Pauses Quotes & Sayings
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Top Pauses Quotes

There were silences as murmurous as sound. There were pauses that seemed about to shatter and were only to be snatched back to oblivion by the tightening of his arms about her and the sense that she was resting there as a caught, gossamer feather, drifted in out of the dark. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I would define a Coarse Actor as one who can remember the lines but not the order in which they come. it is perhaps not an entirely satisfactory definition, and a close friend whom I regard as easily the most desperately bad actor in West Bromwich suggests that a Coarse Actor is one who can remember the pauses but not the lines. — Michael Frederick Green

I know you've been through hell, but you didn't let it eat you up inside." He pauses, hugs me a little closer. "And I know you make me think the hell I've been through was worth it ... if it's what made me recognize heaven when it jumped into my car. — Stacey Jay

Stranger, pause and ask thyself the question, Canst thou do likewise? If not, with a blush retire. — Charles Dickens

But the morbidity of sorrow-not cultivated sorrow, but that which comes inevitably-is often a productive sluggishness, a time when the soul slows down, too weary to go on, and takes stock of where it's been and where it's going. During these gloomy pauses, we often discover parts of ourselves we never knew we possessed, talents that, properly activated, enrich our lives. — Eric G. Wilson

Lost," I say, dropping the photo on to the counter. "I've lost Elizabeth." She pauses a moment and straightens to look at the photo. "Oh, was it an advert you wanted?" Breath floods into my lungs. "Yes. Yes, that's it. I wanted to place an advert." "I'll get you a form. Awful, cats, aren't they?" I nod, feeling as though I've missed some part of the conversation. I nod, but I quite like cats, and I wonder what this woman has against them. "I remember when my auntie lost her Oscar. She was frantic. Missing for weeks, he was. Found him in a beach hut in the end. Have you asked your neighbours to look in their sheds?" I stare at the woman. I can't imagine finding Elizabeth in a shed. But perhaps it is a good suggestion. Perhaps it's just me it doesn't make sense to. I borrow a pen and write beach hut on a scrap of paper. — Emma Healey

The commentary track became a lot like the movie and there are some funny, long, awkward pauses that you can tell we're just trying to find stuff to say. None of us had gotten to really talk about the movie until that moment and they were in New York and we were in L.A. — Jay Roach

I think I'm better at live shows than I used to be because I'm way more comfortable with the uncomfortable pauses between songs. Now, rather than trying to talk or do a costume change, I'll use those moments for myself. I listen to what other people are playing, or just rest, or dance, even though I don't know how to. — Fiona Apple

How did you even know where to look?" "I'm the president's son, remember? I'd heard rumors about a group near the river, southeast of Westfall. I figured it was as good a place to start as any." "Why?" I draw back. "Why would you do that?" "Remember what I told you once?" He pauses. His fingers graze the sensitive skin of my waist underneath my shirt. "About not giving up on you? — Amy Engel

I stop and look up at him. "Brad?" I whisper.
"What, baby?" he says as he continues nibbling on my neck.
"It's yours ... " I say breathlessly.
He pauses and looks up. "What is?"
I gaze into his brown hazy eyes. "My heart. — Beth Michele

Try pausing right before and right after undertaking a new action, even something simple like putting a key in a lock to open a door. Such pauses take a brief moment, yet they have the effect of decompressing time and centering you. — David Steindl-Rast

I know who you are," he says.
Something about his tone causes my heart of smoke to flicker in response, and I throw my guard up. "Oh? And who, O boy of Parthenia, am I?"
He nods to himself, his eyes alight. "You're her. You're that jinni. Oh, gods. Oh, great bleeding gods! You're the one who started the war!"
"Excuse me?"
"You're the jinni who betrayed that famous queen - what was her name? Roshana? She was trying to bring peace between the jinn and the humans, but you turned on her and started the Five Hundred Wars."
I turn cold. I want him to stop, but he doesn't.
"I've heard the stories," he says. "I've heard the songs. They call you the Fair Betrayer, who enchanted humans with your . . ." He pauses to swallow. "Your beauty. You promised them everything, and then you ruined them. — Jessica Khoury

