Nothing To See Here Quotes & Sayings

I had less control over my thoughts than I'd have liked. The little ring hung around my neck, under my gown, where nobody could see it. When I was alone, I took it out sometimes, wondering how he had judged the size, with nothing but my swollen, knotted fingers to go by. Wondering if my hands would ever be as they once were, small, white, and fine. By the time that happened, if it ever did, I would be long gone from here. I would have left behind both husband and wedding ring. It mattered little whether the size were right or no. Yet, when I thought this, I found my hand closing around the ring as if I did not want to let it go. It's mine, something inside me would say. — Juliet Marillier

How do we get there? How did you get here, by the way?' [Will asked].
He heard Halt's deep sigh and knew he'd done it again.
'Do you ever,' the older Ranger said with great deliberation, 'manage to ask just one question at a time? Or does it always have to be multiple choice with you?'
Will looked at him in surprise. 'Do I do that?' he asked. 'Are you sure?'
Halt said nothing. He raised his hands in a 'See what I mean?' gesture ...
'Halt,' [Selethen said], 'I could be wrong, but I think you were just guilty of the same fault. I'm sure I heard you ask two questions just then.'
'Thank you for pointing that out, Lord Selethen,' Halt said with icy formality. — John Flanagan

Lovers of God possess intense concentration. In prayer their attention rivets itself so completely onto God that nothing can tear it away. Even a suggestion of the divine may draw them into a higher state of consciousness. Occasionally this can be somewhat inconvenient. Sri Ramakrishna once went to see a religious drama produced by his disciple. The curtain went up and a character started singing the praises of the Lord. Sri Ramakrishna immediately began to enter the supreme state of consciousness. The stage faded; the actors and actresses faded. As only a great mystic can, he uttered a protest: "I come here, Lord, to see a play staged by my disciple, and you send me into ecstasy. I won't let it happen!" And he started saying over and over, "Money... money...money," so as to keep some awareness of the temporal world. — Eknath Easwaran

here is nothing to see, however, and not a soul to meet. You might walk for twenty miles along this track without being able to fix a point in your mind, unless you are a bushman. This is because of the everlasting, maddening sameness of the stunted trees - that monotony which makes a man long to break away and travel as far as trains can go, and sail as far as ship can sail - and farther. — Henry Lawson

He buys Playboy magazines and looks through them once, then gives them to me. That's what it's like to be rich.
Here's what it's like to be poor. Your wife leaves you because you can't find a job because there aren't any jobs to find. You empty the jar of pennies on the mantel to buy cigarettes. You hate to answer the phone; it can't possibly be good news. When your friends invite you out, you don't go. After a while, they stop inviting. You owe them money, and sometimes they ask for it. You tell them you'll see what you can scrape up.
Which is this: nothing. — Tom Franklin

But this is predicated upon the man's becoming in very fact an American and nothing but an American. If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and separated from the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part as an American. There can be no divided allegiance here ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a polyglot boarding-house; and we have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people. — Theodore Roosevelt

Because it's a fucking disaster to be creative when you know you're not Mozart or Keats. Dammit, I got tired of scratching around in my past. There's nothing in me to justify the pretension of creativity. This came before anything, before you, before Raquel, this is a matter of my own emptiness, my awareness of my own limits, maybe my sterility. Does what I'm saying to you seem awful? Now you want to come along and sell me an illusion, which I don't believe in but which does make me believe that either you're a fool or you underestimate my intelligence. Why don't you just leave me alone, so I can fill the emptiness in my own way? Let me see things for myself, learn if something can still grow in my soul, an idea, a faith, because I swear to you, Laura, my soul is more desolate than this rock landscape you see here ... why? — Carlos Fuentes

By virtue of Creation, and still more the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

What a nightmare!" cried Imtaz. "There's nothing gloomier than nature. You'll lose your sense of humor in the country. Unable to criticize the trees, your intelligence will lose its edge as you contemplate the plowed fields, and then, it'll be very easy for you to sing the praises of your fellow men because you won't be here to see and listen to them. Don't make that mistake. Never cut yourself off from mankind because, with distance, you're more likely to grant men extenuating circumstances. I love you too much to let you succumb to that weakness. — Albert Cossery

Down, down, down. There was nothing else to do, so Alice soon began talking again. 'Dinah'll miss me very much to-night, I should think!' (Dinah was the cat.) 'I hope they'll remember her saucer of milk at tea-time. Dinah my dear! I wish you were down here with me! There are no mice in the air, I'm afraid, but you might catch a bat, and that's very like a mouse, you know. But do cats eat bats, I wonder?' And here Alice began to get rather sleepy, and went on saying to herself, in a dreamy sort of way, 'Do cats eat bats? Do cats eat bats?' and sometimes, 'Do bats eat cats?' for, you see, as she couldn't answer either question, it didn't much matter which way she put it. She felt that she was dozing off, and had just begun to dream that she was walking hand in hand with Dinah, and saying to her very earnestly, 'Now, Dinah, tell me the truth: did you ever eat a bat?' when suddenly, thump! thump! down she came upon a heap of sticks and dry leaves, and the fall was over. — Lewis Carroll

The annoying this was that their authority loomed larger by the hour. One is not aware of it, but these men are kings. Throwing open my rooms, they would say, "Everything here belongs to us." They would fall upon my scraps of thought: "This is ours." They would challenge my story, "Talk," and my story would put itself at their service. In haste, I would rid myself of myself. I distributed my blood, my innermost being among them, lent them the universe, gave them the day. Right before their eyes, though they were not at all startles, I became a drop of water, a spot of ink. I reduced myself to them. The whole presence of me passed in full view before them, and when at last nothing was present but my perfect nothingness and there was nothing more to see, they ceased to see me too. Very irritated, they stood up and cried out, "All right, where are you? Where are you hiding? Hiding is forbidden, it is an offense," etc. — Maurice Blanchot

