Scratch You Quotes & Sayings

Scratch a cynic and you'll find a disappointed idealist. — Jon F. Merz

Lies of omission do not exist. The concept is a very human one. It is the product of your story writing again. You have written a story about the truth, making emotional demands of it, and in particular, of those in possession of it. Your demands are based on a feeling of entitlement to the facts, which is very childish. You can never know all of the facts. Only I can. And since it's impossible for me to reveal all facts to you, it is my discretion alone that decides which facts will be revealed in the finite time we have. If I do not volunteer information you deem critical to your fate, it possibly means that I am a scoundrel, but it does not mean that I am a liar. And it certainly means you did not ask the right questions.
One can make either true statements or false statements about reality. All of the statements I make are true. — Scratch

That's the remarkable thing about baseball. The game has a way of having you scratch your head one minute and drive you crazy, and then the next, you're entertained beyond your wildest hopes. That's why it's the best game. — Johnny Bench

Scratch a pessimist and you will often find a defender of privilege. — William Beveridge

Would it insult you if I used your alphabet? I don't think I could start from scratch. — Clay Griffith

Skeptics squat by the road like guardians of truth, letting no one pass who doesn't come up to scratch. They never realize that they can see only what their paradigm tells them to look for. If you judge a person only by how well he plays pool, Mozart won't pass scrutiny, but the fault is in your lens. — Deepak Chopra

If you scratch below the surface and ask what really makes me tick, it's the liberalism of trying to promote freedom and opportunity. Promoting social mobility is one of the keys to that. — Nick Clegg

I'm pretty much a cat that way. Scratch my stomach, and I'll purr at you, but I'll want to gut you with my claws even more than if you'd ignored me. — Tad Williams

When you're given a newspaper column, you're not being paid to sit on a fence and scratch your chin and say 'On the one hand this' and 'On the other hand that.' You're getting paid for your opinion. — Carl Hiaasen

I have consumed more drink than the first
one hundred men you will pass
on the street
or meet in the madhouse.
I scratch my belly and dream of the
albatross.
I have joined the great drunks of
the centuries:
Li Po, Toulouse-Lautrec, Crane, Faulkner.
I have been selected
but by whom? — Charles Bukowski

Essentially, the [New York] Philharmonic is just like any other orchestra-they all have the spirit of kids, and if you scratch away a little of the fatigue and cynicism, out comes a 17-year-old music student again, full of wonder, exuberance and a tremendous love of music. — Zubin Mehta

I am a student of comparative religion, but whatever I read, you scratch a little bit and underneath is the oneness. You call it different names, yes, according to the time, according to the place, according to the people, but it is all one. — Irina Tweedie

Not only was it nearly impossible to hear because of these huge rubber ears we had to wear, but we also had these huge furry hands which were absolutely useless, especially if you had to scratch yourself. — Helena Bonham Carter

Scratch an actor and you'll find an actor. — Laurence Olivier

Scratch a Jew and you'll find a Wailing Wall. — Eve Merriam

Parcifal is one of those corkscrew artifact of culture in which you get the subjective sense that you've learned something from it, something valuable or even priceless; but on closer inspection you suddenly begin to scratch your head and say Wait a minute. This makes no sense. — Philip K. Dick

Even if you're starting from scratch and buying a new wardrobe, preppy clothes are very fairly priced compared to high fashion. They're very easy to absorb into your wardrobe. You probably already have stuff you can wear and there's a safety factor. You're dressed for success, in a way, if you look like you grew up with success. — Lisa Birnbach

All of a sudden, life became too much to bear. Just like that, for no particular reason. Because there was a child's corpse in the fridge on rue Parthenais. Because I had to start all over again from scratch, one more time. Because I had rolled my rock to the top of the hill and now it was rolling back down again. The times before, I'd always managed to put on a brave face. But there comes a time when you just don't feel strong enough to look for another place to live and go shopping again for clothes and dishes and cutlery and scouring pads and toilet paper. This was one of those times. When I got back to the hotel, I asked the Barbie at reception for the key to the minibar. It burned in the palm of my hand. I slapped it back down on the counter and ran out. I had to find a meeting. — Bernard Emond

