Out Of Box Quotes & Sayings

The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle- making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen. — O. Henry

I found one remaining box of comics which I had saved. When I opened it up and that smell came pouring out, that old paper smell, I was struck by a rush of memories, a sense of my childhood self that seemed to be contained in there. — Michael Chabon

Smart people are a dime a dozen. What matters is the ability to think different ... to think out of the box. — Walter Isaacson

You cannot think your way out of a box made of thought. — Krishna Das

Terrific! Have you done Step Three?" He waggled his brows as he opened up the top left drawer of my dresser.
"No. Hey! Do you mind, Nosy Newton?"
"Are these panties?" he asked, holding up two of my thongs. "Because they look like dental floss to me."
Oh my God. My almost father-in-law was digging around in my lingerie. Embarrassment bloomed in my face. "Ruadan, get out of my underwear!"
"Fine," he said, closing the left drawer and opening the right one. "Oh! Lookie here!"
"If you touch that box," I said menacingly, "I will cut off your head with your own swords. And I'm not talking about the one on your shoulders."
He laughed, shutting the drawer. "You won't need a vibrator anymore. You've got Patrick." His gaze slid toward the dresser. "Unless you have different toys in there. Nipple clamps?"
"I ... what ... oh God." I fell onto the bed, curled into the fetal position, and covered my face. — Michele Bardsley

When someone dismissively answers "Of course a tree makes a sound if no one's nearby," they are merely demonstrating their inability to ponder an event nobody attended. They're finding it too difficult to take themselves out of the equation. They somehow continue to imagine themselves present when they are absent. — Robert Lanza

My dear Princess, if you could creep unseen about your City, peeping at will through the curtain-shielded windows, you would come to think that all the world was little else than a big nursery full of crying children with none to comfort them. The doll is broken: no longer it sweetly sqeaks in answer to our pressure, "I love you, kiss me." The drum lies silent with the drumstick inside, no longer do we make a brave noise in the nursery. The box of tea-things we have clumsily put out foot upon; there will be no more merry parties around the three-legged stool. The tin trumpet will not play the note we want to sound; the wooden bricks keep falling down; the toy has exploded and burnt our fingers. Never mind, little man, little woman, we will try and mend things to-morrow — Jerome K. Jerome

When I was a child I had a fishless aquarium. My father set it up for me with gravel and plants and pebbles before he'd got the fish and I asked him to leave it as it was for a while. The pump kept up a charming burble, the green-gold light was wondrous when the room was dark. I put in a china mermaid and a tin horseman who maintained a relationship like that of the figures on Keat's Grecian urn except that the horseman grew rusty. Eventually fish were pressed upon me and they seemed an intrusion, I gave them to a friend. All that aquarium wanted was the sound of the pump, the gently waving plants, the mysterious pebbles and the silent horseman forever galloping to the mermaid smiling in the green-gold light. I used to sit and look at them for hours. The mermaid and the horseman were from my father. I have them in a box somewhere here, I'm not yet ready to take them out and look at them again. — Russell Hoban

I work pretty quickly. I'd probably draw somebody once or twice in pencil, then just go to ink. Not really care too much about it, and it just kind of worked out. — Box Brown

Paul Klee seems to handle colors and dreams as if they both came out of a box of children's toys. He plays and dreams with whatever he finds. — Jean Helion

The head of the sledgehammer was cold, icy cold, and it touched his forehead as gently as a kiss.
'Pock! There,' said Czernobog. 'Is done.' There was a smile on his face that Shadow had never seen before, an easy, comfortable smile, like sunshine on a summer's day. The old man walked over to the case, and he put the hammer away, and closed the bag, and pushed it back under the sideboard.
'Czernobog?' asked Shadow. Then, 'Are you Czernobog?'
'Yes. For today,' said the old man. 'By tomorrow, it will all be Bielebog. But today, is still Czernobog.'
'Then why? Why didn't you kill me when you could?'
The old man took out an unfiltered cigarette from a pack in his pocket. He took a large box of matches from the mantelpiece and lit the cigarette with a match. He seemed deep in thought. 'Because,' said the old man, after some time, 'there is blood. But there is also gratitude. And it has been a long, long winter. — Neil Gaiman

