One World Me Quotes & Sayings

I wondered why no one had shown the common courtesy to tell me to put on shoes, and why was I out there in my underwear, chicken legs exposed to the world? — John Green

There are 7 billion people in the world, but there's only one heavyweight champion of the world, and that's me. — Tyson Fury

After I retired, it seemed to me that there was a whole new world out there, which was a digital world driven by a marketplace, basically, which had a huge potential driven by handheld devices, which would one day become the virtual retail store of India. — Ratan Tata

In the Jewish tradition of the Bible it says, "Speak to her softly, so that she will want to engage in sexual activity." In today's world, there's a little bit of a danger in that people don't really talk to each other. You see couples walking in the street, each one of them texting someone else. That worries me. — Ruth Westheimer

I think I've been very lucky. The readers who write to me say they like the characters and the sense of a real world, often one they don't otherwise know about. And usually there's a funny bit in there somewhere. — Sophie Weston

I have but one request to ask at my departure from this world; it is-THE CHARITY OF ITS SILENCE. Let no man write my epitaph; for as no man who knows my motives dare now vindicate them, let not prejudice or ignorance asperse them. Let them and me rest in obscurity and peace, and my name remain uninscribed, until other times and other men can do justice to my character. When my country takes her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written. — Robert Emmet

The truth is
we are always highly motivated when something means a great deal to us. If I fell into a deep lake and I didn't know how to swim, I would become highly motivated in an instant. Climbing from the lake would mean more to me than anything else in the world. My effort would be no less than astounding and I would suddenly become one of the most excited and enthusiastic persons imaginable. — Steve Goodier

For the first time, I realize that it's not just the king who appears inhuman.
I do too.
The ferocity of the scar that runs down my cheek, the tightness of my jaw, the look in my eye - I'm no natural thing. Murder and violence have made me this way. Loss and war have made me this way.
I look like a savage.
A savage queen. One who doesn't need a crown or even a weapon to appear powerful.
I see it now - this world's faith in me. It's not just that I am an anachronism; the harshness of my face speaks to these people who have only ever known war.
No wonder the West wants me gone.
A century has gone by, and yet even after all that time I am still something to fear. — Laura Thalassa

We breathe too fast to be able to grasp things in themselves or to expose their fragility. Our panting postulates and distorts them, creates and disfigures them, and binds us to them. I bestir myself, therefore I emit a world as suspect as my speculation which justifies it; I espouse movement, which changes me into a generator of being, into an artisan of fictions, while my cosmogonic verve makes me forget that, led on by the whirlwind of acts, I am nothing but an acolyte of time, an agent of decrepit universes. ( ... )
If we would regain our freedom, we must shake off the burden of sensation, no longer react to the world by our senses, break our bonds. For all sensation is a bond, pleasure as much as pain, joy as much as misery. The only free mind is the one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity. — Emil Cioran

It's not that I refuse to look at the world around me, but that I refuse to pretend it's anymore important than everything else, you know what I mean? The moments from the past or from the future, the unreal scenes from tales, dreams, the projects we push aside each day that exist in the doubt we stop having in order to live--they're all worlds as true as this one, and I neither abandon or degrade them. So, I suppose that if I live in so many spaces at once, being absent from this one from time to time should be excusable, don't you think? — Gustavo Faveron Patriau

There is a musicke where-ever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus farre we may maintain the musick of the spheares; for those well ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the care, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaime against all Church musicke... Even that vulgar and Taverne Musicke, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in mee a deepe fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first Composer; there is something in it of Divinity more than the eare discovers. It is an Hieroglyphicall and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and Creatures of God, such a melody to the eare, as the whole world well understood, would afford the understanding. In briefe it is a sensible fit of that Harmony, which intellectually sounds in the eares of God. — Thomas Browne

Whenever I find myself somehow fooled into doing one of these talks, it's on the grounds that some confused soul thinks that I will talk about the digital world and the future. What always happens is that I rant for an unspecified length of time about obscure history and fringe beliefs. So you need to understand that you are now trapped in this room with me and I've already been paid. This is my cunning plan. — Warren Ellis

I've done over 125 posters and I have worked with some of the best photographers in the world. They made me America's Number one Pin Up. — Cindy Margolis

Girl : do you hear me?
cause although it seemed to be the end of the world to me -
it wasn't.

