Quotes & Sayings About No Days Off

Forgetting myself for a moment, I stopped to study the menu that was elegantly exposed in a show window. I read, realizing that a few days earlier I could have gone in and ordered anything on the menu. But now, though I was the same person with the same appetite, the same appreciation and even the same wallet, no power on earth could get me inside this place for a meal. I recalled hearing some Negro say, "You can live here all your life, but you'll never get inside one of the great restaurants except as a kitchen boy." The Negro often dreams of things separated from him only by a door, knowing that he is forever cut off from experiencing them. — John Howard Griffin

While working at a sawmill, he slipped and fell against the whirring blade, which tore through his upper body at the shoulder, creating a hole so large that his internal organs were exposed - one witness claimed he could see the poor man's beating heart - and leaving his arm attached by just a few strands of glistening sinew. The millworkers bound the injuries as best they could and carried Lindbergh home, where he lay in silent agony for three days awaiting the arrival of a doctor from St. Cloud, forty miles away. When the doctor at last reached him, he took off the arm and sewed up the gaping cavity. It was said that Lindbergh made almost no sound. Remarkably, August Lindbergh recovered and lived another thirty years. Stoicism became the Lindbergh family's most cultivated trait. — Bill Bryson

[New Orleans.] Katrina changed everything. Life here is different, every face altered. Yet we feel and sense the landscape not only in its hurricane-leveled, sodden depressions but - perhaps even more so now in the strangely comforting depths of our shared history. Even in the worst hit areas, not all is dissipated. Dense intricate attachments burrow too deep to underestimate or overlook. This is no featureless town to be rubbed off the map and cast aside. Here the band plays on.

Our kindred colors speak to the values of justice, faith and power; to curious combinations of passion, openness, irreverence and loyalty, to the values of individuality, sharing and compassion. Not least, we still enjoy the sounds of music and respond to succulent foods, to the magnificent flowering gardens, to the elements of grace and dreamy escape, and to the languid Southern charm typical of faded days gone by. — T.J. Fisher

No days off. I'm a workaholic. — Wale

Technology, while providing us many advantages, encourages us to race through our days so that we no longer know what we'd do if we were to slow down. Labor-saving devices seem not only to have failed to enhance the quality of our lives and free up more time, but get between us and the immediate, sensory pleasures of life and increase the pressures on us to do more. Many of us feel cut off from life's blessings, from our neighbors, from the wonders of nature, and from our sense of our own significance in the scheme of things. Modern life leaves us spiritually starved — Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett

My family lived off the land and summer evening meals featured baked stuffed tomatoes, potato salad, corn on the cob, fresh shelled peas and homemade ice cream with strawberries from our garden. With no air conditioning in those days, the cool porch was the center of our universe after the scorching days. — David Mixner

No matter how much long-distance running might suit me, of course there are days when I feel kind of lethargic and don't want to run. Actually, it happens a lot. On days like that, I try to think of all kinds of plausible excuses to slough it off. Once, I interviewed the Olympic running Toshihiko Seko, just after he retired from running and became manager of the S&B company team. I asked him, "Does a runner at your level ever feel like you'd rather not run today, like you don't want to run and would rather just sleep in?" He stared at me and then, in a voice that made it abundantly clear how stupid he thought the question was, replied, "Of course. All the time! — Haruki Murakami

No one has touched me in 264 days. Sometimes I think the loneliness inside of me is going to explode through my skin and sometimes I'm not sure if crying or screaming or laughing through the hysteria will solve anything at all. Sometimes I'm so desperate to touch to be touched to feel that I'm almost certain I'm going to fall off a cliff in an alternate universe where no one will ever be able to find me. It doesn't seem impossible. I've been screaming for years and no one has ever heard me. "Aren't you hungry?" His voice is lower now, a little worried now. I've been starving for 264 days. "No." The word is little more than a broken breath as it escapes my lips — Tahereh Mafi

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

Even if I had convict ancestry, I wouldn't be ashamed of it. As far as I'm concerned, the real criminals back in those days weren't twelve-year-old boys nicking a loaf of bread or a pair of socks to ward off hunger and blisters. No, it was those who exploited them; keeping the battler in the gutter while they sat around in their manors, sipping tea and admiring portraits of their toffee-nosed great grandfathers. — Cameron Trost

I started to crawl off; then I remembered my leftover pizza, and I peeled off the salami, pepperoni, and anchovies and placed them on the CD tray (whicn no one used these days with flash drives around)on Boone's computer. I hit the close button and watched the smelly part of my delicious dinner slide away. Boone would have a great time wondering 'where's that smell coming from? — Duffy Brown

I like cooking, but I don't think I could be a chef. Everyone from the ground up does terrible hours, whether you've just walked in off the street and you've got no experience, to whether you're the head chef. You can work 14 or 15-hour days. It's really, really intense. — James McAvoy

Off, for days and days.' 'But what am I to do?' said Alice. 'Anything you like,' said the Footman, and began whistling. 'Oh, there's no use in talking to him,' said Alice desperately: 'he's perfectly idiotic!' And she opened the door and went in. The door led right into a large kitchen, which was full of smoke from one end to the other: the Duchess was sitting on a three-legged stool in the middle, nursing a baby; the cook was leaning over the fire, stirring a large cauldron which seemed to be full of soup. 'There's certainly too much pepper in that soup!' Alice said to herself, as well as she — Lewis Carroll