He opened the gun box, lifted out the sections of his own gun, for comparison. They slid together with well-oiled clicks. Laying the two guns side by side, he experienced a momentary lapse of faith. They looked nothing like a pair. His own gun looked fat and polished. It almost breathed as it lay on the slab. Bertie's gun looked like a sketch, or a preliminary model done in cheap materials to get the shape right and then discarded. — Helen Simonson

On Wednesday, for variety, he accosted Andrew as Andrew went out to check the state of the garden walls and presented a further cardboard box containing ten kilos of tomatoes and a squash like a deformed head of a baby. — Diana Wynne Jones

Oh, thank the gods. Now I can talk to someone about clothes without being asked how so-and-so would approve of it, or gobble down a box of chocolates without someone telling me I'd better watch my figure - tell me you like chocolates. You do, right? I remember stealing a box from your room once when you were out killing someone. They were delicious." Aelin waved a hand toward the boxes of goodies on the table. "You brought chocolate - as far as I'm concerned, you're my new favorite person." Lysandra — Sarah J. Maas

Kinsey was the kind of pretty that got under her skin. It was as if someone had put the girl next door and a vintage pin-up in a box, shook it, and Kinsey was what had tumbled out, blushing and mussed. Plus, — Alessandra Torre

I can see you have a great deal of water in your personality. Water never waits. It changes shape and flows around things, and finds the secret paths no one else has thought about
the tiny hole through the roof or the bottom of the box. There's no doubt it's the most versatile of the five elements. It can wash away earth; it can put out fire; it can wear a piece of metal down and sweep it away. Even wood, which is its natural complement, can't survive without being nurtured by water. And yet, you haven't drawn on those strengths in living your life, have you? — Arthur Golden

the farmer's almanac, pieces of stick candy, and Grandma's snuff box. I saw him reach into the fireplace once with his bare hand, remove a live coal, and light his pipe. He must have had leather for skin. One day, I looked out to the field to the east of the house and saw a cloud of dust rising from a thrashing machine. Men were gathered around with wagons, pitch — Lanier Davis

I have never understood the saying 'To think outside the box.' Why would anyone sit inside of a box and then think outside of it. Rather just get out of the box. — Lawrence Anthony

I looked at all the trees and didn't know what to do.
A box made out of leaves.
What else was in the woods? A heart, closing. Nevertheless.
Everyone needs a place. It shouldn't be inside of someone else.
I kept my mind on the moon. Cold moon, long nights moon.
From the landscape: a sense of scale.
From the dead: a sense of scale.
I turned my back on the story. A sense of superiority.
Everything casts a shadow.
Your body told me in a dream it's never been afraid of anything. — Richard Siken

You are a terror, aren't you? Leave this yard alone. I know just where everything is in it, and I won't be able to find the things I need for my transport spells if you tidy them up.'
So there was probably a bundle of souls or a box of chewed hearts somewhere out here, Sophie thought. She felt really thwarted. 'Tidying up is what I'm here for!' she shouted at Howl.
'Then you must think of a new meaning for your life,' Howl said. — Diana Wynne Jones

And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached. — Rick Riordan

In 'Colonization in Reverse'41 (a famous poem much anthologized) the speaker is presented as a more or less reliable commentator who implies that Jamaicans who come to 'settle in de motherlan' are like English people who settled in the colonies. West Indian entrepreneurs, shipping off their countrymen 'like fire', turn history upside down. Fire can destroy, but may also be a source of warmth to be welcomed in temperate England. Those people who 'immigrate an populate' the seat of the Empire seem, like many a colonizer, ready to displace previous inhabitants. 'Jamaica live fi box bread/Out a English people mout' plays on a fear that newcomers might exploit the natives; and some of the immigrants are - like some of the colonizers from 'the motherland' - lazy and inclined to put on airs. Can England, who faced war and braved the worst, cope with people from the colonies turning history upside down? Can she cope with 'Colonizin in reverse'? — Mervyn Morris

Think out of the box but stay in the yard. — Johnnie Dent Jr.

