On Opera Quotes & Sayings

The fire crackled. On Jutaire, without oxygen, the fire is different. Fed by different air. Maybe it wishes it were orange, for it sputters and reaches up to the sky with angry fists of blue and purple. It still doesn't know we can't all get what we want. — Hafsah Faizal

Good luck with the aliens, and if we survive this feel free to look me up on your next vacation."

"Good luck with the aliens? You are such a prick. — G.S. Jennsen

Her weight settled on her back foot as she crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, now legitimately baffled.

"How delusional are you, aliens in your head notwithstanding? — G.S. Jennsen

He wasn't going to be able to deactivate the field, which meant there was only one choice.

He'd realized early on that his arcane, profoundly alien passenger came with a cost, possibly one too high to pay and get out the other side free and clear. He'd pay it nonetheless and without complaint if the diati would only come through for him now.

Caleb closed his eyes. — G.S. Jennsen

The operas I listen to aren't in English, and I want to listen to my opera after I'm done with it. I want to have the desire to play it on the stereo. To me, the language is part of the mystery. — Rufus Wainwright

Opera is musical theatre, and the music can teach you so much about the theatre. Very often I use musical terms to think about how I comport myself on stage: I employ 'rubati,' 'ostinati,' 'cadenze.' Finding these parallels is very fascinating for me. — Toni Servillo

On the Overture of the Rossini opera "Il SIgnor Bruschino" - The sound of the second violins striking the backs of their bows against the metal candle holders shortly after the start of the overture was judged 'incomprehensible' by the Giornale. Rossini feared as much. 'Dio ti salvi l'anima' (God save your soul), he wrote on the manuscript at the end of the overture). — Richard Osborne

Working on a soap opera is such good training for the novice actor. No rehearsal, 120 pages of dialogue per week, and one take to get the scene right. No room for error. — Dylan Bruce

It's the economics, that's why opera is not dying but gets more and more difficult to put on. — Christoph Waltz

I had a soap opera, and my next job was working with Kyle McLachlan on The Invisible Man. — Elisabeth Rohm

'All My Children' taught me a great work ethic; you work so hard on a soap opera! — Eva LaRue

Working-girls, in pairs and groups and swarms, loitered by these windows, choosing their future boudoirs from some resplendent display which included even a man's silk pajamas laid domestically across the bed. They stood in front of the jewelry stores and picked out their engagement rings, and their wedding rings and their platinum wrist watches, and then drifted on to inspect the feather fans and opera cloaks; meanwhile digesting the sandwiches and Sundaes they had eaten for lunch. — F Scott Fitzgerald

A novel is more a symphony, opera, oratorio. It exists in time, it goes by you a sound dying out as you write on, so that it is very hard to keep in touch with the whole thing ... — Dorothy Bryant

I've always enjoyed playing a little left of center characters. Otherwise I'd be on a soap opera. — Bruce Campbell

Every day we see allurements of one kind or another that tell us what we have is not enough. Someone or something is forever telling us we need to be more handsome or more wealthy, more applauded or more admired than we see ourselves as being. We are told we haven't collected enough possessions or gone to enough fun places. We are bombarded with the message that on the world's scale of things we have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. Some days it is if we have been locked in a cubicle of a great and spacious building where the only thing on the TV is a never-ending soap opera entitled Vain Imaginations. But God does not work this way. — Jeffrey R. Holland

Contemporary art is based on that an artist is supposed to go into art history in the same way as an art historian. When the artist produces something he or she relates to it with the eye of an art historian/critic. I have the feeling that when I am working it is more like working with soap opera or glamour. It is emotional and not art criticism or history of art. — Odd Nerdrum

'Macbeth' is one of the best operas ever, and doing it was a great experience. I added some things to the opera based from my experience on the movie - such as some of the special effects and bits of film - to make it new and interesting. It was a very good work and a very good experience. — Dario Argento

I've always gravitated towards opera, and the Royal Opera House is quite possibly the greatest opera house on earth. — Rufus Wainwright

He made sure his tone remained casual. He was trying to keep his son unaware of the encroaching alien invasion for as long as he could, be it another day or another hour. Once innocence was lost it was never regained.

