Out Steps Quotes & Sayings

It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it's tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you're offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you're using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world's fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman's shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit's cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black. — Maria Semple

Here's a little secret. He does care about you, but he cares about you for himself. He's keeping you safe on a shelf. I bet he interferes with any guy who might show you some attention while he goes out with every pair of perky tits that steps in his path. He may even marry you someday because I'm guessing you and your cardigans are his parents' wet dream, the perfect ideal of wifey material, but he will own you, D'Arcy. Trust me on this. I know what I'm talking about. Is that what you want? Do you even know what you want? — A.S. Green

THE BLUE DRESS

Her blue dress is a silk train is a river
is water seeps into the cobblestone steps of my sleep, is still raining
is monsoon brocade, is winter stars stitched into puddles
is goodbye in a flooded, antique room, is goodbye in a room of crystal bowls
and crystal cups, is the ring-ting-ring of water dripping from the mouths
of crystal bowls and crystal cups, is the Mississippi river is a hallway, is leaks
like tears from windowsills of a drowned house, is windows open to waterfalls
is a bed is a small boat is a ship, is a currant come to carry me in its arms
through the streets, is me floating in her dress through the streets
is the moon sees me floating through the streets, is me in a blue dress
out to sea, is my mother is a moon out to sea. — Saeed Jones

I had to take false steps and go through hard times to come out to where I am now. I can't imagine living without acting. It's not easy, and I don't disrespect anyone who steps out of it after a certain point. Having a family and a house is cool. It's not a betrayal. But if you're going to be an actor, it has to be more than a passing interest. — Marylouise Burke

I think - I think it's a big deal. Bigger for him and Eve than for most people.' Shane kept his eyes down, fixed on the sidewalk and the steps they were taking. 'Look, ask him, okay? This is girl talk. I don't do girl talk.'
She punched him in the shoulder. 'Ass.'
'That's better. I was starting to feel like we should go shoe shopping or something.'
'Being a girl is not a bad thing!'
'No.' He took his hand out of his pocket and put his arm around her shoulders, hugging her close. 'If I could be half the girl you are, I'd be - wow, I have no idea where I was going with that, and it just turned out uncomfortable, all of a sudden.'
'Jackass.'
'You like being a girl - that's good. I like being a guy - that's also good.'
'Next you'll be all Me, Tarzan, you, Jane! — Rachel Caine

admitted I was powerless over food,
that my life had become uninhabitable.
Sure, there are folks who speak of lives
unmanageable, but my life was always that!
It took more to push me to the admission.
I had a Hell Year when I turned 50
and it took me another ten to reach the crevice,
to fall off the edge, to give up and go
where a counselor had directed me for years,
to the rooms of recovery. I knew she was right
but I wasn't broken enough to go. Unmanageable,
I could life in. Uninhabitable I couldn't.
I fought it for nigh on sixty years
but when I finally couldn't keep on pretending,
continue making do, I found what I needed,
what I could finally accept, and soar out of there
to recovery. — Barbara B. Rollins

A woman steps out of the back door after an hour of him sitting. Younger than either of us, blonde with a tinge of gray at her temples, the light creases of age in the corners of her eyes, beautiful in the untouchable way of mothers who are our exemplars for what we will admire in women when we come of age. — Thomm Quackenbush

I'm getting my stuff," he said, and bolted for the steps.
"You don't have to move out," Astrid called after him.
Sam stopped halfway up the steps. "Oh, I'm sorry. Is that the voice of the council telling me where I can go?"
"There's no point having a town council if you think you don't have to listen to it," Astrid said. She was using her patient voice, trying to calm the situation. "Sam, if you ignore us, no one will pay attention."
"Guess what, Astrid, they're already ignoring you. The only reason anyone pays any attention to you and the others is because they're scared of Edilio's soldiers." He thumped his chest. "And even more scared of me. — Michael Grant

The pain that's created by avoiding hard work is actually much worse than any pain created from the actual work itself. Because if you don't begin to work on those ideas that God has blessed you with, they will become stagnant inside of you and eventually begin to eat away at you. You might seem OK on the outside, but inside you will be ill from not getting those ideas out of your heart and into the world. Stalling leads to sickness. But taking steps, even baby steps, always leads to success. — Russell Simmons

