Query Quotes & Sayings

The piece was like an elegant interrogation made of tangled yarn, a query from a well-dressed man in a casket, not yet dead. It proceeded slowly, like a careful equation, and then not: if x = y, if major = minor, if death equals part of life and life part of death, then what is the sum of the infinite notes of this one phrase? It asked, answered, reasked, its moody asking a refinement of reluctance or dislike. — Lorrie Moore

Beautiful publishers say beautiful things and then We're sorry, but no... and then more beautiful things. It's a shit sandwich with branston pickle and melted gouda.

I read it out loud to the kids. I stick it to the fridge with the others. Some writers do that because it turns their crank to have a Wall of Publishers Who Passed And Will Someday Regret It. I don't. Each one is, really and truly, a gift. We look at them and the boys and I talk about rejection, all kinds of it. Creative, karmic, romantic. Nothing works out until something does. — Kate Inglis

Every country has its cocktail-party question. A simple one-sentence query, the answer to which unlocks a motherlode of information about the person you just met ... In Switzerland it is, Where are you from? That is all you need to know about someone. — Eric Weiner

We give caring attention to every patient with high class and affordable price. Come to us we care for you and give the world-class breast cancer treatment Los Angeles. for more query contact us (310) 879-1099 — Cancercenter

The causes and severity of NSA infractions vary widely. One in 10 incidents is attributed to a typographical error in which an analyst enters an incorrect query and retrieves data about U.S phone calls or emails. — Barton Gellman

I wrote a query letter to an editor - a friend of a friend. The editor called me an idiot, told me never to contact an editor directly, and then recommended three literary agents he had worked with before. Laurie Fox was one of them, and I've never looked back. — Daniel H. Wilson

Above all, a query letter is a sales pitch and it is the single most important page an unpublished writer will ever write. It's the first impression and will either open the door or close it. It's that important, so don't mess it up. Mine took 17 drafts and two weeks to write. — Nicholas Sparks

The answer was no, whatever her query was, except for those bits to which his answer was yes — Jon Courtenay Grimwood

I am not posing these questions only to the world at large. I query us who own Christ as our life. Can God be pleased by the vast and increasing inequities among us? Is he not grieved by our arrogant accumulation, while Christian brothers and sisters elsewhere languish and die? Is it not obligatory upon us to see beyond the nose of our own national interest, so that justice may roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream? Is there not an obligation upon us to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God is we want to live in his wonderful peace? — Richard J. Foster

Till the time, you are enjoying the outside process, everything seems alright, but when the query arises, about why life, you search for the deeper meaning with life. — Roshan Sharma

My favorite words in the world are these:
"what" and "if" in conjunction.
They question curiosities
in simple form and function.
"What" is a query of broadest scope.
"If" is wonder that fuels all hope.
Together they lasso the mind like rope, and spur the wildest deductions! — Richelle E. Goodrich

We are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is small on our small urban street. We can see the city and the train line and it's beautiful in its own dangerous way. Dangerous because it's shared and taken and fought for.
That's the best way I can put it, and thinking about it, when I walk past the tiny houses on our street, I wonder about the stories inside them. I wonder hard, because houses must have walls and rooftops for a reason. My only query is the windows. Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? — Markus Zusak

The new culture war is about national identity rather than religion and 'transcendent authority.' It focuses on which groups the United States will formally admit to residence and citizenship. It asks the same question as the old culture war: 'Who are we?' But the earlier query was primarily about how we define ourselves morally. The new question is about how we define ourselves ethnically, racially and linguistically. It is, in truth, one of the oldest questions in our history, going back to our earliest immigration battles of the 1840s and 1850s. — E. J. Dionne

Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound & query signifying nothing — William Shakespeare

When the fresh patient comes to me the usual query is: "Will I be able to speak like the King?" and my reply is: "Yes, if you will work like he does." [says Lionel Logue] — Mark Logue