After awhile, marriage gets a little stale and you're looking for something to scratch that a little. — Boris Kodjoe

That's the way it is with dreams. They scratch at your door. You see them through the peep hole: a stray dream looking for a home. You think it might go away if you ignore it. Wrong. It's still there when you open the door, smiling. Wagging its tail. — Monique Duval

If you are going to start a regulatory regime from scratch, you'd design it to protect middle-and lower-middle-income people, because the opportunity for them to get ripped off was so high. Instead what we had was a regime where those were the people who were protected the least. — Michael Lewis

The most wonderful revenge you can have is by dumping an attractive, vacant man for an uglier one. That way all of his friends can scratch their heads, and for the next year or so wonder why. — Perry Brass

You could scratch the itch of whatever sin you wanted: glory holes, gang bangs, girls on girls on guys. There were rooms for fetishes, and pits for fucking, and every tie-up, chain-down, in-the-air you could ask for. Especially — J.R. Ward

Sometimes a sound gets overused. There is such a thing as a good saxophone, but it's like those fields in agriculture - they need to rest for a year or so. You need time to burn all the saxophones and start from scratch. — Thomas Mars

A fiddler on the roof. Sounds crazy, no? But here, in our little village of Anatevka, you might say every one of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to scratch out a pleasant, simple tune without breaking his neck. It isn't easy. You may ask 'Why do we stay up there if it's so dangerous?' Well, we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? That I can tell you in one word: tradition! — Sheldon Harnick

I've always been able to tell a lot about people by whether they ask me about my scar. Most people never ask, but if it comes up naturally somehow and I offer up the story, they are quite interested. Some people are just dumb: 'Did a cat scratch you?' God bless. Those sweet dumdums I never mind. Sometimes it is a fun sociology litmus test, like when my friend Ricky asked me, 'Did they ever catch the black guy that did that to you?' Hmmm. It was not a black guy, Ricky, and I never said it was. — Tina Fey

Mma Ramotswe rose to her feet, allowing the woman beneath her to gasp for air and reinflate. She did not enjoy sitting on people, but every so often it was necessary, and in this case it was entirely justified by self-defence. If people came at you and started to scratch you, then of course you had the right to sit on them. Even Nelson Mandela, she told herself, who was a good and gentle man, would have agreed with that. — Alexander McCall Smith

In fact, it's probably easier to give a pill to a cat than to a man. Then again, a man can't scratch you. — Sylvain Reynard

Scratch an intellectual, and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk. — Eric Hoffer

Every cat knows how to keep his owner feeding them: You may scratch and bite ninety-nine times, but the hundredth time, you must leap into a lap and press your nose to their nose. Rules are for dogs. — Catherynne M Valente

Many times when you're a tourist you can just stay on the surface and not really experience the place you're visiting, which will probably leave you disappointed. Everywhere has something interesting; it's just about being curious enough to find it and scratch where you have to scratch and stay longer and walk further. — Diego Luna

Scratch a fantasy and you'll find a nightmare. — Gail Caldwell

If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph. — Janet Malcolm

The process is not simply of constructing a new tonal from scratch, but reordering the one you have. — Frederick Lenz

Revision, once well done, becomes a sort of automatic itch which you scratch in the next work without thinking about it. — Romulus Linney

I never knew words could be so confusing," Milo said to Tock as he bent down to scratch the dog's ear.
"Only when you use a lot to say a little," answered Tock.
Milo thought this was quite the wisest thing he'd heard all day. — Norton Juster

When one thing ends, you put it away and start from scratch on the next thing. — Laurie Metcalf

I mean it's obvious any new place is going to be either alive or dead. If it's alive it's going to be poisonous, if it's dead you're going to have to work it up from scratch. I suppose that could work, but it might take about as long as it took Earth. Even if you've got the right bugs, even if you put machines to work, it would take thousands of years. So what's the point? Why do it at all? Why not be content with what you've got? Who were they, that they were so discontent? Who the fuck were they? This — Kim Stanley Robinson

