No Plastic Quotes & Sayings

barns. Hinged on their sides and latched in the center, the old garage doors swung open into the alley. No electric door openers, no remote controls. Drivers parked in the alley, got out and opened the swinging doors, then returned to their cars to pull inside. Beside each garage were garbage cans, waiting for the garbage trucks that still rumbled down the cinder alleys. Molded plastic garbage cans, some with small plastic wheels, had replaced the dented sheet metal cans that our parents had used. The plastic cans lasted longer, and they didn't rust, but you lost — Tom Robertson

Oh, I would like to live in an empty house, with vines for walls, and a carpet of grass. No planks, no plastic, no fiberglass. — Mary Oliver

Remember my experiments with the RTG and having a hot bath? Same principle, but I came up with an improvement: submerge the RTG. No heat will be wasted that way. I started with a large rigid sample container (or "plastic box" to people who don't work at NASA). I ran a tube through the open top and down the inside wall. Then I coiled it in the bottom to make a spiral. I glued it in place like that and sealed the end. Using my smallest drill bit, I put dozens of little holes in the coil. The idea is for the freezing return air from the regulator to pass through the water as a bunch of little bubbles. The increased surface area will get the heat into the air better. Then I got a medium flexible sample container ("Ziploc bag") and tried to seal the RTG in it. But the RTG has an irregular shape, and I couldn't get all the air out of the bag. I can't allow any air in there. — Andy Weir

Do you think she is?" Her voice trembled. Her heart throbbed as she waited for him to answer. "You think they've killed her?"
Every moment wrapped around Scarlet's neck, strangling her, until the only possiblbe word from Wolf's mouth had to be yes. Yes, she was dead. Yes, she was gone. They'd murdered her. These monsters had murdered her.
Scarlet pressed her palms into the crate, trying to push through the plastic. "Say it."
"No," he murmured, shoulder sinking, "No, I don't think they've killed her. Not yet."
Scarlet shivered with relief. She covered her face with both hands, dizzy with the hurricane of emotions. "Thank the stars," she whispered. "Thank you. — Marissa Meyer

As she left her parents' neighborhood, the houses got newer and bigger and boxier. Through windows with no mullions or fake plastic mullions she could see luminous screens, some giant, some miniature. Evidently every hour of the year, including this one, was a good hour for staring at a screen. — Jonathan Franzen

Oh, pooh, you're just like akri. No, Simmi, don't be breathing fire around the flammable objects or small children. Except for that black plastic card that's not really plastic. It some metal thing, but the Simi loves it cause it let her buy everything she want without limit. He never say no to Simi when she use it. Oh, hello, there, Fang. You okay? You looking kind of peaked or piqued or ... ? Oh, heck, the Simi can never keep those straight. (Simi) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Rosy's mummy hands Franny a clear plastic bag full of reject biscuits, then Rosy holds her cheek out for Franny's wet kiss. Rosy wipes the slime from her face and Franny cackles, then shows them both into the lounge.
There on Franny's coffee table is a biscuit tin with a Christmas picture on the lid. Proper shop-bought biscuits, not factory rejects.
"Please, may I have a biscuit?" Rosy says.
"Oh, there are no biscuits in that my darling," Franny says, and pulls the tin from Rosy's prying fingers. Franny holds open the bag of crumb-speckled chocolate digestives. "Help yourself, my wee hen."
Rosy settles for a reject.
Franny puts the Christmas tin up high, way up high, way out of reach. — R.G. Manse

Usually at least once in a person's childhood we lose an object that at the time is invaluable and irreplaceable to us, although it is worthless to others. Many people remember that lost article for the rest of their lives. Whether it was a lucky pocketknife, a transparent plastic bracelet given to you by your father, a toy you had longed for and never expected to receive, but there it was under the tree on Christmas ... it makes no difference what it was. If we describe it to others and explain why it was so important, even those who love us smile indulgently because to them it sounds like a trivial thing to lose. Kid stuff. But it is not. Those who forget about this object have lost a valuable, perhaps even crucial memory. Becuase something central to our younger self resided in that thing. When we lost it, for whatever reason, a part of us shifted permanently. — Jonathan Carroll

She had doll-like, almost delicate limbs, small hands, and hardly any hips.
But she now had breasts.
All her life sje jad been flat-chested, as if she had never reached puberty. She thought it had looked ridiculous, and she was always uncomfortable showing herself naked.
Now, all of a sudden, she had breasts. They were by no means gigantic - that was not whatshe had wanted, and they would have looked ridiculous on her otherwise skinny body - but they were two solid, round breasts of medium size. The enlargements had been well done, and the proportions were reasonable. But the difference was dramatic. — Stieg Larsson