There was a lot more world : cause roads that look set to take you in one direction will sometimes twist back on themselves without ever seeming anything other than straight, ... many things get forgiven in the course of a life : nothing is finished or unchangeable except death and even death will bend a little if what you tell of it is told right. — Ali Smith

I have never felt comfortable around people who talk about their feelings for Jesus, or any other deity for that matter, because they are usually none too bright ... Or maybe "stupid" is a better way of saying it; but I have never seen much point in getting heavy with either stupid people or Jesus freaks, just as long as they don't bother me. In a world as weird and cruel as this one we have made for ourselves, I figure anybody who can find peace and personal happiness without ripping off somebody else deserves to be left alone. They will not inherit the earth, but then neither will I. — Hunter S. Thompson

With the Wit, one is aware of all the life that surrounds one. It was not just the warmth of the mare nearby that I sensed. I knew the scintillant forms of the myriad insects that populated the grasses, and felt even the shadowy life force of the great oak that lifted its limbs between the moon and me. Just up the hillside, a rabbit crouched motionless in the summer grasses. I felt its indistinct presence, not as a piece of life located in a certain place, but as one sometimes hears a single voice's note within a market's roar. But above all, I felt a physical kinship with all that lived in the world. I had a right to be here. I was as much a part of this summer night as the insects or the water purling past my feet. I think that old magic draws much of its strength from that acknowledgment: that we are a part of that world, no more, but certainly no less than the rabbit."
p. 129 — Robin Hobb

I do, and the now-familiar warmth of his lips steadies me. He tastes of salt and the wine we shared with the others at our small farewell party.
Aladdin pulls away first and lifts one of my hands to his lips, kissing the delicate henna patterns on my skin, then turning my arm over to kiss the inside of my wrist. The ship's crew makes themselves busy on the other side of the ship, giving us privacy.
"You're the most beautiful girl in the world," Aladdin murmurs. "Have I ever told you that?"
"Enough to make me wonder if your father was a parrot. — Jessica Khoury

One of the things that really worries me, in part about Mexico, in part about Latin America, and in part about the Hispanic population in the U.S. and Canada. It's the lack of awareness of this whole science world. — Juan Enriquez

Where writers are from is one of the world' s most boring topics. Where we're born, gender or race, wealth or poverty - those are the things we spend time talking about. Stop trying to label me. I'm a writer. Worry about whether I'm any good! — M. J. Hyland

She took no pleasure from the very things I loved, from her size, her amplitude, her luscious, zaftig heft. As many times as I told her she was beautiful, I know that she never believed me. As many times as I said it didn't matter, I knew that to her it did. I was just one voice, and the world's voice was louder. I could feel her shame like a palpable thing, walking beside us on the street, crouched down between us in a movie theater, coiled up and waiting for someone to say what to her was the dirtiest word in the world: fat. — Jennifer Weiner

Now that the book is out in the world, I'm amazed all over again at what my friend did for me in prompting me to ditch realism for a more magical approach. In some ways, the Golem and the Jinni are the ultimate immigrants. They aren't just new to New York or America; they're new to people. Like those around them, they wrestle with issues of religion versus doubt and duty versus self-determination - but as inescapable aspects of their own otherworldly natures. For seven years I've lived with their questions, arguments, and adventures, and it's been one of the greatest gifts of my life. — Helene Wecker

The path of self-purification is hard and steep. One has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I know that I have not in me as yet that triple purity in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it. That is why the world's praise fails to move me, indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms. — Mahatma Gandhi

He is looking down on the two crystal balls that the old man's foul, strong hands have rolled across to him. In one he sees Margaret, not in her raincoat and her nodding plumes, but as she is transfigured in the light of eternity. Long he looks there; then drops a glance to the other, just long enough to see that in its depths Kitty and I walk in bright dresses through our glowing gardens. We had suffered no transfiguration, for we are as we are, and there is nothing more to us. The whole truth about us lies in our material seeming. He sighs a deep sigh of delight and puts out his hand to the ball where Margaret shines. His sleeve catches the other one and sends it down to crash in a thousand pieces on the floor. The old man's smile continues to be lewd and benevolent; he is still not more interested in me than in the bare-armed woman. Chris is wholly inclosed in his intentness on his chosen crystal. No one weeps for this shattering of our world. — Rebecca West

Actually, I believe there are only two kinds of women in this world: Martha people and Oprah people. That doesn't mean one can't have an affinity for both of them, but my theory is that every chick is more firmly in one camp than the other. The typical Oprah woman is all self-actualized and best-life-y and Eat, Pray, Love. The Big O seems like the kind of gal who'd insist we all spend the afternoon wearing jammy pants. And how fun would that be?!
But Martha?
She's not putting up with that nonsense, and that makes me adore her all the more. She'll tell you what to eat, where to pray, and who to love, and I appreciate the guidance. — Jen Lancaster

The people in this world who scorn me
no doubt have a special wisdom,
so I don't write for them:
instead I write with the thought
that since the world is wide and time is endless,
one day someone will be born
whose nature is the same as mine. — Bhavabhuti

In another moment she had torn herself from his arms, lighted the candle, and Julien had all the difficulty in the world in preventing her from cutting off all one side of her hair. "I wish to remind myself," she told him, "that I am your servant: should my accursed pride ever make me forget it, show me these locks and say: "There is no question now of love, we are not concerned with the emotion that your heart may be feeling at this moment, you have sworn to obey, obey upon your honour. — Stendhal