When we step out of our normal world and leave behind us all the usual barriers and prejudices, we tend to become more adventurous. — Paulo Coelho

Make your world extraordinary! Step out into this world with confidence and treasure yourself. — Alli Simpson

He bent, lips coming to mine and
'Derek? Chloe?' It was Kit, opening the back door. Derek let out a low growl.
'Never fails.' I turned to Kit. 'How is she?'
'We're going to take her back to the house now. She's unconscious again.'
'Then we'll walk back,' Derek said. 'Give you room in the van to lay her down.'
His dad agreed and went back inside. As we walked toward the steps, I looked down at Derek's hand, holding mine.
'No one's around,' he said. 'And we can take the back way.'
'Good,' I said, and entwined my fingers with his. — Kelley Armstrong

It is easier to talk about doing things than doing them. Many of us want to exercise more, eat more healthy, be kinder to our loved ones, etc., but unless we have specific milestones about how to do this, our intentions do not match our actions. The HR milestones we lay out offer specific steps along the longer journey to HR transformation. — Dave Ulrich

I cannot, if I am in the field of glory, be kept out of sight: wherever there is anything to be done, there Providence is sure to direct my steps. — Horatio Nelson

Let the dreams and desires jut out as these are initial and crucial steps on the way to our destinations. — M.H. Rakib

Life is a dance toward God, I began to think. And the dance is not so graceful as we might want. While we glide and swing out practiced sway, God crowds our feet, bumps our toes, and scuffs our shoes. So we learn to dance with the One who made us. And it is a difficult dance to learn, because its steps are foreign. — Donald Miller

A true Educator locates the intelligence and abilities within another, drawing them out for all, even the student, to see. And then steps out of the way, allowing them to develop, create and pursue their talent. — L. Ron Hubbard

One cannot properly drink without self-deception: the lips have to deny the liquor that just passed down the throat. It was surely for the relief of drunkards that the Lord God did not write upon the stone tablets the commandment: thou shalt not lie. The word has to deny the addiction. Among the tribe of alcoholics, lying is a badge of honor - the truth is first an indiscretion, later an affront, and finally a source of despair. If you truly drink, you have to announce to all and sundry that you do not drink; if you admit you drink, that means you do not truly drink. True all-out drinking has to be concealed; anyone who reveals it is giving in, confessing to helplessness, and all that remains for him is weeping, the gnashing of teeth, and the 12 step program. — Jerzy Pilch

It wasn't the high thin mountain air that took our breath away. Those stone steps led us up to a place unlike any other on earth. We were overcome by the vision spread out before us; a purely mystical embodiment of space, time, setting, and silence. Up here the noise of our fellow travelers was strangely absent, muffled beneath a mantle of quiet that permeated the mountaintop city. No one was immune. In that first view, in that first moment, every visitor absorbed the essence of Machu Picchu in reverent stillness. — George L. Ayers

So stay."
It seems to take forever for him to answer, and his hands are still playing with my hair, his lips still darting against mine every few seconds. "I can't" He steps back and takes my hand to move me out of the way of the door. "I'd give anything to stay, but I can't. You're stunning, Blythe." He gives me an almost-sad smile. "But I just can't stay. It's too much. — Jessica Park

Ask yourself: Where do I want to go? Recognize where you are now,
then figure out the steps to get there. — Marshall Sylver

Lines and Squares
Whenever I walk in a London street,
I'm ever so careful to watch my feet;
And I keep in the squares,
And the masses of bears,
Who wait at the corners all ready to eat
The sillies who tread on the lines of the street,
Go back to their lairs,
And I say to them, "Bears,
Just look how I'm walking in all of the squares!"
And the little bears growl to each other, "He's mine,
As soon as he's silly and steps on a line."
And some of the bigger bears try to pretend
That they came round the corner to look for a friend;
And they try to pretend that nobody cares
Whether you walk on the lines or squares.
But only the sillies believe their talk;
It's ever so portant how you walk.
And it's ever so jolly to call out, "Bears,
Just watch me walking in all the squares! — A.A. Milne