The attackers are the people with bold, innovative ideas, who are trying to disrupt the status quo, and usher in a better way. We need to think out of the box, and be curious, and be willing to take risks. — Steve Case

And then there's me, terribly afraid to step out of the box and date someone different. Afraid to get hurt in a different, more complex way - by somebody who I actually trust and care about. My biggest fear. Nice guy was a bad word to me because I feared that lurching-stomach feeling of losing someone I love. Nice meant future, and the future was always uncertain. — Alida Nugent

Life is like a game of Monopoly. You may own hotels on Boardwalk or you may be renting on Baltic Avenue. But in the end, it all goes back in the box. The next generation will be getting out all your stuff and playing with it or fighting over it. — Andy Andrews

He glanced over at me. 'Scared? Of Reggie? What, she thinks he might force her to give up caffeine for real or something?'
'No,' I said.
'Of what, then?' he asked.
I paused, only just now realizing that the subject was hitting a little close to home. 'You know, getting hurt. Putting herself out there, opening up to someone.'
'Yeah,' he said, adding some cheese straws to the car, but risk is just part of relationships. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.'
I picked up a box of cheese straws, examinig it. 'Yeah,' I said. 'But it's not all about chance, either.'
'Meaning what?' he asked, taking the box from me and adding the rest.
'Just that, if you know ahead of time that there might an issue that dooms everything- like, say, you're incredibly controlling and independent, like Harriet- maybe it's better to acknowledge that and not waste your time. Or someone else's. — Sarah Dessen

Without doubt, matter is unlimited in extent, and, in this sense, infinite; and the forces of Nature mould it into an innumerable number of worlds. Would it be at all astonishing if, from the universal dice-box, out of an innumberable number of throws, there should be thrown out one world infinitely perfect? Nay, does not the calculus of probabilities prove to us that one such world out of an infinite number, must be produced of necessity? — William Batchelder Greene

If the black box flight recorder is never damaged during a plane crash, why isn't the whole airplane made out of that stuff? — George Carlin

Neethan is a tall dude, six-eight, and watching him come out of a limo is like watching a cleverly designed Japanese toy robot arachnid emerge from a box, propelling a torso on which nods his head, across which is splashed a smile of idealized teeth, teeth so gleaming you could brush your own teeth looking into them, teeth that still look fantastic blown up two stories tall on the side of a building, a sexual promise to nameless fans encoded in bicuspid, molar, incisor, and canine. The arm rises, a wave, a hello, an acknowledgement that the assembled journalists exist and through the conduits of their cameras exist the public. Neethan F. Jordan has arrived! — Ryan Boudinot

If I weren't standing next to your boyfriend, I'd be tempted to ask you out myself."
She blushes, and St. Clair bounds inside the box office and wrestles her into a hug. "Miiiiiiiiine!" he says.
"Cut it out." Anna pushes him off, laughing. "You'll get fired. And then I'll have to support your sorry arse for the rest of our lives. — Stephanie Perkins

A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. "Spare some change?" mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. "I have nothing to give you," said the stranger. Then he asked: "What's that you are sitting on?" "Nothing," replied the beggar. "Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember." "Ever looked inside?" asked the stranger. "No," said the beggar. "What's the point? There's nothing in there." "Have a look inside," insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold. I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself. — Eckhart Tolle

Get a dog biscuit out of that cabinet there," Mr. Jones told Denny.
Denny found a box of Milk-Bones and took one out.
Mr. Jones was picking up his tools. Denny held the bone out to him.
"Give it to him, not me," said Mr. Jones. "Do I look like I want a Milk-Bone? — Jackie French Koller

Sing little box

Don't let sleep overtake you
The world's awake within you

In your four-sided emptiness
We turn distance into nearness
Forgetfulness into memory

Don't let your nails come loose

For the very first time
We watch sights beyond this world
Through your keyhole

Turn your key in our mouths
Swallow words and numbers
Out of your song

Don't let your lid fly open
Your bottom drop

Sing little box — Vasko Popa

You went shopping with Rebecca?'
'Yep,' I said, pulling the shoes out of the box.
His brows went to the heavens.
'Wow, those are like ... Jenn shoes.'
'These are not hooker shoes,' I said defensively.
'Well played,' he said. — Karina Halle