I don't pay attention to auction prices. Nothing interests me less. One of the benefits of not being an artist is I don't have to navigate the social hierarchies of the art world as a person of desire. I don't need anything. I live in a different way. — Rachel Kushner

Without compunction, pity or shame,
they've built towering walls around me.
Desperate, I sit and think one thing:
alone here this fate confounds me.
For there were many things I'd hoped to do out there.
With all the construction, how was I not aware?
Yet the crack and clang of hammers I never once heard.
Imperceptibly they've confined me from the outside world.
("Walls") — Constantine P. Cavafy

No one's ever going to hurt you again, Taya. Not on my watch." There was no defense in the world that could protect her heart from him when he said things like that. Angling her head up, she cupped the back of his head and lifted up to give him a soft, lingering kiss. Just being near him made her feel safe, stronger. He reminded her of how hard she'd fought to live, how hard she'd battled to take back control over her life.
"You're making it really hard for me not to fall for you," she murmured against his lips. One side of his mouth kicked up as he lifted his head, his eyes glowing with a possessive light that thrilled her.
"Good," was all he said. — Kaylea Cross

Our weaponry was not dropped onto our laps one morning. It is not manna from Sinai's skies. Since Agincourt, the White man has refined & evolved the gunpowder sciences until our modern armies may field muskets by the tens of thousands! Aha!' you will ask, yes, 'But why us Aryans? Why not the Unipeds of Ur or the Mandrakes of Mauritius?' Because, Preacher, of all the world's races, our love - or rather our rapacity - for treasure, gold, spices & dominion, oh, most of all, sweet dominion, is the keenest, the hungriest, the most unscrupulous! This rapacity yes, powers our Progress; for ends infernal or divine I know not. Nor do you know, sir. Nor do I overly care. I feel only gratitude that my Maker cast me on the winning side. — David Mitchell

That's how the world works, doesn't it?"
"That's how it can work. You're such a snob,Brian."
He looked up,flabbergasted. "What?"
"You're such a snob,and the worst kind of snob-the kind who thinks he's broad-minded. Now that I know that,you don't bother me at all."
The stable phone rang,delighting her. Whoever was on the other end not only had perfect timing but they had her gratitude.It gave her great pleasure to see the absolute shock on Brian's face as she walked to the phone.
"Royal Meadows Riding Academy. Would you hold one moment,please." With a friendly smile,she laid a hand over the receiver. "Really,I can finish up here.I'm keeping you from your work."
"I'm not a snob," he finally managed to say.
"Of course you wouldn't see it that way. Can we discuss this another time? I need to take this call."
Irked,he shoved the scoop back in the grain. "I'm not the one wearing bloody diamonds in my ears," he muttered as he stalked out. — Nora Roberts

Justine shook her head mournfully. "I do not fear to die," she said; "that pang is past. God raises my weakness and gives me courage to endure the worst. I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me. Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to the will of heaven! — Mary Shelley

After I was caught returning at dawn from one such late-night escapade, my worried mother thoroughly interrogated me regarding every drug teenagers take, never suspecting that the most intoxicating thing I'd experienced, by far, was the volume of romantic poetry she'd handed me the previous week. Books became my closest confidants, finely ground lenses providing new views of the world. — Paul Kalanithi

All fear has ever done is hold me back. I have so many things I want to accomplish in my life. For myself and for the world. Fear is useless; it just gets in the way of accomplishing everything Overcome fear today and and confront one of your phobias. — Demi Lovato

When he came home, my father swooped me up in his arms. I could feel the cold of the outside world against his one-day growth of beard. — Anonymous

Not long ago I was much amused by imagining - what if the fancy suddenly took me to kill some one, a dozen people at once, or to do some thing awful, something considered the most awful crime in the world - what a predicament my judges would be in, with my having only a fortnight to live, now that corporal punishment and torture is abolished. I should die comfortably in hospital, warm aad snug, with an attentive doctor, and very likely much more snug and comfortable than at home. I wonder that the idea doesn't strike people in my position, if only as a joke. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Power, as human beings exercise power, to me means the ability to change: the ability to change oneself, the ability to change one's community. And the positive use of power is transformation of self and community toward a higher ideal, toward a healed world. — Katharine Jefferts Schori

I am not covetous, but as ambitious as ever any of my sex was, is, or can be; which makes, that though I cannot be Henry the Fifth, or Charles the Second, yet I endeavour to be Margaret the First; and although I have neither power, time, not occasion to conquer the world as Alexander and Caesar did; yet rather than not be mistress of one, since Fortune and Fates would give me none, I have made a world of my own; for which nobody, I hope, will blame me, since it is in everyone's power to do the like. — Margaret Cavendish