Sinner, I would be loth to have thy soul destroyed by wilful self-delusion ... So consequently, there is a despair which is a grievous sin; and there is a despair which is absolutely necessary to thy salvation. I would not have thee despair of the sufficiency of the blood of Christ to save thee, if thou believe, and heartily obey him; nor of the willingness of God to pardon and save thee, if thou be such a one; nor yet absolutely of thy own salvation; because, while there is life and time, there is some hope of thy conversion, and so of thy salvation ... Never stick at the sadness of the conclusion, man, but acknowledge plainly, If I die before I get out of this estate, I am lost forever. It is as good deal truly with thyself as not; God will not flatter thee, he will deal plainly whether thou do or not. The very truth is, this kind of despair is one of the first steps to heaven(233). — Richard Baxter

Step out of the space you're in. Use fear to grow. We can change lives, starting with our own. — Soledad O'Brien

How many generations of ours have worn themselves out by rubbing their foreheads on the steps of the god? But when did the god take pit on you? What big thing has he done for you? Generation after generation, you have been used to clean the village of its garbage and god gave you the dead animals to eat. In spite of all that, god did not show you any pity. It is not this god that you worship, it is your ignorance. — B.R. Ambedkar

No one could tell you: you just had to go through it on your own. If you were lucky, you came out on the other side and understood. If you didn't, you kept getting thrust back, retracing those steps, until you finally got it right. — Sarah Dessen

You see,' he said, 'I always imagine our being really happy with some few other people - a little freedom with people.'

She pondered for a moment.

'Yes, one does want that. But it must happen. You can't do anything for it with your will. You always seem to think you can force the flowers to come out. People must love us because they love us - you can't make them.'

'I know,' he said. 'But must one take no steps at all? Must one just go as if one were alone in the world - the only creature in the world? — D.H. Lawrence

To get the most out of an algorithm, you must be able to do more than simply follow its steps. You need to understand the following: The algorithm's behavior. Does it find the best possible solution, or does it just find a good solution? Could there be multiple best solutions? Is there a reason to pick one "best" solution over the others? The algorithm's speed. Is it fast? Slow? Is it usually fast but sometimes slow for certain inputs? The algorithm's memory requirements. How much memory will the algorithm need? Is this a reasonable amount? Does the algorithm require billions of terabytes more memory than a computer could possibly have (at least today)? The main techniques the algorithm uses. Can you reuse those techniques to solve similar problems? — Rod Stephens

She once told me of a night that fumed with escapes and was filled with bedsides reeking of ecstasy; she told me the stars cast not judgments, but blessings, knowing full well the disastrous outcomes of the deeds they cradled with the strings of their young hearts. She'd inhaled the night itself, those around her doing the same, and so all become one. No disharmony. No discordance. Nothing to shatter the cause; nothing to unearth the beauty. So as we together ascended that front porch, allowing the glow behind the blown-out windows and the odious steams plunder us from through the cracks ... time forgot to distill us, and our steps became as silver as glass. I could no longer deny the boiling words of my blood: tonight would be the beginning of a very long road indeed. — Dave Matthes

Oh baby, he whispers. Steps back. Out of the doorway. His face ashen. He walks slowly back to the kitchen. Leans over the counter. Puts his head in his hands. His hair falls over his fingers.
The bathroom door clicks shut.
She stays there for a long time.
He's pulling his hair out. — Lisa McMann

He strips his shirt over his head and I catch my breath, watching those long hard muscles ripple. I know how his shoulders look, bunched, when he's on top of me, how his face gets tight with lust, as he eases inside me. "Who am I?"
"Jericho"
"Who are you?" He kicks off his boots, steps out of his pants. He's commando tonight.
My breath whooshes out of me in a run-on word: "Whogivesafuck? — Karen Marie Moning

