Second Line Quotes & Sayings

Geometry has two great treasures; one is the Theorem of Pythagoras; the other, the division of a line into extreme and mean ratio. The first we may compare to a measure of gold; the second we may name a precious jewel. — Johannes Kepler

Documentaries are the first line of education, and the second line of education is dramatization, such as 'The Pacific'. — Steven Spielberg

Jude," I said, biting my lip. "I just can't. I can't do this."
His expression darkened. "I know I don't deserve a second, or third, or whatever the hell this is chance, but you and I have something special, Luce, and you know it. Give me another chance, one more chance, and I'll walk a line so straight people will think I've been possessed." God I wanted to look away from those eyes, but I just couldn't. They were impossible to ignore. "One more chance. Not because I deserve it, but because we deserve one. — Nicole Williams

The first Parikrma school started in a slum where there were 70,000 people living below the poverty line. Our first school was on a rooftop of a building inside the slums, a second story building, the only second story building inside the slums. And that rooftop did not have any ceiling, only half a tin sheet. That was our first school. — Shukla Bose

Like most people, I was not able to start selling my stories right away. So I had many other jobs along the way to becoming a writer, including toy maker, gravedigger, cookware salesman, and assembly line worker. Eventually, I became an elementary teacher and worked with second and fourth graders. — Bruce Coville

As the brother of a retired law enforcement officer, I know firsthand that our men and women in uniform perform their duties in the face of tremendous threats and significant personal risk. They put their lives on the line every day, and they often have to make split-second decisions. — Eric Holder

Inheriting from Application is shorter than writing an explicit main method, but it also has some shortcomings. First, you can't use this trait if you need to access command-line arguments, because the args array isn't available. For example, because the Summer application uses command-line arguments, it must be written with an explicit main method, as shown in Listing 4.3. Second, because of some restrictions in the JVM threading model, you need an explicit main method if your program is multi-threaded. Finally, some implementations of the JVM do not optimize the initialization code of an object which is executed by the Application trait. So you should inherit from Application only when your program is relatively simple and single-threaded. — Martin Odersky

Do be kind to yourself. Fill pages as quickly as possible; double space, or write on every second line. Regard every new page as a small triumph, until you get to page 50. Then calm down, and start worrying about the quality. Do feel anxiety - it's the job. — Roddy Doyle

Here was the shattering of the second wall: I had read the Bible many times through, and I saw for myself that it had a holy Author; I saw for myself that it was a canonized collection of sixty-six books with a unified biblical revelation. I heard for myself that when the words "this is mine" came out of my mouth in congregational singing, I was attesting to this one, simple truth: that the line of communication that God ordained for his people required this wrestling with Scripture, and that I truly wanted both to hear God's voice breathed in my life, and I wanted God to hear my pleas. The fog burned away. The whole Bible, each jot and tittle, was my open highway to a holy God. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

In the second row was a boy named Doon Harrow. He sat with his shoulders hunched, his eyes squeezed shut in concentration, and his hands clasped tightly together. His hair looked rumpled, as if he hadn't combed it for a while. He had dark, thick eyebrows, which made him look serious at the best of times and, when he was anxious or angry, came together to form a straight line across his forehead. His brown corduroy jacket was so old that its ridges had flattened out. — Jeanne DuPrau

Aspiring only to second-place goals is a first-rate way to hedge our bets. Among the least appreciated reasons for doing superficial, second-rate work of any kind is the comfort of knowing that it's not our best that's on the line. Far more is at risk when we do what we really want to do rather than something less. I don't think we'll ever fully appreciate the role of not daring to risk a shattered dream in limiting people to second-choice careers and third-choice lives. — Ralph Keyes

Yeah, I'm just here for - I stop for a second, because I'm not sure how to finish the line out loud. To see if I can ever be happy, or even remotely human, again. Would you happen to have the magic cure? — Daisy Whitney

He'd set his mouth in a feral line that could have tipped toward kindness or to cruelty in a second. — Cate Rowan

There was a time when rival teams used a shift against me. They would put the second baseman on the shortstop's side of the bag, move the shortstop into the hole to his right, and have the third baseman hug the foul line. The idea was to build an infield wall against a known right-handed pull hitter. — Harmon Killebrew