The world is going under, I thought, and this notion so little surprised me, it seemed as though I had been waiting a long time for just that to happen. But now, from amid the burning and collapsing city, I saw a boy come toward me. His hands were buried in his pockets and he hopped and skipped from one leg to another, resilient and light-hearted. Then he stopped and emitted an ingenious whistle
our signal from grade school days, and the boy was my friend who had shot himself when he was a student. Immediately I too became, like him, a boy of twelve, and the burning city and the distant thunder and the blustering storm of howling voices from all corners of the world sounded wondrously exquisite to our newly awakened ears. Now everything was good, and the dark nightmare in which I had lived for so many despairing years was gone forever. — Hermann Hesse

To me, what Minecraft represents is more than a hit game franchise. It's this open-world platform. If you think about it, it's the one game parents want their kids to play. — Satya Nadella

Chicago's downtown seems to me to constitute, all in all, the best-looking twentieth-century city, the city where contemporary technique has best been matched by artistry, intelligence, and comparatively moderated greed. No doubt about it, if style were the one gauge, Chicago would be among the greatest of all the cities of the world. — Jan Morris

When I'm doing more than one movie because it makes one not the end of the world. It makes me feel like, "Okay, I won. I had a victory on this one, today. And I lost on this one, today." I can keep going back-and-forth. — Jon M. Chu

I cast people from right around me. I was at my alma mater. It's special to have most of the graduate students in it [and] one professor, because I feel like in terms of this school, I was one of the few students lucky enough to break into the art industry or the contemporary art world. — Kalup Linzy

only one Person can live the Christian life, and that is Christ Himself; and only as I
trust Him to live His life in me, can I possibly live the quality of life that satisfies the heart of God and challenges the world in which I witness.19 — Stephen Seamands

I lay there with my mind running amuck, on the brink of madness. And somehow, gradually, early Sunday morning, I became calm. I can't think of any other word for it. I was thinking about the beach poem again, and I started to feel that I was being looked after, that everything was OK. It was strange: if there was ever a time in my life when I had the right to feel alone this was it. But I lost that sense of loneliness. I felt like there was a force in the room with me, not a person, but I had a sense that there was another world, another dimension, and it would be looking after me. It was like, This isn't the only world, this is just one aspect of the whole thing, don't imagine this is all there is. — John Marsden

The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability. — Ernst Mayr

I suppressed a sigh. Hungary felt increasingly like reading War and Peace: new characters came up every five minutes, with their unusual names and distinctive locutions, and you had to pay attention to them for a time, even though you might never see them again for the whole rest of the book. I would rather have talked to Ivan, the love interest, but somehow I didn't get to decide. At the same time, I also felt that these superabundant personages weren't irrelevant at all, but somehow the opposite, and that when Ivan had told me to make friends with the other kids, he had been telling me something important about the world, about how the fateful character in your life wasn't the one who buried you in a rock, but the one who led you out to more people. — Elif Batuman

February is a month of months, and there is one special day: Valentine's Day on the 14th. I know it's still a ways off, but I just can't wait. Janice, if you're watching, will you make me the happiest man in the world and get out of my apartment? — Ed Helms

One of the things that first attracted me to chess is that it brings you into contact with intelligent, civilized people - men of the stature of Garry Kasparov, the former world champion, who was my part-time coach. — Magnus Carlsen

I could never understand my purpose in this world. I have had nothing but pain and loss my hole life. But now I know why god saved me the first time. It was so I could find you. Then he saved me the second time so I could love you forever. This house is perfect; you are perfect and no one will ever take that away from us. Our love is infinite and I'm going to spend the rest of my life showing you. — Sandi Lynn

The world consists of me and my thoughts and my feelings; and everything else is mere fancy. Life is a dream in which I create the objects that come before me. Everything knowable, every object of experience, is an idea in my mind, and without my mind it does not exist. Dream and reality are one. Life is a connected and consisted dream, and when I cease to dream, the world, with its beauty, its pain and sorrow, its unimaginable variety, will cease to be. take life as it is. just the way it is. — W. Somerset Maugham

The trees were tinted exquisitely to an uncertain glory as the great red sinking sun flashed its rays on their crystal mantle. The vale of Aylesbury was drowsing beneath a slowly deepening shroud of mist. Above it the hills, their crests rounded and shaded by silver and rose coppices, seemed to have set in them great smoky eyes of flame where the last rays burned in them.
'It is like some dream world,' thought Mr. Cort. 'It is curious how, wherever the sun strikes, it seems to make an eye, and each one fixed on me; those hills, even those windows. But, judging from that mist, I shall have a slow journey home ...
("Blind Man's Bluff") — H.R. Wakefield

Who would care if I became pregnant, who would be scandalized? Aunty Eva, Anwar's flatmates. Omar would never know unless I wrote to him. Uncle Saleh was across the world. A few years back, getting pregnant would have shocked Khartoum society, given my father a heart attack, dealt a blow ti my mother's marriage, and mild, modern Omar, instead of beating me, would called me a slut. And now nothing, no one. This empty space was called freedom. — Leila Aboulela