My friends, my children, and fellow sufferers, when I reflect on the
distribution of good and evil here below, I find that much has been
given man to enjoy, yet still more to suffer. Though we should examine
the whole world, we shall not find one man so happy as to have nothing
left to wish for; but we daily see thousands who by suicide shew us they
have nothing left to hope. In this life then it appears that we cannot
be entirely blest; but yet we may be completely miserable! — Oliver Goldsmith

I want to see you again." He stopped, took her face in his hands. "I need to see you again."
Her pulse jumped, as if it had nothing to do with the rest of her. "Roarke, what's going on here?"
"Lieutenant." He leaned forward, touched his lips to hers. "indications are we're having a romance. — J.D. Robb

Because there are times when the anger bleeds away until it's nothing but a raw ache in the pit of my stomach and I see the world and wonder about its people and what it's become and I think about hope and maybe and possibly and possibility and potential. I think about glasses half full and glasses to see the world clearly. I think about sacrifice. And compromise. I think about what will happen if no one fights back. I think about a world where no one stands up to injustice. And I wonder if maybe everyone here is right. If maybe it's time to fight. — Tahereh Mafi

Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,
Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!
Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Here's much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! Serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh? — William Shakespeare

I didn't do anything.I fumble with tears."
"You listened." She handed him back his bandanna.
"Mostly because tears render me speechless.You've a bit of garden dirt here."
Keeley came down the path just in time to see Brian gently wipe her mother's face with a blue bandanna.The tearstains had her leaping forward like a mama bear to her threatened cub.
"What is it? What did you do?" Hissing at Brian, she wrapped an arm around Adelia's shoudler.
"Nothing.I just knocked your mother down and kicked her a few times. — Nora Roberts

THE BUDDHISTS WOULD SAY that everything you need is right here, within you. There's no need to seek outside yourself for the answers. Nothing - no place, no person - can complete you or make you happy. The longer I live, the more I see and experience, the more certain I am that this is true. And yet, occasionally, a shakeup in location, or in the company you keep, can touch you in just the right way, awaken something inside you. At precisely the moment you need it. Timing — Lisa Napoli

There is a fairly common pattern in this field where folks go through about three distinct stages. it true of other areas.
1. You know that you know nothing: here you pretty much just use someone else's canned workouts since you don't know what you're doing
2. You know just enough to be dangerous. This is when everybody starts overcomplicating things. You see these insanely complicated training programs and periodization schemes. Lots of charts, graphs and flowcharts.
3. You realize that the above doesn't matter 999 times out of 1000 and you go back to keeping it simple. You realize that hard work on the basics + talent + time > everything else. — Lyle McDonald

In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don't want it in the oil business. They know there is nothing a man in Washington can do to plug a hole a mile down in the gulf.
On the other hand, they demand that the president 'take control.' They demand that he hold press conferences, show leadership, announce that the buck stops here and do something. They want him to emote and perform the proper theatrical gestures so they can see their emotions enacted on the public stage.
They want to hold him responsible for things they know he doesn't control. Their reaction is a mixture of disgust, anger, longing and need. It may not make sense. But it doesn't make sense that the country wants spending cuts and doesn't want cuts, wants change and doesn't want change. — David Brooks

Floyd sometimes wondered if the Newspad, and the fantastic technology behind it, was the last word in man's quest for perfect communications. Here he was, far out in space, speeding away from Earth at thousands of miles an hour, yet in a few milliseconds he could see the headlines of any newspaper he pleased. (That very word "newspaper," of course, was an anachronistic hangover into the age of electronics.) The text was updated automatically on every hour; even if one read only the English versions, one could spend an entire lifetime doing nothing but absorbing the everchanging flow of information from the news satellites. It was hard to imagine how the system could be improved or made more convenient. But sooner or later, Floyd guessed, it would pass away, to be replaced by something as unimaginable as the Newspad itself would have been to Caxton or Gutenberg. — Arthur C. Clarke

I've had boyfriends before, and frankly, each one was a disappointment.
There was nothing horribly wrong with these boys. It was my fault. I'm kind of a snob when it comes to guys.
So far, the biggest problem with the boys I've dated is that they weren't too smart. And eventually I ended up hating myself for being with them. It scared me, trying to pretend I was something I wasn't. I could see how easily it could be done, and it made me realize that was what most of the other girls were doing as well - pretending. If you were a girl, you could start pretending in high school and go on pretending your whole life, until, I suppose, you imploded and had a nervous breakdown, which is something that's happened to a few of the mothers around here. All of a sudden, one day something snaps and they don't get out of bed for three years. — Candace Bushnell

The more science learns, the clearer it is that although we are here, we shouldn't be. Once we begin considering the details of it all, the towering odds against our existence begin to become a bit unsettling. When we come to see the superlatively extreme precariousness of our existence, and begin to understand how by any accounting, we ought not to exist, what are we to think or feel? Our existence seems to be not merely a virtually impossible miracle but the most outrageous miracle conceivable, one that makes previously amazing miracles seem like almost nothing. — Eric Metaxas

All that guides me is fear,
And all that finds me is loss
Death defines which paths I cross
It is within the shadows that I stumble
And I am desperate without a voice
Here I am threatened by the resolve that you are
my soul
But if my lies are the path that I have to wander
because there is no choice
Will you love me still?
In the darkness of the night when I wish to do
nothing more than take flight?
Will you hold me to this plane and ease the
suffering and pain?
When all you know is the truth
And all they see is the lies
Will I be the one you find, or the one you leave
behind?
Alone may be the only home I shall find — Cassandra Giovanni

One must have common sense, nothing is permanent, nothing endures. I have come to the conclusion that this place is run by a madman. A madman, let me tell you, can be very logical. If you are rich and logical and also mad, you can succeed for a very long time in living out your illusion. But in the end....in the end this will break up. Because, you see, it is not reasonable what happens here! That which is not reasonable must always pay the reckoning in the end.

