read books but they almost never talk.(pg114) — Paulo Coelho

He holds my gaze, and the look in his eyes is a love letter in itself. When he speaks, his voice is rough. "Will you marry me, Cate?"
I go still, the question hanging in the air. I have never felt more accepted 'for the girl I am, not the girl I want to be' never more loved and respected than I am in this moment. It's a choice, and it's mine to make.
"Yes," I breathe.
Finn slides the simple gold band onto my ring finger. I tilt it, and the ruby sparkles, catching the sunlight. He leans down and brushes his lips against mine, sealing the promise. 'I can't wait to make you my wife.'
'Cate Belastra.' I try it out and despite the solemnity of the moment, despite knowing what this will cost him, I can't help smiling. — Jessica Spotswood

Soeur Marie Emelie"

Soeur Marie Emelie
is little and very old:
her eyes are onyx,
and her cheeks vermilion,
her apron wide and kind
and cobalt blue.

She comforts
generations and generations
of children,
who are
"new"
at the convent school.
When they are eight,
they are already up to her shoulder,
they grow up and go into the world,
she remains,
forever,
always incredibly old,
but incredibly never older...
She has an affinity with the hens,
When a hen dies,she sits down on a bench and cries,
she is the only grown-up, whose tears
are not frightening tears.
Children can weep without shame,
at her side...
Soeur Marie Emelie...
her apron as wide and kind
as skies on a summer day
and as clean and blue. — Caryll Houselander

Ninety-nine percent of pilots that go up never have engine failure, and the 1 percent that do usually land it. But if you're up in the air and something goes wrong, you pull that parachute, and the whole plane goes down slowly. — Cory Lidle

- Who dares, in front of Love, to mention Hell?
Curbed forever be that useless dreamer
Who first imagined, in his brutish mind,
Of sheer futility the fatuous schemer,
Honour with Love could ever be combined.
He who in mystic union would enmesh
Shadow with warmth, and daytime with the night,
Will never warm his paralytic flesh
At the red sun of amorous delight.
Go, if you wish, and seek some boorish lover:
Offer your virgin heart to his crude hold,
Full of remorse and horror you'll recover,
And bring me your scarred breast to be consoled ...
Down here, a soul can only serve one master.
(Damned Women) — Charles Baudelaire

You know how if you're born in a certain situation you always expect your life to run on a steady trajectory? I've never really had a sense of that. I assume that life is going to go up and down. — Monica Ali

There are a dozen different ways of delivering destruction in impersonal wholesale, via ships and missiles of one sort or another, catastrophes so widespread, so unselective, that the war is over because that nation or planet has ceased to exist. What we do is entirely different. We make war as personal as a punch in the nose. We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time - we've never been told to go down and kill or capture all left-handed redheads in a particular area, but if they tell us to, we can. We will. — Robert A. Heinlein

I slipped into the shop, wanting to curl up and disappear, wanting the world to blow away until there was nothing left. But before I got my wish, Mama came in after me, slamming the door on Dempsey, on all the prying eyes, on all the swirl of hope and despair and want, and I knew that the world would never go away, but would pull me down right along with it. — Eden Butler

Watch this, Larry. The seeds I saved from last year bring forth plants this year. It's a death, burial, and resurrection. It's this way with the sun also. It comes up in the morning and brings us light all the day long. But in the evening it goes down. Is that the end of the sun? No... It comes up the very next day. Death, burial, and resurrection."
"I never saw it like that, Charlie. Tell me more."
"See Larry, let's go deeper with that. Just for instance, something must die for something to live. You and I eat live substance--whether it is corn or beans, it's a life. That life dies to give us life. Now watch this, Larry. If that works with the physical; then it also works in the spiritual. Jesus Christ had to die to give us life... — Jerrel C. Thomas

Deep down, fundamentally, we are the 'unborn'. We never came into being and we never go out of being. All of these coming and goings are just pulses in the pattern — Bankei Yotaku

I was talking about time. It's so hard for me to believe in it. Some things go. Pass on. Some things just stay. I used to think it's just my rememory. You know. Some things you forget. Other things you never do. But it's not. [...] What I remember is a picture floating around out there outside my head. I mean, even if I don't think it, even if I die, the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there. [...] Someday you be walking down the road and you hear something or see something going on. So clear. And you think it's you thinking it up. A thought picture. But no. It's when you bump into a rememory that belongs to somebody else. — Toni Morrison