What do we want from our mothers when we are children? Complete submission. Oh, it's very nice and rational and respectable to say that a woman has every right to her life, to her ambitions, to her needs, and so on--it's what I've always demanded myself--but as a child, no, the truth is it's a war of attrition, rationality doesn't come into it, not one bit, all you want from your mother is that she once and for all admit that she is your mother and only your mother, and that her battle with the rest of life is over. She has to lay down arms and come to you. And if she doesn't do it, then it's really a war, and it was a war between my mother and me. Only as an adult did I come to truly admire her--especially in the last, painful years of her life--for all that she had done to claw some space in this world for herself. — Zadie Smith

People would ask me how I could stand the long campaigning, how I could stand being charged with the responsibilities of a great nation, one of the most powerful and difficult jobs in the world.
It wasn't any more difficult than picking cotton all day or shaking peanuts. — Jimmy Carter

I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline. Particularly when one can't see the details. Just the shapes. The shapes and the thought that made them. The sky over New York and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? And then people tell me about pilgrimages to some dank pesthole in a jungle where they go to do homage to a crumbling temple, to a leering stone monster with a pot belly, created by some leprous savage. Is it beauty and genius they want to see? Do they seek a sense of the sublime? Let them come to New York, stand on the shore of the Hudson, look and kneel. When I see the city from my window - no, I don't feel how small I am - but I feel that if a war came to threaten this, I would throw myself into space, over the city, and protect these buildings with my body. — Ayn Rand

And just as it is common to hear how, when one is in love, anything one sees reminds one of that love - our feelings remake the world in a secular equivalent of the faith that sees the hand of God in everything - so I began to find that when one is thinking on a theme, everything seems to reflect on it. Suddenly, everything I saw or read, in this girlish city of temples, seemed to take me back to the theme of the lady and the monk. — Pico Iyer

[This world] exists nonnecessarily, improbably, and causelessly. It exists for absolutely no reason at all. It is inexplicably and stunningly actual ... The impact of this captivated realisation upon me is overwhelming. I am completely stunned. I take a few dazed steps in the dark meadow, and fall among the flowers. I lie stupefied, whirling without comprehension in this world through numberless worlds other than this one. — Quentin Smith

I will not change the world. Jesus will do that. I can, however, let Him use me to change the world for one person. — Katie Davis

I ask, I demand to be respected! Shatov went on shouting. Not for my person
to hell with it
but for something else, just for now, for a few words ... We are two beings, and we have come together in infinity ... for the last time in the world. Abandon your tone and take a human one! At least for once in your life speak in a human voice. Not for my sake, but for your own. Do you understand that you should forgive me that slap in the face if only because with it I gave you an opportunity to know your infinite power ... Again you smile that squeamish, worldly smile. Oh, when will you understand me! Away with the young squire! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There was no one in the world but Sydney and me just then, and the only things that mattered were our love and the way I felt in her arms. — Richelle Mead

Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was one of ease and freedom, worldly wisdom, glitter, dash and style. — Jonathan Raban

The thing for me is, what if one returns to these maxims, these rather simplistic maxims "Be the change you want to see in the world." Because what canvas have we but the self for these kind of explorations, ultimately. — Russell Brand

It is for that moment when I might steady you so you don't fall, I have added my blood to an inkwell. Indelible now will be my mark on history's canvas and upon any sincere debate of God where reason finally prevails. And when you have the strength, you too may find another to hold up. They lean against each other in a storm, those cypresses grown tall together ... through the years. If they had not trusted and protected one another the way they do, they would not have survived and given us their grace and shade - a place for our eyes to meet. Our friendship can be like this: a needed lift, a sail, a pillar, a springboard to taste the unfathomable. It is to tend you as you come into being, like a new world, that causes me to stay, gives me a purpose. Of course I thank you for that ... for letting me help. — Rumi

We all have a world of things inside ourselves and each one of us has his own private world. How can we understand each other if the words I use have the sense and the value that I expect them to have, but whoever is listening to me inevitably thinks that those same words have a different sense and value, because of the private world he has inside himself, too. — Luigi Pirandello

Many Christians backslide ... They are unable to stand against the temptations of the world, or of their old nature. They strive to do their best to fight against sin, and to serve God, but they have no strength. They have never really grasped the secret: The Lord Jesus will every day from heaven continue His work in me. But on one condition-the soul must give Him time each day to impart His love and his grace. Time alone with the Lord Jesus each day is the indispensable condition of growth and power. — Andy Murray

You see, Risa, survival is a dance between our needs and our consciences. When the need is great enough, and the music loud enough, we can stomp conscience into the ground.'
Risa closes her eyes. She knows the dance ...
'It's the way of the world,' Divan continues. 'Look at unwinding, society's grand gavotte of denial. There will, no doubt, come a time when people look to one another and say, 'My God, what have we done?' But I don't believe it will happen any time soon. Until then, the dance must have music; the chorus must have its voice. Give it that voice, Risa. Play for me.'
But Risa's fingers offer him nothing, and the Orgao Organico holds the obdurate, unyielding silence of the grave. — Neal Shusterman