Compared to my talents, Whoopi Goldberg is like one of those fake plastic Buddhas you get at dollar stores. I mean really, I fail to see the humor in an overweight negro woman with dreadlocks, no eyebrows, and is named after a childish term for flatulence. — Zach Braff

In my baggy jeans and messy hair, I know I don't fit into this plastic palace. But I don't want to fit in. That's when no one notices you. You leave a longer impression when you're brave enough to stand out. — Katie Kacvinsky

There's no grand excellence to it. In my experience it was just almost the gulaggy boringness of it that'll kill you. You're just in this murk. And you're with other humans, but you lose all your human skills and it's just like you're in this plastic bag and you can't quite connect with people. You lose your ability to transmit electricity or something, and to receive it. — Neko Case

[On plastic surgery:] When I die, God won't know me. There are no two parts of my body the same age. — Phyllis Diller

He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quiet why it did this because it invariable delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea. The Nutri-Matic was designed and manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaint department now covers all the major landmasses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system. — Douglas Adams

Perhaps the simplest example is a synthetic plastic, which unlike natural materials, is not degraded by biological decay. It therefore persists as rubbish or is burned-in both cases causing pollution. In the same way, a substance such as DDT or lead, which plays no role in the chemistry of life and interferes with the actions of substances that do, is bound to cause ecological damage if sufficiently concentrated. — Barry Commoner

Because she bears the image of God. She doesn't have to conjure it, go get it from a salon, have plastic surgery or breast implants. No, beauty is an essence that is given to every woman at her creation. — John Eldredge

It was sort of like Macbeth, thought Fat Charlie, an hour later; in fact, if the witches in Macbeth had been four little old ladies and if, instead of stirring cauldrons and intoning dread incantations, they had just welcomed Macbeth in and fed him turkey and rice and peas spread out on white china plates on a red-and-white patterned plastic tablecloth
not to mention sweet potato pudding and spice cabbage
and encouraged him to take second helpings, and thirds, and then, when Macbeth had declaimed that nay, he was stuffed nigh unto bursting and on his oath could truly eat no more, the witches had pressed upon him their own special island rice pudding and a large slice of Mrs. Bustamonte's famous pineapple upside-down cake, it would have been exactly like Macbeth. — Neil Gaiman

I'm not the first one to point out that George Lucas used plastic helmets to cover the faces of the storm troopers in Star Wars, in order to make them more inhuman, as their eyes and faces were not visible. In our times, we are getting a more modern version of Lucas's Stormtroopers, thanks to the popular nerve toxin Botox. This is something more and more people who are past their middle age are happily injecting into themselves - more specifically, into their faces. Botox causes local paralysis (it is a nerve toxin, after all), which smoothes out wrinkles. Unfortunately, it also means you can no longer use some of your facial muscles, as you are paralyzed. This means you're not only getting the skin of a Barbie doll, you're getting its range of facial expressions too. — Henrik Fexeus

The sounds were trapped in the tank with him. His fingers pawed at the wet plastic but could find no hold. — Scot Gardner

The whole issue was almost unbelievably meaningless and small. He thought about the word "meaning" and tried to summon up his baby's face without looking at the photo, but all he could get was the heft of a full diaper and the plastic mobile over his crib turning in the breeze that the box fan in the doorway made. He imagined that the clock's second hand possessed awareness and knew that it was a second hand and that its job was to go around and around inside a circle of numbers forever at the same slow, unvarying machinelike rate, going no place it hadn't already been a million times before, and imagining the second hand was so awful it made his breath catch in his throat, and he looked quickly around to see if any of the examiners near him had heard it or were looking at him. — David Foster Wallace

My life is hard. No one would rob me of that. The clothes I am wearing came out of a knotted up black plastic trash bag from a resale shop downtown. And not the downtown where shiny cars wink at you in the sunlight. If a car winks at you in this area it's being driven by a person you would be best to avoid.
My side of downtown is crumbling and skirted by chain link fences.
Rocky Evans — Gwenn Wright

Some objects seem to disappear immediately while others never want to leave. Here is a small black plastic gizmo with a serious demeanor that turns up regularly, like a politician at public functions. It seems to be an "integral part," a kind of switch with screw holes so that it can be attached to something larger. Nobody knows what. This thing's use has been forgotten but it looks so important that no one is willing to throw it in the trash. It survives by bluff, like certain insects that escape being eaten because of their formidable appearance. — Louis Jenkins