Someday I will understand Auschwitz. This was a brave statement but innocently absurd. No one will ever understand Auschwitz. What I might have set down with more accuracy would have been: Someday I will write about Sophie's life and death, and thereby help demonstrate how absolute evil is never extinguished from the world. Auschwitz itself remains inexplicable. The most profound statement yet made about Auschwitz was not a statement at all, but a response.
The query: "At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?"
And the answer: "Where was man? — William Styron

Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was? — Cormac McCarthy

Has it ever struck you people how arrogant you are?" it asked, huge hands taking an attitude of query that bordered on accusation. "You're talking of slaughtering a nation. Thousands of innocent people destroyed, lands made barren, mountains leveled and the sea pulled up over them like a blanket. And you're feeling sorry for yourself that you had to wring a bird's neck as a boy? How can anyone have feelings that delicate and that numbed both at the same time? — Daniel Abraham

HAVE FOUND HIM STOP, it read. WILL YOU COME BACK QUERY ROGER. — Diana Gabaldon

People always try to make self-published authors feel insignificant. I have more respect for self-published authors, because I know the adversity they faced. They didn't just write a manuscript, query letter, and blam book deal. These authors had to do it the difficult way. There is no publisher, or agents, investing time, and money into making their book. Just the indie author's manuscript, own currency, and persistence. — Mary Sage Nguyen

I would have died, before a literary agent ever committed to my book. This is why I chose to empower myself by self publishing. — Mary Sage Nguyen

how could so many people talk about the good of Query, and the good of the Guard, and then act in ways basically immoral or destructive just to be a little higher, just to get a star with silver edges instead of gold edges? — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

One question keeps troubling me: Why? ... The short answer: I don't know. and yet that single word, why, remains the consummate human query. By nature, we're curious. We want to know. — Don Piper

consumers are not a piece of code. You can't just query them into action. — Laura Busche

Gankis lifted an arm to point at the distant shale cliffs. "And in the face of it there were thousands of little holes, little what-you-call-'ems ... "
"Alcoves," Kennit supplied in an almost dreamy voice. "I call them alcoves, Gankis. As would you, if you could speak your own mother tongue. — Robin Hobb

Most of the AI goes into figuring which are the important pages you want. And to some extent what your query means, and what you're likely to be after based on your previous behavior and other information it collects about you. — Stuart J. Russell

The writer Lee Smith, who once had a New York copy editor query in the margin of her manuscript "Double-wide what?" tells a perfectly marvelous, spot-on story about Eudora Welty when she came to Hollins College, where Smith was a student. Welty read a short story in which one female character presents another with a marble cake. In the back of the audience Smith noted a group of leather-elbowed, goatee-sporting PhD candidates, all of whom were getting pretty excited. One started waving his hand as soon as she stopped reading and said, "Miz Welty, how did you come up with that powerful symbol of the marble cake, with the feminine and masculine, the yin and the yang, the Freudian and the Jungian all mixed together like that?" Smith reported that Welty looked at him from the lectern without saying anything for a while. Finally she replied mildly, "Well, you see, it's a recipe that's been in my family for some time. — Sally Mann

I am reminded of the query made about man's inhumanity to man in the concentration camps. The question was asked: At Auschwitz, tell me, where was God?

And the answer came: Where was man?

For it was men alone who did this evil. Not God or religion or men acting in the name of God or religion. But simply men. — Glenn Meade

When people call for "deeds, not creeds," asking, "What Would Jesus Do?" without much interest in the query, "What has Jesus done?" identifying themselves as "spiritual but not religious," they are asking for the law without the gospel. — Michael S. Horton

When one seeks assurance, there's none from those who respond, Now, don't you worry about a thing. If you weren't worried, you wouldn't have asked. If you are concerned, it's nice to know that those you query are, too. I'll take a worrier any day over a platitudinous reassurer. — Malcolm Forbes

They downloaded another customer query, and Mae scrolled through the boilerplates, found the appropriate answer, personalized it, and sent it back. — Dave Eggers