The three of us do not go out very often as the three of us. I think Daniel is perfect for Jed, which is the highest compliment I can give. But my friendship isn't with him, and Jed understands that. When we hit the road, we hit it together alone.
We get to the bridge, out undestined destination. Even though there's no sign, no arrow, Jed turns at the last minute and parks us in a verge right before the bridge leaves the ground.
The trunk pops open, and Jed runs round back to retrieve a bag of oranges and a sweatshirt that fits me better.
Shall we make like lizards and leap? he asks.
I never felt the urge to jump off a bridge, but there are times I have wanted to jump out of my life, out of my skin.
Would you stroll me down the promenade instead? I ask back.
Most certainly, my splendid.
There is no word for our kind of friendship. Two people tho don't see each other a lot, but can make each other effortlessly happy. — David Levithan

I have this feeling that whoever's elected president, no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail - blah, blah, blah - when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there, and this little screen comes down ... and it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll ... and then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president, 'Any questions?'" "Just what my agenda is." - Bill Hicks — James H. Fetzer

My eyes bulged out of my head as I saw what rested between his hips. "Good Lord!" I said without thinking. A forked penis will do that to a girl. He glanced down at the appendage and smiled knowingly. "Once you go demon you never go back. — Jaye Wells

The thing is done; it can't be undone. How can one go back and change a moment passed? Even a moment that should never have come. I fear with the deed I have lost not only my virtue but my life as well. For of all life's betrayers, the heart is the worst. It flutters with joyful anticipation, leading down paths better untrod. Now that I know my heart, I must never follow it again. — Kristen Heitzmann

Bow down and pray in fear and trembling, go way back in the dark afraid; or work harder and harder; or stumble and learn; or raise up your fist and strike-but once the idea comes into your head you'll never be the same again. Oh, test tube of life! Crucible of the South, find the right powder and you'll never be the same again-the cotton will blaze and the cabins will burn and the chains will be broken and men, all of a sudden, will shakes hands, black men and white men, like steel meeting steel! — Langston Hughes

Love often doesn't make any sense at all. It likes to creep up on you when you're least expecting it, with the person you're least expecting it to be with. It climbs walls and crosses oceans to find you. When it's your time, love will track you down. Love isn't possession, it isn't codependency, it isn't jealousy, and it isn't neediness or clinginess. It's not meant to complete you, but to complement you. If it's toxic, it isn't love. Love isn't finding a "better half," but an "equal match." Love is letting go when you want to hold on. Love will never require you to sacrifice your dreams or your dignity. Love isn't uncertainty. It isn't a "maybe" thing. It isn't a question. It's always an answer. Love is beautiful. It is magical. It is life-changing. It is breathtaking. — Mandy Hale

People say you're too good - you're never too good to go down, believe me. I've seen it at Leeds. We had a better team at Leeds than we have now and they went down eventually. — Jonathan Woodgate

Toby, if I say challenging him is futile, that you'll change nothing and only grant the omen you saw this morning power over you ... if I say you can save your life and your heart by walking away from this, will it matter?" Part of me
most of me
wanted to say, "Yes, it would matter; please tell me to stay here. If you tell me, I'll stay." I didn't want to go. I'm not a hero; I never have been. I just do what has to be done. But when you get right down to it, isn't that the definition of hero? — Seanan McGuire

He will never, ever, give up. And, most importantly, he will never, ever, let you down. Donald is, and always has been, an amazing leader. Now, he will go to work for you. — Melania Trump

I never go to where's a risk. I'm frightened of dangers down to boredom. — Fernando Pessoa

Don't get impatient with others. Remember how God dealt with you - with patience and with gentleness. But never water down the truth of God. Let it have its way and never apologize for it. Jesus said, "Go ... and make disciples ... " (Matthew 28:19), not, "Make converts to your own thoughts and opinions. — Oswald Chambers

Emotional hurt, you gotta let that go. Walk away and let it be. So many highs and lows, but if you keep being down, you'll never get up. — Micky Ward

After driving 30-minutes East of Seattle, I expect to see a great bowling alley. But, as we pull into the parking lot, all I see are pot holes, a horse and Amish buggy, and no cars to speak of- broken down or otherwise. Even the building is in shambles, needs painted and looks a bit haunted. The old road sign reading- Flicker Lanes- is half-burnt out. Seeing the building's interior lights on, I'm reassured that the place is open- but then again, maybe they've been left on by mistake. "There's LOTS of NICE bowling alleys in SEATTLE," I said. "Why did we come ALL THIS WAY to go BOWLING?"
"I take it that you've never BEEN here before."
"I don't think ANYONE HAS. I don't even KNOW what PLANET we're on."
"I don't know what PLANET you're on either... but the rest of us are on your ANUS."
I half-smile, marveling at his wittiness. — Giorge Leedy