Three days later, Mrs. Dalloway was in the hall, blocking the classroom door. 'Hi there, Dick. Are you prone to seizures?'
'Uh, no.'
Thirty minutes later I was wishing I'd said 'Uh, yes,' because then she's have had to turn off the strobe light. Then again, it might not have made a difference; the loud electronic music and Mrs. D's yelling probably would have been enough to do me in anyway. — Mindi Scott

Bloody Men Bloody men are like bloody buses - You wait for about a year - And as soon as one approaches your stop Two or three others appear. You look at them flashing their indicators, Offering you a ride. You're trying to read the destinations, You haven't much time to decide. If you make a mistake, there is no turning back. Jump off, and you'll stand there and gaze While the cars and taxis and lorries go by And the minutes, the hours, the days. Wendy Cope — Daisy Goodwin

I had a vision.
I lay half asleep in the dirt. The sunset
Behind the hills and burnt my skin.
And in the dream I saw a throne
my throne,
Built on the tower of my life.
When I woke all I could think of was my
Vision, etched so clearly on my mind.
I worked for three days and three nights
With no food or drink, until my vision
Had become a reality
perfect in every
Detail.
I pondered the significance of this
Edifice and shook off my trance ...
I felt tired,
I felt lonely,
I felt confused,
I felt so bloody confused,
I felt like a right prat! — Alan C. Martin

He was done talking. Aiden came off the wall so fast the water reacted in a frenzy of bubbling. He - we - were in a frenzy. His arms crushed me to him, his mouth demanding, saying those three little words over and over again without speaking them. Aiden lifted me up, one hand burying deep in my hair, the other pressing into my lower back, fitting us together. He turned and my back was against the edge and he was everywhere all at once, stealing my breath, my heart, my soul. There was no coming up for air, no control or limits. There was no tottering on the edge. We both fell headfirst. In his arms, in the way the water bubbled and moved with our bodies, I may've lost track of time, but I gained a little part of me. I gained a part of him that U would hold close for the rest of my days, no matter how long or short that turned out to be. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Letting off steam makes people angrier, not calmer. Pennebaker discovered that it's not about steam; it's about sense making. The people in his studies who used their writing time to vent got no benefit. The people who showed deep insight into the causes and consequences of the event on their first day of writing got no benefit, either: They had already made sense of things. It was the people who made progress across the four days, who showed increasing insight; they were the ones whose health improved over the next year. — Jonathan Haidt

I try to work out my mind more these days. I try to eat right. I don't drink, I don't smoke, and I take the skin off chicken. But I'm not on no special diet. I like my steak and potatoes, ice cream, doughnuts. — Mr. T

The reprieve doesn't last long though; within a couple of hours the waves are back up to 70 feet. A 70 foot wave has an angled face of well over 100 feet. The Seastate has reached levels that no one on the boat, and few people one earth, have ever seen. When the Contship Holland finally limped into port several days later, one of the officers stepped off and swore he would never set foot on another ship again. — Sebastian Junger

I'm still trying to decide how I feel about the fact that you knew about this before I did."
"Don't be disappointed," Jack said. "The fact that I've been ridiculously proud of you for days doesn't change how excited you should be about this. Besides, I pretty much know everything. You should probably just start getting used to it."
"And on that note, I'm hanging up," Cameron said.
"Rushing me off so you can call Collin next?" Jack teased.
"No" she said emphatically.
Damn, he really did know everything. — Julie James

What did we know? This was early days. We had no idea what was out there. How dangerous it might be. It was just a school maths problem. They never asked that in the exams, did they? Like, If John walks at three miles an hour from London to Brighton, and he's attacked by rabid grown-ups four times, and they bite his right leg off, how long will it take him to bleed to death? — Charlie Higson

I used to wish I had an easier life," he mused. "Some families sail through years with nothing touching them. They have no tragedies. They go on about how lucky they are. Yet sometimes it seems to me they're half alive. When something goes wrong for them, and it does for everyone sooner or later, their trauma is much worse. They've had nothing bad happen to them before. In the meantime, they think little problems, like losing a wallet, are big deals. They think it's ruined their day. They have no idea what a hard day's like. It's going to be incredibly tough for them when they find out."
He'd also developed his own version of making the most of every minute. "Through Sam I found out how quickly things can change. Because of him I've learned to appreciate each moment and try not to hold on to things. Life's more exciting and intense that way. It's like the yogurt that goes off after three days. It tastes so much better than the stuff that lasts three weeks. — Helen Brown

The despair in books was a distant, safe thing. She'd thought she understood the depth of the emotion as she read through the pages of her beloved books, her life touching those of men and women long dead. She's felt for them, cried for them, tried to breathe for them when they no longer breathed. And then, she'd been able to close the book and place it on its shelf, the word trapped between the leather covers.
Oh, sometimes it had taken her hours or days to recover from a particularly emotional book, but there'd always be another to take her mind off the anguish.
There were no books here. — Cynthia Hand

Sometimes I go for days without speaking to a soul. I think, "I should make that call", but I put it off. Because there's something pleasurable about not talking. But then I love talking, so it's not that. But sometimes it can be nice. It's not like I sit here philosophizing, because I've no talent for that. It's just this thing about silence that's so wonderful. — Ingmar Bergman

Poor Persephone." He stared down his nose at the god. "That must be hard on her if that's what gets you off."
I wrinkled my nose.
"If her name drips from your forked tongue one more time, I will rip it out," Hades promised, voice deadly low.
Was his tongue really forked?
His lips curled up on one side. "What? You don't like me talking about your wife?" He looked over at the three of us. "Is abduction as a means of marriage still all the rage these days?"
Seth arched a brow.
"Uh ... no," I said, shaking my head. "It's really frowned upon. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