He reached down to scratch her on the head. "You're a cute little thing. Fast too. Is that really your name? Precious?" After a couple of scratches between her ears the dog rolled over on her back on the grass, asking for more. — Rich Amooi

Geneva has a long history of hosting international organizations, which is part of the reason why CERN is here. CERN has signed agreements with the ITU, WIPO and the WMO. At first sight, there may not seem to be much common ground between CERN and, say, the World Meteorological Organization, but scratch the surface, and you'll soon find a common thread. All of these organizations have a vocation to stimulate technological innovation, and together we're stronger. — Rolf-Dieter Heuer

In creating music you are the writer, the director, the producer, you create it from scratch. Obviously in playing a role in a film, you take guidance and put your trust into the director. You come into it and you really trust people. — Justin Timberlake

There used to be Boy Scout troops on Mars; it makes sense if you think about it. I got my badge in knots, among other things. That was a lifetime ago, but it's surprising how much of the Boy Scout curriculum is useful after the apocalypse. Scratch that. It's not surprising at all. In hindsight, it seems like the Boy Scouts is an end-times preparation service. — Branden Frankel

You've got to reach towards a better language, and you're not going to make it up from scratch; you've got to reach back into the tradition. Western tradition is not as impoverished as a lot of people would like to think, but you'd have to go back before the industrial revolution; you may have to go back farther than that. Of course, the Bible has a perfectly adequate language, but it's suffered a lot of thoughtless wear. — Wendell Berry

Big G.B. said, "Your Daddy ain't magic."
I said, "He ain't?"
He said, "Naw, there ain't any magic."
I said, "What about the blind man's dummy? Is Joesph of Arimathea magic?"
He said, "Get your shotgun, Sugar."
I went to the corner near the stove and took my shotgun by the barrel. I got my shell bag and looked at Big G.B.to see what he was thinking. His face didn't tell me. I stood by the kitchen door holding the shotgun and shells. I said, "Is Joseph of Arimathea magic, Big G.B.?"
He said, "There ain't no magic. Magic is the same as sentimental. Scratch the surface of sentimental and you know what you find?
Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Magic is German in nature and evil and not real. Scratch magic, Sugar, and you're looking for death. — Lewis Nordan

When once the itch of literature comes over a man, nothing can cure it but the scratching of a pen. But if you have not a pen, I suppose you must scratch any way you can. — Samuel Lover

You're never too old, never too bad, never too late and never too sick to start from the scratch once again. — Bikram Choudhury

She rose to her feet, lining her body up with his and closing the gap between them. "What if I need help in a different way?"
"Darlin', I'm a full-service kind of helper." His hand dropped to her left hips, sending a jolt of awareness straight to her clit. "You tell me what ache is building and I'll relieve it." His other hand fell to her right hip and he pulled her close. "Tell me where it itches and I'll scratch it." His cock, hard and thick, pressed against her, letting lose a wave of desire that threatened to overwhelm her. "Show me where it hurts and I'll kiss it better."
"You make a lot of promises," she managed to get out...
"And I'll deliver on every single one." He dipped his head lower, letting his lips brush across hers. "You can count on it. — Avery Flynn

But then human beings only understood each other in the first place by pretending. You didn't make predictions about people by modeling the hundred trillion synapses in their brain as separate objects. Ask the best social manipulator on Earth to build you an Artificial Intelligence from scratch, and they'd just give you a dumb look. You predicted people by telling your brain to act like theirs. You put yourself in their place. If you wanted to know what an angry person would do, you activated your own brain's anger circuitry, and whatever that circuitry output, that was your prediction. What did the neural circuitry for anger actually look like inside? Who knew? The best social manipulator on Earth might not know what neurons were, and neither might the best Legilimens. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Because you, my darling, are like poison ivy to me. Even though I know that it will only make things worse, I can't help but scratch."
"Oh, the compliments." She smiled sadly. "You are as debonair as always. — J.R. Ward