I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels. — Paul Theroux

Humble people walk comfortably in every group. No one is either too beneath them or too above them for their own sense of well-being. They are who they are, people with as much to give as to get, and they know it. And because they're at ease with themselves, they can afford to be open with others... Having discovered who we are and having opened ourselves to life and having learned to be comfortable with it, we know that God is working in us. We know, most of all, that whatever happens we have nothing to fear... we are free of the false hopes and false faces and false needs that once held us down. We can fly now. Let all the others scratch and grapple for the plastic copy of life. We have found the real thing. — Joan D. Chittister

And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: Look at this Godawful mess. — Art Buchwald

When you stand inside somebody's library, you get a powerful sense of who they are, and not just who they are now but who they've been. . . . It's a wonderful thing to have in a house. It's something I worry is endangered by the rise of the e-book. When you turn off an e-book, there's no map. All that's left behind is a chunk of gray plastic. ~ Lev Grossman — Leah Price

I'm super annoying, I'm the kind of guy that if there's no recycling bins around I hoard plastic bottles, put them in my bag and I bring them home. If I can afford it I want to put solar panels in. — Darren Criss

What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic - this is by no means the same thing. — Fernand Leger

I did not think I could stand a Christmas at my parents' house, with a plastic tree and no snow and the TV going constantly. It was not as if my parent were so anxious to have me, either. In recent years they had fallen in with a gabby, childless couple, older than they were, called the MacNatts. Mr MacNatt was an auto-parts salesman; Mrs MacNat was shaped like a pigeon and sold Avon. — Donna Tartt

A lot of people lounge by pools in L.A., but few of them are truly immortal, no matter how hard they pretend with plastic surgery and exercise. Doyle was truly immortal and had been for over a thousand years. A thousand years of wars, assassinations, and political intrigue, and he'd been reduced to being eye candy in a thong bathing suit by the pool of the rich and famous. — Laurell K. Hamilton

The new painters do not propose, any more than did their predecessors, to be geometers. But it may be said that geometry is to the plastic arts what grammar is to the art of the writer. Today, scholars no longer limit themselves to the three dimensions of Euclid. The painters have been lead quite naturally, one might say by intuition, to preoccupy themselves with the new possibilities of spatial measurement which, in the language of the modern studios, are designated by the term fourth dimension. — Guillaume Apollinaire

I'd never say I'll never have a facelift, but I'm way too scared of looking like a different person. I have no philosophical or political position on plastic surgery; I just don't want to look crazy. And I don't like not being able to tell how old someone is: It's creepy. — Ellen Barkin

Oatmeal Face, Jawless, and the other revenants dragged me out of the van by the zip tie between my hands. The sharp plastic bit painfully into my wrists.
"All right, all right, I'm coming," I said. "Keep your faces on."
There was no reaction from any of them. Humor was wasted on the dead. — Nicholas Kaufmann

The female guard in R&D explained that they had no women's street clothes, so she gave me the smallest pair of men's jeans they had, a green polo shirt, a windbreaker, and a cheap pair of fake-suede lace-up shoes with thin plastic soles. They also provided me with what she called "a gratuity": $28.30. I was ready for the outside world. — Piper Kerman

Equally serious is the complaint that psychoanalysis as a medical practice is a form of oppressive social control, labelling individuals and forcing them to conform to arbitrary definitions of 'normality'. This charge is in fact more usually aimed against psychiatric medicine as a whole: as far as Freud's own views on 'normality' are concerned, the accusation is largely misdirected. Freud's work showed, scandalously, just how 'plastic' and variable in its choice of objects libido really is, how so-called sexual perversions form part of what passes as normal sexuality, and how heterosexuality is by no means a natural or self-evident fact. It is true that Freudian psychoanalysis does usually work with some concept of a sexual 'norm'; but this is in no sense given by Nature. — Terry Eagleton

Women do it all the time to look younger and it would make perfect sense if one of them ever came out looking younger - but they don't. They just look the same; they all get plastic surgery face. No matter who they look like going in, they all come out looking like the girl from the band on 'The Muppet Show. — Dana Gould

Today we can say that at last the director writes the film. The image
its plastic composition and the way it is set in time, because it is founded on a much higher degree of realism
has at its disposal more means of manipulating reality and of modifying it from within. The film-maker is no longer the competitor of the painter and the playwright, he is, at last the equal of the novelist — Andre Bazin

He said that if you were able to look at the crows really closely, you would see that their eyes were stolen baubles, like buttons or marbles.
To get real eyes, they had to steal them from children. Older people's eyes were too set in their ways of looking and would be no good for a crow. That's why people don't let their children out after dark. The crow who stole the eyes of a real child was king. With a piece of plastic they could just see what was in front of them, but with a child's eyes, they could see the whole world. — Heather O'Neill