A neutral place. The chances of finding one these days are slim, maybe even slimmer than Archie's pinball trick. The sheer quantity of shit that must be wiped off the slate if we are to start again as new. Race. Land. Ownership. Faith. Theft. Blood. And more blood. And more. And not only must the place be neutral, but the messenger who takes you to the place, and the messenger who sends the messenger. There are no people or places like that left ... — Zadie Smith

If one is the kind of creature I am and wants to do the kind of writing I want to do, an undisturbed bourgeois existence with no distractions seems in order. A single meeting outside the family upsets one's whole inner web, makes one start off on two-days' thinking and weighing, destroys a delicate balance etc. etc ... I now have enough friends to last me a lifetime and that is enough. I am going to close the doors and hibernate at least for a couple of years. I am frightfully depressed about my work. It seems to me perfectly mediocre. — May Sarton

Drill instructors worked seven days a week, fifteen to seventeen hours a day in many cases, with no time off in between platoons. — R. Lee Ermey

The greats? Well, they all share that quality Napoleon most admired in his generals: luck. Be in Kabul when it falls. Be in Manhattan on 9/11. Be in Paris the night Diana's driver makes his fatal misjudgement." I flinch as the windows blast in, but, no, that's not now, that's ten days ago. "A journalist marries the news, Seymour. She's capricious, cruel, and jealous. She demands you follow her to wherever on Earth life is cheapest, where she'll stay a day or two, then jet off. You, your safety, your family are nothing," I say it like I'm blowing a smoke ring, "nothing, to her. — David Mitchell

Winston Churchill, who abhorred laziness in other people, himself took a nap every afternoon. He defended his afternoon doze in practical terms as an absolute necessity: You must sleep sometime between lunch and dinner, and no halfway measures. Take off your clothes and get into bed. That's what I always do. Don't think you will be doing less work because you sleep during the day. That's a foolish notion held by people who have no imagination. You will be able to accomplish more. You get two days in one - well, at least one and a half, I'm sure. When the war started, I had to sleep during the day because that was the only way I could cope with my responsibilities. — Tom Hodgkinson

They were assembling a rocket there.

It was a big rocket.

It all more or less made sense. There was no cargo too big to be barged up the Columbia River and then trucked the last few miles to Moses Lake. There was no airplane that couldn't be accommodated by that runway. There was no object that the aerospace machine shops of the Seattle area couldn't build. And from this latitude, the same as Baikonur, a well-worn and understood flight plan could take payloads to Izzy.

A mere four days later, Doob stood in the bed of a rusty pickup truck with a random assortment of space rednecks, hoisting a longnecked beer bottle into the sky in emulation of the rocket lifting off from the pad. They all hooted and screamed as they watched it arc gracefully downrange and take off in the general direction of Boise. And the next morning, when they had all sobered up, they got busy building another rocket. — Neal Stephenson

It's a risk-reward thing. If I do go out and try and play and get hurt again, then I'm definitely out. I've got no chance to go. If I'm ready, then great. It's getting better. I've been doing a lot more in the last couple of days. I've got a day off (on Wednesday) and then hope to come back in on Thursday and really see where I am at and test it out. Hopefully I'm going to play this weekend but, in reality, we'll see. — Steve Ralston

I had this dream that my life was a rolling canvas. Everyday it rolled off the sheet, bleached white, into the beach of my life. Come sunup, I'd begin to paint it with my thoughts and actions. My breathing, my living, and my dying. Some days the pictures pleased me, maybe pleased others, pleased God himself, but some days, some months, even some years, they didn't, and I didn't ever want to look at them again. But the thing is this ... every day, no matter what I'd painted the day before, I got a new canvas, washed white. 'Cause each night the tide rolled in, scrubbed it clean, and receded, taking it's stains with it. And my dreams ... I just stood on the beach and watched all that stuff wash out to sea.- Nothing more than ripples in the water. No canvas is ever stained clean through. Not one. — Charles Martin

You look at 30 Seconds to Mars, and you don't think, 'Ooh, I bet they're angry.' No one really does anger these days. I suppose it's a turn-off. — Peter Hook

When it became obvious that the stranger was no longer a threat, Laeth said congenially, "She doesn't like it when men touch her without an invitation. You're lucky that she's in a good mood or she'd have just cut your hand off - that's what she did to the last man who tried it."
A friend of Laeth's leaned over from a nearby table and said sadly, "Poor Jard was never the same."
"Remember what she did to Lothar?" added another man, shaking his head.
"Took us three days to find all the pieces so that we could bury him," commented one of Laeth's fellow lieutenants, a stocky, bald man with a friendly face. He leaned closer and said softly, "But then, Lothar tried to kiss her. — Patricia Briggs

He might dance down the street on his way to work, gaze into the eyes of a complete stranger and speak of love at first sight, or defend an apparently absurd idea. Warriors of light allow themselves days like these.
He is not afraid to weep over ancient sorrows or feel joy at new discoveries. When he feels that the moment has arrived, he drops everything and goes off on some long-dreamed-of adventure. When he realises that he can do no more, he abandons the fight, but never blames himself for having committed a few unexpected acts of folly.
A warrior does not spend his days trying to play the role that others have chosen for him. — Paulo Coelho

