Quotes & Sayings About Not Standing Out

It takes a lot of weapons to do good works (as Richard the Lionhearted could have told us). And this is not just a Somali problem. We have poverty and deprivation in our own country. Try standing unarmed on a street corner in Compton handing out twenty-dollar bills and see how long you last. — P. J. O'Rourke

She says you're not awake until you're actually out of bed and standing up. — Richelle Mead

We are shut up in school and college recitation rooms for ten to fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyful of words and do not know a thing. We cannot use our hands, or our legs, or our eyes, or our arms. We do not know an edible root in the woods. We cannot tell our course by the stars, nor the hour of day by the sun. It is well if we can swim and skate. We are afraid of a horse or a cow, of a dog, of a cat, of a spider. Far better was the Roman rule to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

And the PRCS [Palestinian Red Crescent Society] had not lost just one hospital: thirteen clinics and nine hospitals all over Lebanon had been destroyed in this way. Only Gaza Hospital, for a reason I was to discover three years later, was still standing. At the height of the air raids, when the Palestinians found out that every single PRCS hospital and clinic was a bomb target, they put three Israeli soldiers captured in south Lebanon on the upper floors of Gaza Hospital, and radioed a message to the Israeli Army saying that any further military action on Gaza Hospital would result in Israeli lives being lost. That saved Gaza Hospital from further destruction. — Ang Swee Chai

Umm," Jack said,reminding me that he was still standing beside me, "any ideas, Evie? I seem to be fresh out of baseball bats." Uber-vamp directed a chilling glare in Jack's direction. I inwardly cursed the idiot boy for bringing it up and putting himself in danger,too.
"I'm guessing you didn't bring your communicator."
"In hindsight,not a clever move on my part. — Kiersten White

And I think for a moment, because people don't actually ask that very often. They tell me what they think I feel because they've read it in books, or they say incredible things like "autistic people have no sense of humour or imagination or empathy" when I'm standing right there beside them (and one day I'm going to point out that that is more than a little bit rude, not to mention Not Even True) or they -- even worse -- talk to me like I'm about five, and can't understand.
"It's like living with all your senses turned up to full volume all the time," I say. "And it's like living life in a different language, so you can't ever quite relax because even when you think you're fluent it's still using a different part of your brain so by the end of the day you're exhausted. — Rachael Lucas

This was our last night. We only had one curtain call, Bree. And I thought they were going to give us a standing ovation, but no-o-o-. Do you know why half the audience stood up?"
"To get a head start on the traffic," Bree said.
"To get a head start on the traffic," Antonia agreed in indignation. "I mean, here we are, dancing and singing our little guts out, and all those folks want to do is get to bed early. I ask you, whatever happened to common courtesy? Whatever happened to decent manners? Doesn't anyone care about craft anymore? And on top of that, it's not even nice. — Mary Stanton

GEORGE AND MARLEE UP IN A TREE! K-I-S-S-I-N-G! We stopped. There was a kid over there, standing by a hackberry bush. I'd never seen him before, not at Mary Day or anywhere else. He wasn't but four and a half feet tall, and stocky. He had on gray shorts that went down all the way to his knees, and a green sweater with orange stripes. It was rounded out up top with little boy-tits and a poochy belly underneath. He had a beanie on his head, the stupid kind with a plastic propeller. His — Stephen King

I see the eight of us in the Annexe as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we're standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter. We're surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a way out we keep bumping into each other. We look at the fighting down below and the peace and beauty up above. In the meantime, we've been cut off by the dark mass of clouds, so that we can go neither up nor down. It looms before us like an impenetrable wall, trying to crush us, but not yet able to. I can only cry out and implore, 'Oh, ring, ring, open wide and let us out!' Yours, Anne — Anne Frank

The outright propagandist sets up in me such a fury of opposition I am not apt to care much whether he has got his facts straight or not. He is like someone standing on your toes between you and an open window, describing the view to you. All I ask of him to do is to open the window, stand out of the way, and let me look at the view for myself. — Katherine Anne Porter

She stampeed. "I am making him run late."
She gave a resolution of exact 60 seconds to herself to see if she can find her diamond necklace or else she would attend the party with out it.

She suddenly turned, as if her memory shouted out loud- Its on the chest right there!
To her bewilderment, he was standing just a few inches away holding a big mirror in hand.

That perplexed her. Not Adam. Not even the fact that her neck was already hosting the necklace.
But seeing herself that way, her very own self. As if, she was unapprehended she existed.

Adam was expecting a smile on her face, and that she would touch the necklace and say- "Oh my foolish self" but she touched her face and said- "Oh my self..."