Ana Iris once asked me if I loved him and I told her about the lights in my old home in the capital, how they flickered and you never knew if they would go out or not. You put down your things and you waited and couldn't do anything really until the lights decided. This, I told her, is how I feel. — Junot Diaz

I never understood retirement. What is the attraction of retirement? I go down there to Florida and look around and I said, my God, who wants this? Not me. — Andy Rooney

Do you get it now asshole? I will go down fighting for you, for me, for us. I'm not giving you an option to push me away. I don't care that you're afraid of corrupting me. I love you Tristan. All of you- the dark, the light, the love, the hate. I see it all and I love it all, because who you are is exactly who I am. We're two halves of the same soul and nothing will tear us apart, not even you. So you can either accept it or not, but I'm never leaving you, not in this lifetime, or the next. — Ashley Jade

Go for it, never back down, and don't give in, because there's no greater satisfaction in life than using your gifts to help others and to contribute to your community and country. — Madeleine Albright

It's been a while since I've written a novel aimed at the adult market, but I never sit down and say to myself, 'Okay, now I'm going to write something for us old folks.' I get gripped by an idea, and I go where the idea takes me. — Rick Yancey

An old medical friend gave me some excellent practical advice. He said: "You will have for some time to go much oftener down steps than up steps. Never mind! win the good opinions of washerwomen and such like, and in time you will hear of their recommendations of you to the wealthier families by whom they are employed." I did so, and found it succeed as predicted. — William Crawford Williamson

Life is full of wonderful passions that come and go over the years, but the only one that will never let you down is reading. — Judith Martin

If one has given oneself utterly, watching the beloved sleep can be a vile experience. Perhaps some of you have known that paralysis, staring down at features closed to your enquiry, locked away from you where you can never, ever go, into the other's mind. As I say, for us who have given ourselves, that is a horror. One knows, in those moments, that one does not exist, except in relation to that face, that personality. Therefore, when that face is closed down, that personality is lost in its own unknowable world, one feels completely without purpose. A planet without a sun, revolving in darkness. — Clive Barker

If you want to be a singer or a performer or absolutely anything in the world that you want to do, I think you should never give up, you should never let anyone put you down and tell you you can't do it, because if you believe in yourself you will go far — Perrie Edwards

I didn't want to go down the route of spending a year of my life making a movie that would never be seen. I may as well go down a route making a film that a lot of people will see, which is the whole idea behind cinema. — Ridley Scott

I unknot his tie and offer him a cold sandwich. He raps my backside, paying attention to the bounce. I walk around him as though he were a Maypole, kissing as I go.
"I lost my cuff link, goddamnit" he says, and drops to the floor to look for it. I go down too on my knees, but I know he never had a cuff link in his life. Still I would do a lot for him.
"Got you off you feet that time," he says, laughing. "Oh yes, I did." And before I can even make myself half comfortable on that polka-dotted linoleum, he got onto me right where we were, and the truth is, we were so happy, we forgot the precautions. — Grace Paley

I lost Ike,' Aunt Josephine said, 'and I lost Lake Lachrymose. I mean, I didn't really lose it, of course. It's still down in the valley. But I grew up on its shores. I used to swim in it every day. I know which beaches were sandy and which were rocky. I knew all the islands in the middle of its waters and all the caves alongside it's shore. Lake Lachrymose felt like a friend to me. But when it took poor Ike away from me I was too afraid to go near it anymore. I stopped swimming in it. I never went to the beach again. I even put away all my books about it. The only way I can bear to look at it is from the Wide Window in the Library. — Lemony Snicket

No prophet or apostle has lived a celibate life is what I'd like to tell her. No one who's ever told me celibacy is a viable option has ever been celibate. They don't even use the word. They say 'abstinent,' which implies there will be an end. They don't consider what my life will be like, if I never marry. Which is likely, given who I am, and the ways I'm different. People stand at the pulpit, or they come to my house, and tell me not to need what every human needs. Afterward, they go home and undress. They lie down next to the person they love most, or once did. — Nicole Hardy

Furi gripped Syn's ass in a grip sure to leave finger-marks and slammed his hot mouth over his cock, taking him down to the base in one swallow. An animalistic lust coursed through him with an intensity he'd never felt. Syn was hit hard with hunger and he roughly grabbed two handfuls of Furi's hair and pumped his cock as far down his throat as it could go while he loudly groaned his release. Sweltering heat surrounded his cock as he shot jet after jet of hot, thick come inside that heavenly cavern. Syn had absolutely no poise or courtesy as he used the hell out of Furi's mouth, fucking his dick in between those pretty pink lips until he had no strength left. Furi — A.E. Via

Human life is a passage - it's simply a crossing to somewhere else. Most people stay on the highway, but some choose to go off-road.