A query letter should be like a skirt. Long enough to cover everything, but short enough to be exciting. — Andrea Brown

Her pinkie took matters into its own, er, pinkie, and moved oh-so-slightly, grazing his skin. His pinkie, judging by the shape and texture.
Blood rushed and pounded through her veins, flushing her skin. This could not, in any way, be explained as an accidental touch. But he could feign sleep if he wasn't interested. Did she want him to do that?
What was she doing?
She commanded her pinkie to drop, and thankfully, it obeyed.
A jolt shot through her as his finger made a query, and the need clarified. The need represented her desire for some measure of control. Control over her general situation. Control over her attraction. She answered with a gentle finger stroke along his calloused, warm skin.
A sharp breath pierced the dark air. — Angela Quarles

... . Query: How contrive not to waste one's time?
Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while.
Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room; by remaining on one's balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language on doesn't know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth. — Albert Camus

did you realize every time you speak a query into Apple's Siri artificial intelligence agent, your voice recording is analyzed and stored by the company for at least two years? — Marc Goodman

Even as the Internet has revived hope of a universal library and Google seems to promise an answer to every query, books have remained a dark region in the universe of information. We want books to be as accessible and searchable as the Web. On the other hand, we still want them to be books. — Gary Wolf

Good and evil keep happening in this world. It just takes a little longer for us to take the bad in our stride. And just when we think we've come to terms with bad, we're shocked to be haunted by that one query whose answer is ever as elusive - why on earth did it have to happen to me ? — Tuhin A. Sinha

There comes a moment when the things one has written, even a traveler's memories, stand up and demand a justification. They require an explanation. They query, 'Who am I? What is my name? Why am I here? — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The absolute base-level thing that you do as a new screenwriter is send out query letters. Literally, you just say, 'Hi, Mr. So-and-So,' and you give them a one-sentence description of one of your scripts. You send it out to a list of people you found on the Internet. — Evan Daugherty

If an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. — Edward Snowden

The spirit of science is not to prejudge, but to give any honest query a fair shake. — Allen Wheelis

Here the query A320 returns algorithmic search results about the Airbus aircraft, together with advertisements for various non-aircraft goods numbered A320 that advertisers seek to market to those querying on this query. The lack of advertisements for the aircraft reflects the fact that few marketers attempt to sell A320 aircraft on the web. — Hinrich Schutze

Why do we speak of memory and speed reading? Why is there this need to learn how to learn? The reason is simple. Because at none of us, at school, taught us to learn quickly; they have given us only the contents, making us understand that the content is everything, but they don't have told how to study them. They haven't ever taught to speak in public, but in the school days it happened to do this, just think of the classic query where the audience had as a teacher and class of 20-30 students. — Robert James

It has been our experience that American houses insist on very comprehensive editing; that English houses as a rule require little or none and are inclined to go along with the author's script almost without query. The Canadian practice is just what you would expect
a middle-of-the-road course. We think the Americans edit too heavily and interfere with the author's rights. We think that the English publishers don't take enough editorial responsibility. Naturally, then, we consider our editing to be just about perfect. There's no doubt about it, we Canadians are a superior breed! (in a letter to author Margaret Laurence, dated May, 1960) — Jack McClelland

Thus, an index built for vector space retrieval cannot, in general, be used for phrase queries. Moreover, there is no way of demanding a vector space score for a phrase query - we only know the relative weights of each term in a document. — Prabhakar Raghavan

A man's final query is determined by how well he acts under pressure. If man can control his demeanor under extreme stress, he will be judged in a positive way. — Angela Khristin Brown

My vision when we started Google 15 years ago was that eventually you wouldn't have to have a search query at all. You'd just have information come to you as you needed it. And [Google Glass] is now, 15 years later, sort of the first form factor that I think can deliver that vision. — Sergey Brin

It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror, though under other pretexts, should be reviewed. Otherwise we shall come into control of an utterly ruined land ... The destruction of Dresden remains a serious query against the conduct of Allied bombing ... I feel the need for more precise concentration upon military objectives, such as oil and communications behind the immediate battle-zone, rather than on mere acts of terror and wanton destruction, however impressive. — Winston Churchill

