Quotes & Sayings About Not Being Put Down

There's a long pause.
But it's not a bad pause, because Mik is looking at me like I'm the treasure from the high shelf that someone's just taken down and put into his hands. I find I don't mind being looked at like this. I don't mind it at all. — Laini Taylor

I think - I think it's a big deal. Bigger for him and Eve than for most people.' Shane kept his eyes down, fixed on the sidewalk and the steps they were taking. 'Look, ask him, okay? This is girl talk. I don't do girl talk.'
She punched him in the shoulder. 'Ass.'
'That's better. I was starting to feel like we should go shoe shopping or something.'
'Being a girl is not a bad thing!'
'No.' He took his hand out of his pocket and put his arm around her shoulders, hugging her close. 'If I could be half the girl you are, I'd be - wow, I have no idea where I was going with that, and it just turned out uncomfortable, all of a sudden.'
'Jackass.'
'You like being a girl - that's good. I like being a guy - that's also good.'
'Next you'll be all Me, Tarzan, you, Jane! — Rachel Caine

With me, it was my liver that was out of order. [ ... ] I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being "a general disinclination to work of any kind."
What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness. — Jerome K. Jerome

Love potions? For Will 'erondale? 'Tain't my way to turn down payment, but any man who looks like you 'as got no need of love potions, and that's a fact."
"No," Will said, a little desperation in his voice. "I was looking for the opposite, really
something that might put an end to being in love."
"An 'atred potion?" Mol still sounded amused.
"I was hoping for something more akin to indifference? Tolerance?"
She made a snorting noise, astonishingly human for a ghost. "I 'ardly like to tell you this, Nephilim, but if you want a girl to 'ate you, there's easy enough ways of making it 'appen. You don't need my help with the poor thing."
And with that she vanished, spinning away into the mists among the graves. Will, looking after her, sighed. "Not for her," he said under his breath, though there was no one to hear him, "for me ... " And he leaned his head against the cold iron gate. — Cassandra Clare

I had left my anger somewhere long ago. Put it down on a park bench and walked away. And yet. It had been so long, I didn't know any other way of being. One day I woke up and said to myself: It's not too late. The first days were strange. I had to practice smiling in front of the mirror. But it came back to me. It was as if a weight had been lifted. I let go, and something let go of me. — Nicole Krauss

Don't get me wrong. For the most part, being strong got me through a lot. And I'm thankful that short of people dying on me, nothing can make me break down.
There are times, however, when being strong feels a bit of a curse.
You see, when you're a very strong person, people always expect you to take care of yourself. People always expect you to put on a calm and collected exterior. You're not given much room to freak out and be human. — Nessie Q.

Yes, and then it's these things that cause the whites to say we're not worthy of first-class citizenship." "Ah ... " He dropped his hands to his sides hard in frustration. "Isn't it so? They make it impossible for us to earn, to pay much in taxes because we haven't much in income, and then they say that because they pay most of the taxes, they have the right to have things like they want. It's a vicious circle, Mr. Griffin, and I don't know how we'll get out of it. They put us low, and then blame us for being down there and say that since we are low, we can't deserve our rights. — John Howard Griffin

Some people can accept bad circumstances in their own lives, but some may not want to suffer alone. You understand what I mean? You've known people like that already I bet, even as young as you are. It's a human trait, and as I'm seeing, as people become quicker to put themselves first, they're quicker to judge everything in relative measures, with themselves in the center of it all. It might come down to people feeling that it's not so much them being sick, but them wanting you to be as sick or sicker than they are. Know what I mean, boy? — Arthur DeLozier

No good to paint in the head - what happens is what happens when you put the paint down - you can only hope that you are alert - ready - to see. What joy it is for paint to become a thing - a being. Believe in this miracle - it is your only hope. To will this transformation is not possible. Only a slow maturation can prepare the hand and eye to become quicker than ever. Ideas about art don't matter. They collapse anyway in front of the painting. — Philip Guston

We Jews are accused of being destroyers: whatever you put up, we tear down. It is true only in a relative sense. We are not iconoclasts deliberately: we are not enemies of your institutions simply because of the dislike between us. We are a homeless mass seeking satisfaction for our constructive instincts. And in your institutions we cannot find satisfaction. — Maurice Samuel