We're so distracted, we're missing out own lives. The parent who records his kid's dance recital or first steps or graduation is so busy trying to capture the moment--to create a thing that proves that they were there--they miss out on actually living and enjoying the moment.
I've done this before with my camera. I have jockeyed for position, bumping elbows with other parents so I could get into the best spot to look through the viewfinder of my SLR to capture the moment of my daughter's dance recital. Five-year-old Phoebe was so cute in her little sailor outfit, tapping away. And I got some great pictures. It's just that while I remember getting the pictures, I do not recall the moment. So much of the time we don't trust ourselves to experience our world without stuff. Things so often don't enhance our lives, but are barriers to fully living our lives. — Dave Bruno

Trembling, she rose to her feet, shuffled a few cautious steps closer, and stared down at him. Snow-white hair, as soft-looking as the fox's fur, brushed across his forehead in a tousled mess - and poking out of his hair was a pair of white fox ears. His body was otherwise human, but he'd kept the ears. — Annette Marie

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and old The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering cart, The heavy steps of the plowman, splashing the wintry mold, Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps of my heart. — William Butler Yeats

Herding them all toward the basement, their father paused at the dining-room window, pulled back the curtain and shone the beam through the window and out into the darkness until it caught the yawning base of the doomed tree. After only a quick glimpse, a glimpse that was like a gulp of foul air, Jacob pulled at his mother's hand to draw her to safety. But Michael lingered, and even Annie squirmed out of her father's arms to stand by the window, her two hands on the painted sill. The roots reared out of the black ground, the trunk leaned and then straightened, the long branches swung this way and that. Their mother patted Jacob's hand to soothe him. On their way through the kitchen she took a bottle of milk from the refrigerator and the remaining paper cups from their picnic. They followed their father's flashlight down the wooden steps. It was a tunnel of light and it seemed to draw — Alice McDermott

If somebody steps on your shoes and ruins them, don't freak out.. get a new pair of shoes. If you miss something, don't freak out.. there's nothing you can do to change it.. just move on — Usher

The patience and ability to work through a long series of steps - to figure things out - is a foundation for the child's creative life later on. — Ann Lewin-Benham

But he came back to his idea.
"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat ... "
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I turn and walk out, knowing exactly how many steps will take me away from that monster. Once again wishing I were Fia, Fia who could have killed him with her bare hands.
Fia who is impossible broken because she can do just that. — Kiersten White

The life and vigor of poetry consists of the fact that it steps out of itself, tears out a section of religion, then withdraws into itself to assimilate it. The same is true of philosophy. — Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

The evidence was powerful: the Allied powers - the United States, England, the Soviet Union - had not gone to war out of compassion for the victims of fascism. The United States and its allies did not make war on Japan when Japan was slaughtering the Chinese in Nanking, did not make war on Franco when he was destroying democracy in Spain, did not make war on Hitler when he was sending Jews and dissidents to concentration camps, did not even take steps during the war to save Jews from certain death. They went to war when their national power was threatened. — Howard Zinn

Ask God to show you if there are certain steps of obedience He wants you to take. He'll tell you. You can depend on it. When you come to a place where you trust Him so thoroughly that you will obey whatever He says, you'll find that obedience won't be a gut-wrenching misery; it will be a privilege. You'll obey because the rewards are great. You'll obey out of the desire to have nothing come between you and God. You'll obey because you'll pay any price to not have your light shut off. — Stormie O'martian

Thirty-five years a showgirl that she admits to, and her feet hurt, day in, day out, from the high heels, but she can walk down steps with a forty-pound headdress in high heels, she's walked across a stage with a lion in high heels, she could walk through goddamn Hell in high heels if it came to that. — Neil Gaiman

It all matters. That someone turns out the lamp, picks up the windblown wrapper, says hello to the invalid, pays at the unattended lot, listens to the repeated tale, folds the abandoned laundry, plays the game fairly, tells the story honestly, acknowledges help, gives credit, says good night, resists temptation, wipes the counter, waits at the yellow, makes the bed, tips the maid, remembers the illness, congratulates the victor, accepts the consequences, takes a stand, steps up, offers a hand, goes first, goes last, chooses the small portion, teaches the child, tends to the dying, comforts the grieving, removes the splinter, wipes the tear, directs the lost, touches the lonely, is the whole thing. What is most beautiful is least acknowledged. What is worth dying for is barely noticed. — Laura McBride

