Next In Line Quotes & Sayings

Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ. — John Piper

That's my cousin, dickwad," Agent Jaxon Tremain said from Hector's left.
Had Whacky Jacky been next to Dallas, he would have drilled his knuckles into the guy's bicep.
"Watch your mouth."
"By watch my mouth do you mean I should invite your cuz back to my place for a game of Hide the Magic Wand, or my new personal fave, Puff on the Magic Dragon?" Dallas asked conversationally.
"And I know what you're thinking. I'm really into wizardry these days. Well, you're right." Hector gave a rusty bark of laughter. He hadn't observed Dallas in this good a mood in a long time.
A low growl escaped Jaxon. "I meant I'd scoop out your liver with a spoon, you idiot!"
"Sterling silver or plastic?" Hector asked. In their line of work, details were important.
Besides, he liked being part of their banter. — Gena Showalter

In the dim, wavering light, a page hung open and it was like a snowy feather, the words delicately painted thereon. In all the rush and fervor, Montag had only an instant to read a line, but it blazed in his mind for the next minute as if stamped there with fiery steel. — Ray Bradbury

I'm twenty-seven today," I continue in a whisper. My voice catches for a moment. "We're the same age now." For the first time in my life, I am no longer his little sister. Next year I will step across the line and he will still be in the same place. From now on, I will be older than he ever was. — Marie Lu

I can speak volumes about the guy sitting next to me. You look at his stat line tonight, he had a lot of foul trouble and didn't really get going, but when he was in there, he was defending. He was playing physical, and he was doing everything he could to help us win. — Stephen Curry

London wasn't the first city I'd lived in, but it was certainly the largest. Anywhere else there is always the chance of seeing someone you know or, at the very least, a smiling face. Not here. Commuters crowd the trains, eager to outdo their fellow travelers in an escalating privacy war of paperbacks, headphones and newspapers. A woman next to me on the Northern Line on day held the Metro just inches from her face; it was only three stops later that I noticed she was not reading but crying. It was hard not to offer sympathy and harder still to not start crying myself. — Belle De Jour

There isn't going to be a next time. I mean it, Alan," she said jerkily as he traced a line down the back of her hand with his fingertip. "I wouldn't be here if you hadn't locked me out of my house. Don't touch me that way," she added in a furious undertone.
"How would you like me to touch you? You have very sensitive hands," he murmured before she could answer. He grazed a thumb over her knuckle and felt the quick tremor. Tonight, he promised himself, he was going to feel that tremor again-at every pulse point. "How many times did you think of me this week? — Nora Roberts

Wanting to be liked means being a supporting character in your own life, using the cues of the actors around you to determine your next line rather than your own script. It means that your self-worth will always be tied to what someone else thinks about you, forever out of your control. — Jessica Valenti

Gunner shook his head; he wasn't in the mood. He stared down at his bottle as he spoke. "Yeah, and what if I do go after it and what if I find no one, and I'm alone for the next sixty years? What then? Huh? Friends and family will get married. I'll be stuck buying gifts. Years pass: children, birthday parties. At dinner parties, I'll be odd man out, forcing people to arrange five chairs around a table instead of four or six. Or, okay, let's say maybe twenty years down the line I meet someone nice and I've already given up on ever finding true love. Let's say the girl is a few pounds overweight, has fizzy hair and an annoying laugh, but at this point, I'm also a few pounds overweight and my hair is thinning and my laughter is annoying. Maybe then the two of us get married, and both our groups of friends will say, 'See I told you that you'd find true love. It just took a while.' And we'll smile, but we'll both know it's a lie-- — Michael Anthony

The resurrection of Christ from the dead, next to the Crucifixion itself, is the most significant event in church history. It isn't a peripheral issue; it's foundational. It's bedrock. It's the bottom line. — Greg Laurie

When your young life offered its first disaster, naturally it loomed large. After you'd survived dozens, you basically just told the next one to take a number and get in line. — Lois McMaster Bujold

No matter how old you are, as long as a parent is alive, you are still a child. It is only after both die that you cease being a child. And then, all of a sudden, not only are you no longer a child, you are also next in line. — Dennis Prager

And Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next - and on and on. Thanks to their decreased brainpower, people aren't diverted from the main business of life by the hobgoblins of opinions anymore. — Kurt Vonnegut

I'm not driven to get back into politics. It's not on my top five things to do before I die, but saying that, I may be in politics in the next year or the next ten years. I've been on the front line for 12 years, four in state government, eight on the national level. — J. C. Watts

One day he [Wagner] was batting against a young pitcher who had just come into the league. The catcher was a kid, too . The pitcher threw Honus a curve ball, and he swung at it and missed and fell down. Looked helpless as a robin. I was kind of surprised, but the guy sitting next to me poked me in the ribs and said, 'Watch this next one.' Those kids figured they had the old man's weakness, you see, and served him up the same dish - as he knew they would. Well, Honus hit a line drive so hard the fence in left field went back and forth for five minutes. — Burleigh Grimes