All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run. You know without having to reason about it the price of a bale of cotton, or a quart of molasses. But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much. — Carson McCullers

Steerforth, laughing, took me by the arm and led me out. We went downstairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation for it. A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the streets! There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. I considered it frosty. Steerforth dusted me under a lamp-post, and put my hat into shape, which somebody produced from somewhere in a most extraordinary manner, for I hadn't had it on before. Steerforth then said, 'You are all right, Copperfield, are you not?' and I told him, 'Neverberrer. — Charles Dickens

A purpose statement is, in essence, a written-down reason for being. Jesus' mission helped him decide how to act, what to do, and even what to say when challenging situations arose. Clarity is power: Once you are clear about what you were put here to do then 'jobs' become only a means toward accomplishing your mission, not an end in themselves. — Laurie Beth Jones

I suppose for whatever reason I actively welcome being put down, something which perhaps goes back to my upbringing - that accusation of not being worthy which could be laid at one's door. — Paul Muldoon

Being fearless means busting down those walls of fear and being who you are, not who someone else thinks you are. People like to put others in a box and tell them what they can and cannot do or who they can and cannot be. No one can tell you who you are and what you are made of, only you yourself know what you are made of, and only you yourself can do the work to become who you want to be. — Mariska Hargitay

Of course I want you," she said right in his ear. "I love you." He let loose some kind of hoarse word, and his arms crushed her to him. As she found herself not being able to breathe because he was squeezing her so tight, she thought, Yup, this really was him. And he wasn't going to let her go this time. Thank. God. As he held Jane up off the ground, Vishous was wholly happy. Complete in a way that having all your fingers and toes couldn't hold a candle to. With a shout of triumph, he carried her into her condo, pausing only to put the garage door down. — J.R. Ward

But I can't see how anyone could believe that you killed the bear with a pitchfork,' I said.
'I didn't. I only wounded it - badly, I think, but not enough to put it out of action. It came blundering towards me, I stepped aside and it crashed head-first into the river - I could hear it threshing about in the darkness. I picked up a big stone - poor brute, I hated to do it but I had to finish it off. It gave just one groan as the stone hit it and then went down. I held the lantern high; I could see the bubbles coming up. And then I saw the dark bulk of it under the water, being carried along by the current.'
'But you didn't have a lantern,' I said.
'He didn't have a bear,' said Topaz. — Dodie Smith

Adams has done a bit of everything, from radio to television to designing computer games. Not all of them worked out.

"These are life's little learning experiences," he said. "You know what a learning experience is? A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'

"At the end of all this being-determined-to-be-a-jack-of-all-trades, I think I'm better off just sitting down and putting a hundred thousand words in a cunning order."

Adams writes "slowly and painfully."

"People assume you sit in a room, looking pensive and writing great thoughts," he said. "But you mostly sit in a room looking panic-stricken and hoping they haven't put a guard on the door yet. — Douglas Adams

Extreme intelligence is accused of being as foolish as extreme lack of it; only moderation is good. The majority have laid this down and attack anyone who deviates from it towards any extreme whatever. I am not going to be awkward, I readily consent to being put in the middle and refuse to be at the bottom end, not because it is the bottom but because it is the end, for I should refuse just as much to be put at the top. It is deserting humanity to desert the middle way.
The greatness of the human soul lies in knowing how to keep this course; greatness does not mean going outside it, but rather keeping within it. — Blaise Pascal

It's one thing to develop a nostalgia for home while you're boozing with Yankee writers in Martha's Vineyard or being chased by the bulls in Pamplona. It's something else to go home and visit with the folks in Reed's drugstore on the square and actually listen to them. The reason you can't go home again is not because the down-home folks are mad at you
they're not, don't flatter yourself, they couldn't care less
but because once you're in orbit and you return to Reed's drugstore on the square, you can stand no more than fifteen minutes of the conversation before you head for the woods, head for the liquor store, or head back to Martha's Vineyard, where at least you can put a tolerable and saving distance between you and home. Home may be where the heart is but it's no place to spend Wednesday afternoon. — Walker Percy