I will be putting out a fragrance - I'm following in the great steps of Puff Daddy. — Bryan Ferry

You don't need to wait another day to figure out your calling. You're living it, dear one. Your gifts have a place right now, in the job you have, in your stage of life, with the people who surround you. Calling is virtually never big or famous work; that is rarely the way the kingdom comes. It shows up quietly, subversively, almost invisibly. Half the time, it is unplanned - just the stuff of life in which a precious human steps in, the good news personified. — Jen Hatmaker

Have you ever wondered what it feels like to have a love for the lost? This is a term we use as part of our Christian jargon. Many believers search their hearts in condemnation, looking for the arrival of some feeling of benevolence that will propel them into bold evangelism. It will never happen. It is impossible to love "the lost". You can't feel deeply for an abstraction or a concept. You would find it impossible to love deeply an unfamiliar individual portrayed in a photograph, let alone a nation or a race or something as vague as "all lost people".
Don't wait for a feeling or love in order to share Christ with a stranger. You already love your heavenly Father, and you know that this stranger is created by Him, but separated from Him, so take those first steps in evangelism because you love God. It is not primarily out of compassion for humanity that we share our faith or pray for the lost; it is first of all, love for God. — John Piper

My teacher says that everything that you want in the world is one step away, you just have to figure out which direction to step in. — Ashton Kutcher

You're always a child of your time,
and you cannot step out of that. — Wim Crouwel

Palestinian guerrillas, in a bold and coordinated action, created this newest crisis Sunday, and in doing so they accomplished what they set out to do: they thrust back into the world's attention a problem diplomats have tended to shunt aside in hesitant steps towards Middle East peace. — Kai Bird

And she could hear a sound, rising steadily, not in steps like a scale, but in a slow glissando, and not quite a violin or a voice, but somewhere in between, rising and rising unbearably, without ever leaving the audible range, a violin-voice that was just on the edge of making sense, telling her something urgent in sibilants and vowels more primitive than words. It may have been inside the room, or out in the corridor, or only in her ears, like tinnitus. She may even have been making the noise herself. She did not care - she had to get out. — Ian McEwan

Surely it is one of the requisites of a tasteful garb that the expression of effort to please shall be wanting in it; that the mysteries of the toilet shall not be suggested by it; that the steps to its completion shall be knocked away like the sculptor's ladder from the statue, and the mental force expended upon it be swept away out of sight like the chips on the studio floor. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Ah, I understand", murmured the imperial scapegrace. Turning to the room: "When Franz Ferdinand drinks", he cried, "everybody drinks!"
Which helped restore a level of civility in the room, and soon even of cheer, as smart neckties were soaked in suds, the piano player came back from under the bar, and people in the room resumed dancing syncopated two-steps. After a while someone started singing "All Pimps Look Alike to Me", and half the room joined in. Lew, however, noticing the way the Archduke seemed to keep inching stealthily but unmistakably toward the street door, thought it wise to do the same. Sure enough, just before sliding out the door, Der F. F., with a demonic grin, screamed: "And when Franz Ferdinand pays, everybody pays!" whereupon he disappeared, and it was a near thing that Lew got out with his keester intact. — Thomas Pynchon

It takes courage to step out of the line marked 'security' into the line marked 'risk.' — Robert G. Allen

They are enthusiasts, devotees. Addicts. Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent. They seek each other out, these people of such specific like mind. They tell of how they found the circus, how those first few steps were like magic. Like stepping into a fairy tale under a curtain of stars ... When they depart, they shake hands and embrace like old friends, even if they have only just met, and as they go their separate ways they feel less alone than they had before. — Erin Morgenstern

Where had I been that I didn't know about imaginary friends? I could see the point of it. How a lost part of yourself steps out and remind you who you could be with a little work. — Sue Monk Kidd

She lives a sophisticate's life among worldly people. At the slightest excuse she steps out of civilization, naked and relieved, as I should step out of a soiled chemise. — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

I didn't set out like, "I'm gonna do this album, and I really want a #1 album." So it wasn't even on my mind like a goal to accomplish ... but as soon as it sunk it that it was an accomplishment, I realized I gotta start acknowledging milestones [I've] accomplished because sometimes you get so caught up in the bigger picture that you gotta stop and notice the steps you take to get to the bigger picture. — Ryan Montgomery