So he took his son fishing and strolled along the river and pretended as though the galaxy wasn't on fire. — G.S. Jennsen

Writing is the main gig and teaching and performing are sidelines, an excuse for not writing more. Working on a novel and on an opera make me seriously want to retire and find a volunteer job as a docent at the zoo explaining to schoolchildren where frogs go in the winter. — Garrison Keillor

I know one thing - very few writers in Southern California get to write what they want to write. We are more or less worker ants, working for either film companies or tv companies or Internet companies. We do a lot of assigned work. Feelings hardly ever enter into it. If they do, they tend to be on a sort of soap opera level. — Larry Gelbart

If I were anyone else ... your opera singer ... the woman across the hall ... would you have apologized?"
He looked confused. "No ... but you are neither of those women. You deserve better."
"Better," she repeated, frustrated. "That's just my point! You and the rest of society believe that it's better for me to be set upon a pedestal of primness and propriety - which might have been fine if a decade on that pedestal hadn't simply landed me on the shelf. Perhaps unmarried young women like our sisters should be there. But what of me?" Her voice dropped as she looked down at the cards in her hands. "I'm never going to get a chance to experience life from up there. All that is up there is dust and unwanted apologies. The same cage as hers" - she indicated the woman outside - "merely a different gilt. — Sarah MacLean

I told Hugh Hefner, "I have this crazy boyfriend." And Hef was like, "You're not going anywhere with a crazy boyfriend," and so he put me in a mansion in Bel-Air with an opera singing Chinese maid, and I was driving a Bentley, and a friend of mine came by and was like, "What is going on? Why are you living in this mansion?" And I was like, "Isn't this what happens when people move to LA? — Pamela Anderson

He frowned. "Jedi aren't without emotion. We're allowed to grieve."
"Perhaps," Ventress allowed, "but somehow I don't think most Jedi try to drown the pain with alcohol and slam their fists on the table. — Christie Golden

Look!You want to see? See! Feast your eyes, glut your soul on my cursed ugliness! Look at Erik's face! Now you know the face of the voice! You were not content to hear me, eh? You wanted to know what I looked like? Oh, you women are so inquisitive! Well, are you satisfied? I'm a good-looking fellow, eh? ... When a woman has seen me, as you have, she belongs to me.She loves me forever! I am a kind of Don Juan, you know! ... Look at me! I am Don Juan Triumphant!
-Erik in The Phantom of the Opera — Gaston Leroux

I was very young, and I was on vacation with my family, and there was a retrospective of old films, and one of them was 'The Phantom of the Opera' with Claude Rains that was in color. It was something very important for my career because I began to follow these stories that were morbid. — Dario Argento

You have no shame for ruining my shoes, nyet? If it weren't so difficult to replace shoes here in the middle of nowhere, I would let you stomp on the tops of all of them, but such is not the case. If they are ruined, I must go without."
"A barefoot prince? That sounds like a bad Italian opera. — Karen Hawkins

Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow. — David Hume

I give you five minutes to spare your blushes. here is the little bronze key that opens the ebony caskets on the mantle piece in the Louise-Phillipe room. In one of the caskets you will find a scorpion, in the other, a grasshopper, both very cleverly imitated in Japanese bronze: they will say yes or no for you. If you turn the scorpion round, that will mean to me, when I return that you have said yes. The grasshopper will mean no ... The grasshopper, be careful of the grass hopper! A grasshopper does not only turn: it hops! It hops! And it hops jolly high! — Gaston Leroux

You hear about Broadway your whole life, and I learned what it meant to work on Broadway in 'The Phantom of the Opera.' — Aaron Lazar

You could live without the opera singer, but not without the services of the baker. On this ground you might say that the baker performs a greater service; but no lover of music would agree. — Bertrand Russell

With some difficulty she persuaded the Dauphin, and with no difficulty whatsoever she persuaded his younger brother to take her on a secret visit. From her hairdresser she had heard about "Opera balls"--balls in Paris where the people wore masks and no one knew who anyone else was. So the three royal youngsters ordered a carriage for late at night, dressed up in play costumes which Marie Antoinette got together for them, an drove to Paris. There they went to an "Opera ball. — Bernardine Kielty

Soaps taught me the fundamentals of the game. You know, how to show up, hit your mark, how to be on time. That soap opera world is a microcosm of the entertainment culture. — Michael Weatherly

All these years that I had been waiting for him to return, I had been too anxious and somewhat insecure to develop any plan of action. I had scrupulously avoided giving any thought to it until the time to tackle things head-on arrived, so now I was suffering the consequences of my own indecisiveness. But in all seriousness, what steady plan could there be in matters of the heart? — Jeno Marz

Until the Eighties, Oslo was a rather boring town, but it's changed a lot, and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown, I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries, and to admire the modern architecture such as the Opera House or the new Astrup Fearnley Museum on the water's edge. — Jo Nesbo