Kiss me a question, ask me again with your eyes and I'll answer with my fingers, trailing reasons down your spine. There's a theory behind your knees and a postulate in that sweet spot on your neck, and I'll respond to your query with a smooch and a holler, roll you up against the sink and wash your hair, make love til the plates fall off the shelf. — Lou Beach

There is no room for reverence in a mind fettered with ceaseless query. — Bryant McGill

You go on living life, as if, everything is real, as everything is going into your mind, but you will never hold on for a moment, to notice, how everything filled into your mind? You were born with it, or is it acquired? — Roshan Sharma

Interview on The Skiffy and Fanty Show 2010. In response to query that young adults may not be open to the nuances/realism in Moorehawke:

'(In fact)young adult readers seem to (be very inclined)to reading the (Moorehawke) books thematically. Some (not all) adult reviewers ... tend to be very plot oriented. Because the books are a slow release of information and very character driven ... (they) don't reward impatient reading ... but young adults seem to be very patient readers. They're very analytical as well. I get very analytical responses from my young adult readers. — Celine Kiernan

When people query whether Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) is real or not, my answer is always: Sweden has recognized the condition for a decade and has approximately 300,000 EHS people. — Steven Magee

Hello slash query is all well? parenthesis enquiry after suitability of timing slash insinuations of warmness sixty percent insinuations of belief that interlocutor has topic to be discussed forty percent blah blah." I raised an eyebrow. "It was pointless. — China Mieville

The episode of Banaka pointing to his chest and crying out of existential anguish reminds me of a line from Goethe's West-East Divan: "Is one man alive when others are alive?" Deep within Goethe's query lies the secret of the writer's creed. By writing books, the individual becomes a universe (we speak of the universe of Balzac, the universe of Chekhov, the universe of Kafka, do we not?). And since the principal quality of a universe is its uniqueness, the existence of another universe constitutes a threat to its very essence. — Milan Kundera

But one of the great tragedies of life is that you cannot force people to read what they ought, as good as it might be for them.
- Roland Gardner
"Query — Robert Boyczuk

A typical agent in New York gets 400 query letters a month. Of those, they might ask to read 3-4 manuscripts, and of those, they might ask to represent 1. — Nicholas Sparks

In 2002, Google began an ambitious project to digitize every book in the world. It was intended as a search project: type in a query, and Google would show you snippets. They asked university libraries for books, which they would scan for free. At Harvard we didn't permit them to take works under copyright, but other libraries gave them everything. — Robert Darnton

The program grew out of a desire to address a gap identified after 9/11 ... The program does not involve the NSA examining the phone records of ordinary Americans. Rather, it consolidates these records into a database that the government can query if it has a specific lead - phone records that the companies already retain for business purposes. — Barack Obama

We know that Google Earth and Google Maps have had a tremendous impact on Google traffic, users, brand, adoption, and advertisers. We also know Google News, for example, which we don't monetize, has had a tremendous impact on searches and on query quality. We know those people search more. Because we've measured it. — Eric Schmidt

Empathy comes from the Greek empatheia - em (into) and pathos (feeling) - a penetration, a kind of travel. It suggests you enter another person's pain as you'd enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query: What grows where you are? What are the laws? What animals graze there? — Leslie Jamison

A human is not a device that reliably reports a gold standard judgment of relevance of a document to a query. — Hinrich Schutze

The uncomfortable truth is that we all enjoyed the party far too much to query where all the booze was coming from. Now we seem intent on lynching the barman for letting us get drunk and attacking the Government for letting us get a hangover. — Sean O'Grady