Goldfish have no memory, I guess their lives are much like mine. And the little plastic castle is a surprise everytime. — Ani DiFranco

Before all else I learned that these playthings were not mere idle trifles invented by manufacturers and dealers for the purposes of gain. They were, on the contrary, a little or, rather, a big world, authoritative and beautiful, many sided, containing a multiplicity of things all of which had the one and only aim of serving love, refining the senses, giving life to the dead world around us, endowing it in a magical way with new instruments of love, from powder and scent to the dancing show, from ring to cigarette case, from waist-buckle to handbag. This bag was no bag, this purse no purse, flowers no flowers, the fan no fan. All were the plastic material of love, of magic and delight. Each was a messenger, a smuggler, a weapon, a battle cry. — Hermann Hesse

Time may heal all wounds, but it ain't no plastic surgeon.'" "What — Amy Harmon

I'm not a fan of plastic surgery. Oh, and I've never had a wax in my life. Waxing makes no sense to me because you have to grow it out to wax it. — Elizabeth Banks

The pressure to keep up with what society tells us is perfect is causing us to enter a time when women are no longer women, but plastic shells of what women used to be. — Chelsea Hobbs

Instead of expensive fish eggs and stinky cheeses, Jay had packed Doritos and chicken soft tacos - Violet's favorites. And instead of grapes, he brought Oreos.
He knew her way too well.
Violet grinned as he pulled out two clear plastic cups and a bottle of sparkling cider. She giggled. "What? No champagne?"
He shrugged, pouring a little of the bubbling apple juice into each of the flimsy cups. "I sorta thought that a DUI might ruin the mood." He lifted his cup and clinked - or rather tapped - it against hers. "Cheers." He watched her closely as she took a sip. — Kimberly Derting

Whoever had said in the guidebooks that the bum bag was a sensible device against theft had lied; no single item of dressware ever invented cried out "mug me" more than a pouch of zip-up plastic suspended by your groin. — Kate Griffin

The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason. — Hunter S. Thompson

A few weeks ago, Abdul had seen a boy's hand cut clean off when he was putting plastic into one of the shredders. The boy's eyes had filled with tears but he hadn't screamed. Instead he'd stood there with his blood-spurting stump, his ability to earn a living ended, and started apologizing to the owner of the plant. "Sa'ab, I'm sorry," he'd said to the man in white. "I won't cause you any problems by reporting this. You will have no trouble from me. — Katherine Boo

Mrs E. Kapelsen of Boston, Massachusetts was an elderly lady, indeed, she felt her life was nearly at an end. She had seen a lot of it, been puzzled by some, but, she was a little uneasy to feel at this late stage, bored by too much. It had all been very pleasant, but perhaps a little too explicable, a little too routine.
With a sigh she flipped up the little plastic window shutter and looked out over the wing.
At first she thought she ought to call the stewardess, but then she thought no, damn it, definitely not, this was for her, and her alone.
By the time her two inexplicable people finally slipped back off the wing and tumbled into the slipstream she had cheered up an awful lot.
She was mostly immensely relieved to think that virtually everything that anybody had ever told her was wrong. — Douglas Adams

There's no more delicious irony on the face of the Earth than environmental protesters being led away in plastic handcuffs that have a biodegradability horizon line of, like, 40,000 years. — Dennis Miller

I never touch sugar, cheese, bread ...
I only like what I'm allowed to like. I'm beyond temptation. There is no weakness. When I see tons of food in the studio, for us and for everybody, for me it's as if this stuff was made out of plastic. The idea doesn't even enter my mind that a human being could put that into their mouth. I'm like the animals in the forest. They don't touch what they cannot eat. — Karl Lagerfeld

Marriage is a plastic flower. Love is a real rose, but the real rose is beautiful in the morning; by the evening it is gone. Nobody can say when it will disappear, when the petals will start falling. Just a strong wind and it is no more, just a strong sun and it is no more. But the plastic flower will be there; come rain, come sun, come anything, the plastic flower will be there. In fact, plastic is the only permanent thing in the world. — Rajneesh

Mind is just a word we use to describe neural activity in the brain. No brain, no mind. We know this because if a part of the brain is destroyed through stroke or cancer or injury or surgery, whatever that part of the brain was doing is now gone. If the damage occurs in early childhood when the brain is especially plastic, or in adulthood in certain parts of the brain that are conducive to rewiring, then that brain function - that "mind" part of the brain - may be rewired into another neural network in the brain. But this process just further reinforces the fact that without neural connections in the brain there is no mind. — Michael Shermer