Every once in awhile the human race pauses in the job of botching its affairs and redeems itself by a noble work of the intellect. — Murray N. Rothbard

Some people are good at being in love. Some people are good at love. Two very different things, I think. Being in love is the romantic part - sex all the time, midday naps in the sheets, the jokes, the laughs, the fun, long conversations with no pauses, overwhelming separation anxiety ... Just the best sides of both people, you know? But love begins when the excitement of being in love starts to fade: the stress of life sets in, the butterflies disappear, the sex becomes a chore, the tears, the sadness, the arguments, the cattiness ... The worst parts of both people. But if you still want that person by your side through all of those things ... that's when you know - that's when you know you're good at love. — Nick Miller

You have a roommate."
"Yeah." He sounds confused.
"The, um, picture on your door surprised me."
"NO. No. I prefer my women with ... fewer carnivorous beasts and less weaponry." He pauses and smiles. "Naked is okay. What she needs are a golden retriever and a telescope. Maybe then it would do it for me."
I laugh.
"A squirrel and a laboratory beaker?"
"A bunny rabbit and a flip chart," I say.
"Only if the flip chart has mathematical equations on it."
I fake swoon onto his bed. "Too much, too much! — Stephanie Perkins

Jeremy takes the money and heads toward the back bedroom to get dressed.
"Chinese? I'll come with," Henry calls, but then pauses to look at us, one eyebrow raised.
Harlin laughs and puts his arm around me. "Don't even say it," he warns. "You'll embarrass her." But he always says it.
"Charlotte," Henry begins in a mock parental tone, "when two people love each other, they may have certain urges. Protection is an important - "
"Oh my God!" I cover my ears and laugh. I wait until his lips have stopped moving before I drop my arms. — Suzanne Young

Mom, how do you know if the guy is the guy?"
You mean if he'll be a good husband?" She pauses, then says "The ticket is for the man to love the woman more than she loves him."
Shouldn't it be equal?"
Mom cackles. "It can never be equal."
But what if the woman loves the man more?"
A life of hell awaits her. As women, the deck is stacked against us because time is our enemy. We age, while men season. And trust me, there are plenty of women out there looking for a man, and they don't mind staking a claim on somebody else's husband, no matter how old, creaky, and deaf they are. — Adriana Trigiani

Epic fails are just dramatic pauses to build up intensity of epic awesomeness emerging. — Janna Cachola

In a popular teaching story, a man being chased by a tiger leaps off a cliff in his attempt to get away. Fortunately, a tree growing on the side of the cliff breaks his fall. Dangling from it by one arm - tiger pacing above, jutting rocks hundreds of feet below - he yells out in desperation, "Help! Somebody help me!!" A voice responds, "Yes?" The man screams, "God, God, is that you?" Again, "Yes." Terrified, the man says, "God, I'll do anything, just please, please, help me." God responds, "Okay then, just let go." The man pauses for a moment, then calls out, "Is anyone else there? — Tara Brach

I'm thinking about that afternoon you came to the empty restaurant, that day after the Alchemist. You were so alone." He pauses. I was. I'd never felt so alone. "Nobody saw it, but I did. I always see you. And you came in that door and came up to me and everything was new. — Carolyn Crane

Reading private correspondence is in poor taste, Lord Ackerly."
"Unless it is terribly interesting," Eleanor says, "which Jessamin's letters are not. Mine, however, are lurid tales of my near-death experience and subsequent sequestering against my will in the home of the mysterious and brooding Lord Ackerly. I fear I may have given you a tragic past and a deadly secret or two."
"Are we staying in a decaying Gothic abbey?" I ask.
"Naturally. When I'm finished, there won't be a person in all the city who isn't writhing with jealousy over the heart-pounding drama of my life." She pauses, tapping her pen thoughtfully against her chin. "I don't suppose you have a cousin? I could very much use a romantic foil."
Finn shakes his head. "Sorry to disappoint."
"Alas. As long as I'm not the friend who meets a tragic end that brings you two together forever through shared grief." Her line meets dead silence, and a sly grin splits her face. "Oh wait, I nearly was. — Kiersten White

