Presumptuously Def Quotes & Sayings

The next day, at breakfast and during the entire drive to Milan, he talked passionately about what he considered the most exciting period of his life, the years between 1945 and 1948. I heard in his voice a genuine melancholy, which vanished, however, when he went on to describe with an equally genuine enthusiasm the new climate of revolution, the energy - he said - that was infusing young and old. I kept nodding yes, struck by how important it was for him to convince me that my present was in fact the return of his thrilling past. — Elena Ferrante

I have frequently noticed in myself a tendency to a diffuse style; a disposition to push my metaphors too far, employing a multitude of words to heighten the patness of the image, and so making of it a conceit rather than a metaphor, a fault copiously illustrated in the poetry of Cowley, Waller, Donne, and others of that ilk. — Sidney Lanier

Eve was made as a helpmate in the Bible not a hold-me-and-carry-me mate. — Jennifer Luckett

Press is basically a created story. It's all just stories. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

As a survival-happy species, our successes are calculated in the number of years we have extended our lives, with the reduction of suffering being only incidental to this aim. To stay alive under almost any circumstances is a sickness with us. Nothing could be more unhealthy than to "watch one's health" as a means of stalling death. The lengths we will go as procrastinators of that last gasp only demonstrate a morbid dread of that event. By contrast, our fear of suffering is deficient. — Thomas Ligotti

The quickest way to kill jobs is to have this ordinance pass. It is dumb and dangerous. — Norm Coleman

Eating is one of the most important aspects of living. I like indulging. I like to eat one food at a time, to savor each individual thing. — Marco Pierre White

I'm just remembering myself at 22 or 23. I was all engine and no steering. (Laughter) I had the wheels but I had no steering. I do think it's true that when you're younger, you're more likely to listen to all the naysayers, and people are always telling you how you ought to behave and what kind of job you should get and how you should look. — Anna Quindlen

I studied screenwriting at film school and was constantly learning how to construct three-act dramas. — Tobias Lindholm

Meditation is not something you do in the morning and you are finished with it, meditation is something that you have to go on living every moment of your life. Walking, sleeping, sitting, talking, listening - it has to become a kind of climate. A relaxed person remains in it. A person who goes on dropping the past remains meditative. — Rajneesh

George stopped. It was such a short, little question, but she couldn't make her mouth form the sounds.
Mom, what if I'm a girl? — Alex Gino