It's funny how love can fit inside a brown cardboard box. With relationships, people often think that things pile up. But when it ends, they're surprised how few these things turn out to be. Or at least, how few things they are willing to let go of. — Juan Miguel Sevilla

I'm a self trained, autodidactic artist, so all I was ever trying to do was to draw as realistically as possible - but that's what comes out, because I don't really know how to draw! I think when I draw characters, I'm able to reduce them down to little marks that capture the most distinct elements of them. — Box Brown

You can't think yourself out of a box that's made of your thoughts. — Krishna Das

I don't need my heart anymore, you can have it. Cut it out, put it in a box, bury it in the hard ground, next to you. My eyes are useless too. They only show me a world without you. Color blind, color absent, colorless. And my mind screams, Not fair! Not right. Not what I was promised on the swing set as you pushed me toward the sun. None of the stories you read me schooled me for this. I didn't learn this lesson in the moon, or on the train, or as a thing to be curious about. So I don't need my heart anymore, you can have it. Let it be buried, in the hard ground, next to you. — Catherine McKenzie

So I went ahead and made me a guitar. Igot me a cigar box, I cut me a round hole in the middle of it, takeme a little piece of plank, nailed it onto that cigar box, and I gotme some screen wire and I made me a bridge back there and raised itup high enough that it would sound inside that little box, and got mea tune out of it. I kept my tune and I played from then on. — Lightnin' Hopkins

the Eight Percent Rule to McCann. "It's really very simple," he said, using the same melodic voice he used to pet and stroke the jury. "I have to convince one juror out of twelve to vote with us. One of twelve is eight percent, give or take. Not that I need to convince him our client is innocent, understand. I just need to establish an intimate partnership with that one fellow or lady in a crowd who is contrary. The man or woman who has an ax to grind. My theory, and you saw it happen twice, is that in any group of people forced to be together, at least eight percent of them will go against the majority if for no other reason than to shove it up their ass - if they have an authority figure they can trust to be on their side. I am that leader in the courtroom. — C.J. Box

As long as you and I understand salvation as checking off a box to get to God, we will find ourselves in the meaningless sea of world religions that actually condemn the human race by exalting our supposed ability to get to God. On the other hand, when you and I realize that we are morally evil, dead in sin and deserving of God's wrath with no way out on our own, we begin to discover our desperation for Christ. — David Platt

She stepped out of the box, smiled sweetly. "You know, Brian, just because you can make a fifteen hundred pound horse do what you want, doesn't mean you can budge me one inch.I'm going to go bet on our horse.To win."
"It's not our-" He broke off, swore, as she'd already flounced out. "And you don't bet to win," he muttered. "It's nothing personal," he said to Finnegan who was watching him with soft, sad eyes. "I just can't be owning things.It's not that I don't have great affection and respect for you,for I do. But what happens in a year or two down the road I move on? Even if I don't-as it's feeling more and more that I'd wonder why I would-I can't have the wman give me a horse.Even a half a horse. Well, not to worry.We'll straighten it all out later. — Nora Roberts

You adopted him," I said when Romeo sat on the coffee table in front of me.
"You love him," he said simply. Like that was all he needed to know.
"But you'll have to take care of him. Feed him. Give him water. Change the litter box."
"Thought maybe you'd want to help."
I looked up. Our eyes locked.
"What if I say no?" I asked. "What happens to Murphy then?"
He shrugged. "He's a cook cat. I'll keep him. He can watch football with me on Sundays."
I couldn't help but smile at the image that cast in my head.
"You'd really do that?" I whispered.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Yes." Then his stoic eyes turned playful and his smile came out. "You wanna watch football with me on Sundays too?"
- Rimmel & Romeo — Cambria Hebert

God Layken. How do you do it? she says. She blows her nose and grabs another tissue out of the box. How do I do what? I sniff as I continue to wipe the tears from my eyes. How do you not fall in love with him? The tears begin flowing just as quickly as they had ceased. I grab yet another tissue. I don't not fall in love with him. I don't not fall in love with him a lot! — Colleen Hoover