I thought all I had to do to get you back was kill off your so-called mother and that little girl. No, I also pondered eating you alive. I imagined drinking all your blood and swallowing you whole many times. A thousand times ... no, a million times over the past few days! I couldn't even tell apart my dreams from reality. Why are you so obsessed with your piece of shit family? They abandoned you! Why must you only desire the things I can't give you, huh?! If you have any love left to go around, then don't give it to those worthless people. Give it to me! Give me everything. I want it all, even the last speck of dust lying at the bottom of your heart! Give me everything before I lose my mind! Before I really do drink your blood and eat your flesh! Before I swallow you whole! — Hajin Yoo

On a very hot day in August of 1994, my wife told me she was going down to the Derry Rite Aid to pick up a refill on her sinus medicine prescription - this is stuff you can buy over the counter these days, I believe. I'd finished writing for the day and offered to pick it up for her. She said thanks, but she wanted to get a piece of fish at the supermarket next door anyway; two birds with one stone and all that. She blew a kiss at me off the palm of her and and went out. The next time I saw her, she was on TV. That's how you identify the dead here in Derry - no walking down a subterranean corridor with green tiles on the walls and long fluorescent bars overhead, no naked body rolling out of a chilly drawer on casters; you just go into an office marked PRIVATE and look at a TV screen and say yep or nope. — Stephen King

James often wondered at the chain of flukes it must have taken to bring him through with his own life and limbs intact. Once he might have believed it to be the work of Providence but it seemed to him now that to thank God for his life would be to suggest God had shrugged off all the others flicked them away like cigarette butts by the thousands and that seemed like abominable conceit. James Dorsey took no credit for being alive. His higher power these days was Chance. — Laini Taylor

The perils of aviation in the period are neatly encapsulated in the experience of Harold C. Brinsmead, the head of Australia's Civil Aviation Department in the first days of commercial aviation. In 1931, Brinsmead was on a flight to London, partly for business and partly to demonstrate the safety and reliability of modern air passenger services, when his plane crashed on takeoff in Indonesia. No one was seriously hurt, but the plane was a write-off. Not wanting to wait for a replacement aircraft to be flown in, Brinsmead boarded a flight with the new Dutch airline, KLM. That flight crashed while taking off in Bangkok. On this occasion, five people were killed and Brinsmead suffered serious injuries from which he never recovered. He died two years later. Meanwhile, the surviving passengers carried on to London in a replacement plane. That plane crashed on the return trip. Daly — Bill Bryson

Sometimes we just walk into something that is not for us at all. We pretend it is. We think we can shrug it off like a coat, but it's not a coat at all, it's more like another skin. [ ... ] All I wanted was to make my life thrilling for a while: to take the oridinary objects of my days and make a different argument out of them, no obligations to my past. — Colum McCann

When people confide their deep hurt to you these days, you are at a loss for what to say. A long time ago, you used to say, "I'll be praying for you," and you always meant to do that, to take those heavy burdens off their shoulders and hoist them up to the Lord. But the truth is, you usually forgot. Usually, this was the thing you said to end the conversation, a nice way to say, "I'm sorry. I can no longer handle the depth of your pain. I don't want to talk about this anymore. — Addie Zierman

I don't take off as many days as most other producers and songwriters, so I'm working every single day, and I do songs every day. So it's just about finding time, scheduling, getting in and cutting the records. I make it happen and that's the name of the game. It's no excuses - you gotta figure it out. — Rico Love

Lady Esmeralda's background was no less interesting than herself; it was a colourful picture of luxury and squalor. Armies of servants thronged the great houses; coaches rumbled up to the doors. Huge meals were eaten at tables laden with silver and lit by candles; there was drinking and gambling and duelling. Highwaymen frequented lonely roads and footpads lurked in the streets. Thieves were hanged and crowds gathered to see the grisly entertainment. The picture of life in those far-off days became so real and clear that I felt as if I had lived in them myself. It was almost as if I remembered them. Sometimes I returned to them in my dreams (which was not always enjoyable) and occasionally I found myself — D.E. Stevenson

I let her know that I expected as much money with their daughter as would pay off my remaining debt for the printing-house, which I believe was not then above a hundred pounds. She brought me word they had no such sum to spare; I said they might mortgage their house in the loan-office. The answer to this, after some days, was, that they did not approve the match; that, on inquiry of Bradford, they had been inform'd the printing business was not a profitable one; the types would soon be worn out, and more wanted; that S. Keimer and D. Harry had failed one after the other, and I should probably soon follow them; and, therefore, I was forbidden the house, and the daughter shut up. — Various

When I want somebody to read to,
To match a dream with tuneful phrase,
It is my nurse that I pay heed to,
Companion of my youthful days,
Or, following a boring dinner,
A neihbour comes in, who I corner,
Catch at his coat tails suddenly
And choke him with a tragedy,
Or, (here I am no longer jesting),
Haunted by rhymes and yearning's ache,
I roam beside my country lake
And scare a flock of wild ducks resting:
Hearing my strophes' sweet-toned chants,
They fly off from the banks at once. — Alexander Pushkin

In the long ago, in the gentle days, Brother Grumlow carved wood, worked with saw and chisel. When hard times come carpenters are apt to get nailed to crosses. Grumlow took up the knife and learned to carve men. He looks soft, my brother of the blade, slight in build, light in colour, weak chin, sad eyes, all of him drooping like the moustache that hangs off his lip. Yet he has fast hands and no fear of a sharp edge. Come against him with just a dagger for company and he will cut you a new opinion. — Mark Lawrence

You can buy a man's hours off him, you can steal his days from him, or you can rob him of his whole life, but no one can take away from any man so much as a single moment. That's the way it is. — Robert Seethaler