She leaned toward him and hissed, "I told you what would happen if you crossed the line and tried to get into my shorts! The only reason I'm not making you hurt even more is because someone might wonder about the screams. From now on, you're going to sleep on the deck." The tone in her voice was deadly as she continued. "If you ever try anything like that again, my next problem will be working out how to dispose of your corpse. — Robert Adrian

Is she your Daughter of Man?' He nods toward me.
'She is a Daughter of Man. And she is traveling with me. But she's not my Daughter of Man.'
'Oh. So she's available?' ask Howler.
Raffe gives him an icy look.
'We're all single now, you know,' says Hawk.
'They can't punish us twice for the same crime' says Cyclone.
'And now that we know you're out of the race Commander, that makes me the next best-looking in line,' says Howler.
'Enough.' Raffe doesn't look amused.'You're not her type.'
The Watchers smile knowingly.
'How do you know?' I ask.
Raffe turns to me. 'Because angels aren't your type. You hate them, remember? — Susan Ee

He opened the next door in line, raised the VPX 4000 and fired off a shot.
A woman yelled at the same instant the flash exploded. Not Lillian, he realized. Someone else. This room was inhabited. Not frozen aliens. Warm bodies.
Two figures were illuminated in the intense light. A man with a serious erection dressed in a pair of red bikini briefs and a woman in a black leather bustier and high-heeled black boots.
J. Anderson Flint and Marilyn Thornley.
"Holy cow," Gabe said. "A.Z. was right. But it's worse than she thought. Wait'll she hears that they've thawed out two of the frozen alien life-forms. — Jayne Ann Krentz

The bottom line is that if I did it, you can do it. I got rich without the benefit of a college education or a penny of capital but making many errors along the way. I went from being a pauper.. a hippie dropout on the dole, living in a crummy room without the proverbial pot to piss in, without even the money to pay the rent, without a clue as to what to do next.. to being rich.. — Felix Dennis

I'm glad you feel that way." His breath tickled my jaw line before he ran his tongue along it. "But I'm sorry about your back."
"What about my back?" I murmured, lost in the trance of where his tongue was going to go next.
He shoved my back against the mattress, pulling my arms above my head before he crawled on top of me, straddling my hips. "I'm sorry that it might be sore in the morning. — Magan Vernon

Leif's frown eased and he slid his finger under my chin and gently caressed my jaw line with the pad of his thumb.
"Pagan,will you do me the honor of being my date for Homecoming Dance?The prospect of not being able to hold you in my arms all night is heartbreaking."
Mirand sighed from across the table.
"Okay,that was beautiful.Why didn't you ask me like that?"she asked Wyatt.
Wyatt shot Leif an annoyed frown.
"Thanks,buddy.Next time you decide to break out your romantic side,could you do it alone? — Abbi Glines

The woman next to you that looks really bad might be going through the toughest challenge ever with her teenage daughter; think about if it were you in her shoes before gossiping about her. The man at the checkout line using change may have lost his job and is buying diapers for his baby at home because its all the money he has left; think about it before you snicker to your friends because he could've bought beer or cigarettes. The child with holes in his shoes could be homeless but he's still going to school because he feels safe there even though others laugh at him; think about it before you judge the innocent. You never know what challenges you're going to face from day to day! — Barbara Morrison

The prosecutor uttered the party line that would distinguish revue from burlesque for the next thirty years. The difference is movement. On Broadway, unadorned female figures are used to artistic advantage in tableaux. They do not move. — Dita Von Teese

It's true," says Michael. "Dicken's novels came out in monthly installments. People couldn't wait for the next chapter to arrive. Mobs would gather at train stations and shipyards so they could be first in line to get the next part of the book."

"Mobs?" I say....

..."People don't feel that way about books anymore," Elena says sadly.

"Some people do," I say. — Paul Acampora

She waved, laughing, waiting for him to go zooming past her. Instead he slowed, then came to a stop right in front of her.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, as he put his foot on the asphalt. She pointed to the finish line, a scant hundred yards away. "Go."
People around them started screaming. Josh ignored them all.
He pulled off his glasses. "How you doing?"
"Josh! This isn't funny. Move." She glanced over his shoulder, knowing the other racers would appear at any second. "Just finish. You can win. Then we'll talk."
"We can talk now."
She shrieked. "No! I said I was wrong. I said I loved you. What more do you want?"
"You," he said. "For always."
"Yes, yes. You can have that. Now go. Cross the finish line. It's right there. Can't see it? Hurry."
"You'll marry me?"
The man next to her turned. "For God's sake, lady. Marry him already. — Susan Mallery