The growing drama has outgrown such toys Of simulated stature, face, and speech: It also peradventure may outgrow The simulation of the painted scene, Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume, And take for a worthier stage the soul itself, Its shifting fancies and celestial lights, With all its grand orchestral silences To keep the pauses of its rhythmic sounds. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Becky, if I had to wait five years, then I would. Or eight
or even ten." He pauses, and there's complete silence except for a tiny gust of wind, blowing confetti about the churchyard. "But I hope that one day
preferably rather sooner than that
you'll do me the honor of marrying me? — Sophie Kinsella

Later, dictating the tale into his comlog, the Consul remembered it as a seamless whole, minus the pauses, hoarse voice, false starts, and small redundancies which were the timeless failings of human speech — Dan Simmons

I already told you, I'm not gonna subscribe to your stupid magazine!' she yells.
'We're not selling anything,' Jake calls back. 'We just came to see my favorite chula this side of the Mississippi.'
The girl pauses and shields her eyes to get a better look. 'Jacob? That you?'
'In the flesh,' he confirms with a broad grin. — Hannah Harrington

The vestibule door opens onto a June morning so fine and scrubbed Classira pauses at the threshold as she would at the edge of a pool, watching the turquoise water lapping at the tiles, the liquid nets of sun wavering in the blue depths. As if standing at the edge of a pool she delays for a moment the plunge, the quick membrane of chill, the plain shock of immersion. — Michael Cunningham

Before replays, football telecasts were filled with dead spots ... It really destroyed the momentum of the telecasts. Replays gave you something to show during the pauses. It seemed to make the game go faster. — Tony Verna

Perimeter greatly reduced the pressure to launch on warning at the first sign of an American attack. It gave Soviet leaders more time to investigate the possibility of a false alarm, confident that a real attack would trigger a computer-controlled, devastating response. But it rendered American plans for limited war meaningless; the Soviet computers weren't programmed to allow pauses for negotiation. And the deterrent value of Perimeter was wasted. Like the doomsday machine in Dr. Strangelove, the system was kept secret from the United States. — Eric Schlosser

But what I heard was a low insistent murmur, with pauses for reply in which no reply was made. It had a hypnotic quality that I had never heard in any voice: a blend of urgency, cajolery, and extreme tenderness, and with below it the deep vibrato of a held-in laugh that might break out at any moment. It was the voice of someone wanting something very much and confident of getting it, but at the same time willing, no, constrained, to plead for it with all the force of his being. — L.P. Hartley

He pauses then, studying me. "How would you have done it?"
His question surprises me. "You mean how would I have killed you?"
"Yes. Do you have a favorite method for such things?"
Since he knows I am an assassin, there is no need to be coy. "I prefer a garrote. I like the intimacy it allows me when I whisper reminders of vengeance in their ears as they die. But in your case, I had sharpened my favorite knife especially for the occasion."
His brows quirk up. "Why no garrote for me?"
I look pointedly at his thick neck, bulging with muscle and sinew. "I do not have one big enough," I mutter. — Robin LaFevers

We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we'll also have a lot more joy in living. — Thich Nhat Hanh

This is difficult to comprehend when one pauses to consider the character of Christ. Admittedly there have been many false caricatures of this Person, but an unbiased look at His life quickly reveals an individual of enormous compassion and incredible integrity. — W. Phillip Keller

Punctuation is the art of dividing a written composition into sentences, or parts of sentences, by points or stops, for the purpose of marking the different pauses which the sense, and an accurate pronunciation require. — Lindley Murray

Conversation lets you be an artist every time you open your mouth--or shut it. As Robert Louis Stevenson said, "The most important art is to omit"; the key to being a master conversationalist is to listen at least as much as you talk. Just as the other arts include pauses in a dramatic play, white margins around printed text, and space between a singer's phrases, conversation is about silences as well as about words. — Margaret Shepherd