In the opera, there was only one great love for the characters. In... tales there was only one love as well - yes, even after death. Everything I had read or sung or felt said this was always the case. If you ignored this great truth, if you gave up on it of being too hard to hold on to, or let it slip away to have mere things, no real meaning could be left in life. — Lenore Hart

I don't suppose I can wear the flamingo tie," he said as he pulled on black socks.
"It's a bit festive, given the occasion," I responded.
"Can't wear it to the opera," said the Colonel, almost smiling. "Can't wear it to a funeral. Can't use it to hang myself. It's a bit useless, as ties go." I gave him a tie. — John Green

She placed a hand on his arm. "It's not our fault, not truly. It's theirs. The killers. They're the ones who - "

"Get down!" Caleb collided with her back, sending her crashing to the floor hard enough to knock the air from her chest. The windows shattered and the sounds of a city overtaken by chaos rushed in. — G.S. Jennsen

Yeah." He hesitated, as if not wanting to push. "I'd love to have a few days with you before school starts. Here or back on campus or wherever." "I'd like that," I said, with as much of a casual attitude as I could muster, but inside it was all Wagnerian opera. — Eli Easton

My dad became a soap opera actor, and I was an extra in a skating rink scene on the soap. I didn't audition. It was nepotism all the way. — Jennifer Aniston

My mom was on a soap opera for 40 years, so I know about love and romance. — Corbin Bernsen

She fascinated him.
She was annoying and opinionated and bossy at times, but she was also ... perfect for him.
He wanted to know everything about her, wanted to sit beside her at the opera and watch her cry. He wanted to grow old with this exasperating woman and argue with her as they sipped tea on the porch.
She would never bore him, and every day he spent in her company would be an adventure. — Jen Turano

There's the beauty of the stage. I don't like filmed theater or opera because you're kind of playing soccer in a hockey game. Either or, they don't do justice to the media and you end up with a hybrid that is purely sensationalistic. Opera is a very theatrical medium that should be seen on a stage with the musicians in the pit in the audience. — Christoph Waltz

Please excuse the torn edges of this note. I am writing to you from inside the shack the Baudelaire orphans were forced to live in while at Prufrock Preparatory School, and I am afraid that some of the crabs tried to snatch my stationery away from me. On Sunday night, please purchase a ticket for seat 10-J at the Erratic Opera Company's performance of the opera Faute de Mieux. During Act Five, use a sharp knife to rip open the cushion of your seat. There you should find — Lemony Snicket

If you would dance, my pretty Count, I'll play the tune on my little guitar.. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Life is not an opera. Scenes belong on the stage. — Loretta Chase

I was 11 when a teacher suggested to my parents that they should send me to drama classes to curb my disruptive ways in the classroom. The next Saturday I was acting, and thereafter it became a ritual of my youth to see a show at the Belvoir on Sundays and, if I was lucky, another at the Opera House on Monday after school. — David Wenham

Listeners love when opera dethrones or kills language; the regicide, on these occasions, is the revolutionary, pleasure-seeking, penetrated, tickled ear. Opera theory tells us that words master music, but we, in our secret hearts, know music's superiority; and this destruction of language, this reversal of hierarchy, makes opera a fit object for the enthusiasms of sex-and-gender dissidents. — Wayne Koestenbaum

My lovers suffocate me! Crowding my lips, and thick in the pores of my skin, Jostling me through streets and public halls ... coming naked to me at night, Crying by day Ahoy from the rocks of the river ... swinging and chirping over my head, Calling my name from flowerbeds or vines or tangled underbrush, Or while I swim in the bath ... or drink from the pump on the corner ... or the curtain is down at the opera ... or I glimpse at a woman's face in the railroad car; Lighting on every moment of my life, Bussing my body with soft and balsamic busses, Noiselessly passing handfuls out of their hearts and giving them to be mine — Walt Whitman

Because we're in a small town and somewhat isolated from the fast lane of high tech, we've been able to grow and concentrate on our work instead of being distracted by the competition and getting caught up in the soap opera of Silicon Valley. — Jack Dangermond

Alex peered behind her to see Noah fussing over a scrape on Kennedy's cheek. "Unless someone's bleeding to death, first aid will have to wait. You'll want to strap into the jump seats.