The Duke would later name me a Shadow, and after his naming, life itself wore me away to make his words true. I have been a Shadow for years upon years now. And yet, I think if I were to trace back to the moment I started to fade away from the world, it would not be when I began my training, or when I first killed, or when I first spied upon my King. It would be the moment that I looked around myself, in that cold mountain village, and realized that I might never have been born and no one would ever have missed me. — Moira Katson

when TV like the radio before it has been swallowed alive by the next big thing. My stories will still be here, the books I have written will still be here, and with them like those before me, I will live forever as long as one person reads one page of my world. — Shawn Hilton

For a while, the world for me was like a set of monkey bars. I swung from one place to the next, sometimes backward, sometimes forward, capitalizing on my own momentum, knowing that at some point my arms ... would give out, and I'd fall to the ground. — Amanda Lindhout

Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy." He lifted an eyebrow. "I'll tell you a secret."
"Tell me." I loved it when he was like this.
"I'm going to be the first." He took my palm and held it to his. "Swear it."
"Why me?"
"Because you're the reason. Swear it."
"I swear it," I said, lost in the high color of his cheeks, the flame in his eyes.
"I swear it," he echoed.
We sat like that a moment, hands touching. He grinned.
"I feel like I could eat the world raw. — Madeline Miller

I have a theory that the world is broken up into two kinds of people."
"Yeah?"
"Yep. On the one side are the people who love the Harry Pottery books and wish that they could attend Hogwarts and have Ron and Hermione for best friends and vanquish Death Eaters and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."
She's smiling at me, and she's just so fucking cute. I have to ask: "And the other side?"
Aimee shrugs. "Douchebags. — Autumn Doughton

I always prayed the same way at night: "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Please bless my mother, father, sister, everyone in the word, and me. And please make my father quit drinking."
As a child growing up in a family battling alcoholism, this is what I know: Something bad is coming; it always does. I can't ask for help; I'm too ashamed. I can't talk about our secrets; no one understands. I can't trust anyone; they always leave.
Questions bounced off my self-constructed wall of values
a barricade I'd made from the fears I'd pushed into my darkness.
How could Ryan, a professional baseball player, really resist all those women? How could I really trust Jerry, my childhood friend? I'd barely awakened to sex and already boys were the seventh wonder of the world. Did anyone really trust another person? I needed proof. That proof hadn't revealed itself ... yet. — Pamela Taeuffer

Is not the gospel its own sign and wonder? Is not this a miracle of miracles, that 'God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish'? Surely that precious word, 'Whosoever will, let him come and take the water of life freely' and that solemn promise, 'Him that cometh unto Me, I will in no wise cast out,' are better than signs and wonders! A truthful Saviour ought to be believed. He is truth itself. Why will you ask proof of the veracity of One who cannot lie? — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

DENIAL OF EMOTIONS
Our culture does not handle emotions well. We like folks to be happy and fine. We learn rituals of acting happy and fine at an early age. I can remember many times telling people "I'm fine" when I felt like the world was caving in on me. I often think of Senator Muskie who cried on the campaign trail when running for president. From that moment on he was history. We don't want a president who has emotions. We would rather have one that can act! Emotions are certainly not acceptable in the workplace. True expression of any emotions that are not "positive" are met with disdain. — John Bradshaw

My cousin Helen, who is in her 90s now, was in the Warsaw ghetto during World War II. She and a bunch of the girls in the ghetto had to do sewing each day. And if you were found with a book, it was an automatic death penalty. She had gotten hold of a copy of 'Gone With the Wind', and she would take three or four hours out of her sleeping time each night to read. And then, during the hour or so when they were sewing the next day, she would tell them all the story. These girls were risking certain death for a story. And when she told me that story herself, it actually made what I do feel more important. Because giving people stories is not a luxury. It's actually one of the things that you live and die for. — Neil Gaiman

We were in the middle of a sandbar in the middle of the ocean with no one around, and still someone was following me from New York, and was hiding in some bushes like a mile away with a long lens, so he still got pictures. It was really an eye opener to how you really have to be careful about being followed everywhere. I was trying to go to the most remote place in the world, I was out on a sandbar in the middle of the ocean, and they still found me. It was definitely a very new experience. — Ronda Rousey

To call ourselves a Microcosme, or little world, I thought it onely a pleasant trope of Rhetorick, till my neare judgement and second thoughts told me there was a reall truth therein: for first wee are a rude masse, and in the ranke of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kinde of being not yet priviledged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits, running on in one mysterious nature those five kinds of existence, which comprehend the creatures not onely of world, but of the Universe. — Thomas Browne

