Paul Foot Quotes & Sayings

Thomas Pynchon surely inaugurated or crystallized a new genre in 1963 when he published 'V.' The seriocomic mystery or thriller with one foot set in the present and one in various historical eras received its postmodern baptism from Pynchon. — Paul Di Filippo

When I went back to Iraq again, after the liberation was complete, I was myself engaged on a sort of "dig", and I decided to travel with Paul Wolfowitz. It was in its own way an archaeological and anthropological expedition. Here are some of the things we unearthed or observed. Unnoticed by almost everybody, and unreported by most newspapers, Saddam Hussein's former chief physicist Dr. Mahdi Obeidi had waited until a few weeks after the fall of Baghdad to accost some American soldiers and invite them to excavate his back garden. There he showed them the components of a gas centrifuge
the crown jewels of uranium enrichment
along with a two-foot stack of blueprints. This burial had originally been ordered by Saddam's younger son Qusay, who had himself been in charge of the Ministry of Concealment, and had outlasted many visits by "inspectors". I myself rather doubt that Hans Blix would ever have found the trove on his own. — Christopher Hitchens

Think of all the duties that were perfectly obvious to Paul or Matthew in that old Arabian desert that are pure nonsense to us now. All that foot washing, for example. Was it really for God's glory or just to keep the sand out of the house? — Barbara Kingsolver

After the three of them got back to the Portakabin, while Quill and Ross started to add the details from the manuscript pages to the Ops Board, Sefton got out his special notebook and checked through everything he'd written down about his encounter with ... whatever Brutus had been. I was proceeding in a mystical direction when I encountered a six-foot-two Roman male, with whom I shared a certain sexual tension. — Paul Cornell

I'd love to do a Paul Greengrass movie, or something like that, that's a character-driven action film. I'd like someone to make me go to the gym every day, and all that stuff. I don't know. Wherever the good characters are, I tend to try to get a job. It was nice because this was dipping my toe in the action genre. Maybe I might put my foot in, next time. — Carey Mulligan

They may not be conscripted against their will as the foot soldiers in a federal crusade. — John Paul Stevens

Omigod," Valerie said. "Unh!" And her water broke. It was an explosion of water. A tidal wave. We're talking Hoover Dam quantity water. Water everywhere ... but mostly on Cal. Cal had been standing at the bottom of the gurney. Cal was totally slimed from the top of his head to his knees. It dripped off the end of his nose and ran in rivulets down his bald head. Valerie drew her legs up, the sheet fell away, and Cal gaped at the sight in front of him. Julie stuck her head around for a look. "Uh-oh," Julie said, "there's a foot sticking out. Guess this is going to be a breech baby." That was when Cal fainted. CRASH. Cal went over like he was a giant redwood cut down by Paul Bunyan. Windows rattled and the building shook. Everyone clustered around Cal. — Janet Evanovich

Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear a solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.
My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing;
For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud,
My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips,
And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing.
O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing,
O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark!
Is there no hope for me? Is there no way
That I may sight and check that speeding bark
Which out of sight and sound is passing, passing? — Paul Laurence Dunbar

Today our home was destroyed by fire. The children are grieving and shaken, but Paul and I are so grateful for family, friends, and strangers who have come to our aid. We have lost "everything" but feel rich and free. I climbed into bed next to Paul, who was already asleep. I looked up into the darkness. Everything had changed. Who could believe it? I thought of the children - safe and so close - of Jack at the foot of our bed, and Paul there beside me. Everything had changed, and anything that mattered remained. — Alison Hodgson

Marx wrote about finance and industry all his life but he only knew two people connected with financial and industrial processes. One was his uncle in Holland, Lion Philips, a successful businessman who created what eventually became the vast Philips Electric Company. Uncle Philips' views on the whole capitalist process would have been well-informed and interesting, had Marx troubled to explore them. But he only once consulted him, on a technical matter of high finance, and though he visited Philips four times, these concerned purely personal mattes of family money. The other knowledgeable man was Engels himself. But Marx declined Engel's invitation to accompany him on a visit to a cotton mill, and so far as we know Marx never set foot in a mill, factory, mine or other industrial workplace in the whole of his life. — Paul Johnson

The mountains and moors, the wild uplands, are to be staked out like vampires in the sun, their chests pierced with rows of five-hundred-foot wind turbines and associated access roads, masts, pylons, and wires. — Paul Kingsnorth

One thing is certain: those who worked and voted for less government, the very foot soldiers in the conservative revolution, have been deceived. Today, the ideal of limited government has been abandoned by the GOP, and real conservatives find their views no longer matter. — Ron Paul

Acting in general you just feel kind of stupid doing it anyway, but when you're pretending to be rolling around and dodging a foot or riding an ant, you're having to really do it seriously and there's nothing there. You've got to put faith in the process. — Paul Rudd