The detectives slide back on the digital timeline to the moment when Mendelssohn steps out into the snowstorm: there is something of the Greek epic about it, the old gray man with his walking stick, venturing out, into the snow, out of frame and away, like an ancient word stepping off a page. — Colum McCann

Sir, this is a unique dog. He does not live by tooth or fang. He respects the right of cats to be cats although he doesn't admire them. He turns his steps rather than disturb an earnest caterpillar. His greatest fear is that someone will point out a rabbit and suggest that he chase it. This is a dog of peace and tranquility. — John Steinbeck

It must be cool, having a twin, though."
"Ah, not sure if cool is the right word." He flashed a grin. "But we're not twins."
Out in the crowded hallway, Bethany frowned. "You're not? Could've fooled me and the world."
His laugh was husky, deep, and really nice to hear. "We're triplets."
Her eyes popped wide. "Holy crap, there're three of you?"
"We have a sister." He walked close to her, so their shoulders bumped every few steps. She found that deliciously distracting. "She's fraternal and a lot prettier than us. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

It's that first step-getting out the door-that's the toughest. If you can do that, you've already won. — Mary J. Blige

I can't find good people" becomes "I can't know who my A players are until I challenge them to find out." "Nobody cares as much as I do" becomes "I haven't figured out how they care in their own way that can harmonize with the way that I do." "I can't afford to invest time in someone who is just going to leave anyway" becomes "I don't have time to do anything else." "I'm not a therapist, I don't have the skills to help them with their personal problems" becomes "I'm not a therapist, but I am two steps ahead of this person as a professional and can help them grow by sharing the things I've learned along the way." "We just need better systems and more communication" becomes "We don't need more communication. We need to start speaking a different language." Imagine — Jonathan Raymond

I had so looked forward to her walking." Maud carried her thirteen-month-old sister a few steps away and put her down on her feet. "Walk to Daddy," Maud said, and the baby threw out her arms and took the few steps across the space to her father's chair. — Katherine Paterson

Uh-oh," Moni sang, and nodded her head in Chantal's direction. "I think someone's a wee bit upset with us." She turned and walked a few steps backward.
"Careful," I said. "We're not out of range."
"Have no fear, Super Brain is here." Moni whipped out her calculator, holding it up like a shield.
"What are you going to do, daze her with denominators?"
"Maybe. But first I'm going to pummel her with my Pythagorean theorem. — Charity Tahmaseb

He steps away from her, going to a little side table and removing a cloth that's lying on top. Underneath are severale shiny bits of metal. Mr. Hammar picks one up.
"And now for the second part of our interview", he says, approaching the woman.
Who starts to scream.
"That was," Davy says, pacing around as we wait outside but it's all he can get out. "That was." He turns to me. "Holy crap, Todd."
I don't say nothing, just take the apple I've been saving outta my pocket. "Apple," I whisper to Angharrad, my head close to hers. — Patrick Ness

Why are so many people afraid to take such small steps to help others? One of the most common reasons is that they are just embarrassed to be doing something they're uncertain about. They're afraid of being rejected or appearing foolish. But you know what? If you want to play the game and win, you've got to play "full out." You've got to be willing to feel stupid, and you've got to be willing to try things that might not work - and if they don't work, be willing to change your approach. Otherwise, how could you innovate, how could you grow, how could you discover who you really are? — Anthony Robbins

INTRODUCTION The Puzzling Puzzles of Harry Harlow and Edward Deci In the middle of the last century, two young scientists conducted experiments that should have changed the world - but did not. Harry F. Harlow was a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin who, in the 1940s, established one of the world's first laboratories for studying primate behavior. One day in 1949, Harlow and two colleagues gathered eight rhesus monkeys for a two-week experiment on learning. The researchers devised a simple mechanical puzzle like the one pictured on the next page. Solving it required three steps: pull out the vertical pin, undo the hook, and lift the hinged cover. Pretty easy for you and me, far more challenging for a thirteen-pound — Daniel H. Pink