Don't ever be afraid to drive off the road and into the grass. You never know what you might find there. And don't regret your choices. We all make mistakes, and sometimes they'll be huge ones. But don't despair. In the long run you'll travel so far down the road that you won't be able to see those mistakes behind you. Just put one foot in front of the other, and you'll do just fine. — Marie Simas

Her close friends have gathered.
Lord, ain't it a shame
Grieving together
Sharing the blame.
But when she was dying
Lord, we let her down.
There's no use cryin'
It can't help her now.

The party's all over
Drink up and go home.
It's too late to love her
And leave her alone.

Just say she was someone
Lord, so far from home
Whose life was so lonesome
She died all alone
Who dreamed pretty dreams
That never came true
Lord, why was she born
So black and blue?
Oh, why was she born
So black and blue?

Epitaph (Black And Blue)
Written by: Kris Kristofferson
Note: "Epitaph" is about Janis Joplin. — Kris Kristofferson

You seem to forget that I am married, and the one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties. I never know where my wife is, and my wife never knows what I am doing. When we meet - we do meet occasionally, when we dine out together, or go down to the Duke's - we tell each other the most absurd stories with the most serious faces. — Oscar Wilde

I dream of a peaceful world. Music is the best means I have to work on that dream. Each time I have the opportunity to play, it is another chance to tell the truth. Life on the planet has come down to such an acute degree of ADD it is terrifying. We are constantly being bombarded from all directions with information - most of it useless that serves to bifurcate the mind. I am afraid that people are going to go from birth to death and never know they were here or why they were here. — Charles Lloyd

Don't go changing, to try and please me
You never let me down before. — Billy Joel

She was the kind
To tell it like it is
To kiss and tell
To kiss and kill
To kill with kindness

She was the kind
To get things through her thick skull
To work her fingers to the bone
To work on her back
To never take it lying down

She was the kind
To lay down the law
To get down on her knees
To get up on her feet
To give an inch and take a mile

She was the kind
To stand up for herself
To sit down strike
To go to the wall
To take it to the limit

She was the kind
To take it too far
To drop off the face of the earth
To face the music
To hit rock bottom

She was the kind
To get back on that horse and ride it
To get up on her high horse
To get down to business
To turn the world upside down — Heid E. Erdrich

I review all I know, but can synthesize no meaning. When I doze, the Fact, the certain accomplished calamity, wakes me roughly like a brutal nurse. I see it crouching inflexibly in a corner of the ceiling. It comes down in geometrical diagonal like lightning.
It says, I remain, I AM, I shall never cease to be: your memory will grow a deathly glaze: you will forget, you will fade out, but I cannot be undone.
Thus every quarter hour it puts the taste of death in my mouth, and shows me, but not gently, how I go whoring after oblivion. — Elizabeth Smart

Flying Is that what it's like when you die? Do you slip out of your skin, go soaring up into a butterscotch sky? Do you surf waves of light? How far? How high? I hope that's what it's like, but I'm afraid it's a lot more like falling with no net to catch you, and no way of knowing how hard you will hit or where you'll stop. Will you touch down back on Earth, or will you land in the nightmare you always feared you'd never wake up from? — Ellen Hopkins

She sold her hair; she sold her teeth, but it was never enough. The baby became lethargic and ceased to thrive. She called it "wasting fever".
When the baby died no money could be spared for burial, so she sealed him in an orange box weighed down with stones, and slipped him into the river.
That furtive journey in the middle of the night with her dead baby was the moment when she finally accepted defeat, and knew that the inevitable had come. She and the children would have to go to the workhouse.". — Jennifer Worth

And Will knew what it was to see his daemon. As she flew down to the sand, he felt his heart tighten and release in a way he never forgot. Sixty years and more would go by, and as an old man he would still feel some sensations as bright and fresh as ever: Lyra's fingers putting the fruit between his lips under the gold-and-silver trees; her warm mouth pressing against his; his daemon being torn from his unsuspecting breast as they entered the world of the dead; and the sweet rightfulness of her coming back to him at the edge of the moonlight dunes. — Philip Pullman