The next time you hear someone in a workshop remarking on how good a particular free-verse line or passage sounds, scan it. The odds are that it will fall into a regular metrical pattern. — Annie Finch

There are any number of very hard working people in Hollywood who deserve recognition. Mostly its the artisans and crafts persons - the 'below the line' workers - whose only reward is to be pejoratively labeled 'below the line' workers. I say get them all on the next thing smoking to Vegas for an all expense paid weekend of whatever. — John Ridley

The size and shape of the birds have also made it impossible for commercial turkeys to mount and breed naturally. This means that workers at breeding facilities have to masturbate male turkeys, called toms, to collect their semen. Then, in rapid succession, the females are turned upside down and their legs secured by a clamp. The semen is put in straws and inserted into the hen. She's then released from the clamp, making way for the next in line. Not a pleasant process for the bird, nor a job one can take much pride in. — Gene Baur

Read this to yourself. Read it silently.
Don't move your lips. Don't make a sound.
Listen to yourself. Listen without hearing anything.
What a wonderfully weird thing, huh?
NOW MAKE THIS PART LOUD!
SCREAM IT IN YOUR MIND!
DROWN EVERYTHING OUT.
Now, hear a whisper. A tiny whisper.
Now, read this next line in your best crotchety-
old man voice:
"Hello there, sonny. Does your town have a post office?"
Awesome! Who was that? Whose voice was that?
It sure wasn't yours!
How do you do that?
How?!
It must've been magic. — Bo Burnham

Some parents have taught their small children, "Go to the manager," but this poses the same problem of identification as with the policeman: That small name tag is several feet above the child's eye-line. I don't believe in teaching inflexible rules because it's not possible to know they'll apply in all situations. There is one, however, that reliably enhances safety: Teach children that if they are ever lost, Go to a Woman. Why? First, if your child selects a woman, it's highly unlikely that the woman will be a sexual predator. Next, as Jan's story illustrates, a woman approached by a lost child asking for help is likely to stop whatever she is doing, commit to that child, and not rest until the child is safe. A man approached by a small child might say, "Head over there to the manager's desk," whereas a woman will get involved and stay involved. — Gavin De Becker

Run run run Hermione. You have in your hands a message and a token ... run and run and run and run Hermione. You know running and running and running that the messenger will take (lampadephoros) your message in its fervour and you will sink down exhausted ... run,run, Hermione. For the message-bearer next in line has turned against you ... dead, dead or forgotten. Hecate at crossroads, a destruction ... — H.D.

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer. — E.L. Doctorow

If you don't make the commitment today to start becoming the person you need to be to create the extraordinary life you really want, what makes you think that tomorrow - or next week, or next month, or next year - is going to be any different? They won't. And that's why you must draw your line in the sand TODAY. — Hal Elrod

People who claim to know jackrabbits will tell you they are primarily motivated by Fear, Stupidity, and Craziness. But I have spent enough time in jack rabbit country to know that most of them lead pretty dull lives; they are bored with their daily routines: eat, fuck, sleep, hop around a bush now and then ... No wonder some of them drift over the line into cheap thrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful adrenalin rush in crouching by the side of a road, waiting for the next set of headlights to come along, then streaking out of the bushes with split-second timing and making it across to the other side just inches in front of the speeding front wheels — Hunter S. Thompson

You're the last line of defense. When you're dead, Hitler will march through Leningrad the way he marched through Paris. Do you remember that?'
'That's not fair. The French didn't fight,' Tatiana said, wanting to be anywhere right now but standing in front of men loading artwork from the Hermitage onto armored trucks.
'They didn't fight, Tania, but you will fight. For every street and for every building. And when you lose
'
'The art will be saved.'
'Yes! The art will be saved,' Alexander said emotionally. 'And another artist will paint a glorious picture, immortalizing you, with a club in your raised hand, swinging to hit the German tank as it's about to crush you, all against the backdrop of the statue of Peter the Great atop his bronze horse. And that picture will hang in the Hermitage, and at the start of the next war the curator will once again stand on the street, crying over his vanishing crates. — Paullina Simons

Within the hierarchy of fabrications that compose our lives - families, countries, gods - the self incontestably ranks highest. Just below the self is the family, which has proven itself more durable than national or ethnic affiliations, with these in turn outranking god-figures for their staying power. So any progress toward the salvation of humankind will probably begin from the bottom - when our gods have been devalued to the status of refrigerator magnets or lawn ornaments. Following the death rattle of deities, it would appear that nations or ethnic communities are next in line for the boneyard. Only after fealty to countries, gods, and families has been shucked off can we even think about coming to grips with the least endangered of fabrications - the self. — Thomas Ligotti

I can't do a one-camera show. I don't know how to do that kind of show where you count in your head and then you do the next line. — Bob Newhart