How long are you staying?"
This time she did laugh. "Always gracious.A few days," she told him. "No more than a week.No,please." She held up her hand, palm up. "Don't beg me to extend my visit; I simply can't stay any longer." She knew he would scowl and swear and open his house to her for as long as she needed.
He finished off the last of his eggs. "Okay, you can drive into town for supplies while you're here."
"Always happy to be of service," Shelby muttered. "How do you manage to get every major newspaper in the country delivered out here?"
"I pay for it," he said simply. "They think I'm odd."
"You are odd. — Nora Roberts

In a few days you'll be twenty-something - twenty-five, twenty-six, sixty-three, doesn't matter.
You're no better off - mentally, physically, financially, emotionally, and so on - than you were at the time of your last birthday; and maybe the one before that even.
In fact, things seem kind of worse.
Then again, maybe things are too much the same.
Maybe sameness worsens as time moves forth.
Shouldn't sameness stay the same? — Brian Alan Ellis

love is a full time job with no days off. — Dynamite

Why be saddled with this thing called life expectancy? Of what relevance to an individual is such a statistic? Am I to concern myself with an allotment of days I never had and was never promised? Must I check off each day of my life as if I am subtracting from this imaginary hoard? No, on the contrary, I will add each day of my life to my treasure of days lived. And with each day, my treasure will grow, not diminish. — Robert Brault

I think the idea of a 'mental health day' is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it's like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kind of like saying heart disease can be cured if you eat the right breakfast cereal. mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying 'i don't want to deal with things today' and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide. — David Levithan

That's the beauty of the cure. No one mentions those lost, hot days in the field, when Thomas kissed Rachel's tears away and invented worlds just so he could promise them to her, when she tore the skin off her own arm at the thought of living without him. — Lauren Oliver

My head hasn't been very clear these last few days. I suppose that's why sunflowers made me think of heads. I wish mine could be as clean as they are. I was thinking on the train - if only there were some way to get your head cleaned and refinished. Just chop it off - well, maybe that would be a little violent. Just detach it and hand it over to some university hospital as if you were handing over a bundle of laundry. 'Do this up for me, please,' you'd say. And the rest of you would be quietly asleep for three or four days or a week while the hospital was busy cleaning your head and getting rid of the garbage. No tossing and no dreaming. — Yasunari Kawabata

15 Then all the women present and all the men who knew that their wives had burned incense to idols - a great crowd of all the Judeans living in northern Egypt and southern Egypt* - answered Jeremiah, 16 "We will not listen to your messages from the LORD! 17 We will do whatever we want. We will burn incense and pour out liquid offerings to the Queen of Heaven just as much as we like - just as we, and our ancestors, and our kings and officials have always done in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem. For in those days we had plenty to eat, and we were well off and had no troubles! 18 But ever since we quit burning incense to the Queen of Heaven and stopped worshiping her with liquid offerings, we have been in great trouble and have been dying from war and famine. — Anonymous

Then Lu Wing entered, no longer in chauffeur's uniform but wearing a high-buttoned, deep blue silk tunic, an entourage of smooth, modern men of south China at his heels, ready, I heard him say, to do any further work required of them. The conversation turned to a more distant moment when his father died and he would claim the crown of the Wing emirates, to rule over a subcontinent and its colonies again. Sending his men off, he said, upon their errands and to visit their many relatives in Limehouse, Lu Wing leaned against the bar, as relaxed as he had probably been during his student days at Oxford. — Michael Moorcock

You'd be better off just drinking paint thinner," a voice says. It's playful and feminine with a tone that makes me think of home. Not that we talked like her in Florida, no, but her voice reminds me of warmth. It reminds me of sunshine. It reminds me of starry nights and cloudless days.
That's way too sappy, I know.
Don't tell anyone I said that shit. — J.M. Darhower

WORK, SOMETIMES
I was sad all day, and why not. There I was, books piled
on both sides of the table, paper stacked up, words
falling off my tongue.
The robins had been a long time singing, and now it
was beginning to rain.
What are we sure of? Happiness isn't a town on a map,
or an early arrival, or a job well done, but good work
ongoing. Which is not likely to be the trifling around
with a poem.
Then it began raining hard, and the flowers in the yard
were full of lively fragrance.
You have had days like this, no doubt. And wasn't it
wonderful, finally, to leave the room? Ah, what a
moment!
As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was
the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life. — Mary Oliver

The night I shaved it off altogether, a Staff named Mark, whose take-no-prisoners approach I respected and feared, pulled me aside, looked me hard in the face, and said, Marya, your hair. I said, Yeah, so? crossing my arms in front of me. He said, It's harsh. I said, Yeah, well. He leaned down and whispered to me: No matter how thin you get, no matter how short you cut your hair, it's still going to be you underneath. And he let go of my arm and walked down the hall. I didn't want it to be me underneath. I wanted to kill the me underneath. The fact haunted my days and nights. When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behaviour for many years, your brain can't quite deal with it. — Marya Hornbacher

Any man with a grain of sense knows that marriage is the only way, these days, to acquire a full-time maid who works twenty-five hours a day, with no time off and no pay except room and board. (p9) — Elizabeth Peters

Literature is the great garden that is always there and is open to everyone 24 hours a day. Who tends it? The old tour guides and sylviculturists, the wardens, the fuming parkies in their sweat-soaked serge: these have died off. If you do see an official, a professional, these days, then he's likely to be a scowl in a labcoat, come to flatten a forest or decapitate a peak. The public wanders, with its oohs and ahs, its groans and jeers, its million opinions. The wanderers feed the animals, they walk on the grass, they step in the flowerbeds. But the garden never suffers. It is, of course, Eden; it is unfallen and needs no care. — Martin Amis