I played God today
And it was fun!
I made animals that men had never seen
So they would stop and scratch their heads
Instead of scowling.
I made words that men had never heard
So they would stop and stare at me
Instead of running.
And I made love that laughed
So men would giggle like children
Instead of sighing.
Tomorrow, perhaps, I won't be God
And you will know it
Because you won't see any three-headed cats
Or bushes with bells on ...
I wish I could always play God
So that lonely men could laugh! — James Kavanaugh

You think I'm boring, don't you?"Alec seemed amused as he leaned in closer to me. Exhausted, I laughed and put my hands on my hips, fighting to keep myself from making eye contact. "Yes. But you're pretty to look at, so as long as someone doesn't scratch your face off, you'll always have that! — Rachel Van Dyken

You see, said the wolf. He senses me. Not clearly, but he does. Hello, Fool. My ears itch. Outside the tent, the Fool reached down suddenly to scratch the wolf's ears. — Robin Hobb

I think it's always good to learn a craft from scratch the real way, so that you've learned it from the basis, the raw bones, and then you have that to fall back on. I personally wouldn't want it any other way. — Naomi Campbell

When something is empty, fill it. When something is full, empty it. When you have an itch, scratch it. — Dieter Dengler

What makes characters real are details, and if you're crafting a person from scratch, you're probably not going to pay as much attention to a question like, 'Does this person bite their nails?' — Gina Rodriguez

A home that nourishes life embraces the little moments and appreciates the rhythmic seasons of life, including the time necessary to cook real food from scratch...It doesn't have to take too much time, however, with efficient menu planning and wisely planned trips to the grocery store and farmers' market.
The payoffs are astronomical - better health, good stewardship of our environment, and setting a good example for our children are just a few of the benefits. It also fosters an appreciation of the ebbs and flows of seasons because you'll be using fresh ingredients that are more readily available (and of higher quality) when they are in season. If you feel too busy to cook from scratch, then I argue that you're too busy, period. Reevaluate your priorities and commitments. If you want to live a healthy, long life and to pass the same luxury on to your children, then you MUST take the time to cook real food — Tsh Oxenreider

Physics is like acne. The more you scratch, the more it expands.... — Shikha Kaul

That nervous energy that makes people like you and I want and go after everything in the world - bump our heads on all the hard walls and scratch our hands on all the briars - but it makes living great - doesn't it - I'm glad I want everything in the world - good and bad - bitter and sweet - I want it all and a lot of it too — Georgia O'Keeffe

But about then I began to get into different trouble and more serious. You might call it doctrinal trouble.
The trouble started because I began to doubt the main rock of the faith, which was that the Bible was true in every word ... They had staked their immortal souls on the infallible truth of every pen scratch from "In the beginning" to "Amen." But I had read all of it by then, and I could see that it changed. And if it changed, how could all of it be true?
For instance, there is a big difference between the old tribespeople's coldhearted ferocity against their enemies and Jesus' preaching of forgiveness and of love for your enemies. — Wendell Berry

It's been our experience that any time a Muslim community anywhere seeks to expand or establish a mosque or some other kind of institution, there will be some type of opposition, when you scratch the surface, often there is a tremendous level of bigotry and stereotyping in the opposition. — Ibrahim Hooper

I had to go into a studio and compose and write and press up 12 songs in 14 hours. When you're recording a song from scratch it takes you 14 hours to do just one song. — Grandmaster Flash

People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. — Henry Miller

You're not so bad-looking yourself. A bit too clean, like a metrosexual fella. Probably got a bunch of antiaging cream in your bathroom or something, but you in Dixie now, boy. You walk around looking pretty and these Southern girls will scratch your eyes out because they're afraid you'll tempt their husbands into committing horrible, unnatural sins." "I should hope so." "It's the least you could — Nick Wilgus

You always know more than you think you know without being aware of it. You always remember best what has hurt most.
Memory is a reflex of the pain. Knowledge is the memory of the pain combined with the unconsciousness which we 'rationalize' via dreams or by means of reading literature. It is impossible to learn from someone else's experience unless we don't assume this experience as our own's, which we can achieve only by living it anew and from scratch. We can not live our lives at someone else's expense. Only life fraught with dangers and risks and lived as your own's deserves its name. Only selfish people do not live their lives as if they do not belong entirely to them. Cowardice equals a life that you refuse to live at its fullest and at its most dangerous. — Martin Walser