Woody Allen likes to do a lot of master shots. He likes to get the whole thing in one take, and so you could be going along doing a scene, and then the next to last line, all of a sudden, you stumble, and you have to go back to first base. — Larry David

SEE THE MAN NEXT TO HIM? WITH THE LITTLE MOUSTACHE AND THE GRIN LIKE A LIZARD? Death pointed with his scythe.
'Yes?'
HIS COUSIN, THE DUKE OF STO HELIT. NOT THE NICEST OF PEOPLE, said Death. A HANDY MAN WITH A BOTTLE OF POISON. FIFTH IN LINE TO THE THRONE LAST YEAR, NOW SECOND IN LINE. BIT OF A SOCIAL CLIMBER, YOU MIGHT SAY. — Terry Pratchett

Because six billion of us are pursuing an evolutionarily unstable strategy, we're fundamentally attacking the very ecological systems that keep us alive. Just like the goat that refuses to suckle its kids, we're in the process of eliminating ourselves. Think about the time line Charles drew in his talk about the boiling frog. For the first six thousand years, the impact of our evolutionarily unstable strategy was minimal and confined to the Near East. Over the next two thousand years, the strategy spread to Eastern Europe and the Far East. In the next fifteen hundred years, the strategy spread throughout the Old World. In the next three hundred years, it became global. By the end of the next two hundred years - which is now - so many people were following the strategy that the impact was becoming catastrophic. We're now about two generations away from finishing the job of making this unstable strategy extinct. — Daniel Quinn

I might have tried bungee jumping, until I saw that video of that guy whose cord came untied. He didn't know it 'till he hit the ground. Oh, he flew off that tower, hollering at his buddies. "Whoo, check me out, dudes! Oh, that ground is coming up ... " WHAM! And what do you say, if you're the operator of that ride, to the next guy in line? "All right dude, you're up." — Bill Engvall

Once I was standing in line to buy a telephone and Senator Wirth was in line with me. The next day the New York Times reported that we'd both purchased telephones and what price we'd paid! — Harold H. Greene

Here's what you need to know: some cliches are true, and war is definitely hell. It's being afraid all the time, and when you're not afraid it's because you're pumped full of adrenaline you could literally burst. It's watching people who you love- really profoundly love- get blown to pieces right next to you. It's seeing a leg lying in the ditch and picking it up to put it in a bag because no man- or part of a man, your friend- can be left behind. It's the dark night of the soul. There's no front line over there. The war is all around them, every day, everywhere they go. Some handle it better than others. We don't know why, but we do know this: the human mind can't safely or healthily process that kind of carnage and uncertainty and horror. It just can't. No one comes back from war the same. — Kristin Hannah

Those screams had been growing steadily louder, as the torture masters of Eld worked their way down the line of new prisoners. A few chimes ago, however, the screams had fallen mysteriously silent.
"Do you think the torture masters have tired themselves out?" Gaelen pondered with black humor.
"More likely, we're next, and they've just gone to sharpen their blades," Tajik said.
Locked up in the room with them, Farel gave a grunting laugh of amusement. "Could be. They've been using them enough."
"You know," Gil announced, "as rescues go, I have to say this one pretty much scorches rultshart turds. — C.L. Wilson

Come thaw my frozen heart, my little arctic kitten."
Unable to resist, Aria jumped in and picked up the next line. "No chance, my yeti man, I'd rather be frostbitten."
"Let me be your snowman. Come live in my igloo."
"I'd rather freeze to death than hibernate with you. — Veronica Rossi

Dear Jesus, please get me out. Christ, please, please, please, Christ. If you only keep me from being killed I'll do anything you say. I believe in you and I'll tell everybody in the world that you are the only thing that matters. Please, please, dear Jesus' The shelling moved further up the line. We went to work on the trench and in the morning the sun came up and the day was hot and muggy and cheerful and quiet. The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rosa about Jesus. And he never told anybody. — Ernest Hemingway,

Be like Grace: Wear large, dark glasses and a filmy scarf over your hair next time you go out in public. People will totally wonder who the mysterious beauty is, standing in line behind them at Blockbuster. — Meg Cabot

The real gladiators of the world are so humble in their origins and unremarkable in appearance that when we stand next to them in a grocery-store line, we never guess how brightly their souls can burn in the dark. — James Lee Burke

face lit up with a glow of gratitude that was prayer, though he did not know it. Then furtively the percussion-cap box came out. He released the tick and put him on the long flat desk. The creature probably glowed with a gratitude that amounted to prayer, too, at this moment, but it was premature: for when he started thankfully to travel off, Tom turned him aside with a pin and made him take a new direction. Tom's bosom friend sat next him, suffering just as Tom had been, and now he was deeply and gratefully interested in this entertainment in an instant. This bosom friend was Joe Harper. The two boys were sworn friends all the week, and embattled enemies on Saturdays. Joe took a pin out of his lapel and began to assist in exercising the prisoner. The sport grew in interest momently. Soon Tom said that they were interfering with each other, and neither getting the fullest benefit of the tick. So he put Joe's slate on the desk and drew a line down the middle of it from top to bottom. — Mark Twain