Jealousy can instigate the cruellest act, or more to the point, hatred can. Miss Bennett was the one who found Nathan lying at the bottom of the stairs in the cellar, said he must have slipped or something, especially with one leg being so much weaker than the other. They as good people never would have suspected their own daughter of pushing him. That she never showed emotion over her brother's death was put down to trauma. I could see what they could not - a child incapable of any kind of feeling apart from selfishness. I can still picture him now, lying on his stomach, his head twisted at an unnatural angle, eyes glazed like one of Rhiannon's dolls. She was then about seven years old with the face of an angel and a nature as cruel as anyone on death row. — Tami Egonu

All women should feel as Sex Subjects if they want and choose so without fear of repressions, condemnations and put down and without the need to pay them for that.

Being freely a sexy and seductive woman is allowed only for few privileged professions: actresses, dancers, models, singers, prostitutes. They all do it for work. You can pay for them being sexy.

If a sexy woman is openly adored by a man, the woman remains as a woman, she is not turning into a table, a cup or a bill of money. She is still the Subject who knows her power. — Mai Loog

He believed in nothing. Which is why his departures and his pursuit of the most intense feelings and acts were so radical, so deep and honest. The truth of life was perfectly clear to him. Nothing was made, every new morning was clear. His only challenge was inward. He had not been disillusioned or had some bad experience that he could put it all down to. He had simply seen the world and that was that. And he understood how slippery every moment was and he liked the thrill of it. Slipping from the knowable to the unknown, walking from one street to the next, being different all the time. In one afternoon he could slip from one personality to another. Why not? — Dionne Brand

I'm through with you. Yes, I am going to put you down. From now on, I am my own God. I am going to live by the rules I se for myself. I'll discard everything I was once taught about you. Then I'll be you. I'll be my own God, living my life as I see fit. Not as Mr. Charlie says I should live it, or Mama or anybody else. I shall do as I want in this society that apparently wasn't meant for me and my kind. If you are getting angry because I am talking to you like this, then just kill me, leave me here in this graveyard dead. Maybe thats where all of us belong anyway. Maybe then we wouldn't have to suffer so much. At the rate we are being killed now, we'll all be soon dead anyway. — Anne Moody

If a writer's work lifts you, remain loyal to that experience, even after you've grown beyond it. The book did what it did at the time that you needed it. Don't put it down for not being able to grow with you. It did its job. — Bridgette Hayden

I don't suppose you'd be interested in working part-time at the school?"
Adelai turned her head,met Keeley's eyes in the mirror above the bureau. "Are you offering me a job?"
"It sounds awfully strange when you put it that way, but yes. But don't do it because you feel obliged. Only if you think you'd have the time or the inclination."
Adelia spun around, her face brilliant. "What the devil's taken you so long? I'll start tomorrow."
"Really? You really want to?"
"I've been dying to.Oh, it's taken every bit of my willpower not to come down there every day until you just got so used to me being around you didn't realize I was working there. This is exciting!" She rushed over to give Keeley a hug. "I can't wait to tell your father."
Keeping her arms tight around her daughter, Adelia did a quick dance. "I'm a groom again. — Nora Roberts

He kind of hit on me in that stoned state." I put down the bowl. "Said he and I were gonna be some sort of post apocalyptic hook up buddies." "He was high." "What if I told you, not now, but down the road I was thinking about it?" "I would tell you that you are grief stricken and not thinking clearly." "Okay." I extended the pint to him. "And if I said I was thinking that way about ... you down the road." "I would say you are being very wise and thinking of the future." He smiled. — Jacqueline Druga

She (my ex-wife) wanted me to stop being Evel Knievel. I am who I am. I'm not going to change. I'll settle down the day they put me in a six-foot pine box. — Evel Knievel

Be careful who you choose as your hero or who you choose to deify, be it Clay Aiken or Barack Obama. You put all you're hope and all your dreams and all your ideas about stuff into one human being. They're a human being they're going to let you down.
You can't make someone your hero because of something you read on the internet. The internet is not a source of information it is a source of disinformation. — Craig Ferguson