Without music you are all dead; with music you are alive. There
is nothing music can't do. — Lee "Scratch" Perry

Fishing provides time to think, and reason not to. If you have the virtue of patience, an hour or two of casting alone is plenty of time to review all you've learned about the grand themes of life. It's time enough to realize that every generalization stands opposed by a mosaic of exceptions, and that the biggest truths are few indeed. Meanwhile, you feel the wind shift and the temperature change. You might simply decide to be present, and observe a few facts about the drifting clouds ... Fishing in a place is a meditation on the rhythm of a tide, a season, the arc of a year, and the seasons of life ... I fish to scratch the surface of those mysteries, for nearness to the beautiful, and to reassure myself the world remains. I fish to wash off some of my grief for the peace we so squander. I fish to dip into that great and awesome pool of power that propels these epic migrations. I fish to feel- and steal- a little of that energy. — Carl Safina

Come on in, I've got a sale
on scratch and dent dreams,
whole cases of imperfect ambitions
stuff the idealists couldn't sell.
Yeah, I know none of its got price tags,
you decide how much its worth.
And none of its got glossy colored packaging
but it all works just fine.
I've got rainy day swing sets
good night kisses and stationary stars
still flying at the speed of light.
And over there out back
if you dig down through those
alabaster stoplights and those old 45's
you'll find a whole crate of second hand hope.
Yeah right there, that's no chrome,
you just gotta work, polish it up a little bit.
Most folks give up too easy,
trade it in for some injection mold
and here and now. — Eric Darby

Life is so full of rough edges - small tasks and expectations that scratch you bloody and remind you that you're naked and alone. — Alexis Hall

She gulped her whiskey sour. The bar was hot tonight.
CJ circled back to check on them. "You ladies doing okay?"
"Define okay." Natalie's whiskey seemed to be talking. Because the whiskey was the only thing that could've put that husky, suggestive tone in her voice. Yep, that was all the whiskey.
He propped his elbows on the bar, which put his face level with hers, and fixed his undivided attention on her. There went her lady bits fanning themselves. With a few added whimpers. They remembered what his hands and body and lips felt like too.
"Content." His voice was low and raw, his gaze penetrating and unwavering. "Happy. Completely, one hundred percent satisfied."
Her mouth went dry while the rest of her went up in needy flames that made her want to scratch the all-but-gone rash he'd tended so well on Monday.
"Nope," Natalie squeaked. "Not okay then. — Jamie Farrell

Are wild strawberries really wild? Will they scratch an adult, will they snap at a child? Should you pet them, or let them run free where they roam? Could they ever relax in a steam-heated home? Can they be trained to not growl at the guests? Will a litterbox work or would they make a mess? Can we make them a Cowberry, herding the cows, or maybe a Muleberry pulling the plows, or maybe a Huntberry chasing the grouse, or maybe a Watchberry guarding the house, and though they may curl up at your feet oh so sweetly can you ever feel that you trust them completely? Or should we make a pet out of something less scary, like the Domestic Prune or the Imported Cherry, Anyhow, you've been warned and I will not be blamed if your Wild Strawberries cannot be tamed. — Shel Silverstein

Building a house from scratch in the middle of a field is a bit like building a prototype car. As with all prototypes, if you're building a car you usually have the luxury of producing several prototypes before you arrive at the production line version - so the opportunity for changing things is quite rich. — Kevin McCloud

Raising people is not some lark. It's serious work with serious repercussions. It's air-traffic control. You can't step out for a minute; you can barely pause to scratch your ankle. — Kelly Corrigan

The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is. — Umberto Eco

Normal people who weren't raised by mentally ill goats probably took the feeling of safety for granted. They only noticed when they suddenly felt unsafe. When the hands reach up for under the bed and grab their ankles, they scream, whereas I'm like Wait, can you scratch my knee before you kill me? — Augusten Burroughs