"This could get interesting, and that's before we get clear of the station. — G.S. Jennsen

I think one of the great strengths of 'The Flash' is just how close everyone is on the show. They tend not to have these raging conflicts, like what we keep giving everybody on 'Arrow.' That show is more of a soap opera, and I don't say that derogatorily. — Andrew Kreisberg

She reaches down into her bulging tote bag and pulls out a small plastic box with a hinged lid. It contains a round pill box with a threaded lid from which she tips out a vitamin pill, a fish-oil pill, and the enzyme tablet that lets her stomach digest milk. Inside the hinged plastic box she also carries packets of salt, pepper, horseradish, and hand-wipes, a doll size bottle of Tabasco sauce, chlorine pills for treating drinking water, Pepto-Bismol chews, and God knows what else. If you go to a concert, Bina has opera glasses. If you need to sit on the grass, she whips out a towel. Ant traps, a corkscrew, candles and matches, a dog muzzle, a penknife, a tiny aerosol can of freon, a magnifying glass - Landsman has seen everything come out of that overstuffed cowhide at one time or another. — Michael Chabon

I'd go over to my grandmother's house, and she'd be playing opera. They loved opera. Not only did they play it on the radio, but they played it on their piano. Everybody learned how to read music and how to play. — Linda Ronstadt

What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man. — Terry Pratchett

We are all affected by the time we are born into, and of course that feeds into your work. Society is based on storytelling - religious myths, opera, film - and 1968 was always seen as a time of rupture and fragmentation. I have always been interested in those words. — Doug Aitken

Your wonderful mind has a matching body," I heard Eyuran whispering into my ear through a thick veil of bliss, and found myself laying on my side, my spouse behind me, his hot palm slowly caressing my thigh, up and down. "So it's good to give your body the nice treat it is demanding so explicitly." His finger slid down my spine, making me tremble. "It wants and needs to be satisfied," his low voice soaked into my skin. — Jeno Marz

The majority of American writers today have chosen passive non-resistance to things as they are, producing sloughs of poetry about their personal angst and anomie, cascades of short stories and rivers of novels obsessed with the nuances of domestic relationships - suburban hanky-panky - chic boutique shopping mall literary soap opera. When they do speak out on matters of controversy they attack not the evils of our time but fellow writers who may insist on complaining. — Edward Abbey

When you work on a soap opera, that's three years of you working every day. There was no time to do anything other than the soap opera - you're locked in. — Nathan Fillion

When I am on the opera stage, I am playing someone else. In recitals, I even have the chance to talk to the audience, which is something you don't get to do in opera. — Sondra Radvanovsky

If I had the money, I would love to open up a movie theater that just played images and colors and beautiful music. For me, there's nothing like listening to a beautiful opera sometimes - on a record or seeing it live - just to be sleepy and let those beautiful voices take me somewhere I've never been before. — Peter Stormare

The whole truth?" Miss Bart laughed. "What is the truth? Where a woman is concerned, it's the story that's easiest to believe. In this case it's a great deal easier to believe Bertha Dorset's story than mine, because she has a big house and an opera box, and it's convenient to be on good terms with her — Edith Wharton

The universe is not ordered, and it will not become so simply because one wishes it. The universe is chaos made manifest. The military does a fine job of creating an illusion of structure, of dependable rules to provide an answer for every situation.

"But it is only an illusion, one which on its best days holds the chaos at bay. — G.S. Jennsen

The only thing altruism will get you here is a boot stomping on your head. — Henry Mosquera

There's no better training than working on a soap opera because of the amount of hours, the amount of pages you do a day are unbelievable. It's the best training I had in terms of discipline. — Daniela Ruah

I don't know anybody in the opera business who isn't worried sick about how best to reach out to underpaid millennials who were suckled on the new on-demand pop culture, which supplies them with cheap, unchallenging amusement around the clock. — Terry Teachout

I'm not going to spend two years on a film or four years on an opera if I don't feel like I can put my own self into it. That doesn't mean it has to be about myself. — Julie Taymor

I've just written a very gritty, non-magical take on the King Arthur legend, 'Here Lies Arthur,' and I'm currently toying with some other historical ideas, as well as working with the illustrator David Wyatt on some sequels to my Victorian space opera 'Larklight.' — Philip Reeve

Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera. — Joan Baez

When you have the cast, the sets, the lights, an opera takes on its own life. I'm not one of those directors who marches in with a set of plans. — Maximilian Schell

I hop onto the stage and joke-sing: "The Phaaaanntom of the Opera is there, innnnnside your mind." I attack the curtain with a flourish and sing on, "innnnside your mind. — Anne Eliot