Once again Toll-by-Night had burst out of its captivity, like a monstrous jack from an innocent-looking box. And this time Mosca was a part of it. — Frances Hardinge

If Jenny were a book, she would be a paperback just out of the box - no dog ears, no waterlogging, no creases in her spine. — Gabrielle Zevin

Like he cared about a lot of stupid settlers and Indians and soldiers who hung around out here before he was even born. Hell, before his prehistoric grandparents had been born.
Who gave a shit about Crazy Horse and Sitting Bullshit. He cared about X-Men and the box scores. — Nora Roberts

What Einstein was able to do was - to use a cliche - think out of the box. — Walter Isaacson

I am really committed to my faith journey, and I am committed to my family. My husband and I have been married for almost 30 years, and we homeschool our kids. We have a different working-out-of the-box family, but we do make it work, obviously with God's grace, and we are very grateful for that. — Jodi Benson

You may think this a strange story, but it is not. There are people whose lives are every bit as unusual as Bobby Box's
I can promise you that. Not all of them end as well, of course. For many people, the world is a place of sadness and sorrow, which is a great pity, as we have only one chance at life, and it is very bad luck if things do not go well.
But even if you think they are not going well, you can still wish, as Bobby Box did. And sometimes those wishes will come true, as his did, and the world will seem filled with light and happiness. That can happen, you know. So never give up hope; never think things are so bad that they can never get better. They can get better, and they do. And if you have the chance to make things easier for another person, never miss it. Stretch out your hand to help them, to cheer them up, to wipe away their tears. Stretch out your hand as that man and that woman did to Bobby Box. Stretch out your hand and see what happens. — Alexander McCall Smith

There's one post-Christmas chore I love-writing thank-you letters ... Lots of companies for many reasonable reasons, I guess, have a policy against sending even Christmas cards, never mind things, at Christmastime. But our clan gets a big kick out of opening the Warner-Lambert box containing an assortment of their wares; we argue over which of the boys is to get the Union Oil Co. necktie [and] all the holiday long we play the marvelous Christmas music sent by Goodyear ... None of these things means that Forbes or Forbeses have been had. But all of us like being thought of. — Malcolm Forbes

Stoner was one of the pallbearers at the funeral. At the services he could not keep his mind on the words the minister said, but he knew that they were empty. He remembered Sloane as he had first seen him in the classroom; he remembered their first talks together; and he thought of the slow decline of this man who had been his distant friend. Later, after the services were over, when he lifted his handle of the gray casket and helped to carry it out to the hearse, what he carried seemed so light that he could not believe there was anything inside the narrow box. — John Edward Williams

I think of the New Testament story of the woman with an issue of blood--specifically of her hand reaching out into the clutter and chaos of a crowd, not sure that she would reach Christ, but nevertheless reaching for him in hope. Her story is sacred to me because she truly believed that by reaching outside of the bounds that her culture had set for her--perhaps even the bounds she had set for herself--she could be made whole. — Ashley Mae Hoiland

I love the fact that, one time, my face was on the back of a cereal box - probably 3-CPO's - and it was a mask where you cut out the eye holes and put a string through the side. It makes me feel like I'm 11 years old all over again. — Mark Hamill

Timelessness again, the house like a secret temple as dust built up on things that were never meant to have dust on them - Clee's toothbrush and hairdryer and left-out-of-the-box CDs and deodorant on the bathroom window ledge. Ordinary things carefully kept in place because the last person to touch them would never put a cup down on the edge of the table again, or ever leave a book half-read. — Steven Hall

The assistant, a young man with a single-digit body mass index, looks ill at ease. He visibly struggles to control his urge to snatch the box out of Ove's hands. — Fredrik Backman

I really like my first movie a lot, 'Kicking and Screaming.' I think it's a - I'm very pleased and proud of that movie, but it wasn't the - it wasn't 'Citizen Kane' right out of the box, you know? It wasn't 'Sex, Lies and Videotape.' — Noah Baumbach

Sci-fi conventions are probably the most fun, the most out-of-the-box, entertaining week or weekend you've ever had in your life. — Richard Hatch