A Rare Commodity A man's pride will bring him low, but a humble spirit will obtain honor. PROVERBS 29:23 Humility isn't a show we put on; in fact, if we think we're humble, we're probably not. And in our day of self-promotion, self-assertion, spotlighting "celebrities of the faith," and magnifying the flesh, this quality - so greatly valued by the Lord Jesus - is a rare commodity indeed ... A truly humble person looks for opportunities to give himself freely to others rather than holding back, to release rather than hoarding, to build up rather than tearing down, to serve rather than being served, to learn from others rather than clamoring for the teaching stand. How blessed are those who learn this early in life. Hope Again — Charles R. Swindoll

What would you do if there were no way you could fail? If you were 10 times smarter than the rest of the world? Create two timelines - 6 months and 12 months - and list up to five things you dream of having (including, but not limited to, material wants: house, car, clothing, etc.), being (be a great cook, be fluent in Chinese, etc.), and doing (visiting Thailand, tracing your roots overseas, racing ostriches, etc.) in that order. If you have difficulty identifying what you want in some categories, as most will, consider what you hate or fear in each and write down the opposite. Do not limit yourself, and do not concern yourself with how these things will be accomplished. For now, it's unimportant. This is an exercise in reversing repression. Be sure not to judge or fool yourself. If you really want a Ferrari, don't put down solving world hunger out of guilt. — Timothy Ferriss

But for me it was enough if, in my own bed, my sleep was so heavy as completely to relax my consciousness; for then I lost all sense of the place in which I had gone to sleep, and when I awoke at midnight, not knowing where I was, I could not be sure at first who I was; I had only the most rudimentary sense of existence, such as may lurk and flicker in the depths of an animal's consciousness; I was more destitute of human qualities than the cave-dweller; but then the memory, not yet of the place in which I was, but of various other places where I had lived, and might now very possibly be, would come like a rope let down from heaven to draw me up out of the abyss of not-being, from which I could never have escaped by myself: in a flash I would traverse and surmount centuries of civilisation, and out of a half-visualised succession of oil-lamps, followed by shirts with turned-down collars, would put together by degrees the component parts of my ego. — Anonymous

And yet, despite the multiplicity of times we've done it, it is still a funny, exultant, true thing - where for a short time you turn into something else and fly; where you stop fretting and wanting, and are simply alight with joy - and all while never venturing beyond the walls of your room. And I would put our continued success down to one simple thing. At the end of every tumbling session, one of us will turn to the other and say, "Thank you very much. That was very pleasant. Very pleasant indeed. My dear, I am much obliged to you."
Because at the end of the day, that is the hottest sex tip of all: gratitude. That you've found someone who wants to do that thing, with you, and no government has yet found a way to charge you VAT on it. You can set fire to the sky, and not be charged a penny.
Sometimes, it's great being a human. — Caitlin Moran

My belief is that if we live another century or so - I am talking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals - and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think; if we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality; and the sky, too, and the trees or whatever it may be in themselves; if we look past Milton's bogey, for no human being should shut out the view; if we face the fact, for it is a fact, that there is no arm to cling to, but that we go alone and that our relation is to the world of reality and not only to the world of men and women, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down. — Virginia Woolf

Another one is cleaning up tool that have been used and not put away and are cluttering up the place. This is a good one because one of the first warning signs of impatience is frustration at not being able to lay your hand on the tool you need right away. If you just stop and put tools away neatly you will both find the tool and also scale down your impatience without wasting time or endangering the work. — Robert M. Pirsig

I have the advantage of being pretty small, so if I'm flying myself, I'm flying coach. To save the money. I just put in my headphones, and it's no big thing. I keep my head down, wear a hoodie or a hat - but sometimes not even that. I'm small. People miss me. — Anna Kendrick

If you have people who treat you badly in your life, they will be a human shield against people who will treat you well. If that's not true then we should apply it to marriage and start saying to woman who are being put down or beaten, "you gotta stay with him because he needs you and he has been your husband for 20 years for heaven sakes. You just have to work to love him more and so on." This is the advice they gave to woman like 200 fucking years ago and it was abusive advice.
I view the parent child relationship (This just not my made up perspective.) it is the least voluntary relationship. At least the woman who got married chose to get married. We don't choose our parents. The highest standards of behavior are required for parents and no one else. There is no one else whose standards of behavior need be higher than parents and so often parents get away with the lowest possible standards of behavior with regards to their children. — Stefan Molyneux