She remained silent. There was nothing left to say. He'd said it all the night before. He had to end it. He could never leave his wife. And, in fact, she had known this. Although she loved him - and truly she did - he wasn't hers. He belonged to his wife. She'd earned him. It didn't matter that he was her first love or that she was his passion. It didn't matter that they had loved one another for more than half their lives. It didn't matter that he had married his wife on the rebound. It didn't matter that he didn't love the woman. It didn't even matter that they had turned into some soap-opera cliche. He was married to someone else and that meant that she was leftovers and destined to remain on the periphery in the shadow of another woman's marriage. But no more. She was well and truly sick of it. — Anna McPartlin

I want to carve out a serious period of time to focus on the next opera without any distractions. And to do that you need money. — Rufus Wainwright

There are places in the world where real life is still happening, far away from here, in a pre-Hitler Europe, where hundreds of lights are lit every evening, ladies and gentlemen gather to drink coffee with cream in oak-panelled rooms, or sit comfortably in splendid coffee-houses under gilt chandeliers, stroll arm in arm to the opera or the ballet, observe from close-up the lives of great artists, passionate love affairs, broken hearts, the painter's girlfriend falling in love with his best friend the composer, and going out at midnight bareheaded in the rain to stand alone on the ancient bridge whose reflection trembles in the river. * — Amos Oz

I wanted Red Rising to be the Cave from the Republic. The dark cradle in which you see shadows on the wall and you think you know existence. Then they get out of the cave, and shit look at those space ships and the feuds and the size of everything.

It's hard to come right out and introduce people to a Space Opera. I wanted to lull them into one — Pierce Brown

For the love of God, unless you're prepping for Rigoletto at the Met, go easy on the eyeliner. — Cheryl Cory

And an unstable childhood makes you appreciate calmness and not crave excitement. To spend a Saturday afternoon mopping your kitchen floor while listening to opera on the radio, and to go that night to an Indian restaurant with a friend and be home by nine o'clock - these are enough. They are gifts. — Curtis Sittenfeld

Well, basically there are two sorts of opera," said Nanny, who also had the true witch's ability to be confidently expert on the basis of no experience whatsoever. "There's your heavy opera, where basically people sing foreign and it goes like "Oh oh oh, I am dyin', oh I am dyin', oh oh oh, that's what I'm doin'", and there's your light opera, where they sing in foreign and it basically goes "Beer! Beer! Beer! Beer! I like to drink lots of beer!", although sometimes they drink champagne instead. That's basically all of opera, reely. — Terry Pratchett

I ride horseback - arthritic knees permitting - or listen to opera. Sometimes I cook. I used to do needlework, but it's hard on my hands now, so I only do it occasionally, but I like it. And, of course, I read. — Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Opera has the power to warn you that you have wasted your life. You haven't acted on your desires. You've suffered a stunted, vicarious existence. You've silenced your passions. The volume, height, depth, lushness, and excess of operatic utterance reveal, by contrast, how small your gestures have been until now, how impoverished your physicality; you have only used a fraction of your bodily endowment, and your throat is closed. — Terry Tempest Williams

It's much easier for me to be silly than it is to be serious on soap opera. — Doug Davidson

Alone for a few precious seconds, he drew in a deep breath. He stood on a ruined street in a ruined city. Destruction stretched for kilometers in every direction, all caused by a single man for whom vengeance had devolved into madness. — G.S. Jennsen

As a teenager I studied opera, believe it or not. But I just couldn't catch on to it. — Karen Black

You'll find in Africans a fantastic amount of heavy space opera and so on, going on ... which makes the colored African very, very interesting to process because he doesn't know why he goes through all these dances ... and why he feels so barbarous ... — L. Ron Hubbard

wounded by the son of Venus; and for Mrs Plornish there was no such music at the Opera as the small internal flutterings and chirpings wherein he would discharge himself of these ditties, like a weak, little, broken barrel-organ, ground by a baby. On his 'days out,' those flecks of light in his flat vista of pollard old men,' it was at once Mrs Plornish's delight and sorrow, when he was strong with meat, and had taken his full halfpenny-worth of porter, to say, 'Sing us a song, Father.' Then he would give them Chloe, and if he were in pretty good spirits, Phyllis also - Strephon he had hardly been up to since he went into retirement - and then would Mrs Plornish declare she did — Charles Dickens

As I read Mann in German for the first time, the full achievement - both literary and philosophical - of Death in Venice struck me forcefully, so that, when I was invited to give the Schoff Lectures at Columbia, the opportunity to reflect on the contrasts between novella and opera seemed irresistible. — Philip Kitcher