Today, for the first time in history, a Bishop of Rome sets foot on English soil. This fair land, once a distant outpost of the pagan world, has become, through the preaching of the Gospel, a beloved and gifted portion of Christ's vineyard. — Pope John Paul II

May Mary, who in the freedom of her 'Fiat' and her presence at the foot of the cross, offered to the world, Jesus, the Liberator, help us to find him in the Sacrament of the altar — Pope John Paul II

For if it is rash to walk into a lion's den unarmed, rash to navigate the Atlantic in a rowing boat, rash to stand on one foot on top of St. Paul's, it is still more rash to go home alone with a poet. A poet is Atlantic and lion in one. While one drowns us the other gnaws us. If we survive the teeth, we succumb to the waves. A man who can destroy illusions is both beast and flood. Illusions are to the soul what atmosphere is to the earth. Roll up that tender air and the plant dies, the colour fades. The earth we walk on is a parched cinder. It is marl we tread and fiery cobbles scorch our feet. By the truth we are undone. Life is a dream. 'Tis waking that kills us. He who robs us of our dreams robs us of our life - (and so on for six pages if you will, but the style is tedious and may well be dropped). — Virginia Woolf

Look in every city or any town. Travel by foot, or train or plane. Do not settle until there is love. For there, there will be the address of your happiness. — David Paul Kirkpatrick

I stared in awe at the Lincoln Memorial. If Honest Abe had come to life and somehow managed to lift his bony twenty-three-foot, four-inch frame from his throne, what would he say? What would he do? Would he break-dance? Would he pitch pennies against the curbside? Would he read the paper and see that the Union he saved was now a dysfunctional plutocracy, that the people he freed were now slaves to rhythm, rap, and predatory lending, and that today his skill set would be better suited to the basketball court than the White House? — Paul Beatty

Take care not to step on the foot of a learned idiot. His bite is incurable. — Paul Gauguin

Known colloquially as 'winter,' 'golden needle,' and 'velvet foot' mushrooms, enoki mushrooms grow across much of the world, inhabiting dead conifer trees and stumps, and generally appearing throughout the late fall and winter months. — Paul Stamets

The banks of the Thirty-Foot held, but the swollen Wale, receiving the full force of the Upper Waters and the spring tide, gave at every point. Before the cars reached St. Paul, the flood was rising and pursuing them. Wimsey's car
the last to start
was submerged to the axles. They fled through the dusk, and behind and on their left, the great silver sheet of water spread and spread. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Each night at bedtime, I'd close the bedroom door, climb into bed, and settle in under the covers. Within a minute, the door handle would turn and the door slowly open about a foot. Then a young boy's screams of "Daddy" would follow from the second bedroom - the little boy's room. — Paul Stefaniak

I wrote a mad, passionate letter to the best restaurant in the UK, Le Gavroche in London, and asked if I could work for them. They gave me a job as a dishwasher (Colin laughs). For me that was a joy because I had a foot in the door of this world class restaurant. Just being around the buzz and the pots and pans and the wonderful food and all this produce that was coming in, that was the start of Paul Rankin the chef. — Paul Rankin

Moral deliberation has to be somewhere in the brain, after all. It's not going to be in the foot or the stomach, and it's certainly not going to reside in some mysterious immaterial realm. So who cares about precisely where? — Paul Bloom

That's what scares me the most, Paul. That I'll just pass through life and all the people I know will just disappear, without a trace, without me ever telling them how much they mean to me, no matter how small the time spent was or how great the friendship was. That they'll be gone and they'll forget me and I'll end up with nothing."
I saw in my head Charley laughing, Charley sticking his head out the window and screaming, Charley playing a video game so intensely he was a foot from the screen. Moments flashed before my eyes in a quick, unrelenting sequence.
I shook my head. "I know. Believe me, I know. — J.C. Joranco

I learned that one person hurting another really is like a hand curling into a fist to smash the foot. And that all that really matters is family and other people. And that the purpose of life is to find the Light of God, but not the light from some old guy with a beard sitting up there judging us. The light is the love we give each other on our way back home. And that God wouldn't mind if we spent a little less time telling him how great he is and a little more time loving each other, and not just the people we're supposed to love, but everyone. — Paul H. Magid

Why Brownlee left, and where he went,
Is a mystery even now.
For if a man should have been content
It was him; two acres of barley,
One of potatoes, four bullocks,
A milker, a slated farmhouse.
He was last seen going out to plough
On a March morning, bright and early.

By noon Brownlee was famous;
They had found all abandoned, with
The last rig unbroken, his pair of black
Horses, like man and wife,
Shifting their weight from foot to
Foot, and gazing into the future. — Paul Muldoon