I took all of my rejection letters - there must have been thousands of them in a huge box - and I went out on the curb and burned them all, crying. — Janet Evanovich

Being an entrepreneur means the ability to think out of the box by putting away our fear of any risk, including financial. — Ciputra

If Daddy could see me now. I spent the morning with Rebecca at the Indianapolis Speedway, at an auto museum filled with Nascars and racing paraphernalia. Do you remember when we used to watch all five hundred laps with him, every year? I never understood what it was that made auto racing such a biggie for him - it's not like he ever tried the sport himself. He told me once when I was older that it was the absolute speed of it all. I liked to watch for crashes, like you. I liked the way there'd be a huge explosion on the track and billows of ebony smoke, and the other cars would just keep a straight course and head right for the spin, into this sort of black box, and they'd come out okay. I — Jodi Picoult

Everything seems really simple on paper until you take a camera out of the box. — David Fincher

I was ready to get out of the box and play something a little different than what everybody has seen. — Ice Cube

Wyomingites, Joe had observed, didn't know what to do when it rained except get out of it, watch it through the window, and wait for it to go away. — C.J. Box

A good way to figure out how likely it is that the directors are sucking money out of a company is to draw a chart with each director's name in a box. Read through the Management section, and each time you identify a professional or personal connection between two directors, connect their boxes with a line. If you also happen to know about other relationships between directors, for instance one director is married to the other director's daughter, or one director is an old college buddy of another director, you can draw a line in there as well. If, upon completion, the chart looks like a spider web then hold on to your wallet. — Peter Troob

I think we should probably get Vanessa out of the Quiet Box to help us. What do you guys say?'
'Absolutely,' Newel affirmed. 'Best idea I've heard all day.'
'I'll second that,' Doren said gladly.
Seth gave the satyrs a doubtful scowl. 'Wait a minute. You guys just think she's pretty.'
'I've been around a long time,' Newel said. 'Vanessa Santoro is not jut pretty.'
'He's right,' Doren agreed. 'She's walking dynamite. My pulse is rising just talking about her.'
'She also might be a traitor,' Seth stressed.
'The lethal temptress,' Newel said with relish. 'Even better.'
'It will definitely spice up the adventure,' Doren encouraged.
'I'm obviously talking to wrong guys,' Seth sighed.
'Believe me,' Newel said cockily. 'you're talking to the right guys. We've been chasing babes since the world was flat.'
Seth rolled his eyes. — Brandon Mull

Ultimately all hominids came from Africa, and therefore everyone in America should simply check the box next to 'African-American.' My maternal grandmother was German and my maternal grandfather was Greek. The next time I fill out one of those forms I am going to check 'Other' and write in the truth about my racial and cultural heritage: 'African-Greek-German-American.' And proud of it. — Michael Shermer

We all need to begin thinking out of the box. — Peter Piot

In so far as I listen with interest to a record, it's usually to figure out how it was arrived at. The musical end product is where interest starts to flag. It's a bit like jigsaw puzzles. Emptied out of the box, there's a heap of pieces, all shapes, sizes and colours, in themselves attractive and could add up to anything
intriguing. Figuring out how to put them together can be interesting, but what you finish up with as often as not is a picture of unsurpassed banality. Music's like that."
From "Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation" by Ben Watson, Verso, London, 2004, p. 440. — Derek Bailey

There is an unseen sweetness in the stomach's emptiness. We are lutes. When the sound box is filled, no music can come forth. When the brain and the belly burn from fasting, every moment a new song rises out of the fire. The mists clear, and a new vitality makes you spring up the steps before you ... — Rumi

Neither of us ever threw anything away. We made
a lot of mix tapes while we were together. Tapes for making out, tapes for dancing, tapes for falling asleep. Tapes for doing the dishes, for walking
the dog. I kept them all. I have them piled up on my bookshelves, spilling out of my kitchen cabinets, scattered all over the bedroom floor. I don't
even have pots or pans in my kitchen, just that old boom-box on the counter, next to the sink. So many tapes. — Rob Sheffield