All right, You Great Git, You've asked for it. I'll cover the world in Tastee-Freez and Wimpy Burgers. I'll fill it with concrete runways, motorways, aircraft, television, automobiles, advertising, plastic flowers, frozen food and supersonic bangs. I'll make it so noisy and disgusting that even You'll be ashamed of Yourself! No wonder You've so few friends. You're unbelievable! — Peter Cook

Oh please. A plastic personality has no power. Or is your bitchy personality your real personality? — Evelyn Smith

I'm no interior decorator, but just I have a feeling that plastic plants in the bathroom ... probably not a good idea. — Kyan Douglas

The cut was only the beginning. With Goldi acting as art director, a couple of girls in pink smocks swooped in and painstakingly separated strands of his hair and painted them with a noxious substance. Then they carefully encased the locks in foil so he resembled a Star Trek extra. He was placed in a chair where - no lie - they lowered a plastic dome over his head and set it on Bake. Under the plastic dryer-dome, Bo sat there like an abductee and pondered what else his captors had in mind. He wondered when they were going to bring out the probe. — Susan Wiggs

Was there anything quite so under-rated in this shallow, plastic, global-corporate, tall-skinny-late, kiddy-meal-and-free-toy, united-colours-of-fuck-you-too world, than a good old-fashioned, no-frills, retail blow-job? — Christopher Brookmyre

I don't think that the despiritualised, dehumanised culture in which we live, the McDonalds and Disney culture, does our internal lives, our mythological lives, any favours at all. In other words, to be an Outsider in this culture now is to be looking inside at a plastic world, and I think it's easier to critique that world if I don't belong to it ... In Hollywood where I live now, there's a lot of having lunches, a lot of going to parties ... and I will have no part of that. I'm certainly not very good at it, I don't like it and I feel a little weird about it. I don't want to be part of the problem, I want to be a part of the solution, and the only way I can help solve the problem of the plasticity of our world is by writing, by painting and by making my work, so I stay where I can do that, which is at my desk, in my studio. I will venture out when I need to sell a book or exhibit my paintings, but the rest of the time my job is to be here and imagine. — Clive Barker

Seemed to me a phone was an impersonal instrument. If it felt like it, it let your personality go through its wires. If it didn't want to, it just drained your personality away until what slipped through at the other end was some cold fish of a voice, all steel, copper, plastic, no warmth, no reality. It's easy to say the wrong thing on telephones; the telephone changes your meaning on you. First thing you know, you've made an enemy. Then, of course, the telephone's such a convenient thing; it just sits there and demands you call someone who doesn't want to be called. Friends were always calling, calling, calling me. Hell, I hadn't any time of my own. — Ray Bradbury

Funny enough, if you are looking at people these days who are putting Botox in their face and getting all sorts of plastic surgery, we look at them and go, I can tell you've had Botox. I can tell you've had plastic surgery. You look really strange to me. But no one's saying anything. We're just accepting the fact that they're strange-looking. — Guy Pearce

I definitely believe in plastic surgery. I don't want to be an old hag. There's no fun in that. — Scarlett Johansson

We took a right at the fork, heading farther north. The charred houses continued. To the right, a large sign nailed to an old telephone post shouted DANGER in huge red letters. Underneath in crisp black letters was written:
IM-1: Infectious Magic Area
Do Not Enter
Authorized Personnel Only
A second smaller sign under the first one, written on a piece of plastic with permanent marker, read:
Keep out, stupid.
"We aren't going to keep out, are we?" Ascanio asked.
"No."
"Awesome. — Ilona Andrews

The appeal of magic is that it promises to render objects plastic to the will without one's getting too entangled with them. Treated from arm's length, the object can issue no challenge to the self. According to Freud, this is precisely the condition of the narcissist: he treats objects as props for his fragile ego and has an uncertain grasp of them as having a reality of their own. The clearest contrast to the narcissist that I can think of is the repairman, who must subordinate himself to the broken washing machine, listen to it with patience, notice its symptoms, and then act accordingly. He cannot treat it abstractly; the kind of agency he exhibits is not at all magical. — Matthew B. Crawford

We must be learning if we are to feel fully alive, and when life, or love, becomes too predictable and it seems like there is little left to learn, we become restless - a protest, perhaps, of the plastic brain when it can no longer perform its essential task. — Norman Doidge