~Dr. Barron — Agatha Christie

Try another Subtraction sum. Take a bone from a dog: what remains?' Alice considered. 'The bone wouldn't remain, of course, if I took it - and the dog wouldn't remain; it would come to bite me - and I'm sure I shouldn't remain!' 'Then you think nothing would remain?' said the Red Queen. 'I think that's the answer.' 'Wrong, as usual,' said the Red Queen: 'the dog's temper would remain.' 'But I don't see how - ' 'Why, look here!' the Red Queen cried. 'The dog would lose its temper, wouldn't it?' 'Perhaps it would,' Alice replied cautiously. 'Then if the dog went away, its temper would remain!' the Queen exclaimed triumphantly. Alice said, as gravely as she could, 'They might go different ways.' But she couldn't help thinking to herself, 'What dreadful nonsense we ARE talking! — Lewis Carroll

Everybody was hoping for something, talking about our new life to come and all that they hoped from it. Fresh air, whatever that's supposed to mean. Real gravity, instead of the fake kind that broke every now and then (even though no one over fifteen would admit that it was actually really fun when it did). All the wide open spaces we'd have, all the new people we'd meet when we woke them up, ignoring completely what happened to the original settlers, super- confident that we were so much better equipped that nothing bad could possibly happen to us.
All this hope, and here I was, right at the very edge of it, looking out into the darkness, the first to see it coming, the first to greet it when we found out what it really looked like. — Patrick Ness

You say that because you didn't see Noah today," Blue told him as she set a mug down in front of Malory. "That one doesn't have any hallucinogenic effects, but you might experience some euphoria."
Gansey said, "Nothing I have ever drank here has ever made me experience anything close to euphoria."
"You've never had that one," she said. — Maggie Stiefvater

But most of all, as summer slanted to an end, he was learning to love idleness, idleness no longer as stretches of freedom reclaimed by stealth here and there from involuntary labour, surreptitious thefts to be enjoyed sitting on his heels before a flowerbed with the fork dangling from his fingers, but as a yielding up of himself to time, to a time flowing slowly like oil from horizon to horizon over the face of the world, washing over his body, circulating in his armpits and his groin, stirring his eyelids. He was neither pleased nor displeased when there was work to do; it was all the same. He could lie all afternoon with his eyes open, staring at the corrugations in the roof-iron and the tracings of rust; his mind would not wander, he would see nothing but the iron, the lines would not transform themselves into pattern or fantasy; he was himself, lying in his own house, the rust was merely rust, all that was moving was time, bearing him onward in its flow. — J.M. Coetzee

I think: you deserve to be what you are if you could bare to get that way. You must have seen it coming. And now there's nothing for you here. No one will protect you, and people won't see any reason not to do you harm. — Martin Amis

Curiosity broke her earlier resolve. "Have you ever been tested?"
"No." He stood behind Sara, holding the camera in front so she could see. "Zoom here," he said, flicking the toggle.
"You could probably-"
"This is macro."
"Will-"
"Super macro." He kept talking over her until she gave up. "Here's where you adjust for color. This is light. Anti-shake. Red-eye." He clicked through the features like a photography instructor.
Sara Finally relented. "Why don't I point and you shoot?"
"All right." His back was stiff, and she could tell that he was irritated.
"I'm sorry I-"
"Please don't apologize."
Sara held his gaze for a few moments longer, wishing she could fix this. There was nothing to say if he wouldn't even let her apologize. — Karin Slaughter

Today 5:14 p.m.
"Mrrrrrowl. Mrrrrrowl."
"Ow! Ow, stupid cat! Ahem. You told me, 'stop calling, Isabelle,' but I'm not the one calling you. Church is calling you. Mine are merely the fingers that work the phone.
"See, here's something you may not have known before you committed your recent rash acts. Our cat, Church, and your cat, Chairman Meow? They're in love. I've never seen such love before. I never knew such love could exist in the heart of a ... cat. Some people say that love between two dude cats is wrong, but I think it's beautiful. Love makes Church happier than I've ever seen him. Nothing makes him happy like Chairman Meow. Not tuna. Not shredding centuries-old tapestries. Nothing. Please don't keep these cats apart. Please don't take the joy of love away from Church.
"Look, this is really just a warning for your own good. If you keep Church and Chairman Meow apart, Church will start to get angry.
"You wouldn't like Church when he's angry."
Beep — Cassandra Clare

- I been here before, haven't I?
He just sat there staring out at the plain.
Son of a bitch, I thought. He's ignoring me.
- Hey, I said, I'm not the dead, not a shade in passing. I'm flesh and blood here.
He pulled a notebook out of his pocket and started writing.
- You got to at least look at me, I said. After all, it is my dream.
I drew closer. Close enough to see what he was writing. He had his notebook open to a blank page and three words suddenly materialized.
Nope, it's mine.
- Well, I'll be damned, I murmured. I shaded my eyes and stood there looking out toward what he was seeing - dust clouds flatbed tumbleweed white sky - a whole lot of nothing.
- The writer is a conductor, he drawled. — Patti Smith

The idea of Zen is to catch life as it flows. There is nothing extraordinary or mysterious about Zen. I raise my hand ; I take a book from the other side of the desk ; I hear the boys playing ball outside my window; I see the clouds blown away beyond the neighbouring wood: - in all these I am practising Zen, I am living Zen. No wordy discussions is necessary, nor any explanation. I do not know why - and there is no need of explaining, but when the sun rises the whole world dances with joy and everybody's heart is filled with bliss. If Zen is at all conceivable, it must be taken hold of here. — D.T. Suzuki

Ruby Bates, one of the young white girls, was a remarkable person. She told me she had been driven into prostitution when she was thirteen. She had been working in a textile mill for a pittance. When she asked for a raise, the boss told her to make it up by going with the workers. She told me there was nothing else she could do ... Ruby Bates was a remarkable woman. Underneath it all - the poverty, the degradation - she was decent, pure. Here was an illiterate white girl, all of whose training had been clouded by the myths of white supremacy, who, in the struggle for the lives of these nine innocent boys, had come to see the role she was being forced to play. As a murderer. She turned against her oppressors ... I shall never forget her. — Studs Terkel

Alone, Empty, Fraud, Shame, Fear,
Close your eyes.There is nothing to see out here. — Penelope Douglas