To see takes time, like having a friend takes time. It is as simple as turning off the television to learn the song of a single bird. Why should anyone do such things? I cannot imagine - unless one is weary of crossing days off the calendar with no sense of what makes the last day different from the next. Unless one is weary of acting in what feels more like a television commercial than a life. The practice of paying attention offers no quick fix for such weariness, with guaranteed results printed on the side. Instead, it is one way into a different way of life, full of treasure for those who are willing to pay attention to exactly where they are. — Barbara Brown Taylor

Wow," he said, his voice as sarcastic as before. "I had no idea I was related to such an accomplished detective. Is that where you were the past couple of days? Doing undercover work? Tell me, Detective Oliviera, what else did you and your CSI team learn during your amazing investigation?"
"She learned," Mr. Liu said, taking a menacing step forward, "that boys who smart off to ladies often get slapped. — Meg Cabot

Everybody's going through a lot of stress these days, no matter how well off you are and how many advantages you have, it's a stressful time in everybody's lives. — Chris Frantz

Don't tell me from genetics. What've they got to do with it?" said Crowley. "Look at Satan. Created as an angel, grows up to be the Great Adversary. Hey, if you're going to go on about genetics, you might as well say the kid will grow up to be an angel. After all, his father was really big in Heaven in the old days. Saying he'll grow up to be a demon just because his dad _became_ one is like saying a mouse with its tail cut off will give birth to tailless mice. No. Upbringing is everything. Take it from me. — Terry Pratchett

There are no days off in our division. Even a team like Tampa Bay can beat you up. — Josh Beckett

I made it the mantra of those days; when I paused before yet another series of switchbacks or skidded down knee-jarring slopes, when patches of flesh peeled off my feet along with my socks, when I lay alone and lonely in my tent at night I asked, often out loud: Who is tougher than me?
The answer was always the same, and even when I knew absolutely there was no way on this earth that it was true, I said it anyway: No one. — Cheryl Strayed

I want a homing beacon on your vehicle."
"There will be."
"No, I want one on before we leave the grounds in the morning. I'll see to it."
Give and take, she reminded herself. Even when
maybe especially when
give and take was a pain in the ass. "Okay. But there go my plans to slip off and meet Pablo the pool boy for an hour of hot, sticky sex."
"We all have to make sacrifices. Myself, I've had to reschedule my liaison with Vivien the French maid three times in the last couple of days."
"Blows," Eve said as they slipped into bed.
"She certainly does. — J.D. Robb

a happy child grows up to be a happy adult. When I was growing up, spoiling a child meant ruining a child. If something was spoiled, it either went down the drain or was tossed into the rubbish. These days, however, parents pat themselves on the back because their children want for nothing. Wanting is good. If you want for nothing, then you have no goals. And if you have no goals, you have no life, no drive, and no ambitions. Chances are, if today's children don't inherit a lot of money from their parents, they'll grow up and live off the welfare system. — Jamie Eubanks

Everybody thought that Titanic was the most romantic movie ever. A story about two teenagers who knew each other for three days. Try to make that movie with a couple that's been together for a few years. 'Get in the goddamn boat, Rose!' 'I don't wanna get in the boat!' 'Get in, come on, I'm freezing my ass off out here! I wanted to go to Jamaica, but no, we had to go on a cruise in the middle of the winter!' 'You never draw me naked anymore' — Greg Giraldo

Real life is all beginnings. Days, weeks, children, journeys, marriages, inventions. Even a murder is the beginning of a criminal. Perhaps even a spree. Everything is prologue. Every story has a stutter. It just keeps starting and starting until you decide to shut the camera off. Half the time you don't even realise that what you're choosing for breakfast is the beginning of a story that won't pan out till you're sixty and staring at the pastry that made you a widower. No, love, in real life you can get all the way to death and never have finished one single story. Or never even get one so much as half-begun. — Catherynne M Valente

We had no sleep or days off or anything like that and then, when the band became big, Hendrix became a star and looked down at us lot. — Noel Redding

Lehman Brothers' Repo 105 program - which temporarily moved billions of dollars of liability off the bank's books at the end of each quarter and replaced them a few days later at the start of the next quarter - was intentionally designed to hide the firm's financial weaknesses. This was a carefully crafted fraud, detailed by a court-appointed Lehman examiner. But no former Lehman executive ever faced criminal prosecution for it. Contrast this with the fact that a teenager who sells an ounce of marijuana can be put away for years. — Robert B. Reich

We didn't know what he did on the weekends. What sort of person showed up on Monday and had no interest in sharing what transpired during the two days of the week when one's real life took place? His weekends were long dark shadows of mystery. In all likelihood, he spent his days off in the office, cultivating his master plan. Mondays we'd come in refreshed and unsuspecting and he would already be there, ready to spring something on us. Maybe he never left. Certainly he never came around with a coffee mug to palaver with us on a Monday morning. We didn't judge him for that, so long as he didn't judge us for our custom of easing into a new workweek. — Joshua Ferris

That didn't surprise me; any man with a grain of sense knows that marriage is the only way, these days, to acquire a full-time maid who works twenty-five hours a day. with no time off and no pay except room and board. — Elizabeth Peters