When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath ... I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will. After each few metres this too fizzles out in unending tiredness. Then I think nothing. I let myself fall, just lie there. For an indefinite time I remain completely irresolute. Then I make a few steps again. — Reinhold Messner

Had he but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear
a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade, where her tiny hand had rested last. — Emmuska Orczy

What will happen when my heart stops beating?" Momo asked.
When that moment comes," said the professor, "time will stop for you as well. Or rather, you will retrace your steps through time, through all the days and nights, myths and years of your life, until you go out through the great, round, silver gate you entered by."
What will I find on the other side?"
The home of the music you've sometimes faintly heard in the distance, but by then you'll be part of it. You yourself will be a note in its mighty harmonies. — Michael Ende

When the Soul wants to experience something she throws out an image in front of her and then steps into it. — Meister Eckhart

Alec decided to go first this time, stepping through the doorway and onto the landing. He reached back and pulled his flashlight out of his pack, clicked it on and shined it down the steps. Mark leaned in to see dust motes dancing in the bright beam. Alec was just putting his foot forward to start down when a voice rang out from below. "C-c-come any closer and I'll l-l-light the match." It was a man's voice, weak and shaky. Alec glanced back at Mark with a questioning look. — James Dashner

The easy way out of this would be to marry Hank and let him labor for her. After a few years, when the children were waist-high, the man would come along whom she should have married in the first place. There would be searchings of hearts, fevers and frets, long looks at each other on the post office steps, and misery for everybody. — Harper Lee

Perhaps making movies is a step toward being able to move backward and forward and in and out of linear time. — Eleanor Coppola

Lord, teach us to step outside ourselves. Teach us to go out into the streets and manifest your love. — Pope Francis

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

When a captive lion steps out of his cage, he comes into a wider world than the lion who has known only the wilds. While he was in captivity, there were only two worlds for him - the world of the cage, and the world outside the cage. Now he is free. He roars. He attacks people. He eats them. Yet he is not satisfied, for there is no third world that is neither the world of the cage nor the world outside the cage. — Yukio Mishima

Her heart smoldered with pain as he passed from sight her soul crept out of her, as in a dream, and fluttered in his steps. — Apollonius Of Rhodes

When a flawlessly dressed woman steps out of an iridescent bubble and wants to know, like NOW if you'd like to become a substitute princess, do you:
a) run
b) faint
c) say yes! — Lindsey Leavitt

Notice to step out of time into eternity. — Leonard Ravenhill

Goodness, a girl steps out of the office for a couple days and the whole world ends! — A.J. Lauer

I finished high school, moved to Nashville for college, and set out to break into the music business. Every night when I called home with news of my experiences, my mom and dad would encourage me to keep taking those small steps. — Trisha Yearwood

The first step to problem solving is figuring out who's got the problem. — Gregory D. Brenneman

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

Then, before Rhun charges, I leap from him, running toward the dead. His steps beat after me, and I hold out my hand. Our fingers link. The dead slather gleefully and lick their lips. It is the third night of Samhain, and we run together. — Tessa Gratton

Exhausted, hardly knowing what she was doing, she came the last three steps and sat, took the man in her arms, actually held him, gazing out of her smudged eyes down the stairs, back into the morning. She felt wetness against her breast and saw that he was crying again. He hardly breathed but tears came as if being pumped. "I can't help," she whispered, rocking him, "I can't help." It was already too many miles to Fresno. — Thomas Pynchon

Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March.
...
I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world ... I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.
I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness ... Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.
I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.
I am thawing. — Laurie Halse Anderson

So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine,


And mine in his was wound, and whirl'd
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,


Aeonian music measuring out
The steps of Time - the shocks of Chance--
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt. — Alfred Tennyson

The court doesn't follow public opinion. The court's views are radically out of step with public opinion. — Ted Cruz

My father's wery much in that line now. If my mother-in-law blows him up, he whistles. She flies in a passion, and breaks his pipe; he steps out, and gets another. Then she screams wery loud, and falls into 'sterics; and he smokes wery comfortably till she comes to agin. That's philosophy, Sir, ain't it? — Charles Dickens