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind," he said, "That from the nunnery, Of they chaste breast and quiet mind."
I looked up at him, and said the next line, "To war and arms I fly."
"True, a new mistress now I chase," he said.
"The first foe in the field," I said, and let him draw me closer.
"And with a stronger faith embrace," he said.
"A sword, a horse, a shield." And the last word was whispered against his chest, still looking up into those eyes, searching his face.
"Yet this inconstancy is such, As thou too shalt adore," he whispered against my hair.
I finished the poem with my face pressed against his chest, listening to the beat of his heart, that truly beat with my blood. "I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honor more. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The autopilot is a hands-free piece of electronic wizardry. It's not some brutal application of electricity like one of the Pubyok's car batteries ... Think of its probing as a conversation with the mind, imagine it in a dance with identity. Yes, picture a pencil and eraser engaged in a beautiful dance across the page. The pencil's tip bursts with expression - squiggles, figures, words - filling the page, as the eraser measures, takes note, follows in the pencil's footsteps, leaving only blankness in its wake. The pencil's next seizure of scribbles is perhaps more intense and desperate, but shorter lived, and the eraser follows again. They continue in lockstep this way, the self and the state, coming closer to one another until finally the pencil and the eraser are almost one, moving in sympathy, the line disappearing even as it's laid down, the words unwritten before the letters are formed, and finally there is only white. — Adam Johnson

Over the course of the next twenty-four hours, they would have to collect their belongings and change trains in Jackson, Tennessee, to board the Illinois Central Railroad, the legendary rail system that, for a great portion of the twentieth century, carried upward of a million colored people from the Deep South up the country's central artery, across the Mason-Dixon Line, and into a new world called the Midwest. It carried so many southern blacks north that Chicago would go from 1.8 percent black at the start of the twentieth century to one-third black by the time the flow of people finally began to slow in 1970. Detroit's black population would skyrocket from 1.4 percent to 44 percent during the era of the Migration. — Isabel Wilkerson

I beamed widely at the reporters, my fangs - all natural of course - flashing as I let them drop from my gums. "Now, as I was saying, I am a vampire, and not just any vampire. I am the Queen's general, her most loyal servant and spokesperson." And next in line for the throne if someone actually manages to get past her safeguards and kill her. — Eve Langlais

I thought I was getting better at this. I thought I was starting to make peace with being in love with a girl who despises me, but I don't think I'm so okay with it after all. Somewhere along the line I made a dark bargain with the universe without ever really being aware of it
a bargain that if I was allowed to see her, even if we never spoke, then I could live with that. And now a week without her has swallowed up all of my rational thinking. I feel like a junkie, sick for my next fix and not sure when it will come. — Holly Black

I gotta call Vanni tonight, and tell her. I've got her all confused and totally furious ... "
"Paul, you can't tell her on the phone," Jack said.
"But - "
"Paul! She's gonna hang up on you! And then the next time you show your face, she's going to put a bullet in your head. And Walt will help her line up her shot. — Robyn Carr

It felt as though the whole globe was dressed in snow. Like it has pulled it on, the way you pull on a sweater. Next to the train line, footprints were sunken to their shins. Trees wore blankets of ice.
As you may expect, someone has died. — Markus Zusak

I go on Twitter and I ask my viewers, 'What would you like to see next season in my line?' or 'What are things you love to wear?' They're the ones wearing it, so I want to make sure it applies to them. — Bethany Mota

I use three main tools in writing: instinct, hard work and dumb luck. Dumb luck is missing a train and, while you wait for the next one, writing a key word, line or verse. When this happens often enough you begin to believe in Fate. — David Massengill

Maybe I could have loved you better. Maybe you should have loved me more. Maybe our hearts were just next in line. Maybe everything breaks sometime. — Jewel

Swinging the door open, I took a sip. All of the coffee in the world wouldn't help if more visitors showed up at my door this early in the morning but the caffeine fortification was a bonus. The delivery guy pushed his clipboard at me. I held up my cup and raided my eyebrows.
We had an entire conversation in the next seven seconds with our eyes and eyebrows.
I told him that I wasn't giving up my coffee for his delivery. He told me that if I'd just sign on the damned dotted line he would get the hell out of here.
I replied in turn that if he'd hold the clipboard instead of shoving it at me (I threw in a nod here for good measure), I'd sign the damned line.
He finally sighed, turned the clipboard around and held the pen out.
I braced the door with my hip, grabbed the pen and scrawled Wilma Flinstone on the paper. — Nicole Hamlett