Fuck Martha Stewart! Martha Stewart can kiss my shiny plastic butt! Here I am, slaving a way over a hot stove, making cookies... making Swedish meatballs, and for what? A man who doesn't appreciate me! For a man that can't even wash one fucking dish! For a man who isn't even a man at all where it counts, if you get my drift! -to Jade- Take it from me honey, plastic is no substitute for a nice hunk of wood! — Jennifer Tilly

I never had plastic surgery. I had a nose procedure done because I had to. I had no cartilage in my nose; I have a piece of cartilage from my ear put into my nose. I had a medical procedure done. I have no plastic in my nose. — Tamar Braxton

No more photos. Surely there are enough. No more shadows of myself thrown by light onto pieces of paper, onto squares of plastic. No more of my eyes, mouths, noses, moods, bad angles. No more yawns, teeth, wrinkles. I suffer from my own multiplicity. Two or three images would have been enough, or four, or five. That would have allowed for a firm idea: This is she. As it is, I'm watery, I ripple, from moment to moment I dissolve into my other selves. Turn the page: you, looking, are newly confused. You know me too well to know me. Or not too well: too much. — Margaret Atwood

What is your type? No wait. Let me guess. Hard, plastic coated and jammed full of big D batteries. — Eve Langlais

A Book of Glass
On the table, a book of glass. In the book only a few pages with no words But scratched in a diamond-point pencil to pieces in diagonal Spirals, light triangles; and a French curve fractures lines to
elisions.

The last pages are simplest. They can be read backwards and
thoroughly. Each page bends a bit like ludicrous plastic. He who wrote it was very ambitious, fed up, and finished. He had been teaching the insides and outsides of things

To children, teaching the art of Rembrandt to them. His two wives were beautiful and Death begins As a beggar beside them. What is an abstract persona? A painter visits but he prefers to look at perfume in vials.

And I see a book in glass - the words go off In wild loops without words. I should Wake and render them! In bed, Mother says each child Will receive the book of etchings, but the book will be
incomplete, after all.
But I will make the book of glass. — David Shapiro

Every time you place a stone on the board you are exposing something of yourself. It is not just a piece of slate, shell or plastic. You have entrusted to that stone your feelings, your individuality, your will power, and once it is played there is no going back. Each stone carries a great responsibility on your behalf. — Kajiwara Takeo

She sighed. "Oh, God, to be in the flyship cruising through the void. That's what I long for: an infinite void. With no human voices, no human smells, no human jaws masticating plastic chewing gum in nine iridescent colors. — Philip K. Dick

On bad days, I think I'd like to be a plastic surgeon who goes to Third World countries and operates on children in villages with airlifts, and then I think, 'Yeah, right, I'm going to go back to undergraduate school and take all the biology I missed and then go to medical school.' No. No. — Tama Janowitz

The guy on the left shrugged and raised up an inch off his chair and dug in his back pants pocket. The other guy did the same. Reacher watched. Safe enough. No one kept a weapon in his back pants pocket. Uncomfortable. Not readily accessible. The guys came out with two IDs each. Plastic, the size of credit cards. But not. They were national identity cards, and driver's licenses. Both had Bundesrepublik Deutschland at the top. Germany. The Federal Republic. The photographs were right. The guy on the left was named Bernd Durnberger, and the guy on the right was named Klaus Augenthaler. Reacher — Lee Child

No problem is insoluble, given a big enough plastic bag. — Tom Stoppard

What became clear as I sat on my plastic chair and drank my instant coffee was that I had somehow found myself on the other side. I had crossed a bridge. Their struggle was no longer my struggle. It wasn't that I would ever stop grieving for Will, or loving him, or missing him, but that my life seemed to have somehow landed back in the present. — Jojo Moyes

Real Men no longer drive Corvettes. Despite being able to squander gas with the best of them, even today's least enlightened Real Man finds the notion of a $17,000 plastic car with no trunk somewhat absurd. — Bruce Feirstein

It's funny when people ask an actor what they want to play next, because you don't get to decide what you play. I don't know. I can only say this: I don't want to and have no interest in playing a plastic surgeon. That's for sure. I'm open to anything else. — Dylan Walsh

Ronan wasn't exactly sure why he was angry. Although Gansey had done nothing to invoke his ire, he was definitely part of the problem. Currently, he propped his cell between ear and shoulder as he eyed a pair of plastic plates printed with smiling tomatoes. His unbuttoned collar revealed a good bit of his collarbone. No one could deny that Gansey was a glorious portrait of youth, the well-tended product of a fortunate and moneyed pairing. Ordinarily, he was so polished that it was bearable, though, because he was clearly not the same species as Ronan's rough-and-ready family. But tonight, under the fluorescent lights of Dollar City, Gansey's hair was scuffed and his cargo shorts were a greasy ruin from mucking over the Pig. He was barelegged and sockless in his Top-Siders and very clearly a real human, an attainable human, and this, somehow, made Ronan want to smash his fist through a wall. — Maggie Stiefvater