It is asked whether, in fact, the leader makes propaganda, or whether propaganda makes the leader. There is a widespread impression that a good press agent can puff up a nobody into a great man.
The answer is the same as that made to the old query as to whether the newspaper makes public opinion or whether public opinion makes the newspaper. There has to be fertile ground for the leader and the idea to fall on. But the leader also has to have some vital seed to sow. To use another figure, a mutual need has to exist before either can become positively effective. Propaganda is of no use to the politician unless he has something to say which the public, consciously or unconsciously, wants to hear. — Edward L. Bernays

When the query was finished getting results, we ended — Michael K. Glass

It's not a query of staying wholesome. It's a query of discovering a illness you want. — Jackie Mason

To my surprise, the sensation of query filled my stomach, spreading through to every corner. This was followed by each point of query ending at the same answer. Device Nineteen had responded to the question by coming to the conclusion that oblivion was the end of every path.
Great. My roommate's an emo.>
My stomach reviewed the comment and rumbled queries to various parts of the diamond, but most were returned unanswered because the required systems were not yet online. — J. Cameron McClain

It was simple. His world was Kate. If he denied that, he might as well stop breathing right now.
"I have to go," he blurted out, standing up so suddenly that his thighs hit the edge of the table, sending walnut shell shards skittering across the tabletop.
"I thought you might," Colin murmured.
Benedict just smiled and said, "Go."
His brothers, Anthony realized, were a bit smarter than they let on.
"We'll speak to you in a week or so?" Colin asked.
Anthony had to grin. He and his brothers had met at their club every day for the past fortnight. Colin's oh-so-innocent query could only imply one thing - that it was obvious that Anthony had completely lost his heart to his wife and planned to spend at least the next seven days proving it to her. And that the family he was creating had grown as important as the one he'd been born into.
"Two weeks," Anthony replied, yanking on his coat. "Maybe three."
His brothers just grinned. — Julia Quinn

As for the excellent little wretches who grow up in what they are taught, with never a scruple or a query, ... they signify nothing in the intellectual life of the race. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Here is another query: is it the duty of Society to burden itself permanently with every vicious woman who becomes a mother? And is it possible to make such an establishment of male and female loafers, even with the best management, anything useful to them or the world? - NEW-YORK DAILY TRIBUNE, AUGUST 11, 1847 — Lyndsay Faye

You're able to use a search engine, like Google or Bing or whatever. But those engines don't understand anything about pages that they give you; they essentially index the pages based on the words that you're searching, and then they intersect that with the words in your query, and they use some tricks to figure out which pages are more important than others. But they don't understand anything. — Stuart J. Russell

Before Google, I don't think people put much effort into the ordering of results. You might get a couple thouand results for a query. We saw that a thousand results weren't necessarily as useful as 10 good ones. — Sergey Brin

In a culture where life was short, decisions had to be made in a hurry. You would never have enough time, might never live to see the consequences of a wrong action - or a correct one. On Query, it was different. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

[Responding to trick query about whether she believed herself in a state of grace:] If I am not, may it please God to bring me into it; if I am, may He preserve me in it. — Joan Of Arc

2 Searching for Health Information
1. Choose a fitness or diet plan to research.
2. Determine the keywords you will use in the search query.
3. Time how long it takes you to find the information you are seeking using multiple
search engines and the Internet Explorer Search box and QuickPick menu.
4. Evaluate how well you perform the search:
a. Record how many Web sites you visit.
b. For each site you visit, evaluate the quality of information and credibility of the
site. List the qualities that make the site more or less credible.
c. For the fitness or diet plan that you choose, find out the recommendations for
exercise and any major food restrictions.
d. Write down what further steps you should take to evaluate the quality of the
information.
3 — Gary B. Shelly

Good!" the creature echoed. "Doctor Nelson will be along in a minute. Feel like some breakfast?" All four symbols in the query were in Smith's vocabulary but he had trouble believing that he had heard them rightly. He knew that he was food, but he did not "feel like" food. Nor had he had any warning that he might be selected for such an honor. He had not known that the food supply was such that it was necessary to reduce the corporate group. He was filled with mild regret, since there was still so much to grok of these new events, but no reluctance. — Robert A. Heinlein