I'm proud of you, Bliss," he said.
"Michael's sword released the souls that were trapped in your blood. You freed them. You freed me."
"But now I'm never going to see you again, am I?" she asked.
Dylan smiled. "It's unlikely. But I never say never.'
"I wish you wouldn't go. I'll miss you so much," Bliss said.
"I'll miss you too."
Dylan put his hand up, and so did Bliss. But this time, instead of touching air, she felt his warm hand grasping her cold one. She looked at Allegra. Somehow, she knew her mother was making this happen. Dylan leaned down, and she could feel his lips, soft and inviting, gently kissing hers. Then Dylan was gone. But Bliss did not feel anguished. She felt at peace. Dylan was not broken and incomplete anymore. He was whole. — Melissa De La Cruz

As it did go. They never talked about the sex, let it happen, at first only in the tent at night, then in the full daylight with the hot sun striking down, and at evening in the fire glow, quick, rough, laughing and snorting, no lack of noises, but saying not a goddamn word except once Ennis said, "I'm not no queer," and Jack jumped in with "Me neither. A one-shot thing. Nobody's business but ours. — Annie Proulx

But afterwards in the pub, they had dreamed about the big stories and talked for hours of how they would never be satisfied with the conventional or the shallow but instead would always dig deep. They were young and ambitious and wanted it all, all at once. There were times when Levin missed that, not the salary, or the working hours, or even the easy life in the bars and the women, but the dreams - he missed the power in them. He sometimes longed for that throbbing urge to change society and journalism and to write so that the world would come to a standstill and the mighty powers bow down. Even a hotshot like himself wondered: Where did the dreams go? — David Lagercrantz

For the first time in years the tears were streaming down his face. But they were for himself now. He did not care about mouth and eyes and moving hands. He wanted to care, and he could not care. For he had gone away and he could never go back any more. The gates were closed, the sun was gone down, and there was no beauty but the gray beauty of steel that withstands all time. Even the grief he could have borne was left behind in the country of illusion, of youth, of the richness of life, where his winter dreams had flourished.
"Long ago," he said, "long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I think that in the end we never managed to be good for one another. Without wishing to, we dragged each other down into our respective pits, each drawn by the other's darkness and the force of his eddies. We never truly knew how to help one another with what really mattered, instead we behaved like that pair of men drowning in the sea who, as they go under, cling so fiercely to their saviors, with arms and fingernails, that they end up dragging them down with them to the depths. — Carlos Castan

A real Christian in an odd number anyway. He feels supreme love for One whom he has never seen, talks familiarly every day to Someone he cannot see, expects to go to heaven on the virtue of Another, empties himself in order to be full, admits he is wrong so he can be declared right, goes down in order to get up, is strongest when he is weakest, richest when he is poorest, and happiest when he feels worst. He dies so he can live, forsakes in order to have, gives away so he can keep, sees the invisible, hears the inaudible, and knows that which passes knowledge. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

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

If you're a man, you don't cry about it, you take life, the ups and downs; if you're a real man you never go down, you just stay up! — Ric Flair

Maybe he should turn around. Go back and tell them that's what life was, a long series of things that didn't go down the way you thought they would.
Hell with it. Either they'd figure it out or they wouldn't. Most people never did. — James Sallis

And when you came right down to it, the only purpose to life that I have ever been able to find is not to die. You couldn't let them push you out the door to go gentle into that good night. You had to rage, rage, and slam that door on the bastards' fingers. That was the contest - to delay the end of your personal match as long as you could. The point was not to win; you never did. Nobody can win in a game that ends with everybody dying - always, without exception. No, the only real point was to fight back and enjoy the combat. And by gum, I would. — Jeff Lindsay

You realize I had half my guard out searching for you?" Eddard Stark said when they were alone. "Septa Mordane is beside herself with fear. She's in the sept praying for your safe return. Arya, you know you are never to go beyond the castle gates without my leave."
"I didn't go out the gates," she blurted. "Well, I didn't mean to. I was down in the dungeons, only they turned into this tunnel. It was all dark, and I didn't have a torch or a candle to see by, so I had to follow. I couldn't go back the way I came on account of the monsters. Father, they were talking about killing you! Not the monsters, the two men. They didn't see me, I was being still as stone and quiet as a shadow, but I heard them. They said you had a book and a bastard and if one Hand could die, why not a second? Is that the book? Jon's the bastard, I bet. — George R R Martin