Earned a bachelor's at 27, then an M.F.A. that is still completely unused and in mint condition, never taken out of the box. — Daniel Woodrell

I have a shoebox: for ideas, fragments, snatches of conversation I hear. I scrawl it down, throw the scraps in the box. Every time I start a new script I start picking through the pieces. Suddenly you get five pieces together and think: this is almost the first Act of a movie, if I flesh it out a bit. — Shane Black

I love how you can shoot a movie in a month or two or three of four, and it's this encapsulated story that you box up and ship out into the world, and what it is, is what it is. — Steven Strait

MF Doom is like so out-of-the-box and just crazy. — Andy Milonakis

No one had ever said anything like that to Evie. Her parents always wanted to advise or instruct or command. They were good people, but they needed the world to bend to them, to fit into their order of things. Evie had never really quite fit, and when she tried, she'd just pop back out, like a doll squeezed into a too-small box. — Libba Bray

A weathered cork sat inside the box lined with green velvet. It had turned a darker brown and was a little shriveled, but the name Moet & Chandon was still clearly visible.
Vivien reached inside and pulled out her mother's cork. The one she'd searched for in the bed of red impatiens. To anyone else, it was nothing. Just a weathered piece of nothing. To Vivien, it was everything. — Rachel Gibson

I have a box of evidence that's going to a certain person should anything happen to me, so if you top me off, it's still going to that person, and the truth will come out. — Heather Mills

And though our relationship had many layers, they weren't separate. Like my feelings for him weren't kept in a neat little box beside the one where our friendship was. We swirled together. Like chocolate and vanilla soft serve, like ketchup and mustard on a burger. Our friendship was better because of our love. Our love was better because it blossomed out of friendship. — Cambria Hebert

I am very much out of my element here. There are moments, listening to the conversations going on around me, when I feel I am going to lose my mind. Earlier today, I heard someone say the words, "I felt at one with the divine source of creation." Mary Roach on a conducted tour of Hades. I had to fight the urge to push back my chair and start screaming: STAND BACK! ALL OF YOU! I'VE GOT AN ARTHUR FINDLAY BOX CUTTER! Instead, I quietly excused myself and went to the bar, to commune with spirits I know how to relate to. — Mary Roach

There's a cough behind me, and I find Cheeseburger staring anxiously at my box. I glare at Amanda, the Arm-Toucher, and pull out an entire sleeve of Thin Mints. "Here you go, Cheeseburger."
He looks at me in surprise, but then again, that's how he always looks. "Wow. Thanks Anna." Cheeseburger takes the cookies and lumbers toward the stairwell.
Josh is horrified. "Whyareyougivingawaythecookies? — Stephanie Perkins

Maybe the day will come when I can sit back and be content ... But until that day comes, I intend to stay in the batter's box - I don't let the big guys push me out of there anymore - and keep hammering away. — Hank Aaron

All of the devices work out of the box without any subscription fee. — David Rose

When she went out to the kitchen, I knew she would be getting her Triscuits. That was what she had for her snack at the end of every workday: six Triscuits exactly, because six was the "serving size" listed on the box. She showed a slavish devotion to the concept of a recommended serving size ... — Anne Tyler

While at Colonel Niel's marquee I saw a detail of soldiers bring out a man by the name of Rowland, whom they were going to shoot to death with musketry, by order of a court-martial, for desertion. He was being hauled to the place of execution in a wagon, sitting on an old gun box, which was to be his coffin. When they got to the grave, which had been dug the day before, the water had risen in it, and a soldier was baling it out. Rowland spoke up and said, 'Please hand me a drink of that water, as I want to drink out of my own grave so the boys will talk about it when I am dead, and remember Rowland. — Sam R. Watkins

The Bible encourages us to "serve one another in love." One of the ways you can work this out in your marriage is first to ask yourself, "Whose needs will this conversation serve?" Your needs and those of your husband often cannot be met in the same conversation. When it's your husband's turn to talk, practice staying in the box he wants to open. You see, when he brings up an issue for discussion, he actually intends to talk about that issue alone. — Bill Farrel