Everything about [chance] scares the bejesus out of so many people; it's the this thing they try to avoid at all costs. Don't travel to the Middle East these days - there's a chance something could happen. Don't get involved with that new fellow on Creamery Street - I hear a lot of mud was scraped off his floor after the divorce. Don't have your baby at home - there's a a chance something could go wrong. Don't don't don't ... Well, you can't live your life like that! You can't spend your entire life avoiding chance. It's out there, it's inescapable, it's a part of the soul of the world. There are no sure things in this universe, and it's absolutely ridiculous to try and live like there are! — Chris Bohjalian

It's not just that," Chief Porter said. "A guy who once would have raped and killed a woman, now a lot of times he also has to cut off her lips and mail them to us or take her eyes for a souvenir and keep them in his freezer at home. There's more flamboyant craziness these days." Giving the buttered cinnamon roll a reprieve, Ozzie said, "Maybe it's all these superhero movies with all their supervillains. Some psychopath who used to be satisfied raping and murdering, these days he thinks that he should be in a Batman movie, he wants to be the Joker or the Penguin." "No real-life bad guy wants to be the Penguin," I assured him. "Norman Bates was happy just dressing up like his mother and stabbing people," Chief Porter said, "but Hannibal Lecter has to cut off their faces and eat their livers with fava beans. The role models have become more intense. — Dean Koontz

He went to the cupboard where he had stored Eddie's remaining possessions. There was, as he had remembered, a pair of jeans, and he took these out and unfolded them. They were distressed, but no more so than new jeans were these days, and they appeared to fit. William examined himself in the mirror; the jeans took off ten years, he thought, possibly more, and they were perfect with the blazer. This was the very essence of casual smart, he thought - that vague concept that allowed you to wear anything as long as you looked as if you had at least made some effort. He could hold up his head in any company in an outfit like this. — Alexander McCall Smith

In the months and years after 9/11 it appeared likewise as if things had returned to some state of normalcy. As time passed, as the initial shock wore off and the trauma lessened, there was a growing temptation to go on almost as if it had never happened, as if the nation were still somehow immune to destruction. So it was in the last days of ancient Israel. But it was all an illusion." There was a long silence after that ... broken only by the sound of the seagulls. Then he continued as if there had been no break. "It was all a fatal illusion. So then ... what of America? — Jonathan Cahn

Gabby," Jenna cried. "It's so horrible. I can't believe this happened."
"Jenna," I said in a soothing voice, "I'm alive and okay. No worries."
She sniffled into the phone. "No, it's not that."
I waited a beat. "What?"
"The bridesmaid dresses are all wrong!" she wailed.
"Wait a second," I said. "You aren't upset over my being dead for four days?"
"I knew you'd be fine," she explained, brushing off the subject. "But these dresses? I don't know what to do. They're the wrong color, and they're hideous!" She went into a hysterical fit of tears. — Laura Kreitzer

Forty-seven years old, tired, but none the worse for wear. In a little more than thirteen months, he had discovered, analyzed, and packed tens of thousands of pieces of artwork, including eighty truckloads from Altaussee alone. He had organized the MFAA field officers at Normandy, pushed SHAEF to expand and support the monuments effort, mentored the other Monuments Men across France and Germany, interrogated many of the important Nazi art officials, and inspected most of the Nazi repositories south of Berlin and east of the Rhine. It would be no exaggeration to guess he put 50,000 miles on his old captured VW and visited nearly every area of action in U.S. Twelfth Army Group territory. And during his entire tour of duty on the continent, he had taken exactly one and a half days off. — Robert M. Edsel

You fly until you crash two days two nights no sleep, no food, come down off the monster YOU CRASH REAL HARD — Ellen Hopkins

Because here's the thing. We can do a lot in thirty-five days." He sat on the bed and pulled her down next to him. "I mean, think about books and movies. You can watch a great love story in two hours, right? Or read one in maybe two days? So imagine what we can do with thirty-five. We can celebrate a whole year of holidays. We can lock the door at night and turn the music up and memorize each other. We can taste and smell and touch every single thing we love about this whole town, so we never forget, no matter who we turn into out there." He hugged her hands tightly with his. "And then when it's time to leave each other, we'll go off smiling into the future, and we won't be distracted by all that 'when will I find true love' stuff people always worry about because they don't know how it feels. Because we'll already know how it feels. And if neither one of us ever gets another great love story, this one will be enough to last our whole entire lives. — J.C. Lillis

Old Man At Home Alone in the Morning"

There are questions that I no longer ask
and others that I have not asked for a long time
that I return to and dust off and discover
that I'm smiling and the question
has always been me and that it is
no question at all but that it means
different things at the same time
yes I am old now and I am the child
I remember what are called the old days and there is
no one to ask how they became the old days
and if I ask myself there is no answer
so this is old and what I have become
and the answer is something I would come to
later when I was old but this morning
is not old and I am the morning
in which the autumn leaves have no question
as the breeze passes through them and is gone — W.S. Merwin

Speak not, move not, but listen, the sky is full of gold. No ripple on the river, no stir in field or fold, All gleams but naught doth glisten, but the far-off unseen sea. Forget days past, heart broken, put all memory by! No grief on the green hillside, no pity in the sky, Joy that may not be spoken fills mead and flower and tree. — William Morris

I've had sex before with the belt on. That was back in the Ricco Rodriguez days. The night I won the belt I had a sexual experience with the belt on. But hey, I was 25 years old and it was the biggest thing that ever had happened to me in my life. The girl was like hey, are you going to take that thing off. And I said no, I'm not ... I'm wearing it and if you have a problem with it, then I'm leaving. And I hate to say it, but if I do win the belt again, then this time it's never coming off. I'm going to wear it a lot more. — Tim Sylvia