Pope smiled. "You're thinking all wrong, boy. There's no such thing as law or government inside this room. It's just you and me. I am the one and only authority in your little world, whose borders are these walls. I could kill you right now if I wanted to. — Blake Crouch

There is nothing like understanding that your work has touched somebody. That is the sole purpose of acting. To be able to move and inspire. If I can do that for one person it is already changing the world and that makes me feel accomplished. — Scott Cohen

I got the idea in my head - and I could not get it out - that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heaven's sake. What's the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? I think that knowledge - when it's knowledge for knowledge's sake, anyway - is the worst of all. The least excusable certainly. I don't think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while - just once in a while - there was some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn't, it's just a disgusting waste of time! But there never is! — J.D. Salinger

When God created the heavens and the earth, darkness was upon the face of the deep. When the Eternal Son became flesh, He was carried for a time in the darkness of the sweet virgin's womb. When He died for the life of the world, it was in the darkness, seen by no one at the last. When He arose from the dead, it was ,'very early in the morning." No one saw Him rise. It is as if God were saying, "What I am is all that need matter to you, for there lie your hope and your peace. I will do what I will do, and it will all come to light at last, but how I do it is My secret. Trust Me, and be not afraid. — A.W. Tozer

Hunger is a deep concern of mine, and I feel that no one should go without food in this world as long as there are caring people to lend a hand. I've had to struggle in my past and I know what it's like to go without, so I try to do as much as I can to help bring awareness to an issue that hits very close to home for me. — Nick Cannon

But even if they could go home it would be difficult for me to tell you what the moral of the story is. In some stories, it's easy. The moral of "The Three Bears," for instance, is "Never break into someone else's house." The moral of "Snow White" is "Never eat apples." The moral of World War One is "Never assassinate Archduke Ferdinand." [ ... ] and as the Baudelaire orphans sat and watched the dock fill with people as the business of the day began, they figured out something that was very important to them. It dawned on them that unlike Aunt Josephine, who had lived up in that house, sad and alone, the three children had one another for comfort and support over the course of their miserable lives. And while this did not make them feel entirely safe, or entirely happy, it made them feel appreciative. — Lemony Snicket

I don't know one thing about the future. I don't know what the next hour will hold. There may be sickness, accident, personal or world catastrophe. Before this day is over I may have to deal with death, pain, loss, rejection. I don't know what the future holds for me, for those I love, for my nation, for this world. Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will, and I cheerfully persist in living in the hope that nothing will separate me from Christ's love. — Eugene H. Peterson

Don't you think the stairs are a good place for reading letters? I do. One is somehow suspended. One is on neutral ground - not in one's own world nor in a strange one. They are an almost perfect meeting place. Oh Heavens! How stairs do fascinate me when I think of it. Waiting for people - sitting on strange stairs - hearing steps far above, watching the light playing by itself - hearing - far below a door, looking down into a kind of dim brightness, watching someone come up. But I could go on forever. Must put them in a story though! People come out of themselves on stairs - they issue forth, unprotected. — Katherine Mansfield

My high school guidance counselor, Mrs. Inverholl, once had me take an aptitude test to figure out my future. The number one job recommendation for my set of skills was an air traffic accident investigator, of which there are fewer than fifty in the world. The number two job was a museum curator for Chinese-American studies. The number three job was a circus clown. — Jodi Picoult

I think there must be probably different types of suicides. I'm not one of the self-hating ones. The type of like "I'm shit and the world'd be better off without poor me" type that says that but also imagines what everybody'll say at their funeral. I've met types like that on wards. Poor-me-I-hate-me-punish-me-come-to-my-funeral. Then they show you a 20 X 25 glossy of their dead cat. It's all self-pity bullshit. It's bullshit. I didn't have any special grudges. I didn't fail an exam or get dumped by anybody. All these types. Hurt themselves. I didn't want to especially hurt myself. Or like punish. I don't hate myself. I just wanted out. I didn't want to play anymore is all. I wanted to just stop being conscious. I'm a whole different type. I wanted to stop feeling this way. If I could have just put myself in a really long coma I would have done that. Or given myself shock I would have done that. Instead. — David Foster Wallace

For me, it is as though at every moment the actual world had completely lost its actuality. As though there was nothing there; asthough there were no foundations for anything or as though it escaped us. Only one thing, however, is vividly present: the constant tearing of the veil of appearances; the constant destruction of everything in construction. Nothing holds together, everything falls apart. — Eugene Ionesco

When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant "government of the people" but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term "people" to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America's problem is not its betrayal of "government of the people," but the means by which "the people" acquired their names. This — Ta-Nehisi Coates