There was something in the way he posed a question and followed it up with a generous pause, I think, that drew me out. I had never noticed all the pauses that were missing from most people's conversations. — Suzanne Rindell

The notes I handle no better than many pianists. But the pauses between the notes - ah, that is where the art resides. — Artur Schnabel

The mistake the GDR made was to force people into a position,' the dark man says, 'either you are for us or an enemy. And if you then came to think of yourself as an enemy you had to ask yourself: what am I doing here? They wanted to put everything into their narrow schema, but life simply didn't fit into it.' He pauses, and the others wait for him to finish. 'I think we need to remember that they came here for the freedom, not for fifteen kinds of ketchup. — Anna Funder

Everyone says it's wrong, 'drinking and driving', don't they.
I can tell you two things that are far more dangerous than 'drinking and driving': 1. 'drinking'; 2. 'driving'.
Do you know how many people were killed last year in Britain as a direct result of alcohol abuse?--thirty-five-thousand!
Do you know how many people were killed as a direct result of driving a car?--twenty-two-thousand!
Do you know how many people were killed as a direct result of drinking _and_ driving?--five-hundred!
::pauses::
I'm not taking any fuckin' chances!
::swigs his beer:: — Lee Mack

Old Milgrom pauses to console the girl and tells her she's not the only one who's clumsy, that she herself couldn't do anything when she was young - boil an egg or hem a diaper - and then she learned. Life taught her. — Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

Right now I don't call it the menopause, I call it men-on-pause. — Marie Osmond

I became addicted to the floating nature of nothingness, to the charm of its carefree pauses and to waiting. I magnified waiting. I wrote about waiting. I basked in its warm nook and completely let go of who I am or what I really wanted. — Ibraheem Hamdi

You're smart and confident and the people around you seem to love you." He stops and watches me, I can tell he is deciding to continue. "And when I look into your eyes I see a little light flicker ... "
He pauses for a second. I look at him, but still don't speak.
"And for the last twenty four hours all I could think about was what it would take to turn that flicker into a flame. — Vi Keeland

Mastery of impulse is achieved through taking pauses during life's contrasting situations. Mastery of impulse is about developing strong willpower that can be used to redirect the flow of energy in any situation. Mastery of impulse is about responding to the world with a sense of reason and peace. — Alaric Hutchinson

When you're in a groove, you're not spinning your wheels; you're moving forward in a straight and narrow path without pauses or hitches. You're unwavering, undeviating, and unparalleled in your purpose. A groove is the best place in the world. Because when you are in it, you have the freedom to explore, where everything you question leads you to new avenues and new routes. — Twyla Tharp

Rabid's pink eyes lose their shimmer, hazy like cotton candy. Before the door closes he mutters, "Zombies in Toyland?"
Dad pauses shutting him out and exchanges a worried glance with Mom.
I giggle. "It's a game on my phone. Rabid beat my high score a few weeks ago." I smirk at my little advisor. "We'll play it again soon. I have to get my title back."
His eyes brighten. "Generous are you! Cookies, too? Rabid White hungry be. Always."
I laugh. "Yeah, always. I'll have Mom make you some cookies."
He grins, then hops away down the hall, looking more like a rabbit than a demented otherworldly being. — A.G. Howard

Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern of sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses. Communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature; and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself.
-ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE — Robert Louis Stevenson

Strange, that some of us, with quick alternative vision, see beyond our infatuations, and even while we rave on the heights, behold the wide plain where our persistent self pauses and awaits us. — George Eliot

Because you wandered away, during daylight hours. After I asked you not to." "Those pauses are unnecessary," I told him. "Not when dealing with your level of righteous indignation. — Molly Harper