That was foolish! — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

Kaz rapped his cane on the stone floor. He was standing in the doorway to the tomb. "If everyone is done cuddling, we have a job to do."
"Hold up," said Jesper, arm still slung around Inej. "We're not talking about the job until we figure out what those things were on the Stave."
"What things?" asked Inej.
"Did you miss half the Stave blowing up?"
"We saw the bomb at the White Rose go off," said Inej, "and then we heard another explosion."
"At the Anvil," said Nina.
"After that," Inej said, "we ran."
Jesper nodded sagely. "That was your big mistake. If you'd stuck around, you could have nearly been killed by a Shu guy with wings. — Leigh Bardugo

Her eyes rounded. "They don't open until eleven."
"Unless you're me, and you strike up a conversation with the prep cook who starts work at seven."
"Ah."
"Get your mind out of the gutter," he said, uncurling his forefinger from around his own cup to point it at her. "His name is George and he has a wife and three kids."
"My mind's not in the gutter!" Well, not since she woke from a twenty-minute midnight doze during which she'd imagined herself stretched out on her bed, Gage standing at its foot, slowing stripping off his clothes.
He grinned at her, then reached into his front pocket to pull free a slim camera. Still juggling his coffee, he managed to bring the viewfinder to his eye and snap a shot. "I'll call it 'Guilty as Charged.'"
"That's an invasion of privacy," she said, frowning at him.
"I think that blush indicates that you've been mentally invading mine."
"Gage! — Christie Ridgway

We are not different nor alike
But each strange in his leather body
sealed in skin and reaching out clumsy hands
and loving is an act
that cannot outlive
the open hand
the open eye
the door in the chest standing open. — Marge Piercy

Blue was standing over her, shaking out his wet hair like an annoying blue dog. Beads of water clung to the muscle of his chest. He was wiry, not buff like Henley, but his body made up for size with definition.
Nothing could make up for his personality.
"Stop dripping on me," Mira snapped. — Sarah Cross

Titter," Radcliffe muttered as he pushed the window open on the first empty room he found on the main floor. "What the devil is a titter? And how the hell am I supposed to try not to look so large?" Shaking his head with disgust, he held the window open with one hand as he sat on the ledge, then swung one leg after the other over the sill and into the room. Standing, he let the window slide closed, then took a moment to brush the wrinkles out of his skirt and yank at the bottom of his bodice to straighten it before hurrying across the room.
Pausing at the door, he pressed an ear to it to listen briefly, then eased it open and peered out. It was early afternoon and yet it seemed the women were all still abed. Slipping into the hallway, he pulled the door gently closed and hurried as quickly as a man could in a dress that kept catching at his boot spurs, toward the stairs. — Lynsay Sands

I studied him as he studied me. Something came out of that dimension. It looked like my husband. Smelled like him. Felt like him. But the being standing in a pool of billowing black smoke was not the man I married. He was a feral version of him. A beast.
This truly was Rey'azikeen. — Darynda Jones

What was standing in my way was my own self-awareness. If I can begin this fasting of the heart, self-awareness will vanish. Then I will be free from limitation and preoccupation I Is that what you mean?" "Yes," said Confucius, "that's it! If you can do this, you will be able to go among men in their world without upsetting them. You will not enter into conflict with their ideal image of themselves. If they will listen, sing them a song. If not, keep silent. Don't try to break down their door. Don't try out new medicines on them. Just be there among them, because there is nothing else for you to be but one of them. Then you may have success! — Thomas Merton

No. You don't get to get me all hot bothered, parading around in those sexy-as-hell ass-hugging jeans, and think you're going to get out of fucking me. Not happening." Hudson's standing there with the biggest smile on his face. I — Teagan Hunter

Longstreet took a deep breath. In the winter the fever had come to Richmond. In a week they were dead. All within a week, all three. He saw the sweet faces: moment of enormous pain. The thing had pushed him out of his mind, insane, but no one knew it. He had not thought God would do a thing like that ... she kept standing in the door: the boy is dead. And he could not even help her, could say nothing, could not move, could not even take her into his arms. Nothing to give. One strength he did not have. Oh God: my boy is dead. — Michael Shaara

We're not meant to fit in. We're meant to stand out. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

So sell the Hummer, buy a Dodge, and move into a trailer. (Wulf)
Oh, yeah, right. Remember when I traded the Hummer for an Alpha Romeo last year? You burned the car and bought me a new Hummer and threatened to lock me in my room with a hooker if I ever did it again. And as for the perks ... Have you bothered to look around this place? We have a heated indoor pool, a theater with surround sound, two cooks, three maids, and a pool guy I get to boss around, not to mention all kinds of other fun toys. I'm not about to leave Disneyland. It's the only good part in this arrangement. I mean, hell, if my life has to suck there's no way I'm going to live in the Mini-Winni. Which knowing you, you'd make me park out front anyway with armed guards standing watch in case I get a hangnail. (Chris) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

It's an amazing thing when you finally settle in to knowing you'll never fit in. The difference between the rest of the world and you; you feel to much about too many things. And most others feel not enough, about too few. Keep standing out. Keep showing the crowd what beautifully flying free is all about. — J. Raymond

He who is silent is forgotten; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed; out distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow becomes smaller; he who leaves off, gives up; the condition of standing still is the beginning of the end. — Henri Frederic Amiel

We're an Ag college," I explain to them. "Not as good as the one in Yanco but we have livestock."
"Cows?" Anson Choi asks, covering his nose.
"Pigs, too. And horses. Great for growing tomatoes.
The Cadets are wanna-be soldiers. City people. They may know how to street fight but they don't know how to wade through manure.
"I'm going to throw up," one of the guys says.
"Don't feel too bad," I explain. "Some of our lot did while they were laying out this stuff. Actually, right there where you're standing. — Melina Marchetta