I don't get inoculations or take anti-malaria tablets when I go abroad; I take the homeopathic alternative, called 'nosodes', and I'm the only one who never goes down with anything. — Julia Sawalha

Someone told me at the beginning of that summer that I would come face-to-face with death because of a Romeo and Juliet romance, I would never have believed it. But it wasn't like that summer went at all like I had planned in the first place. The Columbia recruiter sat across from me, her dark bushy eyebrows rising as high as they could go while she stared down at my application. "So, Alex, I see that you don't have any extracurricular activities." I shrugged. I was sitting in one of those uncomfortable orange plastic chairs in the guidance counselor's office, wishing I could just disappear. I was the first student in all of Winnebago High School's history to have a recruiter from an Ivy League school visit. By the way she looked at our tiny school with its ancient, chipped walls and rusted lockers, I could see why nobody had wanted to visit in the past. — Magan Vernon

I finally get to the place where the book has matured in my mind and I can hardly wait to start writing it. Then I just sit down and I start. I hit the go button. I have an outline, which is 70 pages, but I don't look at it. I never have to look at it. — Stephen J. Cannell

I know you're not ready to believe it," he added. "Just like I wasn't. Until I met you I thought I could never love again. But here I am, yelling it down an alley because I am not letting you go without a fight. You said you're not the same, so prove it. Prove you're not the scared little girl anymore and turn and face me like the woman I know you are. Because that woman has changed me too, Sophie. That woman has made me fall in love again. So don't you dare walk away from me. — Lindsay J. Pryor

I feel it's all wrong to be nervous," said Maria. "I feel it's lack of confidence. One ought to go right ahead, never minding."
"Some people do," he said, "but they're the duds. They are the ones that win prizes at school, and you never hear of them again. Go on. Be nervous. Be ill. Be sick down the lavatory pan. It's part of your life from now on. You've got to go through with it. Nothing's worth while if you don't fight for it first, if you haven't a pain in your belly beforehand. — Daphne Du Maurier

You come to this place, mid-life. You don't know how you got here, but suddenly you're staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wraiths and phantoms creep under your carpets and between the warp and weft of fabric, they lurk in wardrobes and lie flat under drawer-liners. You think of the children you might have had but didn't. When the midwife says, 'It's a boy,' where does the girl go? When you think you're pregnant, and you're not, what happens to the child that has already formed in your mind? You keep it filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that never worked after the opening lines. — Hilary Mantel

We have still not answered the question of when an experiment might be justifiable. It will not do to say "Never!" Putting morality in such black-and-white terms is appealing, because it eliminates the need to think about particular cases; but in extreme circumstances, such absolutist answers always break down. Torturing a human being is almost always wrong, but it is not absolutely wrong. If torture were the only way in which we could discover the location of a nuclear bomb hidden in a New York City basement and timed to go off within the hour, then torture would be justifiable. — Peter Singer

There is no more valuable skill than studentship. The farther we go down one area of human understanding, the more we see the corollaries that all activities share. Everything I do for the rest of my life, all the skills I acquire, will be made possible because of my time spent on the mats. It has revealed a symbiosis between all things that I never knew existed. — Chris Matakas

Laying down what we want to protect or are afraid of losing or are terrified we will never have is not the same thing as losing those things. It is surrendering them. It is opening up our clenched hand around them and allowing God access to them and to us. It is actually saying yes to God for them. Yes to his plan. Yes to his way. It is believing that just as his ways are higher than the heavens are above the earth, so his way for the things we fear is higher. This God of ours is a God of life, of goodness. He is the God of the Resurrection. We lay down our fear. We pick up Jesus. He is the only way we can live beyond fear. He is the Way. — Stasi Eldredge

We never know. Any day could be the day we go down, and we never know. — Stephen King

In a way, simplifying your life for vagabonding is easier than it sounds. This is because travel by its very nature demands simplicity. If you don't believe this, just go home and try stuffing everything you own into a backpack. This will never work, because no matter how meagerly you live at home, you can't match the scaled-down minimalism that travel requires. — Rolf Potts

Some people live their entire life and never once feel how I felt every time he looked at me. So yes, this hurts. And yes, I feel as if I might die. But I won't. And somehow, I find a way to let it all go...just let it go. No regrets. No grief. It will always hurt a little, down deep in that secret place, but it's become a pain I can handle. Besides, if it didn't always hurt, just a little, it wouldn't mean as much. — Megan Hart