Cosmetic surgery is not "cosmetic," and human flesh is not "plastic." Even the names trivialize what it is. It's not like ironing wrinkles in fabric, or tuning up a car, or altering outmoded clothes, the current metaphors. Trivialization and infantilization pervade the surgeons' language when they speak to women: "a nip," a "tummy tuck." ... Surgery changes one forever, the mind as well as the body. If we don't start to speak of it as serious, the millennium of the man-made woman will be upon us, and we will have had no choice. — Naomi Wolf

No! Beauty is emotional! That's why plastic surgery never works. Women who want to change their nose, lips, they don't understand that they are doing nothing except erasing their magic. — Mario Testino

We divorced ourselves from the materials of the earth, the rock, the wood, the iron ore; we looked to new materials which were cooked in vats, long complex derivatives of urine which we called plastic. They had no odor of the living, ... their touch was alien to nature ... [They proliferated] like the matastases of cancer cells. — Norman Mailer

I suppose you want me to give certificates to all the contestants? Little plastic trophies to every single athlete or soldier for participation? Should we all line up and shake hands and tell each other, Good game? No! — Rick Riordan

The Welsh are the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art, no architecture, no drama. They just sing. Sing and blow down wind instruments of plated silver. — Evelyn Waugh

I had a very Italian house - the "plastic furniture you couldn't sit on" house. Did anybody have the museum house? For a kid it's traumatic. Towels you can never touch. China no one's ever gonna use. Everything is for a special occasion that never happens. My mother was waiting for the Pope to show up for dinner. Or Sinatra. Or Chachi. — Ray Romano

Whirs. See?" Heidi grabbed the string and pulled. The snail toppled over. "No, not like that," Vanja said. "I'll show you." She placed the snail upright and slowly dragged it a few meters. "I've got a little sister!" she said aloud. Robin had gone to the window where he stood staring out into the backyard. Stella, who was energetic and presumably extra-lively since it was her party, excitedly shouted something that I didn't understand, pointed to one of the two smaller girls, who handed her the doll she was clutching, took out a little carriage, placed the doll in it, and began to push it down the hall. Achilles had found his way to Benjamin, a boy eighteen months older than Vanja, who usually sat deeply absorbed in something, a drawing or a pile of Legos or a pirate ship with plastic pirates. He was imaginative, independent, and well-behaved, — Karl Ove Knausgard

I have not had any plastic surgery in any shape or form. No implants. And my hair is not dyed. — Pierce Brosnan

There can be no intellectual, spiritual, or emotional life without the substratum of memory. Without cognition and awareness of beauty and appreciation of our limited time on planet Earth, humankind's sojourn would be a colorless collage composed of the base acts of a biological mass endeavoring merely to survive. Without the ability to recall striking memories, our emotional life would be stillborn. Absent authentic memories, our life struggles would seem purposeless: human beings would exhibit no capacity to reflect awe when witnessing the bounty of nature's plenitude or be able to take in and express intense reverence for all that is sacred. Without memory, there would not be a dais to support faith or any ability to imagine a God; the concepts of good and evil would be nonexistent; and the past and the future would become less relevant than the choice between salt or pepper, and paper or plastic. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Oh ... my ... god,"Drew whimpered."Who ... "
Anubis ignored her (bless him for that) and held out his elbow for me - a sweet old-fashioned gesture.
" May I have this dance?"
"I suppose," I said,as non committally as I could. I looped my arm through his, and we left the Plastic Bags behind us, all of them muttering,"Oh my god! Oh my god!"
No ,actually, I wanted to say. He's my amazingly hot boy god. Find your own. — Rick Riordan

You'll teach me to drive your car if I let you get in the water?"
"Uh, no. I'll teach you how to drive Galen's car if you let me get in the water. You're not touching my car without a license. A real one, not some shiny plastic thing Rachel made between afternoon talk shows." Even if Galen doesn't have insurance, he's got enough in his wallet to buy a new one. I, on the other hand, have just enough in saving to cover my deductible.
Her eyes go round. "You'll let me drive his little red one? The combustible?"
Why not? I nod. "Yep. The convertible. Deal?"
She grabs my hand from the couch to pull us both up. Then she shakes it. "Deal! I'll go get the keys from Rachel. — Anna Banks