And then finally the magic flowed, but not the same way as when the Dragon's spell-lessons dragged it in a rush out of me. Instead it seemed to me the sound of the chanting became a stream made to carry magic along, and I was standing by the water's edge with a pitcher that never ran dry, pouring a thin silver line into the rushing current. — Naomi Novik

We are out of the ditch, we're standing, we're walking, but we're not running. I want to grow the economy. — Hillary Clinton

Life is not about gutting out every situation. It's about identifying opportunity or the lack thereof. If your pride is all that is standing in the way of quitting, quit. The right people won't care and the wrong people don't matter. If you know you're on the right path, persevere though the pain. It will be worth it. — Seth Godin

Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really. — David Foster Wallace

Don't tell me what I want to hear. Tell me the truth. It may hurt, but it definitely won't hurt more than the feeling that I was told something out of pity, not out of honesty. If you mean it, say it. If you don't, keep your words until the right person is standing in front of you. If words are said too many times, they become cheap, and I only deserve to hear what is valuable — Najwa Zebian

Amah would not have approved of her meekly standing aside, twisting her hands as if she had no more resources than those girls who hung themselves without first exacting any retribution from their heartless lovers.
He would not get away with it.
She walked, like an automaton, to her horse. Her fingers dug out the jar of salve, but left behind the pilules that must be taken while one used the salve. He was already mounted when she approached him.
A quartet of birds trilled raucously as she presented the jar to him. Perhaps they were trying to warn him. Or her.
'Here, a parting gift,' she said softly. — Sherry Thomas

I see the eight of us in the Annex as if we were a patch of blue sky surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we're standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us, and the ring between us and the approaching danger is being pulled tighter and tighter. We're surrounded by darkness and danger, and in our desperate search for a way out we keep bumping into each other. We look at the fighting down below and the peace and beauty up above. In the meantime, we've been cut off by the dark mass of clouds, so that we can go neither up nor down. It looms before us like an impenetrable wall, trying to crush us, but not yet able to. I can only cry out and implore, Oh, ring, ring, open wide and let us out! — Anne Frank

Then he comes to the brink of a precipitous fall; that is, he comes to the point where he himself will have to be taken as standing-reserve. Meanwhile man, precisely as the one so threatened, exalts himself to the posture of lord of the earth. In this way the impression comes to prevail that everything man encounters exists only insofar as it is his construct. This illusion gives rise in turn to one final delusion: It seems as though man everywhere and always encounters only himself ... In truth, however, precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e. his essence. Man stands so decisively in attendance on the challenging-forth of Enframing that he does not apprehend Enframing as a claim, that he fails to see himself as the one spoken to, and hence also fails in every way to hear in what respect he ek-sists, from out of his essence, in the realm of an exhortation or address, and thus can never encounter only himself. — Martin Heidegger

It was an evil doom that set her in his path. For she is a fair maiden, fairest lady of a house of queens. And yet I know not how I should speak of her. When I first looked on her and perceived her unhappiness, it seemed to me that I saw a white flower standing straight and proud, shapely as a lily and yet knew that it was hard, as if wrought by elf-wrights out of steel.
(Aragorn talking of Eowyn, in the Houses of Healing) — J.R.R. Tolkien

Most of the time it's the parents who recognise me. They try to tell their kids, 'Look, it's Giselle,' and I say, 'No, no, no, don't ruin this for them,' because I'm usually standing there with my hair sideways and no make-up on. And the kid is saying, 'That is not Giselle. No way. That is some worn-out girl who really needs a bath.' — Amy Adams

THE TWINS WERE eighteen months old now, walking (and standing and staring and screaming and sitting) just like other children more or less their age, and Andy found herself increasingly preoccupied with those baby scrapbooks her brother's wife had sent when they were born. Andy had gotten Janny's to the six-month mark - the last photo was of her sitting up in the baby bath with her fingers in her mouth. Richie's and Michael's - not even birth pictures. Birth pictures of the twins existed, but they reminded Andy more of mug shots than of baby photos, naked in incubators, little skinny limbs and odd heads, no hair except where it shouldn't be, on arms and back, like monkeys. She had stuffed the scrapbooks onto the upper shelf in the closet in Richie and Michael's room, and every time she slid open that door, she would see their spines, white, pink, and blue, the silliest objects in her very modern house, ready to get thrown out. — Jane Smiley

So it wasn't actually that bad, it took a couple of weeks to sort of get used to uh, you know, standing around and pretending to have ice shoot out of your hand, but once you got used to that it uh, it was actually not that hard. — Shawn Ashmore

Beverly had thought how strange and wonderful it would be if the earth were hurled far from its orbit, into the cold extremes of black space where the sun was a faint cool disc, not even a quarter-moon, and night was everlasting. Imagine the industry, she thought, as every tree, every piece of coal, and every scrap of wood were burned for heat and light. Though the sea would freeze, men would go out in the darkness and pierce it's glassy ice to find the stilled fish. But finally all the animals would be eaten and their hides and wool stitched and woven, all the coal would be burned, and not a tree would be left standing. Silence would rule the earth, for the wind would stop and the sea would be heavy glass. People would die quietly, buried in their furs and down. — Mark Helprin

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.
Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. — William Wordsworth