When you sling a saddle atop a llama's back, just after he's rolled in the dirt to scratch the unscratchable tickle of having lugged an ungrateful hiker's 90 pounds of impedimenta another eight miles along the trail, you're struck by how matted, coarse, and snarly the wool seems. But that's why it makes for versatile outdoor wear. — David Roberts

There is a tiger in my room,' said Frances.
'Did he bite you?' said Father.
'No,' said Frances.
'Did he scratch you?' said Mother.
'No,' said Frances.
'Then he is a friendly tiger,' said Father. 'He will not hurt you. Go back to sleep. — Russell Hoban

If they'd been dogs, they would have all been in the yard eating grass and trying to yak up whatever was making them feel so lousy. Not a bone gnawed, not a ball chased-all tails went unwagged. Oh, life is a fast cat, a short leash, a flea in that place where you just can't scratch. — Christopher Moore

Scratch the surface of most cynics and you find a frustrated idealist - someone who made the mistake of converting his ideals into expectations. — Peter M. Senge

There is a distinct evolutionary advantage to being fuzzy, as much of the mammal kingdom had discovered, particularly when you wanted a human to scratch your back. The dwarven evolutionary tree had embraced this concept wholeheartedly only to discover that once you started talking and expressing opinions a human's desire to scratch your back became directly inverse to how fuzzy it was. — Jeffery Russell

I guess I'm hoping the weapons will make me feel better, grant me some kind of fucking control, especially if I sense the dullness inside me get too heavy and thick, warning me that something is again approaching, creeping slowly towards my room, no figment of my imagination either but as tangible as you and I, never ceasing to scratch, waiting, perhaps for a word or an order or some other kind of sign to at last initiate this violent and by now inevitable confrontation - always as full of wrath as I am full of fear. — Mark Z. Danielewski

So for any new checklist created from scratch, you have to pick the type that makes the most sense for the situation.
The checklist cannot be lengthy. A rule of thumb some use is to keep it to between five and nine items, which is the limit of working memory. — Atul Gawande

No one wants to hear you speak, Bradie Boy," Kitten said in that scratchy voice of hers.
"Like that's ever stopped me. I can't believe we've got a bird and a cat in the car." Bradley chuckled. "I guess that makes me animal control. Nice."
"I'm a Teran," Kitten said tightly, "not a cat. And if I hear you call me a cat one more time, I'll scratch your eyes out. Understand?"
"Oh, I understand. I just don't think you'll like what I'm understanding, which is that you can't wait to get your hands on me. — Gena Showalter

Somehow I felt better toward him, knowing that he had possessed some instinct to fight back. It was something I needed to believe - that all men possess, somewhere, the dignity to value their own lives. If only enough to scratch the arm of the one who throws you to the wolves. — Randall Wallace

He needed to man up. Step one. Take a deep breath. Step two. Scratch his balls to remind himself he wasn't a prissy fucking princess. Step three - "What the hell are you doing?" Constantine said, snapping him back to the here and now. Doing? Why having a panic attack, of course, but that wasn't something he was about to admit. "Just taking in all the changes to the place. — Eve Langlais

Don't wait till you are big before you begin building your brand. Build a brand from scratch alongside your business. — Richard Branson

When people hurt you over and over, think of them like sand paper. They may scratch and hurt you a bit, but in the end, you end up polished and they end up useless. — Chris Colfer

A present," he said, then winced. The presents he'd bought for Portia usually included ropes of pearls or gemstones the size of robin's eggs. A man of his wealth ought to provide something much nicer than a sack of strange-looking pods. Sophie peeked inside the bag, her face screwing up in confusion. "What are they?" she asked, lifting the odd vegetable from the bag. It was a ruddy orange shade, larger than her hand, and looked like an oblong pumpkin. There were four of them in the bag. "You once said the cocoa powder in this village was bad, and you wanted to make your own. These are cocoa pods, shipped directly from Brazil. If you split it open, you will find fresh cocoa beans inside. Then you can begin your culinary adventure of making chocolate from scratch." "You remembered!" she exclaimed. Her eyes widened in delight as she held the pod to her nose for a sniff and then ran her fingers along its waxy skin. "It's fabulous. Thank you! — Elizabeth Camden

