Practised Hard Quotes & Sayings

It was Dolana, at the salt farm, who first told me about the gaze of men: that look of temporary possession that some men pressed against female flesh. About its dangers and possibilities. It can be used to survive, Dolana had said softly, showing me the power that lay in reflecting a man's desire. And even at twelve years old, the knowledge of it was already in the way I moved my head, my hands, my shoulders. But Dolana had whispered her secrets to a girl. And I had to become a boy. I had to stop being alert to the turn of a man's head towards me. Stop glancing up to meet his gaze in fleeting connection. Stop falsely veiling my eyes from his momentary interest. It was hard to train out of my body, but I practised and learned to cloak myself in the skin and gaze of a boy. — Alison Goodman

The social network, the only place that doesn't physically exist but u can still live vicariously through someone who is only virtual. — Carl Henegan

What I liked was the train ride. It took an hour and that was enough for me to be able to lean backwards against the seat with closed eyes, feel the joints in the rails come up and thump through my body and sometimes peer out of the windows and see windswept heathland and imagine I was on the Trans-Siberian Railway. I had read about it, seen pictures in a book and decided that no matter when and how life would turn out, one day I would travel from Moscow to Vladivostok on that train, and I practised saying the names: Omsk, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Irkutsk, they were difficult to pronounce with all their hard consonants, but ever since the trip to Skagen, every journey I made by train was a potential departure on my own great journey. — Per Petterson

In my youth, I wanted to be a great pantomimist
but I found I had nothing to say. — Victor Borge

It was too easy to lie, when you'd practised it a few times. It was hard the first time, but once it flow from your tongue like the perfect summer breeze, and everybody seemed to believe in it, it became mundane. You'd just have to program it first, copy and paste the same old sentences all over again. — Diyar Harraz

I think it's your own ghost, seeing the work and just thinking if it will be okay to leave that around. — Julian Schnabel

When you decide to adapt some Russian novel, it's like everyone knows about it but nobody has read it. — Audrey Tautou

I am both worse and better than you thought. — Sylvia Plath

Many persons grow insensibly attached to that which gives them a great deal of trouble, as a mother often loves her sick and ever-ailing child better than her more healthy offspring. — Charles Mackay

Idlers do not make history: they suffer it! — Peter Kropotkin

The Traveller
They pointed me out on the highway, and they said
'That man has a curious way of holding his head.'
They pointed me out on the beach; they said 'That man
Will never become as we are, try as he can.'
They pointed me out at the station, and the guard
Looked at me twice, thrice, thoughtfully & hard.
I took the same train that the others took,
To the same place. Were it not for that look
And those words, we were all of us the same.
I studied merely maps. I tried to name
The effects of motion on the travellers,
I watched the couple I could see, the curse
And blessings of that couple, their destination,
The deception practised on them at the station,
Their courage. When the train stopped and they knew
The end of their journey, I descended too. — John Berryman

As you swallow the cow's tongue, think for a moment about how strange and holy that is, to devour the tongue of another. To steal from it all its power to speak, to low at the moon, to call to its calf. To be worthy of such food you must guard your own words carefully, speaking only the wise and clever ones, lest your tongue end up likewise, on the plate of a rich man. — Catherynne M Valente

The true success is the person who invented himself. — Al Goldstein

The bluebird enjoys the preeminence of being the first bit of color that cheers our northern landscape. The other birds that arrive about the same time
the sparrow, the robin, the phoebe-bird
are clad in neutral tints, gray, brown, or russet; but the bluebird brings one of the primary hues and the divinest of them all. — John Burroughs

Maybe the best we can hope for is that those we leave behind find comfort in knowing, that we're born out of love, and not science. That biology explains the how, but love explains the why — Shane Koyczan

I went through my reasoning again, checking it carefully, looking for any indications that I had added things up wrong, and found none. I was as sure as I could be, and that's always a nice feeling. If I lived through all this, I must remember to have that feeling more often. — Jeff Lindsay

is willing to hire people based 10 percent on their knowledge and 90 percent on their personality, — Carmine Gallo