The music cuts out and suddenly my breathing sounds really loud. It also seems to amplify his whole nakedness.
I stare at him. Actually I try not to stare at him but it's kind of hard not to. I mean, he's standing there topless in front of me and his stomach looks like it just walked out of an Abercrombie catalogue. Sweat has darkened the waistband of his jeans. He's holding a spanner in one hand, the tyre in the other. — Sarah Alderson

And she ran out of the diesel combustion and right to me and we held each other and we were not empty at all.
"Holling," she said. "I was so afraid I wouldn't fine you."
"I was standing right here, Heather." I said. "I'll always be standing right here. — Gary D. Schmidt

The wildly drunk man from the cabin next door to ours is in front of me in the crowd. He's so drunk that he's standing in the women-and-children section. He complains loudly that this is boring and that we are a bunch of assholes. When a clearly terrified woman blurts out, "Please, sir, be quiet," he sways for a second and then lets out a long "Shuuuuut uuuuuuuup" that is funny not just because of its Jackie Gleason-style delivery but also because of its inappropriateness in a situation where we're all probably going to die. — Tina Fey

Wait, so you do love me?" I asked, hope welling in my heart.
She growled and pounded her fist into a locker, leaving a fist-shaped dent. "Stop it, Justin. Stop it!"
I grabbed her shoulders. "Look at me and tell me you don't love me," I said. "Do it and I'll never bother you again."
"I don't love you," she mumbled.
"Look at me when you say it!"
She turned to me, her eyes hard but dull and faded. "I don't love you."
I let her go. My heart turned to lead, the heavy lump sagging in my chest. "Well, if there are agents out there looking to kill me, I guess it would be a mercy."
I turned to leave. Her hand gripped my shoulder.
"Please listen to me, Justin."
I pushed her hand away but didn't turn to face her. I couldn't let her see the tears welling in my eyes. "Why? What does it matter?"
"It just does. I - I don't want to see you hurt."
I took a deep shuddering breath. "You're not doing a very good job of it." I walked away and left her standing there. — John Corwin

They are afraid to read out loud, fearful of being thought stupid or foolish or - what? I ask them. Girlish? Boring, says one Megan. (Which Megan? I can't remember.) This is a terrible fear, I know - this fear of not being interesting - of being trivial, not special. It is almost as great, I think, as their fear of standing out and being special. — Sallie Tisdale

What about him?" she'd say, finding an attractive guy to point out while they were standing in the lunch line. "Do you want to kiss him?"
"I don't want to kiss a stranger," Cath would answer. "I'm not interested in lips out of context. — Rainbow Rowell

Are we fighting?" I asked Morelli. "No. Were discussing." "Are you sure?" "Am I yelling?" Morelli asked. "Is my face purple? Are the cords on my neck standing out? Am I waving my arms around?" "No." "The were not fighting. — Janet Evanovich

It was Buckley, as my father and sister joined the group and listened to Grandma Lynn's countless toasts, who saw me. He saw me standing under the rustic colonial clock and stared. He was drinking champagne. There were strings coming out from all around me, reaching out, waving in the air. Someone passed him a brownie. He held it in his hand but did not eat. He saw my shape and face, which had not changed-the hair still parted down the middle, the chest still flat and hips undeveloped-and wanted to call out my name. It was only a moment, and then I was gone. — Alice Sebold

Elegance is not standing out, but being remembered. — Giorgio Armani

Eventually man, too, found his way back to the sea. Standing on its shores, he must have looked out upon it with wonder and curiosity, compounded with an unconscious recognition of his lineage. He could not physically re-enter the ocean as the seals and whales had done. But over the centuries, with all the skill and ingenuity and reasoning powers of his mind, he has sought to explore and investigate even its most remote parts, so that he might re-enter it mentally and imaginatively. — Rachel Carson

Miss Manette!'
The young lady, to whom all eyes had been turned before, and were now turned again, stood up where she had sat. Her father rose with her, and kept her hand drawn through his arm.
'Miss Manette, look upon the prisoner.'
To be confronted with such pity, and such earnest youth and beauty, was far more trying to the accused than to be confronted with all the crowd. Standing, as it were, apart with her on the edge of his grave, not all the staring curiosity that looked on, could, for the moment, nerve him to remain quite still. His hurried right hand parcelled out the herbs before him into imaginary beds of flowers in a garden; and his efforts to control and steady his breathing shook the lips from which the colour rushed to his heart. The buzz of the great flies was loud again.
'Miss Manette, have you ever seen the prisoner before?'
'Yes, sir. — Charles Dickens

I climb out of the Jacuzzi, go to the edge of the pool, curl my toes around the border tiles, and do a standing flip, which I pretzel into a can opener, leaning back just far enough to truly propel a geyser but not so far as to hit my head.

Going under, I hear maximal vacuum suckage. Everything shudders. An aquatic bomb explodes. I surface to see that I have drenched half the banshees.

They stare at me in saucer-eyed wonderment, because I have just done in one dive what they have failed to do in a hundred- shellacked the ceiling, which is now dripping wet, especially around the central light fixture.