Friends with spiteful hearts and thousand eyes of evil, mock not my slumbering glory. I just might be the next in line to gain access to the secret fount of good riches. — Darmie Orem

You never know where your next job is going to lead you, down the road. One single episode that might seem so far removed from what you might end up doing in the future might spark somebody's memory bank. Just one little line you said or a look you gave might be what they want to pursue with a character. — Amanda Schull

We hold these stories and mad idea and events in our head and they run around and around telling us we are different, separate, broken.
Then one day the mad idea escapes the asylum. Most times it's unplanned. It just tumbles out on the lap of the man sitting next to us on the bus, or it slips sideways into a conversation on line at the Trader Joe's or it falls out at the kitchen table when your neighbor comes to pick up her cat.
And there is a terrifying moment when it first hits the light of day, where we think, "holy mother of God! What have I done? How could I have been to casual with my crazy ways?"
But the man on the bus just smiles and nods his head, and the casher takes a moment to look us in the eye and the neighbor sits for a cup of tea and together we move into some new agreements that we are all in fact crazy and it's so much nicer to be out of the closet with it all. — Maureen Muldoon

The vice president had a bargaining asset, however, that no ordinary person has: He was next in line to the presidency. I saw no chance that he would resign first, then take his chances on trial, conviction, and jail. — Elliot Richardson

That's the big mistake a lot of people make when they wonder how soldiers can put their lives on the line day after day or how they can fight for something they may not believe in. Not everyone does. I've worked with soldiers on all sides of the political spectrum; I've met some who hated the army and others who wanted to make it a career. I've met geniuses and idiots, but when all is said and done,we do what we do for one another. For friendship. Not for country, not for patriotism, not because we're programmed killing machines, but because of the guy next to you. You fight for your friend, to keep him alive, and he fights for you, and everything about the army is built on this simple premise. — Nicholas Sparks

When Pat Buchanan came out against the Beijing Women's Conference and there were women standing next to him, smiling and laughing when he was making fun of it, I was so embarrassed. I don't mind when the more liberal or moderate Republican women talk about smaller government or money issues and things of that nature. But when I see a conservative Republican woman in line with the Christian right or coming out against abortion and day-care issues and for taking away womens' aid, I see a self-hating, unenlightened woman, like a self-hating Jew. That blows my mind. I don't get it at all. — Janeane Garofalo

Simple as that," said Nina. "Did you know I'm next in line for the Fjerdan throne? They call me Princess Ilse of Engelsberg." "There is no princess of Engelsberg," said Matthias. "It's a fishing town." Nina shrugged. "If we're going to lie to ourselves, we might as well be grand about it. — Leigh Bardugo

I had a dream about you. You were crying, and I couldn't tell if it was because you were sad or because you'd been laughing too hard. So I decided to find out by telling you that I'd just heard from the cops, and your mother had been murdered. Before I got to the punch line you started sobbing in a different manner, so I realized you'd been laughing earlier. By that time the mood had changed, and I decided it best not to deliver the punch line after all. So I sat down next to you and put my arm around you and tried to console you for your perceived loss. — Dora J. Arod

We live in an age where quantity is seen as preferable to quality, and many people tend to work in a horizontal line: next, next, next. But if you do that, you never investigate the vertical line - the depth of the piece. — Simon McBurney

I wanted to start a menswear line of slim-fitting, luxury cashmere jumpers in a range of great colors. I know these jumpers will become season-less staples in my own wardrobe. Cashmere and silk printed scarves and hand-beaded T-shirts compliment the line and form a solid foundation for the collection to grow next season. — Matthew Williamson

he followed me with his eyes as if I wore a black hood and carried an axe, and he was next in line. — Robin McKinley

Let me explain: Like two great athletes who don't play on the same team but meet up on the world stage, blacks and women have always convened at the Oppressed Olympics and given each other a friendly head nod, similar to how when I'm in line at the grocery store and I notice the person in the next checkout line is also buying lemonade. — Phoebe Robinson

Crayfish," I said. I dumped out a tin of water. "Really?" I nodded. "Big ones?" "Not these. You can find them, though." "Can I see?" She dropped down off the bank just like a boy would, not sitting first, just putting her left hand to the ground and vaulting the three-foot drop to the first big stone in the line that led zigzag across the water. She studied the line a moment and then crossed to the Rock. I was impressed. She had no hesitation and her balance was perfect. I made room for her. There was suddenly this fine clean smell sitting next to me. Her eyes were green. She looked around. To all of us back then the Rock was something special. It sat smack in the middle of the deepest part of the brook, the water running clear and fast around it. — Jack Ketchum