Oceanic malaise. I never saw anyone reading anything more demanding than a comic book. I never heard any youth express an interest in science or art. No one even talked politics. It was all idleness, and whenever I asked someone a question, no matter how simple, no matter how well the person spoke English, there was always a long pause before I got a reply, and I found these Pacific pauses maddening. And there was giggling but no humor - no wit. It was just foolery. — Paul Theroux

All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that "delays are dangerous," and that the sluggish man the man "who roasteth not that which he took in hunting" will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind. — Walter Bagehot

Eavesdrop on any coffee shop conversation and you'll realize in a heartbeat you'd never put that slush onscreen. Real conversation is full of awkward pauses, poor word choices and phrasing, non sequiturs, pointless repetitions; it seldom makes a point or achieves closure. But that's okay because conversation isn't about making points or achieving closure. It's what psychologists call "keeping the channel open." Talk is how we develop and change relationships. — Robert McKee

And yet not a dream, but a mighty reality- a glimpse of the higher life, the broader possibilities of humanity, which is granted to the man who, amid the rush and roar of living, pauses four short years to learn what living means — W.E.B. Du Bois

A good zoo," Stella said, "is a large domain. A wild cage. A safe place to be. It has room to roam and humans who don't hurt." She pauses, considering her words. "A good zoo is how humans make amends. — Katherine Applegate

A healthy relationship is when two individuated adults decide to have a relationship and that becomes a third entity. They nurture the relationship and the relationship nurtures them. But they're not overly dependent or independent: They are interdependent, which means that they take care of the majority of their needs and wants on their own, but when they can't, they're not afraid to ask their partner for help." She pauses to let it all sink in, then concludes, "Only when our love for someone exceeds our need for them do we have a shot at a genuine relationship together. — Neil Strauss

If you pledge yourself to the Inquisition, to me, and swear to use your powers and your knowledge to send malfettos back to the Underworld, I will give you everything you've ever wanted. I can grant your every desire. Money? Power? Respect? Done." He smiles. "You can redeem yourself, change from an abomination in the gods' eyes to a savior. You can help me fix this world. Wouldn't it be nice, not having to run anymore?" He pauses, and for a moment, a note of real, painful tragedy enters his voice. "We are not supposed to exist, Adelina. We were never meant to be." We are mistakes. — Marie Lu

Few, as I have said, are the humorists who can induce this state. To master and dissolve us, to give us the joy of being worn down and tired out with laughter, is a success to be won by no man save in virtue of a rare staying-power. Laughter becomes extreme only if it be consecutive. There must be no pauses for recovery. Touch-and-go humour, however happy, is not enough. The jester must be able to grapple his theme and hang on to it, twisting it this way and that, and making it yield magically all manner of strange and precious things. — Max Beerbohm

Yes, I am Jewish," she says. "But I am also Catholic." She pauses and adds, "And Muslim too." ... "It is all the same, is it not? It is mankind that creates the differences. That does not mean it is not all the same God. — Kristin Harmel

If you take real-life circumstances and take out all the pauses then you have a thriller. It has to be non-stop, high stakes and fascinating all the time. Real life is like that from time to time. — Hank Phillippi Ryan

Principal Principal: Where's your late pass, mister?
Errant Student: I'm on my way to get one now.
PP: But you can't be in the hall without a pass.
ES: I know, I'm so upset. That's why I need to hurry, so I can get a pass.
Principal Principal pauses with a look on his face like Daffy Duck's when Bugs is pulling a fast one.
PP: Well, hurry up, then, and get that pass. — Laurie Halse Anderson

When the zipper snaps open, Ben pauses, his breath hot in my ear. "Janelle Tenner," he whispers. "I fucking love you. — Elizabeth Norris

I throw him a smile and pull on my suit jacket and then my hat. "Come on, what would you do?"
He pauses for a moment and then lets out a low chuckle.
"Just go. Maybe you two can sing in the rain Frank!" he jests, eyeballing my fedora.
I throw him a sly smirk. "You may be the better looking brother Kyle, but you know I'm the one with the killer style! — Joanne McClean