I'm kind of disguted with myself for showing off, but it's important to let them know that there are standards in the world. — Conrad Wesselhoeft

These people looked Japanese, were originally Japanese, were numerous. We had no way of knowing to what extent they had been infiltrated. To their great credit, it seems not to have been very much at all. But I can understand why. And I rather respect Eleanor for standing out against the tide at that point. But it certainly was a tide. And I'm not going to say it was unjustified. — William A. Rusher

I love my job. But I like to have fun at work. So I don't get finicky if one strand of hair is standing out in a shot. I don't get finicky about broken nails. I don't let small things affect me. I'm not perfect. Nobody is. There's no fun in being perfect. I enjoy my work; there's no pressure on me. — Sonakshi Sinha

I went camping one time when I was twelve, to the Great Lakes. My friend stepped in really deep muddy water and started screaming and sinking. My mom ran up, and I was just standing there a foot away and wouldn't stick out my hand to pull him up. So I'm probably not the best person to take on a camping trip. — Norman Reedus

Hate the sin, not the sinner" isn't working...I encourage you to instead "Love the sinner, not the sin." Remove the word hate from your vocabulary, and start reflecting an image of Jesus that portrays him differently than a man standing on a soapbox wielding a megaphone. I can't ever recall a person who came to faith because of hate. Let's start a movement of people who are willing to take hate out of the equation and love people regardless of their sins — Jarrid Wilson

Unlike most other members of the Court, I do not regard the non-powered as being lesser. Perhaps it is because I lack the courage to go out and face what they do, but in any case I know they are just as good as me. Still, by long-standing tradition and policy, non-powered individuals cannot become members of the Court - the ruling circle. The Court answers to the highest individuals in the land only, and not always to them. — Daniel O'Malley

The PURPOSE of the DATA INTEGRITY BOARD review meeting is NOT for the purpose of reviewing the INTEGRITY of the paperwork because that has already been decided, it is for the PURPOSE of determining the CHARACTER & STANDING of THE MAN/WOMAN who brought the perfect paperwork and was intending to use the perfect paperwork for COMMERCIAL settlement and closure. So they have to find out if the STATUS and CHARACTER of the party who is going to use the paperwork was going to be ALLOWED to use it. — Jack Smith

I realized that the childish impression I had always had of my father, as Just Lawgiver, was entirely wrong. We were utterly dependent on this man, who was not only deluded and ignorant, but incompetent in every way. What was more, I knew that my mother was incapable of standing up to him. It was like walking into the cockpit of an airplane and finding the pilot and co-pilot passed out drunk in their seats. And standing outside the Lyceum, I was struck with a black, incredulous horror, which in fact was not at all unlike the horror I had felt at twelve, sitting on a bar stool in our sunny little kitchen in Plano. Who is in control here? I thought, dismayed. Who is flying this plane? — Donna Tartt

September laughed a little. She tried to make it sound light and happy, as though it were all over now and how funny it was, when you think about it, that simply not having another person by you could hurt so. But it did not come out quite right; there was a heaviness in her laughing like ice at the bottom of a glass. She still missed Saturday, yet he was standing right beside her! Missing him had become a part of her, like a hard, dark bone, and she needed so much more than a few words to let it go. In all this while, she had spent more time missing Saturday than seeing him. — Catherynne M Valente

Not if we kill them - " I began, only to cut off when a sudden rushing noise filled the air. And Ray grabbed my gun and went ballistic on something on the wall over our heads.
"Die! Die! Die!" he screamed, emptying the clip and causing spent shells to rain down all around us. And okay, maybe I'd been wrong about the calm thing. Because he was just standing there, trembling and panting and staring
At the air-conditioning vent that he'd just shot the crap out of.
" - first." I took my smoking gun out of his limp fingers and patted him on the back. "See? That's the spirit. — Karen Chance

I remember him standing next to me at Hoosier Hill, smiling out at the ugly trees and the ugly farmland and the ugly kids as if he could see Oz. 'Believe it or not, it's actually beautiful to some people..' So I decide to see it through his eyes. — Jennifer Niven

I was 9 years old when I had my first glimpse of wholeness. It was early Christmas morning and I was standing in my pajamas in the living room and looked out of the large windows. Outside the white snow flakes silently singled down toward a snowclad landscape. Suddenly I was filled with a feeling of being one with the slowly dancing snowflakes, one with the silent landscape.
I did not understand then that this was my first taste of meditation, but it created a deep thirst and a longing in my heart to return to this natural and effortless experience of being one with the Whole. — Swami Dhyan Giten

I don't even like the word 'indoors'. It doesn't make sense. According to you right now, by stepping through the doorway I'd be indoors. Yet I wouldn't actually be standing in the doorway. If it's supposed to refer to being inside a building, then they shouldn't have used the word 'door,' since last time I checked, doors don't make up every square inch of a building! And I'd assume that now, since I'm not indoors, you'd say I'm 'out of doors', right? But, shouldn't out of doors just be everywhere that's not directly under a door? You know what, from now on I insist that everyone refer to being in a building as being 'under-roof'. — Natalie Bina

Helena had been standing by her window looking out to sea, breathing in the fresh air and admiring the picturesque scene of a small ship sailing into the harbor.
She had not been able to think of anything other than Mikolas for days.
From LONGING the 3rd chapter of TRUE LOVE — Destin Bays

Even so, I was proud of myself for taking action at all. I didn't hide or run away or pretend the ugliness didn't happen. I stood up and said something that was true. I said it out loud, and by doing so, I was standing up for lots of people, not just me. — Lauren Myracle