When you spend weeks on end close to another person, so close that you know every hiccough, every smell and every scratch on the skin, you either come out of it hating each other or so deep in each other's gut that you can't find a way out. Klara and I were both. Our little love affair had turned into a Siamese-twin relationship. There wasn't any romance in it. There wasn't room enough between us for romance to occur. And yet I knew every inch of Klara, every pore, and every thought, far better than I'd known my own mother. And in the same way: from the womb out. I was surrounded by Klara — Frederik Pohl

I am a muso, and I love doing it. I assumed that would be my career for a long time. I always wanted to be a writer, but I didn't think that anyone could actually be that full-time, so I always go back to conducting and arranging and playing. If you scratch me, I'm a musician. — Jason Robert Brown

One day, while he was idly reciting his verses to a captive audience, a scrap of paper, borne by the wind, landed on his lap. On it were written two words: "Layla" and "Majnun." As the crowd watched, Majnun tore the paper in half. The half on which was written "Layla" he crumpled into a ball and threw over his shoulder; the half with his own name he kept for himself.
"What does this mean?" someone asked.
"Do you not realize that one name is better than two?" Majnun replied. "If only you knew the reality of love, you would see that when you scratch a lover, you find his beloved."
"But why throw away Layla's name and not your own?" asked another.
Majnun glowered at the man. "The name is a shell and nothing more. It is what the shell hides that counts. I am the shell and Layla is the pearl; I am the veil and she is the face beneath it."
The crowd, though they knew not the meaning of his words, were amazed by the sweetness of his tongue. — Reza Aslan

I was going to France to do my masters and my Ph.D., but I didn't know how to say, 'bonjour.' You really feel like a baby, starting everything from scratch. — Zeresenay Alemseged

I don't think you can explain why all these other sports and college basketball have a fair representation of African American coaches, but college football doesn't. You can dig and scramble and scratch, but at the end of the day I think it's just pure, old-fashioned racism. — Frank Deford

Scratch a conservative and you find someone who prefers the past over any future. Scratch a liberal and find a closet aristocrat. It's true! Liberal governments always develop into aristocracies. The bureaucracies betray the true intent of people who form such governments. Right from the first, the little people who formed the governments which promised to equalize the social burdens found themselves suddenly in the hands of bureaucratic aristocracies. Of course, all bureaucracies follow this pattern, but what a hypocrisy to find this even under a communized banner. Ahhh, well, if patterns teach me anything it's that patterns are repeated. My oppressions, by and large, are no worse than any of the others and, at least, I teach a new lesson. - — Frank Herbert

If you scratch some saints you will find the devil. — Austin O'Malley

Ideas are like the flint stone of wondrous works. You scratch at them until a spark flies ... then the world catches fire. — Gerard De Marigny

We've come to kill Zarek of Moesia, and if you get in our way, little girl, we're going to kill you. (Otto) I'll be damned. He speaks. Or rather growls. (Jess) But not for long if he doesn't watch his mouth. For the record, Squire, it would take more man than you to even scratch me. (Syra) I live for a woman who scratches. Just make sure you keep it on the back, baby. I don't like scars. (Otto) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

There are very sophisticated, very time-consuming dishes to prepare; always from scratch, and always in excess of what you could possibly need. You tend to kill your guests with kindness around here. — Anthony Bourdain

Dear Benjamin,
"You should know that I'm not sorry either. I'm not sorry that I want to do these things with you. I'm not sorry that I want you so much I can't think of anything but you. But most of all, I'm not sorry that I love you. I love you. I love you."
I pause and listen to the low scratch of a pencil on paper as it carries all of my feelings to him, my one.
Before I finish, to the heavenly sound of him sighing with pleasure.
"Yours always, Eleanor. — Charlotte Stein

Scratch a pessimist and you find often a defender of privilege. — William Beveridge

On the surface I'm a mild mannered person, that's until you scratch the animal inside. — Ray Davies