People say we are survivors but I don't see us as survivors of anything. We are still here, there's nothing that's come and tried to dislodge us. We just go about our business. — Dave Mason

Because of your arrogance you have become nothing but a puppet, a court jester who believes that he has no choice other than what you remembered you could do a long time ago. Your only reason for existence now is to keep men in fear of what we see as Demons. They are the ones who control what may happen to them if they choose to take, what we are led to believe is the wrong path. The trail leads us away from his protection.
You are arrogant and because of your vanity, you have become blinded to the truth. Do you not know that you cannot take a soul from a man whose future has already been set? I also know this is someone you cannot overrule have the power to overrule? Even if you tried to take me from here, your power would be overruled. You are the tool of the carpenter, not the carpenter. — Peter Fryer

I had no idea what humans were capable of. I heard they were crafty, but how are they able to do such things?
You mean harness light and water? Speedy asked. Change the weather?
Yes.
It's only the beginning, Speedy said. There are more marvels waiting. Some not so marvelous.
Such as?
Be not in haste, said the tortoise.
There is nothing here but time.
If you live long enough, you will see.
Of course, though, you will see them from your cage.
Live long enough? I asked. Are there mortal dangers here?
The tortoise chuckled.
The boy doesn't always take very good care of his prisoners, Rex the lizard chimed in.
What do you mean? He doesn't feed us enough?
Sometimes he doesn't understand what we need to survive, Rex answered. Sometimes he plays too rough.
How can a creature able to bend the laws of nature be so cruel? I asked. — Patrick Jennings

I get your moments when nothing seems to matter & I suppose that most of the time we, or I at any rate, are passively inert to happiness or unhappiness. I mean that we are so persistently automatic that most of the day is a trance. When I do think or feel, it is usually with rage or despair. Don't you feel often or always that there is so little time to lose, & that we are losing it so fast. The Christians are right there, I feel, it wouldn't matter if there were another life, if there were some chance of making up for the time we are cruelly forced to lose here. But to be hurrying to annihilation, & only to have lived for a hour or two out of twenty five years! And you say, as they all would say, 'I feel it's an episode': you don't seem to see that in a few minutes we shall be old & in a few hours dead, that it's an episode between youth & life, & sterility & annihilation. — Leonard Woolf

We often think we know things when in fact it's only our imagination taking us further and further away from what is actually happening. What we imagine then seems very real to us. Soon we're caught up in our imaginary longings and loathings. But if you're here - truly present - you realize there's nothing to run from or to go after. You can stay calm ... Just be with this moment and see what's going on. (9) — Steve Hagen

He wanted to stick his finger in it and see what happened. Some story, some quest, started here, and he wanted to go on it. It felt fresh and clean and unsafe, nothing like the heavy warm lard of palace life. The protective plastic wrap had been peeled off — Lev Grossman

But for me there is neither Monday nor Sunday: there are days which pass in disorder, and then, sudden lightning like this one. Nothing has changed and yet everything is different. I can't describe it, it's like the Nausea and yet it's just the opposite: at last an adventure happens to me and when I question myself I see that it happens that I am myself and that I am here; I am the one who splits in the night, I am as happy as the hero of a novel. — Jean-Paul Sartre

TIMON
Look thee, 'tis so! Thou singly honest man,
Here, take: the gods out of my misery
Have sent thee treasure. Go, live rich and happy;
But thus condition'd: thou shalt build from men;
Hate all, curse all, show charity to none,
But let the famish'd flesh slide from the bone,
Ere thou relieve the beggar; give to dogs
What thou deny'st to men; let prisons swallow 'em,
Debts wither 'em to nothing; be men like
blasted woods,
And may diseases lick up their false bloods!
And so farewell and thrive.
FLAVIUS
O, let me stay,
And comfort you, my master.
TIMON
If thou hatest curses,
Stay not; fly, whilst thou art blest and free:
Ne'er see thou man, and let me ne'er see thee. — William Shakespeare

A TWIST OF LIGHT-prologue
Reissue date; 6-16-14

The new mother mover the sacking away from the tiny red face, marveling at the perfect mouth and the arc of dark eyebrows of the child she cradled. "Did you ever see anything so pretty?" She spoke to no one in particular, but addressed her question to the group of women huddled inside the hut. Fashioned from cardboard and corrugated iron, the hut wasn't much bigger than the flatbed of the truck that had brought her here.

"Nothing's quite as pretty as a healthy baby." the flat vowels marked the midwife's origins in Oklahoma as surely as her faded sunbonnet and her residence in the labor camp. Set up less than two months ago, it already bulged with over five hundred people who'd been blown out of their homes along with the rich topsoil.(less) — Joyce Mandeville

This plague ... This curse ... I have an idea where it came from. I don't think it's from any spell or virus or nuclear rays. I think it's from a deeper place. I think we brought it here. I think we crushed ourselves down over the centuries. Buried ourselves under greed and hate and whatever other sins we could find until our souls finally hit the rock bottom of the universe. And then they scraped a hole through it, into some ... dark place. We released it. We poked through the seabed and the oil erupted, painted us black, pulled our inner sickness out for everyone to see. Now here we are in this dry corpse of a world, rotting on our feet till there's nothing left but bones and the buzz of flies. — Isaac Marion

[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever. — Lev Grossman

Nothing makes you happy in life except love... Neither the books you write or cites you see... I am very lonely... If I say that I want to be here in this city close to you until the end of my life would you believe me? — Orhan Pamuk

On good days, which don't come often, I love my ship and everything it represents. I thrill at the thought of seeing Earth II. There are going to be so many things there that have never been seen by human eyes before. I'll get to study the planet using priceless, brand-new equipment that's just waiting to be unpacked. I'll discover things that might change the fate of humanity for ever. The Infinity is the biggest, most expensive scientific mission in history. I get to be the very first person to see the results. I'm so lucky.

On bad days, I worry about my responsibilities until my gut cramps and my head feels full of knives.