The king's very simple cousin, for example, pointed out that the tower Froi could see from where he was standing was the prison and currently held only one prisoner. "The rest of the the scum are kept in dungeons close to the bridge of the Citavita," the man explained.
"And the king?" Froi asked.
"We try not to refer to him as scum out loud," the man whispered. — Melina Marchetta

He looked up as the party emerged and nickered a soft hello to his master, who was dressed in an unfamiliar green cloak and had dirt plastered on his face. Halt glanced at him, brow furrowed, and silently mouthed the words 'shut up'. Abelardshook his mane, which was as close as a horse could come to shruging, and turned away.
'My horse recognized me,' Halt said accusingly out of the side of his mouth to Horace.
Horace glanced at the small shagging horse, standing beside his own massive battlehorse.
'Mine didn't,' he replied. 'So that's a fifty-fifty result.'
'I think I'd like odds better than that,' Halt replied.
Horace suppressed a grin. 'Don't worry. He can probably smell you.'
'I can smell myself,' Halt replied acerbically. 'I smell of tea and soot.'
Horace thought it was wiser not to reply to that. — John Flanagan

I sat there behind the wheel of my car, not sure what I should do, wishing I was someplace else, anyplace else, trying on shoes at Thom McAn's, filling out a credit application in a discount store, standing in front of a pay toilet stall with diarrhea and no dime. Anyplace, man. It didn't have to be Monte Carlo. Mostly I sat there wishing I was older. — Stephen King

Gregory is a good boy, though all the Latin he has learned, all the sonorous periods of the great authors, have rolled through his head and out again, like stones. Still, you think of Thomas More's boy: offspring of a scholar all Europe admired, and poor young John can barely stumble through his Pater Noster. Gregory is a fine archer, a fine horseman, a shining star in the tilt yard, and his manners cannot be faulted. He speaks reverently to his superiors, not scuffling his feet or standing on one leg, and he is mild and polite with those below him. He knows how to bow to foreign diplomats in the manner of their own countries, sits at table without fidgeting or feeding spaniels, can neatly carve and joint any fowl if requested to serve his elders. He doesn't slouch around with his jacket off one shoulder, or look in windows to admire himself, or stare around in church, or interrupt old men, or finish their stories for them. If anyone sneezes, he says, 'Christ help you! — Hilary Mantel

People felt themselves watching him even before they knew that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a person think that he heard things that no one else had ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did not seem quite human. — Carson McCullers

He looks up and the loss in his Noise is so great it feels like I'm standing on the edge of an abyss, that I'm about to fall down into him, into blackness so empty and lonely there'd never be a way out.
"Todd," I say again, a catch in my voice. "On the ledge, under the waterfall, do you remember what you said to me? Do you remember what you said to save me?"
He's shaking his head slowly. "I've done terrible things, Viola. Terrible things-"
"We all fall, you said." I'm gripping his hand now. "We all fall but that's not what matters. What matters is picking yourself up again. — Patrick Ness

For the fact was drugs were not necessary to most of us, because the music, youth, sweaty bodies were enough. And if it was too hot, too humid to sleep the next day, and we awoke bathed in sweat, it did not matter: We remained in a state of animated suspension the whole hot day. We lived for music, we lived for Beauty, and we were poor. But we didn't care where we were living, or what we had to do during the day to make it possible; eventually, if you waited long enough, you were finally standing before the mirror in that cheap room, looking at your face one last time, like an actor going onstage, before rushing out to walk in the door of that discotheque and see someone like Malone. — Andrew Holleran

To write out the precepts again, we contend with them, and keep them; we build our humanity, and keep our humanity alive ... Thay has named the precepts 'wonderful' ... Wonderful because they can protect us, and show us how to live a joyous life, an interesting, adventurous, deep, large life, and how to be with one another, and with animals, plants, and all the Earth and universe. Wonderful because when we practice the precepts, we existentially become humane, we embody loving kindness ... Standing in the midst of burning ruins, I was glad that I knew the precepts. Though I kept their tenets imperfectly, even in aspiration I created some invisible good that could not be destroyed ... The Five Wonderful Precepts give clear and simple directions to finding that life. In devastation, I have blueprints for making home anew (90-92).
For a Future to Be Possible: Commentaries on the Five Wonderful Precepts — Maxine Hong Kingston

A country, after all, is not something you build as the pharaohs built the pyramids, and then leave standing there to defy eternity. A country is something that is built every day out of certain basic shared values. — Pierre Trudeau

By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us - set us right with him, make us fit for him - we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that's not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand - out in the wide open spaces of God's grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise. — Paul The Apostle

Finally, I found what seemed at the time to be a lid of some sort. Presuming it was a toilet seat (but not really caring one way or the other) I lifted it up, then dropped my shorts and began to piss. Ahhh ... success. Then I stumbled back to bed and passed out. It wasn't until the next morning that I realized what had actually happened. I woke to the sight of Junior standing over my bed with a look of disgust on his face. Hey, man. Did you pee in my suitcase? — Dave Mustaine

If I had it my way, Harper and I wouldn't be standing in this room right now, we wouldn't be pressed against each other. I would just be her roommate's brother who pisses her off. But when it came to this girl, I was no longer in control of anything. She consumed me in every way possible. My brain was telling me to run from her, to keep her safe, to keep her from someone like me, but she had my heart completely, and that was winning out. I wanted her, I wanted her to want me and only me. Not Brandon even though I knew he was the better choice for her. But that just didn't matter to me at the moment; all I cared about was the fact that one of my best friends was winning over the only girl that would ever mean anything to me. - Chase Grayson. — Molly McAdams

As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool - not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others - a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive. — C.S. Lewis

She frowned, thinking of going down there and explaining herself all over again, reliving the horror of finding Mimi's body and trying not to think of how she'd looked when they'd dragged her up and out of the ravine. No sooner had she thought it than she heard Mimi's voice, chastising her over a year ago.