The world outside of me has no meaning independent of my thinking it. (pauses to look) I look out of the window. A garden. Trees. Grass. A young woman in a chair reading a book. I think: chair. So she is sitting. I think: book. So she is reading. Now the young woman touches her hair where it's come undone. But how can we be sure there is a world of phenomena, a woman reading in a garden? Perhaps the only thing that's real is my sensory experience, which has the form of a woman reading- in a universe which is in fact empty! But Immanuel Kant says- no! Because what I perceive as reality includes concepts which I cannot experience through the senses. Time and space. Cause and effect. Relations between things. Without me there is something wrong with this picture. The trees, the grass, the woman are merely- oh, she's coming! (nervously)- she's coming in here-! I say, don't leave!-where are you going? — Tom Stoppard

Search as you might, you will never know the clarity of distance without me. Still you can't say I didn't try,' my shadow says, then pauses. 'I loved you. — Haruki Murakami

I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea.
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence for which music alone finds the word. — Edgar Lee Masters

Not that there's anything wrong with geeky," Link says before Dad has a chance to. Geeky is one of Dad's favorite words, and I listen with glee to my brother's imitation of our father: "Geeky people often have that which is most valuable in this life." Link pauses here for effect, so that James and I can join in, shouting Dad's favorite phrase, "A mind with its own heartbeat. — Garret Freymann-Weyr

I don't want anything to happen to you. You being hurt ... that thought fills me with dread. I can't promise not to interfere, not if I think you'll come to harm." He pauses and takes a deep breath. "I love you, Anastasia. I will do everything in my power to protect you. I cann't imagine my life without you. — E.L. James

McLarney laughs, then leaps into the parable of Snot Boogie, who joined the neighborhood crap game, waited for the pot to thicken, then grabbed the cash and bolted down the street only to be shot dead by one of the irate players.
"So we're interviewing the witnesses down at the office and they're saying how Snot Boogie would always join the crap game, then run away with the pot, and that they'd finally gotten sick of it ... "
Dave Brown drives in silence, barely tracking this historical digression.
"And I asked one of them, you know, I asked him why they even let Snot Boogie into the game if he always tried to run away with the money."
McLarney pauses for effect.
"And?" asks Brown.
"He just looked at me real bizarre," says McLarney. "And then he says, 'you gotta let him play ... This is America — David Simon

The man who pauses on the paths of treason, Halts on a quicksand, the first step engulfs him. — Aaron Hill

Listen to John Coltrane enough and after two bars, just two bars at any place, and you know that's him. We all have signature things that happen to be similar that you can predict and you try to stay away from that except the rhythms: those pauses, they're part of my signature, the part where I know when I say nothing, I already painted enough, led enough and I don't even have to say anything. But those pauses don't belong to me. Jack Benny was one of the first guys in comedy to make the anticipation so great that during the pause people start to laugh before the execution. — Bill Cosby

Tender pauses speak
The overflow of gladness,
When words are all too weak. — William C. Bryant

Achilles pauses, looks over his shoulder at the masses of men behind him, turns back, looks past Zeus toward Olympos and the masses of gods in front of him, and then crooks his neck to look up again at towering Zeus.
"Surrender now", says Achilles, "and we'll spare your goddesses' lives so they can be our slaves and courtesans. — Dan Simmons

Only the poet truly understands what is written between the pregnant pauses they create. — Shannon Lynette

I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. — Jeanette Winterson

He pauses and takes a deep breath. I love you Anastasia. I will do everything in my power to protect you. I cannot imagine my life without you. — E.L. James

you will also see short, yellow stripes. When the cooldown bar reaches the stripes, quickly press the R key. This way, your weapon will instantly become ready to fire. Make short pauses while — GameTricks Inc.