She tore through the wrapping and took out a blue velvet box. She glanced back at me as though unable to believe her eyes. After pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, she lifted the lid. Two rolls of cushioned velvet sat inside. The slit that those cushions made should have held a ring, but it didn't.
Sucked to be her.
She gaped at me. "What is this?" she asked, appalled.
"It's a simple yes/no question," I said, trying to keep a straight face. I lay back, crossing my arms behind my head. "When I get an answer, you get the rest of your gift. — Darynda Jones

If you don't get out of the box you've been raised in, you won't understand how much bigger the world is. — Angelina Jolie

Perhaps she moves too slowly now, or the world moves too fast for her. She enters the lift, a giant wheel turns and steel cables lower the mechanized box. The lift drops down a black shaft, which exists at the heart of each HDB block. The country may be described, not as a place covered with blocks of public housing, but a topography where black vertical shafts, some forty storeys tall, rise out of the ground like trees. — Justin Ker

I could see the outline of the cage coming into sight.

"It's so beautiful out today," she commented.

"It is." I started to sweat.

"Do you need a hand?" She could see the trap breaking the water.

"No, I'm good," I said, clearing my throat.

"Oh, that stinks. It's empty."

"Oh well. No loss." Maybe I didn't have to do this now. Maybe she wouldn't see the box, and I could just pull up the traps I had set earlier today. She didn't have to know.

"Wait. What's that?"

Okay, never mind. Back to plan A.

"What's what?" That was smooth. — Kiera Cass

There's a longstanding tradition that journalists don't cheer in the press box. They have opinions, like anyone else, but they are expected to keep those opinions out of their work. — Bill Dedman

Unpleasant questions are being raised about Mother's Day. Is this day necessary? ... Isn't it bad public policy? ... No politician with half his senses, which a majority of politicians have, is likely to vote for its abolition, however. As a class, mothers are tender and loving, but as a voting bloc they would not hesitate for an instant to pull the seat out from under any Congressman who suggests that Mother is not entitled to a box of chocolates each year in the middle of May. — Russell Baker

If writing is the ultimate act of self-pleasure, then mine certainly qualifies as masturbatory.
Still, if you gave me a box of pens and a box of tissues, and then locked me in a room with nothing else but skin mags and blank notebooks, I'd be lying if I told you I'd run out of pens before tissues.
The nice thing about writing is that you actually get to share it with other people when you're done, which usually doesn't go over so well with spent bodily fluids, but ideally you don't want readers walking away from your book with the sneaking suspicion that they've just spent hours of their precious lives watching you masturbate.
Unless of course it's that type of publication. — Arthur Graham

The idea of using extraordinary force does not mean more of the same effort. Extraordinary action results from out-of-the-box thinking. — Gerald A. Michaelson

I have seen many people, who, while you are speaking to them, instead of looking at, and attending to you, fix their eyes upon theceiling, or some other part of the room, look out of the window, play with a dog, twirl their snuff-box, or pick their nose. Nothing discovers a little, futile, frivolous mind more than this, and nothing is so offensively ill-bred. — Lord Chesterfield

She slid open the box, extracted a match, and struck it with a flourish. The flame flared up in the gloom of the unlit room, a tiny golden beacon. For a moment, Oma Kristel held it aloft, then the unthinkable happened. The match slipped out of her fingers and fell straight onto her pink mohair bosom. With a whooomph! like the sounds of a gas furnace firing up, the hairspray with which Oma Kristel had doused herself ignited, obliterating her in a column of flames. — Helen Grant

I think anybody who tries to follow the conventional Hollywood rule, will probably be better liked than the ones who try to think a little bit out of the box. — Bruno Zheng Wu

The old-fashioned idea of a good manager is one who is supposed to know all the answers, can solve every problem himself, and can give appropriate orders to his subordinates to carry out his plans ... A good modern manager is like a good coach who leads and encourages his team in never-ending quality improvement. — George E.P. Box

I think there are a lot of things out there that are humorous that people don't realize until you actually show them what is going on. Saran Wrap for one thing. You know, you could pull enough of that out of the box and it will actually kill you. It will get a hold of you, stick to you, and choke you to death. — Tim Conway