"You hide from life, Catherine. Even when you're in the middle of it, standing toe to toe with all the bad guys you bring in, you manage to keep an emotional distance. I understand why you do it, but ultimately, you're the one who will suffer. You're the one who's going to grow old alone."

Cat blinked back tears, remembering what she'd told her.

I won't be alone, Mimi. I'll always have you.

Obviously she had been wrong. — Sharon Sala

If you are not the free person you want to be you must find a place to tell the truth about that. To tell how things go for you. Candor is like a skein being produced inside the belly day after day, it has to get itself woven out somewhere. You could whisper down a well. You could write a letter and keep it in a drawer. You could inscribe a curse on a ribbon of lead and bury it in the ground to lie unread for thousands of years. The point is not to find a reader, the point is the telling itself. Consider a person standing alone in a room. The house is silent. She is looking down at a piece of paper. Nothing else exists. All her veins go down into this paper. She takes her pen and writes on it some marks no one else will ever see, she bestows on it a kind of surplus, she tops it off with a gesture as private and accurate as her own name — Anne Carson

It was a Friday morning, and Walmart was populated only by the occasional mom with very young children and the random senior citizen, which made my bathroom makeover less conspicuous. Only one woman came in while I stood in front of the mirror, and she went straight to the toilets. I made sure that when she came out I was no longer standing in front of the mirror but was huddled with my palms stretched out beneath a loud hand dryer, my face completely averted. No one expects to see a celebrity in their local Walmart bathroom. Most of us don't really look at each other anyway. Our eyes glance off without really registering what we're seeing. It's human nature. It's polite society. Ignore each other unless someone is grotesquely fat or immodestly dressed or disfigured in some way - and then we pretend not to see, but we see everything. I was none of those things, and so far human nature was working in my favor. — Amy Harmon

These days, when people compete for ever more imaginative ways to make themselves stand out, when all of life is one big exhibition and if it's not on Facebook and Twitter it's like it never happened, I suppose many people would enjoy standing out. But that's because they don't have to stand out. Standing out is their luxury, not their necessity. — Rose Waldman

Suddenly, the swan dropped down from the sky, flew low over the swamp, almost touching the water, just slow enough to have a closer look at the girl. The sight of the swan's cold eye staring straight into hers, made the girl feel exposed, hunted and found, while all those who had suddenly stopped eating fish, watched this big black thing look straight at the only person that nobody had ever bothered having a close look at. Her breathing went AWOL while her mind stitched row after row of fretting to strangle her breath: What are they thinking about me now? What did the swan have to single me out for and not anyone else standing around? What kind of premonition is this? Heart-thump thinking was really tricky for her. She feasted on a plague of outsidedness. It was always better never to have to think about what other people thought of her. — Alexis Wright

She'd seen them on the news, compassionate Americans talking about how the United States should be more welcoming to people who came in peace. She believed these kindhearted people, like Natasha, would never betray them, and she wanted to tell Jende this, that the people of Judson Memorial Church loved immigrants, that their secret was safe with Natasha. But she also knew it would be futile reasoning with a raging man, so she decided to sit quietly with her head bowed as he unleashed a verbal lashing, as he called her a stupid idiot and a bloody fool. The man who had promised to always take care of her was standing above her vomiting a parade of insults, spewing out venom she never thought he had inside him. For the first time in a long love affair, she was afraid he would beat her. She was almost certain he would beat her. And if he had, she would have known that it was not her Jende who was beating her but a grotesque being created by the sufferings of an American immigrant life. — Imbolo Mbue

Oh, you just look at something and figure out how it works," Kai deadpanned, standing beside her. "Is that all?" Cinder fixed her ponytail and shrugged, suddenly embarrassed. "It's just mechanics." Kai scooped an arm around her waist and pulled her against him. "No, it's impressive," he said, using the pad of his thumb to brush something off Cinder's cheek. "Not to mention, weirdly attractive," he said, before capturing her lips. — Marissa Meyer

Hell," he said, looking down his body. "I shouldn't have thought about that just yet. Now Alice is going to come out of the bathroom and see you standing there being demanding. That's not very gentlemanly ... "
This just made him even harder.
With a sigh, he snatched up her pirate hat and slapped it over his crotch. "There. Now we can at least present the semblance of a man who doesn't have a single track mind. — Katie MacAlister