Every single substitute teacher growing up could not pronounce my name, so whenever someone pauses, I'm like, 'Oh, that's me.' — Cary Fukunaga

Our young people, raised under the old rules of courtesy, never indulged in the present habit of talking incessantly and all at the same time. To do so would have been not only impolite, but foolish; for poise, so much admired as a social grace, could not be accompanied by restlessness. Pauses were acknowledged gracefully and did not cause lack of ease or embarrassment. — Kent Nerburn

Wesley Crusher: Say goodbye, Data.
Lt. Cmdr. Data: Goodbye, Data.
[crew laughs]
Lt. Cmdr. Data: Was that funny?
Wesley Crusher: [laughs]
Lt. Cmdr. Data: Accessing. Ah! Burns and Allen, Roxy Theater, New York City, 1932. It still works.
[pauses]
Lt. Cmdr. Data: Then there was the one about the girl in the nudist colony, that nothing looked good on?
Lieutenant Worf: We're ready to get under way, sir.
Lt. Cmdr. Data: Take my Worf, please.
Commander William T. Riker: [to Captain Picard] Warp speed, sir?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Please. — Star Trek The Next Generation

I still have those childish moments when I wish with all my heart that I could wake up and find it's all been a dream. I really have thought that. I have felt-stronger than grief, stronger than anger, stronger than despair-the profound desire to return to the netherworld of the safer past. There are still flashes of unexpected sadness, the pauses that last longer than they used to. The desire for retribution, the fear of retribution. Like a death in the family, like a personal tragedy, an event like this lays bare the complexity of our worlds, internal and external. — David Levithan

Sometimes I feel like if you just watch things, just sit still and let the world exist in front of you - sometimes I swear that just for a second time freezes and the world pauses in its tilt. Just for a second. And if you somehow found a way to live in that second, then you would live forever. — Lauren Oliver

So the first time I ever came into contact with O'Toole was at one of these very gatherings. I remember it well because I'd just punched Harold Pinter down a flight of stairs. Oh yes, I'm afraid so. No long dramatic pauses this time, Harold; he got one right on the side of the jaw. Wham! — Brian Blessed

An underestimated element in poetry, that reading aloud makes clear, is the pause. I mean especially the force of a pause or a couple of pauses close together, contrasted with a longer unit of grammar. — Robert Pinsky

We have one of those conversations where every thing clicks, meshes, corresponds, locks, where even our pauses, even our punctuation marks, seem to be nodding in agreement. — Nick Hornby

She pauses and then says: "Maybe, for now, the only right decision is to stop making decisions. — Glennon Doyle Melton

If for instance the sentiment possessing for the moment the empire of our mind is sorrow, will not the genius sharpen the sorrow and the sorrow purify the genius? Together, will they not be like a cut diamond for which language is only the wax on which they stamp their imprint? I believe that genius, thus awakened, has no need to seek out details, that it scarcely pauses to reflect, that it never thinks of unity: I believe that the details come naturally without search by the poet, that inspiration takes the place of reflection and as for unity, I think there is no unity so perfect as that which results from a heart filled with a single idea ... The nature of genius is related to that of instinct; it's operation is both simple and marvelous. — Charlotte Bronte

Each of us, in the journey through mortality, will travel his own Jericho Road. What will be your experience? What will be mine? Will I fail to notice him who has fallen among thieves and requires my help? Will you? Will I be one who sees the injured and hears his plea, yet crosses to the other side? Will you? Or will I be one who sees, who hears, who pauses, and who helps? Will you? — Thomas S. Monson

Rachel's the first one to speak. "So - he told you."
"Told me what?"
"Come on, Hal. What's changed since yesterday?" Rachel sneaks one arm out of her jacket cocoon to give Hallelujah a soft punch in the shoulder. "I may not be at my best right now, but I'm not blind." She pauses. "Or deaf."
Hallelujah feels her face get hot. "Oh. What did you hear?"
"Bits and pieces. I was really out of it last night, after . . . whatever that was. After almost freezing to death." Rachel shudders. "I have to say, it was totally obvious from the get-go that Jonah liked you."
"It was?" Hallelujah is still surprised. She still doesn't quite believe it.
"Um, yeah. Or did you think he's out here for me?" Rachel says slowly, as if to a child, "You followed me. He followed you. — Kathryn Holmes