On my very worst days, I think of nothing but how vulnerable I am out here. I'm balanced on the edge of oblivion with only a fragile skin of metal separating me from the void of space. — Lauren James

And we need this. It could save us a year. Without it all we got is a regular manhunt. For a guy already four months AWOL, with a brand-new foreign passport. Instead of that we could have a Saudi kid in a pink shirt and pointed shoes lead us directly to him. Right here and now. Who wouldn't take that deal? The future means nothing if we don't live to see it." "So you broke the law, but only because you thought you had a good reason. You and everyone else. There are lots of good reasons. Too many good reasons. Which is why we have a special structure, to decide between them, when they compete one against the other. That structure is called the National Security Council. We weigh things up and we judge priorities. You just blew a year's hard work, major. You should resign. Before the after-action report comes out. You'll get a better deal that way." "OK," Reacher said. "I will, if it turns out bad. — Lee Child

Will you call me before Christmas?' she asks.
Maybe.' I pull on my vest, wondering why I even came here in the first place.
You've still got my number, don't you?' She reaches for a pad and begins to write it down.
Yeah, Blair. I've got your number. I'll get in touch.'
I button up my jeans and turn to leave.
Clay?'
Yeah, Blair.'
If I don't see you before Christmas,' she stops. 'Have a good one.'
I look at her a moment. 'Hey, you too.'
She picks up the stuffed black cat and strokes its head.
I step out the door and start to close it.
Clay?' she whispers loudly.
I stop but don't turn around.'Yeah?'
Nothing. — Bret Easton Ellis

Well, I think the main message is there is more to your story. There is more than what happens between the crib and the grave, and that is what I am really trying to speak to, this idea that all of life is this life and that there is nothing more than what we see and experience right here on this earth. — Max Lucado

I am not here for your understanding of who I am. I am here for your understanding of who you are. I am your mirror. How you feel about me, what you see in me, the thoughts that arise from your encounter of me, the judgments you hold about me, are all reflections of you. They have nothing to do with me. — Emily Maroutian

There'll be no more music, Father. But there'll be this!" He stepped into the dark, picked up the knife, and held it under their noses.
"Go home. Tell your people what you saw and heard here tonight. And tell 'em that anyone we catch on these roads after dark anymore ... this is what they'll get. Now that I know we're never to see the face o' God, we have nothing to lose. So, make sure you have your message right, Father, 'cause there'll be no other warning. — Eddie Lenihan

When I moved to New York, I had nothing. And a friend of mine also had nothing. And he said, 'Hey, come with me to the Marriot Marquis. And if you go to the 30th floor, and you wait by this door, and you sneak in, you can get free food.' And I did that for three years. I was prepared if anyone said, 'Can we see your room key?' to be like, 'Do you know who I am? I'm Bob Marriot's nephew.' Um, so great, I'm glad to be here and have free food again. And I didn't have to sneak in! — Santino Fontana

It is only that people are far more different than is pretended. All over the world men and women are worrying because they cannot develop as they are supposed to develop. Here and there they have the matter out, and it comforts them. Don't fret yourself, Helen. Develop what you have; love your child. I do not love children. I am thankful to have none. I can play with their beauty and charm, but that is all - nothing real, not one scrap of what there ought to be. And others - others go farther still, and move outside humanity altogether. A place, as well as a person, may catch the glow. Don't you see that all this leads to comfort in the end? It is part of the battle against sameness. Differences - eternal differences, planted by God in a single family, so that there may always be colour; sorrow, perhaps, but colour in the daily grey. — E. M. Forster

What is wrong with you?" Radu sounded on the verge of tears. "Why do you have to destroy everything good we have here?"
"Because," Lada said, voice flat with the sudden wave of exhaustion pulling her heavily to the ground. "We have nothing. Can you not see that?"
"We have Mehmed!"
Lada looked up. The stars were static, still and cold in the night, all the fire gone from the sky. "It is not enough," she said. — Kiersten White

And then suddenly I hear his footsteps approaching. He's behind me, thirty feet away, at a guess.
No wonder I couldn't see him.
I should turn. Right now I should turn. This is the moment that it would be natural to swivel round
and greet him. Call out a hello; wave my phone in the air.
But my feet are rooted to the spot. I can't bring myself to move. Because as soon as I do, it will be
time to be polite and matter-of-fact and back to normal. And I can't bear that. I want to stay here. In
the place where we can say anything to each other. In the magic spell.
Sam pauses, right behind me. There's an unbearable fragile beat as I wait for him to shatter the quiet. But it's as though he feels the same way. He says nothing. All I can hear is the gentle sound
of his breathing. Slowly, his arms wrap round me from behind. I close my eyes and lean back
against his chest, feeling unreal. — Sophie Kinsella

Wom. My lord, said she, he dares not leave preaching as long as he can speak. Twis. See here, what should we talk any more about such a fellow? Must he do what he lists? He is a breaker of the peace. Wom. She told him again, that he desired to live peaceably, and to follow his calling, that his family might be maintained; and moreover, said, My Lord, I have four small children, that cannot help themselves, one of which is blind, and have nothing to live upon, but the charity of good people. Hale. Hast thou four children? said Judge Hale; thou art but a young woman to have four children. — John Bunyan

Clem is my first dead body. I've heard again and again - mostly from friends who've lost other friends to AIDS - that it's essential to see the corpse of someone you love, especially someone who's died undeservedly young; how it will confirm the way nothing else can that he or she is no longer here. The body won't look like the person you know, the self of that person, at all. This tells you there has to be a soul because something's missing; what else could that something be? The first thing I know, when I see her, isthat this is not a piece of advice I will ever pass on. — Julia Glass

If I were going to paint the dimension I see in front of me, I'd load my palette up with burnt umber, opaque black, a spectrum of grays - nothing brighter than that. I'd have to grind something into the paint with my thumb, some sort of grit or ash, because the grime here goes deeper than surfaces. — Claudia Gray

The way I see it, since you're staying here, it's only right for me to be hospitable. So if I get you a sandwich, don't feel like you have to make it up to me. It's just a sandwich." She said nothing, but he was wrong. It wasn't just a sandwich. It was more than that to her. "And I appreciate the offer to help with my laundry. Thanks, Haven. — J.M. Darhower