His day had been just like so many others - a boring as hell meeting in the morning, consisting of people going over the same conversations they'd already had via email, then working on a few projects when he was actually given any time to be productive. It was all so pointless, such a waste of resources. The afternoon had been filled making a few calls to clients then answering emails that he didn't doubt would then be discussed at length, again, the next day in yet another meeting. — Al K. Line

I'm opening a store at the end of the month in the New York meatpacking district. I'm launching a line of bedding this summer, and I am writing a book that will be out next January. — Genevieve Gorder

I don't believe in influence. I think that in order to be an artist, you have to move. When you stop moving, then you're no longer an artist. And if you move from somebody else's position, you simply cannot know the next step. I think that everyone is on his own line. I think that after you've made one step, the next step reveals itself. I believe that you were born on this line. I don't say that the actual footsteps were marked before you get to them, and I don't say that change isn't possible in your course. But I do believe we unfold out of ourselves, and we do what we are born to do sooner or later, anyway. — Agnes Martin

I've wrestled Kyle O'Reilly all over the world. I know how good he is, our fans know how good he is. A lot of people feel he is the next guy in line to be world champion. — Adam Cole

I'm all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius. — Leo Szilard

We all admire the courageous person and quite often consider the individual who lacks courage, a coward. However, that is not how Earl Nightingale saw it. He said the opposite of courage was not cowardness, it was conformity. The next time you are encouraged to fall into line, to be a sport and everything in you says no - be courageous and go your own way. There is no compensation in conformity. — Bob Proctor

I'm pre-med," he added smugly.
"Okay." I said again. I didn't shrug this time, but his jaw tightened a bit as if he was annoyed that I wasn't displaying the proper amazement at his accomplishment.
"And I'm next in line to be promoted to death investigator." The look he gave me was nothing short of a challenge, and I had to fight to not roll my eyes. What, he expected me to start crowing about my own accomplishments so he could top them? He'd be waiting a long time for that. — Diana Rowland

As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure any thing which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children in our hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect, which a few present fears and prejudices conceal from our sight. — Thomas Paine

6:08 and the next dude in line is buying the new King and The Shining just to be bold - he calls The Shining a prequel and I want to cut his face — Caroline Kepnes

How often does it happen that an obscure line finds its way into a periodical ... is requoted in every book that comes out during the next three months, and sleeps again! — Samuel Laman Blanchard

Ray bent his head toward her, and they smiled at each other, a pair of blissful ghouls in love.
I might have felt sorry for them if the continued existence of their relationship didn't necessitate generating incredible amounts of anguish and misery, which I was apparently next in line to provide. — Jacqueline Carey

I suppose this means I can claim all those other sons and daughters of mine and send you some siblings next summer."
"Ha-ha."
Poseidon reeled in his empty line.
I shifted my feet. "Um, you were kidding, right? — Rick Riordan

Knowing that life is a marathon and not a sprint is important. Conserve your energy. Understand that each battle is only one of many and that you can use it to make the next one easier. More important, you must keep them all in real perspective. Passing one obstacle simply says you're worthy of more. The world seems to keep throwing them at you once it knows you can take it. Which is good, because we get better with every attempt. Never rattled. Never frantic. Always hustling and acting with creativity. Never anything but deliberate. Never attempting to do the impossible - but everything up to that line. Simply flipping the obstacles that life throws at you by improving in spite of them, because of them. And therefore no longer afraid. But excited, cheerful, and eagerly anticipating the next round. — Ryan Holiday

And even though they fail us every bit as readily as we fail ourselves, even though they prove just as incapable of fulfilling us as all the other people do in our lives, we still keep pushing that gimme button like blasted morons, fully expecting that the next time we snag whatever comes out of it will be the time when the satisfaction finally takes hold, when the good feelings finally stick around and stay. And so like clockwork, we go down in flames again and again to our alcohol abuse or our sexual lust or our sweet tooth or our credit line - whatever particular desire is so powerful and predictable at deceiving us. We grab for things that have never failed to disappoint us in the past, thinking that what we must need more than anything is more of it ... more of the same thing that's never been able to satisfy us before. That's the call of the world for you. And it's madness. — Matt Chandler

Life is all about being in the labyrinth just to seek happiness but the only way to escape it is to stop and wait what's next in this line — Bianca Agoncillo

I blew through her like baby's breath through a dandelion, and my soul
left its mark on hers. Forever. In one night, I'd bound her too me for as long
as she lived, and I had no words to tell her.
When I woke the next night, to see her there, above me, the relief radiating
from every line of her body, I thought it was more of a miracle than my
first rising. — Amy Lane