Every time you get angry with yourself for where you are in your process of growth, it's the equivalent of chopping off the head of the rose because it hasn't bloomed yet. Now you have to go through that part of the process again. Anger will set you back every time and slow down your growth. However, self-compassion and self-encouragement are like water and sunshine; they help the growth process happen faster and easier. It's up to you how you want to proceed, but if you can break the habit of getting angry with yourself and replace it with some compassion and encouragement, then you will bloom like you have never bloomed before. — Emily Maroutian

But the important thing is that I don't do anything else. I avoid social life normally associated with publishing. I don't go to the cocktail parties, I don't give or go to dinner parties. I need that time in the evening because I can do a tremendous amount of work then. And I can concentrate. When I sit down to write I never brood. I have so many other things to do, with my children and teaching, that I can't afford it ... — Toni Morrison

As he took possession of it, he was overcome by a sense of something like sacred awe. He carefully spread his horse blanket on the ground as if dressing an altar and lay down on it. He felt blessedly wonderful. He was lying a hundred and fifty feet below the earth, inside the loneliest mountain in France - as if in his own grave. Never in his life had he felt so secure, certainly not in his mother's belly. The world could go up on flames out there, but he would not even notice it here. He even began to cry softly. He did not know who to thank for such good fortune. — Patrick Suskind

was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world." It was the jackal - Tabaqui, the Dish-licker - and the wolves of India — Rudyard Kipling

When you were strung out

and I kissed you
I imagined your mouth

a mound of cocaine,
inhaling your breath

like powder as I pushed
into you and you pulled

me with your bruised thighs.
Some nights we fucked so

slowly I dissolved
like a Quaalude in a glass

of vodka, and you drank
me down. We kept the room dark,

so we could not see
each other with our eyes

rolled back - or was it
because we did not want

to see ourselves.
It's taken me too long to think

of that, the way we never
thought the other would go,

and then one night
I woke up

sober
and yes,

still there. — Sean Thomas Dougherty

So I was forced to go to school wearing a menstrual pad belt that had been in our first aid drawer since approximately 1961. If you've never seen one of these things, because you haven't been to the antiquities museum, it is a literal belt that goes around your waist, with two straps that dangle down in your front and back cracks, ice cold metal clips holding a small throw pillow in place over your shame canyon. — Lindy West

People break down after a couple of hours. All the defenses go down, and there's a kind of communication that if I spent 20 years in a living room with one of these people, I would never, never know as much about them as I do in that one day. — Lee Grant

I have never as yet gone a step to see a literary lion; but I would go a considerable way to see Emerson, this pioneer in the moral forests of the New World, who applies his axe to the roots of the old trees to hew them down and to open the paths for new planting. — Fredrika Bremer

I used to skip out of high school and go flying. It was just one of those things, I thought it was kind of a cool thing to do. I never thought about doing that as a profession, but I started checking things out and I found out there was a flight school down in Daytona Beach, called Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. — Jerry Doyle

A man is a fool not to put everything he has, at any given moment, into what he is creating. You're there now doing the thing on paper. You're not killing the goose, you're just producing an egg. So I don't worry about inspiration, or anything like that. It's a matter of just sitting down and working. I have never had the problem of a writing block. I've heard about it. I've felt reluctant to write on some days, for whole weeks, or sometimes even longer. I'd much rather go fishing, for example, or go sharpen pencils, or go swimming, or what not. But, later, coming back and reading what I have produced, I am unable to detect the difference between what came easily and when I had to sit down and say, "Well, now it's writing time and now I'll write." There's no difference on paper between the two. — Frank Herbert

I can tell you how to get what you want: You've just got to keep a thing in view and go for it and never let your eyes wander to right or left or up or down. And looking back is fatal. — William John Locke

The worst part is wondering how you'll find the strength tomorrow
to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much
too long, where you'll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe it's treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Real investors should never feel bearish because the time to buy value is when markets go down! — Irving Kahn