Green leaned his head back, wanting everything Ruxs was going to do to him. "Upstairs. Get the fuck upstairs, Mark. We can't do it right here. What if Curtis comes downstairs?" Green panted. Thank god some portion of his brain was still working. "Oh shit. You're right." Ruxs chuckled softly, rubbing his hand up and down Green's body. "You're so goddamn beautiful, I can't think straight when I see you. You can't be walking around in a fuckin' silk robe, nothing but this soft material between me and your naked body." He squeezed Green's ass, thrust against him a couple more times before he dropped Green's robe back down and pulled his pajama pants back over his ass. "Go — A.E. Via

There is a foundation for our lives, a place in which our life rests. That place is nothing but the present moment, as we see, hear, experience what is. If we do not return to that place, we live our lives out of our heads. We blame others; we complain; we feel sorry for ourselves. All of these symptoms show that we're stuck in our thoughts. We're out of touch with the open space that is always right here. — Charlotte Joko Beck

There's a fog of fae magic on the first floor of the house," he told her. "Where's Charles?" "Downstairs," she told him. "He sent me up here to make sure nothing happened to the kids." "There's a pool of blood just outside the door," he whispered, stepping aside so Anna could see it while the kids were preoccupied. "Chelsea's blood. I can't scent her through the stink of fae magic that is coating this house. — Patricia Briggs

I'd get out of here," he said. "Go someplace where no one knew me. Start over. Go to Paris like you did or go to - I don't know - Prague. Somewhere." He looked toward the window, like he could already see himself gone.
"Oh," she said, because it hurt that he was thinking about that when she was thinking about him. She narrowed her eyes. "What's stopping you?"
The boy looked down at the book of fairy tales. "Nothing," he said.
Lila wanted to be the one to stop him. — Holly Black

But there is also a depth-psychology which can discover in physical sickness a spiritual guilt, a person's covert acquiescence in being bound by the "strong man" in such a way that he cannot break free. Here Jesus starts by loosing the spiritual bond: the first thing he says to the lame man who is set before him is: "My son, your sins are forgiven you," and only after his power to forgive sins has been called into question does he utter the second word (which was in principle included in the first): "Rise, take up your pallet and go home" (Mt 2:5, 11). To the sick man by the pool, whom Jesus knew to have been "lying there a long time", he gave this admonition: "See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you" (Jn 5:6, 14). The — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Out would come another star, winking at me over the white shoulder of the Rothorn. Round me stood the mountains, exquisite examples of peace - A world above man's head, to let him see How boundless might his soul's horizons be - and here was I, minding because guests went into their bedrooms and told each other I had five children. Well, so I had. Nothing could possibly be more true. How vast, yet of what clear transparency - and minding because they said I was forty, which I certainly would be some day, if I went on living at the rate I was doing. How it were good to abide there and be free - The fact was, I reflected, my eyes on the glittering slopes of the Weisshorn, we were all too close together, and my guests, being of one family, only made this closeness worse. The remedy - it burst upon me suddenly in a flash, - was not to waste my serenity vainly longing for the guests I had to go, but to invite yet more of them. Unrelated ones. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

It doesn't really matter. Here goes nothing. It will be interesting to see what happens. — Sloan Wilson

I remember once, when I lived in the Capital for a month and bought the paper fresh each day, I went wild with love, anger, irritation, frustration; all of the passions boiled in me. I was young. I exploded at everything I saw. But then I saw what I was doing: I was believing what I read. Have you noticed? You believe a paper printed on the very day you buy it? This has happened but only an hour ago, you think! It must be true.' He shook his head. 'So I learned to stand back away and let the paper age and mellow. Back here, in Colonia, I saw the headlines diminish to nothing. The week-old paper - why, you can spit on it if you wish. It is like a woman you once loved, but you now see, a few days later, she is not quite what you thought. She has rather a plain face. She is no deeper than a cup of water. — Ray Bradbury

Every few minutes or so I would remember the look from the man who had wanted fifty cents, and I'd look at that framed memory hanging in myself and it meant I was here, back in this sick city, but in other ways I was not here at all and anyone who looked closely could see that I had nothing to give, that I was a junk drawer, a collection of things that may or may not have had a use. — Catherine Lacey

I'm just a girl from Flatbush, Bo. There's nothing special here.""You're so wrong.""I know what people think. To friends and family I'm sweet and helpless. To guys I'm a body.""Your body is spectacular. I'm not going to pretend I don't see that. But I can have any body. You've lit something inside me. And it's you, not your assets.""You don't know me. We've hardly scratched the surface.""That's why I need time. I want to know your story, your dreams, your longings. Every part I see makes me want more." He was speaking her own desire to understand him, because his real self called to her more strongly than anyone she'd known , even people she'd known for years. — Kristen Heitzmann

Here's some advice. Stay alive, says Haymitch, and then bursts out laughing. I exchange a look with Peeta before I remember that I'm having nothing more to do with him. I'm surprised to see the hardness in his eyes. He generally seems so mild.
'That's very funny,' says Peeta. Suddenly, he lashes out at the glass in Haymitch's hand. It shatters on the floor, sending the bloodred liquid running toward the back of the train. 'Only not to us.'
Haymitch considers this a moment, then punches Peeta in the jaw, knocking him from his chair. When he turns back to reach for the spirits, I drive my knife into the table between his hand and the bottle, barely missing his fingers. I brace myself to deflect his hit, but it doesn't come. Instead, he sits back and squints at us.
'Well, what's this?' says Haymitch. 'Did I actually get a pair of fighters this year? — Suzanne Collins

For a moment nothing happens. The figure stands still and I stand cold and alive and-
He starts to run. I make my way down the rocks, slipping, sliding, trying to get to the plain. I wish, I think, my feet clumsy, moving too fast, not fast enough, I wish i could run, I wish I'd written a whole poem, I wish I kept the compass-
And then I reach the plain and wish for nothing but what I have. Ky. Running toward me. I have never seen him run like this, fast, free, strong, wild. He looks so beautiful, his body moves so right. He stops just close enough for me to see the blue of his eyes and forget the red on my hands and the green I wish I wore. "You're here," he says, breathing hard and hungry. sweat and dirt cover his face, and he looks at me as though I'm the only thing he ever needed to see. I open my mouth to say yes. But I only have time to breathe in before he closes the last of the distance. All I know is the kiss. — Ally Condie

You were just a piece on the board, and I was the piece that replaced you. Nothing more than the false hero the world needed. And now this good-for-nothing world was going to push me across the same bloodstained, smoke-filled battlefield.