Do you fancy catching a movie at the Sturbridge Theater tonight? That new Robert Pattinson movie is showing," I ask her, the phone cradled against my chest.
"Definitely sign me up for that!" Ari replies, chuckling as I mock scowl. Her easy laugh warms my soul.
"We're in," I tell Gil, arranging to meet him and his date in the diner later.
"So, who is it this time?" Ari asks, resting her chin in her hands. "Anyone we know?"
Considering I can count the girls on one hand who have enjoyed more than one date with Gil, I doubt it'll be someone familiar. "I didn't ask; guess we'll find out soon enough."
"Five bucks says it's a blonde," Ari quips.
"That's one bet I'm not taking," I admit, twirling a lock of her hair around my finger. "Gil's penchant for blondes is world-renowned. — Siobhan Davis

Dad used to tell me about the guys at the VFW who could feel their amputated limbs. I feel like one of those guys-wiggling my weak tortured, pathetic self from only a month ago even though I've amputated him.
It's a little like being two people at once. One minute I feel like the old Lucky who had nothing, and the next minute I realize I have everything I could possibly need.
While I'm in the driveway, I hear the neighborhood kids playing. Normal kids doing normal things. They probably don't know that as of today more than 1,700 servicemen have still not been accounted for. They probably don't know that about 8,000 are still missing from Korea, or that approximately 74,000 never surfaced after World War II. They don't know that amputees sometimes try to wiggle limbs they lost.
I don't envy them. They have a lot to learn. — A.S. King

I do not know where I can find a better place than just here, to make mention of one or two other things, which to me seem important, as in printed form establishing in all respects the reasonableness of the whole story of the White Whale, more especially the catastrophe. For this is one of those disheartening instances where truth requires full as much bolstering as error. So ignorant are most landsmen of some of the plainest and most palpable wonders of the world, that without some hints touching the plain facts, historical and otherwise, of the fishery, they might scout at Moby Dick as a monstrous fable, or still worse and more detestable, a hideous and intolerable allegory. — Herman Melville

She flapped her hands, anxious energy coursing through her. "How can you be so calm?"
He got to his feet, unfolding with an easy grace. He held out a hand, his dark eyes focused solemnly on hers. "Come with me."
"For what?"
"That's part of the lesson." Was it her imagination, or did a twinkle of humor stir in those eyes? "Center yourself, and grab onto the here and now."
That made no sense - what was he now, Sir Medieval Zen Master? But she slipped her hand into his strong, calloused one. He hauled her up until she bumped into his chest. With a finger under her chin, he tilted her face until she looked in his eyes.
"Listen to the world around you. Hear the birds? Hear the small animals scurrying? You are in this moment, this moment only, and sometimes that's all you can do, all you can be." His finger pulled away, brushing against her skin, and he tapped her nose, stepping away. — Angela Quarles

And eventually there is no one left in the world except people who don't look at other people's faces and who don't know what these pictures mean and these people are all special people like me. And they like being on their own and I hardly ever see them because they are like okapi in the jungle in the Congo, which are a kind of antelope and very shy and rare. And I can go anywhere in the world and I know that no one is going to talk to me or touch me or ask me a question. But if I don't want to go anywhere I don't have to, and I can stay at home and eat broccoli and oranges and licorice laces all the time, or I can play computer games for a whole week, or I can just sit in the corner of the room and rub £1 coin back and forward over the ripple shapes on the surface of the radiator. And I wouldn't have to go to France. — Mark Haddon

Mute in that golden silence hung with green,
Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyes
Remembrance of all beauty that has been,
And stillness from the pools of Paradise.
— Siegfried Sassoon

The notion that we are separate is not really true; it's all made up. It's all conjured up in our mind. It's one big dream that we have. The difficulty with this dream is that almost everybody around us is having the same dream. It's essentially the collective dream of humanity. So it's not just you or me that's dreaming; almost all human beings are also having this dream of being separate, of being completely other than the world around them. What this means is that we really have to look within ourselves quite deeply, because we're not only looking beyond our own deluded mind, our own misunderstanding; we're looking beyond the delusion of the entirety of humanity. — Adyashanti

Their world will eat at you," Mab said. "Strip you away bit by bit. Cut off from the Nevernever, you will not survive. Whether it takes one mortal year or a thousand, you will gradually fade away, until you simply cease to exist." Mab stepped closer, pointing at me with the scepter. "She will die, Ash. She is only human. She will grow old, wither and die, and her soul will flee to a place you cannot follow. And then, you will be left to wander the mortal world alone, until you yourself are only a memory.And after that-" the queen opened her empty fist "-nothing. Forever. — Julie Kagawa

It's so childish, greatest country in the world. It's like saying, I have the best wife in the world. Not just the one best suited for me, the best wife in the world. And if you could have my wife, you'd kill your wife. — Bill Maher

Ed, once called Aladdin, is the first artificial intelligence I've ever known. Maybe if Harry can kill Hiskott and if then I live long enough to see the world become the total science-fiction theme park it seems to be headed toward, I'll probably know dozens of them one day. Let me tell you, if they're all as nice as Ed has turned out to be, that's okay with me. — Dean Koontz