She had graduated from the Beaux Arts in Caen. She worked entirely on her body, she explained to me; I looked at her anxiously as she opened her portfolio. I was hoping she wasn't going to show me photos of plastic surgery on her toes or anything like that - I'd had it up to here with things like that. But no, she simply handed me some postcards which she had had made, with the imprint of her pussy dipped in different coloured paints. I chose a turquoise and a mauve; I was a little sorry I hadn't brought photos of my prick to return the favour. — Michel Houellebecq

The window rattles without you, you bastard. The trees are the cause, rattling in the wind, you jerk, the wind scraping those leaves and twigs against my window. They'll keep doing this, you terrible husband, and slowly wear away our entire apartment building. I know all these facts about you and there is no longer any use for them. What will I do with your license plate number, and where you hid the key outside so we'd never get locked out of this shaky building? What good does it do me, your pants size and the blue cheese preference for dressing? Who opens the door in the morning now, and takes the newspaper out of the plastic bag when it rains? I'll never get back all the hours I was nice to your parents. I nudge my cherry tomatoes to the side of the plate, bastard, but no one is waiting there with a fork to eat them. I miss you and I love you, bastard bastard bastard, come and clean the onion skins out of the crisper and trim back the tree so I can sleep at night. — Daniel Handler

The elevator doors opened to reveal a very large man brandishing a bloodstained antique phone receiver in a plastic bag and proclaiming, "I found this up him!"
"You know," said Tallow, "I really have no response to that. — Warren Ellis

The most ancient parts of truth ... also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They also mediated between still earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations. Purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatsoever, is nowhere to be found. The reasons why we call things true is the reason why they are true, for to be true means only to perform this marriage-function. — William James

Your mama-akra sent that to you, akri, to hurt the heathen-god. Now it's Dimonique time. The Simi can't be bothered we no Greek god messing with the one who pays the plastic bills. Can the Simi have that black metal card she loves so much? (Simi) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

WORTH IT?
It is no credit to our phase of civilization if it is fear rather than ambition that drives most of those who bankrupt themselves on the vanities, or who end up under the surgeon's knife. It is the fear of falling short, of being inadequate in the eyes of others, including loved ones. [ ... ]
It is unfitting, one might say, improper, treating one's owm body as a tool rather than a part of oneself. [ ... ]
The bottom line is that it dishonors ourselves, for we ought to think better of ourselves than that. — Simon Blackburn

At this time in his life Zinkoff sees no difference between the stars in the sky and the stars in his mother's plastic Baggie. He believes that stars fall from the sky sometimes, and that his mother goes around collecting them like acorns. He believes she has to use heavy gloves and dark sunglasses because the fallen stars are so hot and shiny. She puts them in the freezer for forty-five minutes, and when they come out they are flat and silver and sticky on the back and ready for his shirts. — Jerry Spinelli

The retirees are gone from their plastic rockers on the front porches of the aging art-deco hotels. Hookers, dealers, pimps, chicken hawks, and runaways no longer stroll Ocean Drive, hustling their wares. The Yuppies have staked claims to South Beach, spiffing up the old buildings with turquoise and salmon paint, dressing themselves in bright, baggy cottons and silks, and hovering on the perimeter of perpetual trendiness. — Paul Levine

So are you moving on now? Is that what brought you to the grand metropolis of Valladolid?"
"No. The wind just blew me here."
"What? Like a plastic bag?"
"I prefer to think of myself as a ship. Like a sailboat. — Gayle Forman

We already have the Wooden Pillar, the Steel Pillar and the Plastic Pillar. In a moment we will have the Golden Bail ... '
No, you won't.'
We will,' stated the robot simply.
No, you won't. It makes my ship work.'
In a moment,' repeated the robot patiently, 'we will have the Golden Bail ... '
You will not,' said Zaphod.
And then we must go,' said the robot, in all seriousness, 'to a party.'
Oh,' said Zaphod, startled, 'can I come?'
No,' said the robot, 'we are going to shoot you.'
Oh, yeah?' said Zaphod, waggling his gun.
Yes,' said the robot, and they shot him.
Zaphod was so surprised that they had to shoot him again before he fell down. (85-86) — Douglas Adams

For years I walked around with the phrase "Green River" because I had seen that on a soda fountain drink when I was probably 8 or 9 years old, and I went, 'Gee, I like that.' Another one was "Lodi", which I thought sounded really cool. I got this cheap little empty plastic notebook at my local drugstore, and bought a little slab of filler paper and the very first title I wrote in it was "Proud Mary". I had no idea what that title meant. — John Fogerty