My studies have shown that the process of falling into mature love happens in four steps. When you meet a woman, you subconsciously look for cues that she's the kind os person you should be with. That's assumption. If she passes the assumption test, you begin to get to know her to find out if she's appropriate for you. If she is, you're attracted. If, as you get to know her, the attraction is reinforced with joy or pain or both, you'll fall into infatuation. And if you manage to make a connection and attach to each other during infatuation, you'll move into mature, unconditional love. — Jennifer Crusie

Zack stepped toward Mollie, and without asking permission, tugged her into his arms. "Let's dance," he said impulsively. Her eyes widened in alarm. "Don't be ridiculous." Mollie was not the sort to be drawn out of her comfort zone without a little prodding. She tried to skitter out of his arms, but he hauled her back. "Let me do all the work, Mollie. I know what I'm doing." Like any good Pole in Chicago, Zack had been dancing since childhood and confidently led Mollie in a rousing jig. She was clumsy at first, but all she had to do was follow his lead. The tension in her back relaxed, and she learned the steps. Her smile started out hesitant, then bloomed wider. With her face illuminated by firelight and laughter, she was perfect in his arms. — Elizabeth Camden

The more we reflect on this state, the more convinced we shall be that it was the least subject of any to revolutions, the best for man, and that nothing could have drawn him out of it but some fatal accident, which, for the public good, should never have happened. The example of the savages, most of whom have been found in this condition, seems to confirm that mankind was formed ever to remain in it, that this condition is the real youth of the world, and that all ulterior improvements have been so many steps, in appearance towards the perfection of individuals, but in fact towards — Steven Pinker

Leave the Irreparable Past in His hands, and step out into the Irresistible Future with Him. — Oswald Chambers

But while admiring my neighbour, I don't think I shall ever try to follow in her steps, my talents not being of the energetic and organising variety, but rather that of that order which makes their owner almost lamentably prone to take up a volume of poetry and wander out to where the kingcups grow, and, sitting on a willow trunk beside a little stream, forget the very existence of everything but green pastures and still waters, and the glad blowing of the wind across the joyous fields. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

The universe is limitless and so are you. There is a limitless supply of good that the universe wants to show you. Step out of the way and let it be! — James Van Praagh

There are good checklists and bad, Boorman explained. Bad checklists are vague and imprecise. They are too long; they are hard to use; they are impractical. They are made by desk jockeys with no awareness of the situations in which they are to be deployed. They treat the people using the tools as dumb and try to spell out every single step. They turn people's brains off rather than turn them on. Good checklists, on the other hand, are precise. They are efficient, to the point, and easy to use even in the most difficult situations. They do not try to spell out everything - a checklist cannot fly a plane. Instead, they provide reminders of only the most critical and important steps - the ones that even the highly skilled professionals using them could miss. Good checklists are, above all, practical. The power of — Atul Gawande

Sometimes a cloudless swatch of sky would blow past the moon, and Pella could see the outline of Mike's face in a slightly sharper relief. It was strange the way he loved her: a sidelong and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention. Like their first meeting on the steps of the gym, when he'd hardly so much as glanced at her. With David and every guy before David, what passed for love had always been eye to eye, nose to nose; she felt watched, observed, like the prize at the zoo, and she wound up pacing, preening, watching back, to fit the part. Whereas Mike was always beside her. She would stand at the kitchen window and look out at the quad, at the Melville statue and beyond that the beach and the rolling lake, and realize that Make, for however long, had been standing beside her, staring at the same thing. — Chad Harbach

You see, even after decades of therapy and workshops and retreats and twelve-steps and meditation and even experiencing a very weird session of rebirthings, even after rappeling down mountains and walking over hot coals and jumping out of airplanes and watching elephant races and climbing the Great Wall of China, and even after floating down the Amazon and taking ayahuasca with an ex-husband and a witch doctor and speaking in tongues and fasting (both nutritional and verbal), I remained pelted and plagued by feelings of uncertainty and despair. Yes, even after sleeping with a senator, and waking up next to a dead friend, and celebrating Michael Jackson's last Christmas with him and his kids, I still did not feel - how shall I put this? - mentally sound. — Carrie Fisher