While I live and breathe, humanity will never fall. I promise you. It may take a dozen years, but I will win this war for you. Even if you won't be here to see it. You were the only person I wanted to protect, and you were gone. — Hiroshi Sakurazaka

I hate to think of you stuck here all day every day, doing nothing with that brilliant brain of yours."
"It never was brilliant. Anyway, who keeps these books to see who's used themselves wisely and who's wasted? — Tessa Hadley

I always feel it's necessary to look at my images from two distances. Here is my criterion: If I can look at it from a distance and then come up close but find nothing more to see, it's printed too large. It's not giving me any new information when I come up to it. — Bruce Barnbaum

It was then Jessica realized he wasn't using his left hand at all, and that he held the arm oddly, as though something were wrong with it. There shouldn't be except for a minor bullet wound. She'd aimed carefully, and she was an excellent markswoman. Not to mention he was a very large target.
He looked her way then, and caught her staring. Admiring your handiwork, are you? I daresay you'd like a better look. Regrettably, there's nothing to see. There's nothing wrong with it, according to the quacks. Except that it doesn't work. Still, I count myself fortunate, Miss Trent, that you didn't aim a ways lower. I'm merely disarmed, not dismanned. But I have no doubt that Herriard here will see to the emasculation. — Loretta Chase

Now, Miss Bentley," he said with mock seriousness. "I'll have you know that yes, you are correct, I will always be the master in a relationship. I will always be the master when it comes to sex. I am the man."
Harly was having a hard time trying to maintain her own contrite, meek expression; her quivering lips gave that away. "Yes, Sir."
"See, when I say strip, you strip. When I say come here, you come. When I say kiss me, you kiss me. When I say you're walking around in my presence in nothing but silk stockings and a garter belt and a red satin bra, you will do so."
"Not happening."
"Insubordination will not be tolerated."
"I'll tell my mother."
"I'm not scared of her."
"All right. I'll tell your mother."
"Okay, some insubordination will be tolerated."
"I thought so."
"And when I say get the bondage gear-"
She guffawed right in his face. — Angela Verdenius

In how many families do you hear the legend that all the goodness and graces of the living are nothing to the peculiar charms of one who is not. It is as if heaven had an especial band of angels, whose office it was to sojourn for a season here, and endear to them the wayward human heart, that they might bear it upward with them in their homewoard flight. When you see that deep, spiritual light in the eye,
when the little soul reveals itself in words sweeter and wiser than the ordinary words of children,
hope not to retain that child, for the seal of heaven is on it, and the light of immortality looks out from its eyes. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

We see much more of this loneliness now. It's paradoxical that that where people are the most closely crowded in the big coastal cities in the East and West, the loneliness is greatest. Back where people are so spread out in Western Oregon and Idaho and Montana and the Dakotas you'd think the loneliness would have been greater, but we didn't see it so much. The explanation, I suppose, is that the physical distance between people has nothing to do with loneliness. It's the psychic distance, and in Montana and Idaho the physical distances are long but the psychic distances between people are small, and here, in primary America, it's reversed. — Robert M. Pirsig

They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick. The cosmic process is hurrying on, crushing life back into granite and methane; the wheel turns for all life. It is all temporary. — Philip K. Dick

The daylight has nothing to show me, since you are not here, and I don't like to see the rooks and starlings in the fields, because I grieve and grieve to miss you who used to see them with me. I long for only one thing in heaven or earth or under the earth, to meet you my own dear! Come to me - come to me, and save me from what threatens me! - Your faithful heartbroken — Thomas Hardy

Crazy Horse dreamed and went into the world where there is nothing but the spirits of things. That is the real world that is behind this one, and everything we see here is something like a shadow from that world ... It was this vision that gave him his great power, for when he went into a fight, he had only to think of that world to be in it again, so that he could go through anything and not be hurt — Black Elk

I come in here and you gotta be here; I'm thinkin' about football, and you gotta be here with your tits and your ass and this tight shrunken clothes and these shriveled jeans, so that's all I'm thinking about from the minute I see you is tits and ass. Football doesn't have a chance against it. It's like this invasion of tits and ass overwhelming my own measly individuality so I don't have a prayer to have my own thoughts about my own things except you and tits and ass and sucking and fucking and that's all I can think about. My privacy has been demolished. You think a person wants that kind of a thing to happen their heads - they are trying to give their problems some serious thought, the next thing they know there's nothing in their brains as far as they can see but your tits and ass? You think a person likes that? — David Rabe

Albus Dumbledore had gotten to his feet. He was beaming at the students, his arms opened wide, as if nothing could have pleased him more than to see them all there.
"Welcome!" he said. "Welcome to a new year at Hogwarts! Before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"
"Thank you!"
He sat back down. Everybody clapped and cheered. Harry didn't know whether to laugh or not.
"Is he - a bit mad?" he asked Percy uncertainly.
"Mad?" said Percy airily. "He's a genius! Best wizard in the world! But he is a bit mad, yes. Potatoes, Harry? — J.K. Rowling

PREPARE FOR LANDING PREPARE FOR LANDING, TRACK 1 The seat belt sign is illuminated The flight attendants beyond frustrated The passengers are drunk and frayed A baby's screaming in seat 16A Another flight from here to where? Crammed in a sardine can with not enough air We're on the map, I know that much But the directions I really need are in your touch Prepare for landing, says the captain As the plane arcs down to the looming horizon Ushering us onto some foreign soil I touch the ground, and see your smile Up and down, and down and up Cokespritebeerpretzelspeanuts As we careen through empty sky It feels like nothing but you and I Prepare for landing, says the captain Out the window, the sun is setting Hand in mine, you give a squeeze You're all the home I'll ever need — Gayle Forman