The kind of nonsense they put into a lass's head from day one! How is any woman expected to have a voice as strong as a man's, to have the will to overcome like a man, to conquer and triumph like a bloody soddin' pego-wielding Richard! They're not to! Oh no! That's the reason for the stories, lass! To lock you down good and tight, to wrap you up in guilt and shame just for being what you are. Bloody bastards! — R.S. Belcher

Alma came to admire sailors. She could not imagine how they endured such long periods of time away from the comforts of land. How did they not go mad? The ocean both stunned and disturbed her. Nothing had ever put more of an impression upon her being. It seemed to her the very distillation of matter, the very masterpiece of mysteries. One night they sailed through a diamond field of liquid phosphorescence. The ship churned up strange molecules of green and purple light as it moved, until it appeared that the Elliot was dragging a long glowing veil behind herself, wide across the sea. It was so beautiful that Alma wondered how the men did not throw themselves into the water, drawn down to their deaths by this intoxicating magic. — Elizabeth Gilbert

We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.
When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not put down, diminishes our chances of joy.
It's like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable. — Mark Nepo

I try to be true to myself yet still at the same time look at comments and look at what the fans have to say and kind of put it in perspective. I'm never someone whose not open for opinion, I'm always just down to make it work and see how we can do things but at the end of the day I always want to make sure it represents me. It's really about just being humble and not selling yourself on being there already. — Kid Ink

Ed Koch will never 'rest in peace.' That was not his way. He was always nervously squirming, while making others squirm as well. Comfort was not his goal. He understood that to be a proud and assertive Jew meant never being able to leave a sigh of relief and say, 'It's over, we are at peace, we can now put down our guard and relax.' — Alan Dershowitz

I'm sure those are not the right words," said poor Alice, and her eyes filled with tears again as she went on, "I must be Mabel after all, and I shall have to go and live in that poky little house, and have next to no toys to play with, and oh, ever so many lessons to learn! No, I've made up my mind about it: if I'm Mabel, I'll stay down here! It'll be no use their putting their heads down and saying 'Come up again, dear!' I shall only look up and say 'Who Am I, then? Tell me that first, and then if I like being that person, I'll come up: if not, I'll stay down here till I'm somebody else' - but oh dear!" Cried Alice, with a sudden burst of tears, " I do wish they would put their heads down! I am so very tired of being all alone here! — Lewis Carroll

I'm not having much of a life. It's not awful, just ordinary. I am trying to accommodate the memories of the life I had with the life I am now living, and I just can't do it. After being behind the wheel of a Lamborghini going 140 down Sunset Drive at four a.m., it's hard to get up and put on a polyester shirt and sell books at Barnes and Noble. But I'm not ashamed of it. — Robert Goolrick

One of the curious things about our educational system, I would note, is that the better trained you are in a discipline, the less used to dialectical method you're likely to be. In fact, young children are very dialectical; they see everything in motion, in contradictions and transformations. We have to put an immense effort into training kids out of being good dialecticians. Marx wants to recover the intuitive power of the dialectical method and put it to work in understanding how everything is in process, everything is in motion. He doesn't simply talk about labor; he talks about the labor process. Capital is not a thing, but rather a process that exists only in motion. When circulation stops, value disappears and the whole system comes tumbling down. — David Harvey

I said to myself, I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught. — Georgia O'Keeffe

It's luck. All is luck when skill's played out. It was luck left me with a face that didn't fit in Contact, it's luck that's made you a great game-player, it's luck that's put you here tonight. Neither of us were fully planned, Jernau Gurgeh; your genes determined you and your mother's genofixing made certain you would not be a cripple or mentally subnormal. The rest is chance. I was brought into being with the freedom to be myself; if what that general plan and that particular luck produced is something a majority - a majority, mark you; not all - of one SC admissions board decides is not what they just happen to want, is it my fault? Is it?"

"No," Gurgeh sighed, looking down.