For in this sickened world, it is better to believe in something too fiercely than to believe in nothing.' Words, words, wonderful words. But lies too. 'No, it isn't!' shouted Mosca the Housefly, Quillam Mye's daughter. 'Not if what you're believin' isn't blinkin' well True! You shouldn't just go believin' things for no reason, pertickly if you got a sword in your hand! Sacred just means something you're not meant to think about properly, an' you should never stop thinking! Show me something I can kick, and hit with rocks, and set fire to, and leave out in the rain, and think about, and if it's still standing after all that then maybe, just maybe, I'll start to believe in it, but not till then. An' if all we're left with is muck and wickedness and no gods, then we'd better face it and get used to it because it's better than a lie. Which is what you are, Mr Kohlrabi.' Mosca — Frances Hardinge

As Charles Stewart Parnell called out during the Irish rent strike campaign in 1879 and 1880:
It is no use relying on the Government ... You must only rely upon your own determination ... Help yourselves by standing together ... strengthen those amongst yourselves who are weak ... , band yourselves together, organize yourselves ... and you must win ...
When you have made this question ripe for settlement,then and not till then will it be settled. — Gene Sharp

I'm not perfect. I think more highly of snow and ice than love. It's easier for me to be interested in mathematics than to have affection for my fellow human beings. But I am anchored to something in life that is constant. You can call it a sense of orientation; you can call it woman's intuition; you can call it whatever you like. I'm standing on a foundation and have no farther to fall. It could be that I haven't managed to organize my life very well. But I always have a grip - with at least one finger at a time - on Absolute Space. That's why there's a limit to how far the world can twist out of joint, and to how badly things can go before I find out. I now know, without a shadow of a doubt, that something is wrong. I — Peter Hoeg

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood - it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." Martin Luther King, Jr. — Steven Pressfield

At the hill's foot Frodo found Aragorn, standing still and silent as a tree; but in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eyes. He was wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they had been in this same place. For the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord fall and fair; and he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see. Arwen vanimelda, namarie! He said, and then he drew a breath, and returning out of his thought he looked at Frodo and smiled.

'Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth,' he said, 'and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!' And taking Frodo's hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as a living man. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I'm very comfortable with my own body. I come from Broadway - everybody's naked on Broadway. I like to think of myself as more granola. I'm not going to run around naked or anything like that unless I'm at my own home. Today, I walked into my backyard and was standing out there naked for a while. Don't tell: my neighbors will freak out! — Lea Michele

Being a parent is standing on a shore and watching her child in a vulnerable craft, heading out over deeper and deeper water, hoping but not knowing there will be land somewhere ahead. — Matt Haig

But after all, truth is something that cannot be given to you. You have to find it out for yourself. And to find it out for yourself, you must be a law to yourself, you must be a guide to yourself, not the political man that is going to save the world, not the communist, not the leader, not the priest, not the sannyasi, not the books; you have to live, you have to be a law to yourself. And therefore no authority - which means completely standing alone, not outwardly, but inwardly completely alone, which means no fear. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Some primary reasons that both Plato and Aristotle had for believing in God were utterly erroneous - simple errors caused by our being stuck to the planet and misled by the sensation that the planet is standing still. If they had been aware that the Earth spins, they would have understood that, by and large, we are making our own light show in the night sky. As it was, the precision of the movements of all the stars seemed astonishing. If we knew how we lined up among the planets, their motion would not seem so strange and willful. Also, had the philosophers been able to leave planet Earth for a jaunt in outer space, they could have seen that, at a distance from gravity and atmosphere, moving things tend to keep moving, without any need for an impelling force. From out there, the motion of the planets would seem natural as well. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Shortly after I began work with Teresa, I acquired another MPD client, a supposedly schizophrenic young man I will call Tony. He called in to the clinic on a day I was on telephone duty, saying he was having flashbacks of "ritual abuse." I did not yet know what that was. Tony became my client. He could be quite entertaining. I have a vivid memory of him as a three-year-old, "Tiny Tony," standing on his head on my office couch, and running down the hall to try unsuccessfully to make it to the bathroom. He had in his head the entire rock band of Guns'n'Roses, and I got to know Axl, the band leader, quite well. I remember the time Tony was in hospital and I went to visit him; Axl popped out and said, "Remember, we're schizophrenic in here! — Alison Miller

There was one painting, I remember, that showed a broad, clean sweep of sky and the ocean drawn out to the horizon, and the sand littered with seashells and crabs and mermaid's purses and bits of seaweed. A boy and girl were standing four feet apart, not facing each other, not acknowledging each other in any way, just standing,looking out at the water. I always liked that painting. I liked to think they had a secret. — Lauren Oliver

Everybody keeps calling for Excellence excellence not just in schooling, throughout society. But as soon as somebody or something stands out as Excellent, the other shout goes up: "Elitism!" And whatever produced that thing, whoever praises that result, is promptly put down. "Standing out" is undemocratic. — Jacques Barzun

You are designed by God not to blend in, but to stand out — Myles Munroe

I wanted to feel like I could extend someone else's joy and not crush it, and that is the giant paradox nowadays of being a powerful woman: you want to live in a space of compassion and helpfulness and joy and expression, and the world is standing there, pointing the finger at you and telling you that you're greedy and domineering and attention-grabbing, and all you can do is shrug and just say, "Hopefully, someone out there understands and isn't misinterpreting." — Amanda Palmer