Isn't this everyone's Point of View?" asked Tock, looking around curiously.
"Of course not," replied Alec, sitting himself down on nothing. "It's only mine, and you certainly can't always look at things from someone else's Point of View. For instance, from here that looks like a bucket of water," he said, pointing to a bucket of water; "but from an ant's point of view it's a vast ocean, from an elephant's just a cool drink, and to a fish, of course, it's home. So, you see, the way you see things depends a great deal on where you look at them from. — Norton Juster

I see nothing wrong with the human trait to desire. In fact, I consider it integral to our success mechanism. Becoming attached to what we desire is what causes the trouble. If you must have it in order to be happy, then you are denying the happiness of the here and now. — Peter McWilliams

Ever since the dawn of civilization, people have not been content to see events as unconnected and inexplicable. They have craved an understanding of the underlying order in the world. Today we still yearn to know why we are here and where we came from. Humanity's deepest desire for knowledge is justification enough for our continuing quest. And our goal is nothing less than a complete description of the universe we live in. — Stephen Hawking

It is their sense of space and time. They see through the here, the now, into the vast black deep beyond, the unchanging. And that is fatal to life. Because eventually there will be no life; there was once only the dust particles in space, the hot hydrogen gases, nothing more, and it will come again. This is an interval, ein Augenblick. — Philip K. Dick

The past is no more; the future not yet. Nothing exists except the here and now. Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at our hands. — Bruce Lee

They would always be here, she realized. Always. Day in, day out. They had lives of their own, lives that would be the same day after day into perpetuity, and yet they'd chosen to make themselves into what was essentially the furniture of other people's realities. These, she thought, were people without dreams, and she wondered what had happened to cut those dreams out and leave them hollow carriers of nothing but a feeble need to see something more in the mindless kick of a ball down the field. She'd once thought it was imaginary value, the way they watched this. But it wasn't imaginary. It was real, when it was the only thing that let them feel like there was still some bright spark left in them. That had value, if only to them. That meant something. — Cole McCade

It didn't seem like they were here to find food. Nor did they have the patience to bite anyone. Left to themselves, they'd quickly haul to particles of mud and built nests here and there in the house. You could try scuttling them with a broom, but they'd get into a mad frenzy and climb up the broom and on to your arm. Before you knew it, they'd be all over you, even under your clothes. For days on end there would be a terrific invasion, and then one day you would wake up to find them gone. There was no telling why they came, where they went. I sometimes saw them racing in lines along the window sills in the front room, where there was nothing to eat. Perhaps they were on a mission of some sort, only passing through our house in self-important columns. But not once did I see the trail of a column, an ant that had no other ants behind it. — Vivek Shanbhag

The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can't see this house. You'd never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn't see but a few feet ahead. I didn't meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted - to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost. — Eugene O'Neill

Here is a piece of metal which has been melted until it has become shapeless. It represents nothing. Nor does it have design, of any intentional sort. It is merely amorphous. One might say, it is mere content, deprived of form." Childan nodded. "Yet," Paul said, "I have for several days now inspected it, and for no logical reason I feel a certain emotional fondness. Why is that? I may ask. I do not even now project into this blob, as in psychological German tests, my own psyche. I still see no shapes or forms. But it somehow partakes of Tao. You see?" He motioned Childan over. "It is balanced. The forces within this piece are stabilized. At rest. So to speak, this object has made its peace with the universe. It has separated from it and hence has managed to come to homeostasis. — Philip K. Dick

Being really alone means being free from anticipation. Even to know that something is going to happen, that I am required to do something is an intrusion on the emptiness I am after. What I love to see is an empty diary, pages and pages of nothing planned. A date, an arrangement, is a point in the future when something is required of me. I begin to worry about it days, sometimes weeks ahead. Just a haircut, a hospital visit, a dinner party. Going out. The weight of the thing-that-is-going-to-happen sits on my heart and crushes the present into non-existence. My ability to live in the here and now depends on not having any plans, on there being no expected interruption. I have no other way to do it. How can you be alone, properly alone, if you know someone is going to knock at the door in five hours, or tomorrow morning, or you have to get ready and go out in three days' time? I can't abide the fracturing of the present by the intrusion of a planned future. — Jenny Diski

School...school... is just nothing... if you think that you are going to learn something. You are here wrong, you wanna see the system?

It's in about

23 Channels as a start then increases... decreases... even with different topics in the end... they want you to recall the whole data from the 23 Channels as for Perfect, as For under Perfect Okay..okay... but still not perfect, as for Good... Just an Okay... and as for Middle... Little from there and little from there as for the last... Nothing at all. — Deyth Banger

Hypatia: ... I don't want to be good; and I don't want to be bad: I just don't want to be bothered about either good or bad: I want to be an active verb.
Lord Summerhays: An active verb? Oh, I see.An active verb signifies to be, to do or to suffer.
Hypatia: Just so; how clever of you! I want to be; I want to do; and I'm game to suffer if it costs that. But stick here doing nothing but being good and nice and ladylike I simply won't. — George Bernard Shaw

I didn't just see myself as a film director here [in Life And Nothing More], but also as an observer of people who had been condemned to death. — Abbas Kiarostami

Monroe is about sixty miles outside of New York City. It's home to approximately eight thousand people. It's a small community where most everyone knows one another. There's nothing but strip malls and second-tier grocery chains you never see elsewhere. If you click on the "Attractions" tab on TripAdvisor's Monroe page, it brings up a message that says, "I'm sorry, you must have clicked here by mistake. No one could possibly be planning a trip to Monroe to see its 'Attractions.' I have a feeling about why you'd want to go to Monroe. Here, let me redirect you to a suicide-prevention site. — Aziz Ansari