"Oh, it's all so wonderful in the Culture, isn't it, Gurgeh; nobody starves and nobody dies of disease or natural disasters and nobody and nothing's exploited, but there's still luck and heartache and joy, there's still chance and advantage and disadvantage. — Iain M. Banks

Are you going to continue to scold me?" "Is that what I'm doing?" "I think so." "You're lucky I'm just scolding you." "What do you mean?" "Well, if you were mine, you wouldn't be able to sit down for a week after the stunt you pulled yesterday. You didn't eat, you got drunk, you put yourself at risk." He closes his eyes, dread etched briefly on his face, and he shudders. When he opens his eyes, he glares at me. "I hate to think what could have happened to you." I scowl back at him. What is his problem? What's it to him? If I was his ... Well, I'm not. Though maybe part of me would like to be. The thought pierces through the irritation I feel at his high-handed words. I flush at the waywardness of my subconscious - she's doing her happy dance in a bright red hula skirt at the thought of being his. — E.L. James

[The Republican plan will] make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans and that ensures affordable access for all Americans and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government. — Virginia Foxx

We insult her everyday on TV
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she's young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb — John Lennon

Derek stopped short. I smacked into his back - not for the first time, since he insisted on walking in front of me. I'd been tripping on his heels and mumbling apologies the whole way. When I'd slow down to let him get farther ahead, he'd snap at me to keep up.
"We're almost there," Simon said.
He was behind me - sticking to the curbside, walking as close as Derek. While normally I wouldn't complain about Simon being so close, I had the weird sensation of being blocked in.
As we started forward again, I tried dropping back with Tori, who lagged behind, but Simon put his finger on my elbow and steered me back into place.
"Okay," I said. "Something's up. What's with the walking blockade?"
"They're protecting you," Tori said. "Shielding you from the big bad world." — Kelley Armstrong

First of all, you don't want me to get too hungry. Ever. I'm an ever worse bastard than normal and having starved for centuries, I'm not about to deprive myself again when I don't have to. Second, let me tell you something about your 'friends.' Deimos held me down while I was branded and then took me to the human realm where I was left with nothing. No clothes, no money. Not a damn thing to call my own. Hence the aforementioned starvation. A hundred years later, M'Ordant dumped my inside a Spartan prison camp and told the commander I was a traitor to their people. You don't really want to know what the Spartans did to people they thought betrayed them. D'Alerian had me put inside a Turkish prison in the fifteenth century where I was impaled after being tortured for three weeks. So you'll have to excuse me if I have a hard time feeling too sorry for them right now. At least no one's shoving a sharp spike up their asses. (Jericho) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

In many other cultures, and certainly in the Eastern world, there's great value put on being, contemplating, and even withdrawing from the world at certain times or for certain periods of time. But we don't really have that in our culture, so it's difficult for many Westerners to learn how to sit down or lie down and just be quiet without going to sleep. We're just not trained to do it. — Shakti Gawain

Others felt that their question had already been answered in the minds of other group members, and if they asked the question, it would be considered a dumb question, and they would be put down as being stupid or not going along with the group. Because people did not ask questions, people lost lives when the Titanic sank, when the Challenger crashed, when President Kennedy authorized a covert attack on the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. — Michael J. Marquardt

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. This, however, is not generally a part of the domestic apparatus on the premises. I think myself that the thing might be managed with several pails of Aspinall and a broom. Only if one worked in a really sweeping and masterly way, and laid on the color in great washes, it might drip down again on one's face in floods of rich and mingled color like some strange fairy rain; and that would have its disadvantages. I am afraid it would be necessary to stick to black and white in this form of artistic composition. To that purpose, indeed, the white ceiling would be of the greatest possible use; in fact, it is the only use I think of a white ceiling being put to. — G.K. Chesterton

Not until you finally try to put down the stuff do you realize, with stinging clarity, precisely why you picked it up in the first place. All life, in this freshly nerve-flayed state, boils down to a choice of hells. The hell of being fucked-up on drugs or the hell of being fucked-up without them. — Jerry Stahl

It's not enough to be aware of the domain you're working in, you need to understand it. Noticing things and being curious about how they work is the single most common trait I see in creative people. Once you can break the components down, you can put them back together into something brand new. — Seth

You hear about our conservative background and know that we're Christian guys, but we're not timid at all. I will take anyone on when it comes to outworking them or putting on a better show or standing up for people who are being put down. — Tyler Joseph