Do you know what's one mistake we always make? Believing that life's immutable, that once you get on a particular track you have to follow it to the end of the line. But it appears that fate has more imagination than we do. Just when you think you're in a situation you can't escape from, when you've reached the lowest depths of total desperation, everything changes as fast as a gust of wind, everything's overturned; from one second to the next you find you're living a new life. — Susanna Tamaro

Where were answers to the truly deep questions? Religion promised those, though always in vague terms, while retreating from one line in the sand to the next. Don't look past this boundary, they told Galileo, then Hutton, Darwin, Von Neumann, and Crick, always retreating with great dignity before the latest scientific advance, then drawing the next holy perimeter at the shadowy rim of knowledge. — David Brin

World's freakiest bloodsucker, right here," I went on. "And you know what? If it makes some of you uncomfortable, too bad. If it makes some of you so uncomfortable you want to start shit with me about it, step right up and see if I don't eat the hell out of you next!"
I'd meant that last part as a threat, but somewhere in my impassioned declaration of independence from hiding what I was, I'd neglected to think through my phrasing. I saw Bones raise a brow, a muffled snicker broke out from Ian, and then Vlad laughed loud and hearty.
"With that sort of invitation, Reaper, you might want to suggest the line form to your right."
"That's not ... I meant eat them in a bad way," I sputtered. — Jeaniene Frost

For a moment I think to myself, which connection is quicker to God? Telepathically or by email? Maybe there's a quicker turnaround time if I email my problems. I should probably start by apologizing and doing something spiritual to make up for my long absence. Would an Angel with poor customer service etiquette respond to my email? Is there an 800 holy number to dial? If so, which manual would the Angel be reading from? The Bible or the Qur'an? Does it matter? Would the Angel have Sister Mary sitting next to her, watching and coaching her on how to talk to people with issues? And how do you handle four billion calls a day? I suppose I would have to wait my turn in line, just like everyone else. — Sadiqua Hamdan

It was funny, Grey thought. Not funny ha-ha, but funny strange, the whole idea of time. He'd thought it was one thing but it was actually another. It wasn't a line but a circle, and even more; it was a circle made of circles made of circles, each lying on top of the other, so that every moment was next to every other moment, all at once. And once you knew this you couldn't unknow it. Such as now the way he could see events as they were about to unfold, as if they'd already happened, because in a way they had. — Justin Cronin

As Antiquus's son, I was next in line to be the leader of my village ... But leadership is not inherited. It is earned through action. — Tony DiTerlizzi

A woman once told me that she did not feel the need to reach out to those around her because she prayed every day. Surely, this was enough. But a prayer is about our relationship to God; a blessing is about our relationship to the spark of God in one another. God may not need our attention as badly as the person next to us on the bus or behind us in line in the supermarket. Everyone in the world matters, and so do their blessings. When we bless others, we offer them refuge from an indifferent world. — Rachel Naomi Remen

My most persistent memory of stand - up is of my mouth being in the present and my mind being in the future: the mouth speaking the line, the body delivering the gesture, while the mind looks back, observing, analyzing, judging, worrying, and then deciding when and what to say next. Enjoyment while performing was rare - enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford. — Steve Martin

I made the out of town trip once, walked a mile, and endured product placement rather than putting an item where it made sense. There were plastic smiles of overworked, underpaid employees who not only didn't want to help you, they didn't want to be there. Crowds, lots of crowds, because everything was always on sale. And after I'd wandered aimlessly for a couple of hours, running from one side of the store to the next caught in some perverse scavenger hunt, I stood in the line. Then there was the one open line in a row of fifty closed ones trying to check out a store full of tired suburbanites, their screaming kids, and clueless teenagers. — Adrienne Wilder

YOU WEREN'T born choking on no silver spoon, you know how it goes when you go looking for a job and you need one: You wait in the first indifferent room, ink in the forms, apply in another room with linoleum that's waxy and squeaks and overhead lights that don't miss a thing; then there's the desk and the person behind it who thinks he's an admiral, or it's a she and she thinks she's now in line for the throne to somewhere, and next you're kissing ass and aw-shucksing toward the desk, telling how bad all your life you've been wanting to be night janitor in a chemical plant, or hog wrangler in a slaughterhouse, or pizza delivery boy, how you've laid awake in bed gettin' goose bumps just from imagining how high and wide your life might someday be lived if ever you could average five dollars and forty cents an hour. But — Daniel Woodrell

There were upsides to the whole mess. While Douglas was holding me hostage, I'd met a girl - I mean, screw dating websites and house parties; apparently all the really eligible ladies are being held in cages these days. I would have liked to see Brid fill out a dating questionnaire, though. What would she put? "Hi, my name is Bridin Blackthorn. I'm next in line to rule the local werewolf pack. I like long walks on the beach and destroying my enemies. I have four older brothers, so watch your step. We'll be forming a queue to the left for potential suitors."
And, trust me, there would be a queue. — Lish McBride