I knew it, I just knew it! The person who had the job of writing my life's dialogue used to work on a very low budget soap opera. — Marian Keyes

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible. — J.D. Salinger

My grandmother was this unbelievably smart, phenomenally cool woman and [soap operas] were just always on in her house. I just realized that I live in a soap opera, and it's awesome. — Ian Somerhalder

I wouldn't know anything about opera music if it wasn't for Bugs Bunny. That was my entire introduction to opera music. I wouldn't know anything about classical music if it wasn't for "Fantasia." They didn't have to do that stuff. They chose to base this ridiculous, funny, intriguing, creative story on this beautiful classical music. It's the combination of the high and the low that I thought was very cool. But I had no concept of it as a kid. — Jon Hamm

Dumb luck brought on the move from business to acting. I had moved to New York when I was 23, in the year 2000. On a lark, I went to audition for a soap opera. I thought, 'Hey, this will be a really fun story to tell my grandkids one day, that I auditioned for a soap!' — Teddy Sears

I went with him to the Opera Orchestra, even though the programs were so boring and dragged on so long that I feared I might actually black out and topple into the aisle. — Anonymous

The ordinary reality, as I perceive it, is but a huge and intricate virtual screen which operates on multiple levels. Its origins and developments extend far beyond the understanding and scope of the established functioning of the mind. Trapped in the pen of the binary system and the identification with their physical bodies, human beings eat up a fodder made up of sin, guilt and fear, as they watch the soap opera of life being repeated over and over. Yet such a mirage is so insane and unreal that attentive eyes cannot help discovering gaps all over the place. Although the operators at the projector do their best to botch it up, the absurd illusion of this misperception may reveal itself at any moment. It is like a boasting block of ice showing off its solidity as long as the temperature is below zero and yet inevitably starting to thaw and melt away in warmer weather. — Franco Santoro

Out of nowhere, I became a fairly well-known director with a penchant for opera, which I did for 10 years. Then I realized I was taking myself out the theater channel, and so I re-focused on theater. — Jack O'Brien

Everything about the hawk is tuned and turned to hunt and kill. Yesterday I discovered that when I suck air through my teeth and make a squeaking noise like an injured rabbit, all the tendons in her toes instantaneously contract, driving her talons into the glove with terrible, crushing force. This killing grip is an old, deep pattern in her brain, an innate response that hasn't yet found the stimulus meant to release it. Because other sounds provoke it: door hinges, squealing breaks, bicycles with unoiled wheels - and on the second afternoon, Joan Sutherland singing an aria on the radio. Ow. I laughed out loud at that. Stimulus: opera. Response: kill. — Helen Macdonald

The music of this opera (Madame Butterfly) was dictated to me by God. I was merely instrumental in getting it on paper and communicating it to the public. — Giacomo Puccini

Eyuran," I addressed his Node. "What was in this one?"

He came closer and studied the huge case, which was easily twice the height of an adult Danna and had body slots for some kind of gear.

"I don't know for sure. I haven't seen this before. It resembles a gearbot sarx, but those are usually larger. Must be a new, compact model." Observing the empty sarx, a wave of bad feelings came over me.

"I also saw some of the weapon crates with broken locks."

"If someone is operating a gearbot, a bunch of guns will be the least of our worries. A hull repairer can't even begin to compete with the power of an assault exomachine." He looked around and frowned. "By the way, the whole hull repairer rack is empty. Counting the one you took out, we should have seven more roaming somewhere on the ship. — Jeno Marz

I was on a soap opera before that for three years, where I was the nicest guy on earth. — Ray Liotta

She and Kennedy both dove for the power connector; Kennedy reached it first and yanked out the connection as Alex landed on her stomach beside it.

The air settled down until the fine hairs on her arm no longer stood on end. Alex dropped her forehead to the platform and started laughing. "Just like university, isn't it?"

"Almost - nothing's actually blown up yet. — G.S. Jennsen

Finally, after a glance at Notre Dame and a brisk trot through the Louvre, we sat down at a cafe on the Place de l'Opera and watched the people. They were amazing
never had we seen such costumes, such make-up, such wigs; and, strangest of all, the wearers didn't seem in the least conscious of how funny they looked. Many of them even stared at us and smiled, as though we had been the oddities, and not they. Mr. Holmes no doubt found it amusing to see the pageant of prostitution, poverty and fashion reflected in our callow faces and wide-open eyes. — Christopher Isherwood