Some readers may have noticed an icy little missive from Noam Chomsky ["Letters," December 3], repudiating the very idea that he and I had disagreed on the "roots" of September 11. I rush to agree. Here is what he told his audience at MIT on October 11:
I'll talk about the situation in Afghanistan ... Looks like what's happening is some sort of silent genocide ... It indicates that whatever, what will happen we don't know, but plans are being made and programs implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the death of several million people in the next - in the next couple of weeks ... very casually with no comment ... we are in the midst of apparently trying to murder three or four million people.
Clever of him to have spotted that (his favorite put-down is the preface 'Turning to the facts ... ') and brave of him to have taken such a lonely position. As he rightly insists, our disagreements are not really political. — Christopher Hitchens

At that moment, when I had the TV sound off, I was in a 382 mood; I had just dialed it. So although I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn't feel it. My first reaction consisted of being grateful that we could afford a Penfield mood organ. But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building but everywhere, and not reacting - do you see? I guess you don't. But that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it 'absence of appropriate affect.' So I left the TV sound off and I sat down at my mood organ and I experimented. And I finally found a setting for despair. So I put it on my schedule for twice a month; I think that's a reasonable amount of time to feel hopeless about everything, about staying here on Earth after everybody who's smart has emigrated, don't you think? — Philip K. Dick

[Maximus] put his head down and said in a conspiratorial whisper, "Tell Temeraire that Lily and I have not forgotten our promise; we will not let them hang you at all."
Laurence stared up at the immense Regal Copper. All his crew looked deeply distressed, as well they might, the outlaw remark being perfectly audible several clearings over. — Naomi Novik

The thing about learning how to fight is that - some of us are not born with that desire. They say some are born fighters; but they don't usually point out that others just aren't. Some of us are forced by life to take up arms and fight. Many of us are. The art lies in knowing when to wield those arms and when to put them down. I don't think it's a matter of pretending to be ideally unharmed by life and untouched by darkness; because that is hypocrisy. Rather, I think it is a matter of being true to your truth and learning when to fight and learning when to be soft. Hopefully, our soft moments in life will largely outweigh, outrank, and outrun our fighting. — C. JoyBell C.

My father has always felt that being fat was a choice. When I was in college I would sometimes meet him for lunch or coffee, and he would stare at my extra flesh like it was some weird piece of clothing I was wearing just to annoy him. Like my fat was an elaborate turban or Mel's zombie tiara or some anarchy flag that, in my impetuous youth, I was choosing to hold up and wave in his face. Not really part of me, just something I was doing to rebel, prove him wrong. I started seeing him even less. Now, I wouldn't say he's proud of me. As far as he is concerned, things have just become as they should be. I've finally put down the flag. Taken off the turban. Case closed. Good for me. — Mona Awad

After the sudden release of the laughter, he was trembling. All his body seemed growing weak. He felt, almost physically, more barriers breaking
those necessary barriers of defense, built up through the months of loneliness and desperation. He must touch another human being, and he put forward his hand in the old conventional gesture of the handshake. She took it, and doubtless as she noticed his trembling, she drew him toward a chair and almost pushed him into it. As he sat down, she patted his shoulder lightly.
She spoke again, once more neither questioning nor commanding: "I'll get you something to eat."
He did not protest, though he had just eaten heartily. But he knew that behind her quiet affirmation lay something more than any call of the body for food. There was need now for the symbolic eating together, that first common bond of human beings
the sitting at the same table, the sharing of bread and salt. — George R. Stewart

Hunted what?" Shea held her breath, afraid of what he might say.
"Beautiful women, little one, and I was the one who found you after all." His white teeth gleamed at her, a definite leer.
"Don't put me off like that." She had already taken advantage, sliding easily into his mind and picking out the pictures of danger and revulsion. Fear even. Not so much of their adversary, but of themselves turning into the very thing they sought to destroy.
Jacques, unprepared for her entrance into his mind, had been confident he could keep the grimmer side of their existence watered down for her. Shea had always been reluctant to enter his mind; it hadn't occurred to him that she would do so whenever she wanted.
His expression was so rueful that Shea burst out laughing. "Where I grew up, that's called being caught with your pants down."
He looked down at his body, glistening with the rain. His grin was self-mocking, his black eyes amused. "Literally. — Christine Feehan