He almost danced to the fridge, found the three least hairy things in it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that time he called them breakfast and ate them. Between them they killed a virulent space disease he'd picked up without knowing it in the Flargathon Gas Swamps a few days earlier, which otherwise would have killed off half the population of the Western Hemisphere, blinded the other half, and driven everyone else psychotic and sterile, so the Earth was lucky there. — Douglas Adams

As soon as I decided I'd have to dig down still deeper to uncover the root of my listless withdrawal from life, I became aware of some interference from the past distracting and confusing my thoughts, causing me a sensation that was at the same time oppressive, expectant and empty. In these somewhat contradictory feelings, I came to recognize my childish sense of having run down like a clock that needed someone to wind it before it could go again; and saw that I was now no less helpless than in those far-off days when I waited for somebody to take me by the hand and tell me what to do. On my own initiative I could do nothing, take no responsibility, make no decisions only watch my existence unroll. — Anna Kavan

Public men in America are too public. Too accessible. This sitting on the stoop and being 'just folk' was all very well for local politics and the simple farmer days of a hundred years ago, but it's no good for world affairs. Opening flower-shows and being genial to babies and all that is out of date. These parish politics methods have to go. The ultimate leader ought to be distant, audible but far off. Show yourself and then vanish into a cloud. Marx would never have counted for one tenth of his weight as 'Charlie Marx' playing chess with the boys, and Woodrow Wilson threw away all his magic as far as Europe was concerned when he crossed the Atlantic. Before he crossed he was a god -- what a god he was! After he arrived he was just a grinning guest. I've got to be the Common Man, yes, but not common like that. — H.G.Wells

And as a general rule, which may make all creditors who are inclined to be severe pretty comfortable in their minds, no men embarrassed are altogether honest, very likely. They conceal something; they exaggerate chances of good luck; hide away the reals state of affairs; say that things are flourishing when they are hopeless; keep a smiling face (a dreary smile it is) upon the verge of bankruptcy
are ready to lay hold of any pretext for delay, or of any money, so as to stave off the inevitable ruin a few days longer. — William Makepeace Thackeray

Bloody men are like bloody buses
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.
You look at them flashing their indicators,
Offering you a ride.
You're trying to read the destinations,
You haven't much time to decide.
If you make a mistake, there is no turning back.
Jump off, and you'll stand there and gaze
While the cars and the taxis and lorries go by
And the minutes, the hours, the days. — Wendy Cope

At eleven I was at the peak of my creative powers: I was writing stories and playlets, putting together poetryprojects. I was absorbed by my 'work.' At twelve I was no longer reading or writing, just counting off days and checking them off. I was interested in survival. — Todd Solondz

There are a lot of musicians who are still desperately trying to pretend that it's 1998 and by having a huge marketing campaign, they somehow believe that they can sell 10 million records. That's delusional. No one sells 10 million records. The days of musicians getting rich off of selling records are done. — Moby

He suddenly began to look wretched, much as I had seen him look as a schoolboy: lonely: awkward: unpopular: odd; no longer the self-confident businessman into which he had grown. His face now brought back the days when one used to watch him plodding off through the drizzle to undertake the long, solitary runs across the dismal fields beyond the sewage farms: runs which were to train him for teams in which he was never included. — Anthony Powell

For the last several days I've had the sudden and general urge to buy a new book. I've stopped off at a few bookstores around the city, and while I've looked at hundreds and hundreds of books in that time, I have not found the one book that will satisfy my urge. It's not as if I don't have anything to read; there's a tower of perfectly good unread books next to my bed, not to mention the shelves of books in the living room I've been meaning to reread. I find myself, maddeningly, hungry for the next one, as yet unknown. I no longer try to analyze this hunger; I capitulated long ago to the book lust that's afflicted me most of my life. I know enough about the course of the disease to know I'll discover something soon. — Lewis Buzbee

We, being the Western world, wouldn't let Russia off the hook on debt. So there were demands on debt servicing in the early days until they ran out of reserves. There was no real aid program, just a fictional aid program. — Jeffrey Sachs

It is not pleasant to experience decay, to find yourself exposed to the ravages of an almost daily rain, and to know that you are turning into something feeble, that more and more of you will blow off with the first strong wind, making you less and less. Some people accumulate more emotional rust than others. Depression starts out insipid, fogs the days into a dull color, weakens ordinary actions until their clear shapes are obscured by the effort they require, leaves you tired and bored and self-obsessed- but you can get through all that. No happily, perhaps, but you can get through. No one has ever been able to define the collapse point that marks major depression, but when you get there, there's not much mistaking it. — Andrew Solomon

I made arrangements with Bitaki, a teammate on the soccer team I played with, to go fishing with his brothers, who typically worked the waters off Maiana, the nearest island south of Tarawa. When I mentioned to Sylvia that I was going, she said: "No, you're not." "And what do you mean by 'No, you're not'?" I determined right then that I would go out fishing every week. No, every day. I would become a professional fisherman. I would become sun-browned and sea-weathered. I would smell like fish. I would be a Salty Dog. "I mean," Sylvia said, "that when the engine dies and you start drifting, which will happen, because things like that do seem to happen to you, you will not survive two days. Your skin will fry, you will collapse from dehydration, and because you will be the most useless person on the boat, you will be regarded by the others as a potential food source." I didn't like the imagery here. — J. Maarten Troost