Telling Mom was one thing. Telling Dad is another.
He's in the living room smoking and watching what he claims is a very important Yankees game. It's in the ninth inning and the teams are tied. I consider backing out, maybe waiting another week or so, but maybe he won't actually care when I tell him. Maybe all that stuff he said when I was younger, about never acting like a girl or playing with any female action figures, will go away once he realizes I am the way I am without any choice. Maybe he'll accept me.
Mom follows me into the living room and sits down on Eric's bed. "Mark, do you have a minute? Aaron has something he wants to talk about."
He exhales cigarette smoke. "I'm listening." He never looks away from the game. — Adam Silvera

whenever possible, you need to go to the primary source to make your decisions. Regardless of whether or not you're a student, it is never enough to rely on other people's ideas. You have to look at the thing itself and make up your own mind. That's what it means to study and to learn. Some secondary sources proclaim their points of view so loudly and with such passion you might be tempted just to take their word for it. You might be tempted not to do the work of checking to see for yourself. But there can be a fine line between obedience and laziness, and if you go through life dutifully taking other people's word about what's right, you are putting yourself in the position to be led down some very dark roads. After — Ann Patchett

And suddenly the miracle happens. I look across at the woman who has just made some coffee and is now reading the newspaper, whose eyes look tired and desperate, who is her usual silent self, who does not always show her affection in gestures, the woman who made me say yes when i wanted to say no, who forced me to fight for what she, quiet rightly, believed was my reason for living, who let me set off alone because her love for me was greater even than her love for herself, who made me go in serch of my dream,; and suddenly, seeing that small, quiet woman, whose eyes said more than words, who was often terrified inside, but always courageous in her actions, who could love someone without humbling herself and who never ever apologized for fighting for her man - suddenly. my fingers press down on the keys. — Paulo Coelho

He didn't go down to dinner at all that night, didn't eat, didn't drink, simply thought of his wife, trying to decide what to do with her. He'd wanted her to suffer, and she'd suffered. He'd wanted her to pay for her deceits, and she'd saved his life. He'd wanted to torment her with the knowledge that she would never see him again and had instead created his own private hell. He wanted her to come to him again, giving herself to him as she had that night before her attempted escape, and he wanted to hear words she would never speak. He'd even started lying to himself as he lay sleepless in his bed, reliving each moment of their last night together, telling himself it was real, that she'd meant every word. He was going mad. — Elizabeth Elliott

Why are you sad?" Baby asked.
"Because some day you'll fly higher than high, and the blue will fill your eyes, and maybe you'll forget to come down," said Wishmoley.
Baby snuggled next to him. "I'll never forget," she said. — Julia Hubery Mary McQuillam

The lyric abstrusities of Auden ring mystically down the circular canals of my ear and it begins to look like snow. The good gray conservative obliterating snow. Smoothing (in one white lacy euphemism after another) out all the black bleak angular unangelic nauseous ugliness of the blasted sterile world: dry buds, shrunken stone houses, dead vertical moving people all all all go under the great white beguiling wave. And come out transformed. Lose yourself in a numb dumb snow-daubed lattice of crystal and come out pure with the white virginal veneer you never had. — Sylvia Plath

You never think it will happen to you. You think about what it would be like. You go through it over and over in your mind, changing the scenario slightly each time, but deep down, you don't really believe it would ever happen, because it's something that happens to someone else, not to you. — Tonya Hurley

It's a rough journey, and a sad heart to travel it; and we must pass by Gimmerton Kirk, to go that journey! We've braved its ghosts often together, and dared each other to stand among the graves and ask them to come. But Heathcliff, if I dare you now, will you venture? If you do, I'll keep you. I'll not lie there by myself; they may bury me twelve feet deep, and throw the church down over me, but I won't rest till you are with me. I never will!"
She paused, and resumed with a strange smile, "He's considering-he'd rather I'd come to him! Find a way, then! not through that Kirkyard. You are slow! Be content, you always followed me! — Emily Bronte

The ownership of land is an odd thing when you come to think of it. How deep, after all, can it go? If a person owns a piece of land, does he own it all the way down, in ever narrowing dimensions, till it meets all other pieces at the center of the earth? Or does ownership consist only of a thin crust under which the friendly worms have never heard of trespassing? — Natalie Babbitt

It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world. — Rudyard Kipling

If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate's beautiful, lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were, or how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect, and fear, and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem Finch and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go. But this time without being chased by the Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breath for the rest of my life. — Melina Marchetta

It can't be done, old thing. Sorry, but it's out of the question. I couldn't go through all that again."
"Not for me?"
"Not for a dozen more like you."
"I never thought," said Bingo sorrowfully, "to hear those words from Bertie Wooster!"
"Well, you've heard them now," I said. "Paste them in your hat."
"Bertie, we were at school together."
"It wasn't my fault."
"We've been pals for fifteen years."
"I know. It's going to take me the rest of my life to live it down. — P.G. Wodehouse