What's the difference between a Spartan king and a mid-ranker? One man will lob this query to his mate as they prepare to bed down in the open in a cold driving rain. His friend considers mock-theatrically for a moment.'The king sleeps in that shithole over there' he replies. 'We sleep in this shithole over here. — Steven Pressfield

Doug Crowley was going to go the way of all flesh, and as quickly as possible I would find him and flense him and send him off to the ocean's floor in four neat and separate garbage bags, and I would do it before he could write another taunting drivel-filled blog bragging about his insult to me. I would tape him and teach him what it truly meant to be Me, and I would make him wish he had chosen someone else to fill out his shadow, and the only question at all was a very simple one-word query: How? — Jeff Lindsay

If you had a system that could read all the pages and understand the context, instead of just throwing back 26 million pages to answer your query, it could actually answer the question. You could ask a real question and get an answer as if you were talking to a person who read all those millions and billions of pages, understood them, and synthesized all that information. — Stuart J. Russell

Venerable architecture critic Witold Rybczynski, for instance, suggests in his book How Architecture Works: A Humanist's Toolkit that "the first question you ask yourself approaching a building is: Where is the front door?" But this is by no means the first architectural question many among us will ask; it is altogether too straightforward a query for a segment of the population. Some of us deliberately and strategically seek out, say, an attic window within reach of a strong tree branch or an unlocked storm shelter leading down into someone's basement, even a badly fit screen door that looks easy to slip through around back. Perhaps you even did this yourself as a teenager, just looking for a new way to sneak out of the house past your bedtime or to avoid the all-seeing gaze of your girlfriend's parents. — Geoff Manaugh

A year after I'd graduated college, I went to a weeklong conference intensive in Boston, and that's when things kicked into high gear. My workshop leader was a Harvard professor and editor. At the end of the week we met one-on-one over breakfast, and she said, in essence, "Look, you're ready to turn pro." She gave me a list of literary agents to query once I had something to show them. I came home and wrote my first real novel, and the agent that sold it to Tor Books was on that list. — Brian Hodge

Waiting for the response to a query is a little like being Schroedinger's cat. You are neither 'dead' nor 'alive', but some amorphous state in between. — Pippa Jay

To be seduced? Why, that was a matter of leaning back in one's chair, sipping one's wine, and responding to a query with the very first thought that has popped into one's head. And — Amor Towles

I don't suppose you molested me while I was all tied up?" That out-of-the-blue query had her mouth hanging open, and she blinked. "Are you for real?" "Totally. Want to touch me again and see? — Eve Langlais

Why are there no great women artists?' sounds as ignorant of human geography as the query 'Why are there no Eskimo tennis teams? — Francine Du Plessix Gray

There are so many works of the mind, so much humanity, that to disburden ourselves of ourselves is an understandable temptation. Open a book and a voice speaks. A world, more or less alien or welcoming, emerges to enrich a reader's store of hypotheses about how life is to be understood. As with scientific hypotheses, even failure is meaningful, a test of the boundaries of credibility. So many voices, so many worlds, we can weary of them. If there were only one human query to be heard in the universe, and it was only the sort of thing we were always inclined to wonder about
Where did all this come from? or, Why could we never refrain from war?
we would hear in it a beauty that would overwhelm us. So frail a sound, so brave, so deeply inflected by the burden of thought, that we would ask, Whose voice is this? We would feel a barely tolerable loneliness, hers and ours. And if there were another hearer, not one of us, how starkly that hearer would apprehend what we are and were. — Marilynne Robinson

Authors should do multiple submissions to agents. I mean, that's the way the business world works and whether or not the industry likes it or not, they can't stop you from submitting to multiple agents and you know what? If an agent misses out on you because they took too long with your query letter, tough luck for them. — Brad Thor

MIND TELLING US WHAT THE REALITY IS LIKE ROUND HERE?" The pen wrote: +++ On A Scale Of One To Ten - Query +++ "FINE," Ridcully shouted. +++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++ — Terry Pratchett