The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the
privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful
continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection. — Joseph Conrad

The mountain-path of Action is no longer a path for me; my future hope pauses with my present happiness in the shadowed valley of Repose. — Wilkie Collins

Society has a problem with female nudity when it is not ... " - Badu pauses to get her words together; she wants this point to be very clear - " ... when it is not packaged for the consumption of male entertainment. Then it becomes confusing. — Erykah Badu

At the stroke of midnight in Washington, a drooling red-eyed beast with the legs of a man and a head of a giant hyena crawls out of its bedroom window in the South Wing of the White House and leaps fifty feet down to the lawn ... pauses briefly to strangle the Chow watchdog, then races off into the darkness ... towards the Watergate, snarling with lust, loping through the alleys behind Pennsylvania Avenue, and trying desperately to remember which one of those fore hundred identical balconies is the one outside of Martha Mitchell's apartment ... Ah ... Nightmares, nightmares. But I was only kidding. The President of the United States would never act that weird. At least not during football season. — Hunter S. Thompson

Too often in life we pass by important things. Let's pause, change perspective and see things more clearly. — Sergio Pinto

Boys normally attended the school for seven or eight years, beginning at the age of seven. The schoolday was long and characterized by an extreme devotion to tedium. Pupils sat on hard wooden benches from six in the morning to five or six in the evening, with only two short pauses for refreshment, six days a week. — Bill Bryson

And then suddenly I hear his footsteps approaching. He's behind me, thirty feet away, at a guess.
No wonder I couldn't see him.
I should turn. Right now I should turn. This is the moment that it would be natural to swivel round
and greet him. Call out a hello; wave my phone in the air.
But my feet are rooted to the spot. I can't bring myself to move. Because as soon as I do, it will be
time to be polite and matter-of-fact and back to normal. And I can't bear that. I want to stay here. In
the place where we can say anything to each other. In the magic spell.
Sam pauses, right behind me. There's an unbearable fragile beat as I wait for him to shatter the quiet. But it's as though he feels the same way. He says nothing. All I can hear is the gentle sound
of his breathing. Slowly, his arms wrap round me from behind. I close my eyes and lean back
against his chest, feeling unreal. — Sophie Kinsella

I really like the stuff that is very absurd and very real at the same time. I think Anton Chekhov is the greatest comedy writer of all time. I think he would make a great addition to The Office staff. If you look through Chekhov plays there is a lot of awkward pauses in there. His mixture of pathos, absurdity, truthfulness and whimsy is just mixed together perfectly. — Rainn Wilson

In Paris the swaying lanterns are lit in the streets; lights shine through water, fuzzy, diffuse. Saint-Just sits by an insufficient fire, in a poor light. He is a Spartan after all, and Spartans don't need home comforts. He has begun his report, his list of accusations; if Robespierre saw it now, he would tear it up, but in a few days' time it will be the very thing he needs. Sometimes he stops, half-glances over his shoulder. He feels someone has come into the room behind him; but when he allows himself to look, there is nothing to see. It is my destiny, he feels, forming in the shadows of the room. It is the guardian angel I had, long ago when I was a child. It is Camille Desmoulins, looking over my shoulder, laughing at my grammar. He pauses for a moment. He thinks, there are no living ghosts. He takes hold of himself. Bends his head over his task. His pen scratches. His strange letterforms incise the paper. His handwriting is minute. He gets a lot of words to the page. — Hilary Mantel

When a person pauses in mid-sentence to choose a word, that's the best time to jump in and change the subject! It's like an interception in football! You grab the others guy's idea and run the opposite way with it! The more sentences you complete, the higher your score! The idea is to block the other guy's thoughts and express your own! That's how you win!
Conversations aren't contests!
Ok, a point for you, but I'm still ahead. — Bill Watterson

To read a poem
Is to see light where there is darkness
Is to hear silence where there is noise
Is to dance where there is no music
Is to sing where the only instrument is words
And the stirring, impassioned pauses — A.A. Patawaran