A second line is in effect a civil rights demonstration. Literally, demonstrating the civil right of the community to assemble in the street for peaceful purposes. Or, more simply, demonstrating the civil right of the community to exist. — Ned Sublette

One time he (Cool Papa Bell) hit a line drive right past my ear. I turned around and saw the ball hit his ass sliding into second. — Satchel Paige

I will never, ever regret stopping you from walking out of my life a second time, Kyle," she said in an emotional voice. "And I can prove it."
She reached for the buttons on her trench coat and undid them, one at a time. Then she opened the coat and let it drop to the floor.
And even if she didn't say a single word more, Kyle knew he would never again doubt the way Rylann felt about him.
She was wearing his flannel shirt.
"You kept it," he said softly. "All this time."
She nodded. "For nine years, I've held on to this darn shirt, literally dragging it across the country and back."
Kyle touched her cheek, gently brushing away a tear with his thumb. "Why?"
She paused hesitantly, and then with a tender smile, finally put it all on the line, too. "I guess I always hoped you'd come back for it someday. — Julie James

When I was a kid, I used to wonder (I bet everyone did) whether there was somebody somewhere on the earth, or even in the universe, or ever had been in all of time, who had had exactly the same experience that I was having at that moment, and I hoped so badly that there was. But I realized then that could never occur, because every moment is all the things that are going to happen, and every moment is just the way all those things look at one point on their way along a line. And I thought how maybe once there was, say, a princess who lost her mother's ring in a forest, and how in some other galaxy a strange creature might fall, screaming, on the shore of a red lake, and how right at that second there could be a man standing at a window overlooking a busy street, aiming a loaded revolver, but how it was just me, there, after Chris, staring at that turtle in the fourth-grade room and wondering if it would die before I stopped being able to see it. — Deborah Eisenberg

Even the damned can dream - infact, it's part of their torment. To escape, even for a second or two, to forget reality and drift, only to be yanked back into the waking world like a fish caught on a line ... Yes. In some ways that's even worse than to have no relief at all. That second of two, on awakening, when anything still seems possible — Joanne Harris

The first step on the path to fearlessness is to embrace two critical principles of truth that are the opposites of the two core fears (the fear of failure and the fear of loss). If you practice trusting these two truths you can eliminate fear in any situation. The first is to trust that your value isn't on the line because life is a classroom, not a test. The second is to trust that your journey is the perfect classroom journey for you; that anything you lose, you are meant to lose; and that each experience serves you no matter what happens. — Kimberly Giles

Sometimes you have to recycle celebrities to make them interesting, and they can be even better the second time around. Case in point: the fabulous and talented Miss Joey Heatherton, star of stage, screen, Vegas and mattress commercials. Close your eyes and imagine what it would be like to wake up one day and be Joey Heatherton. On July 8, 1985, it must not have felt so hot. Joey, goddess, was detained in the U.S. passport office at Rockefeller Center for allegedly becoming abusive at not receiving special treatment in the passport line. Supposedly, she threw a tantrum, grabbed passport-office clerk, Mary Polik, tore her hair out and smashed her head against the Formica counter. Oh, well, nobody's perfect. — John Waters

Responding to John the Baptist's hard-line approach, Jesus maintains both sides of this equation when he says, "No man born of woman is greater than John the Baptizer, yet the least who enters the kingdom of heaven is greater than he is" (Matthew 11:11). Is that double-talk? No, it is second-half-of-life talk. — Richard Rohr

Two observations take us across the finish line. The Second Law ensures that entropy increases throughout the entire process, and so the information hidden within the hard drives, Kindles, old-fashioned paper books, and everything else you packed into the region is less than that hidden in the black hole. From the results of Bekenstein and Hawking, we know that the black hole's hidden information content is given by the area of its event horizon. Moreover, because you were careful not to overspill the original region of space, the black hole's event horizon coincides with the region's boundary, so the black hole's entropy equals the area of this surrounding surface. We thus learn an important lesson. The amount of information contained within a region of space, stored in any objects of any design, is always less than the area of the surface that surrounds the region (measured in square Planck units). — Brian Greene

Those type of people [in New Orleans] keep me happy and just smiling, you know? I just go hang out and talk with them and they tell me all types of old stories, and sometimes I might even pull my horn out in the middle of the block, and they're playing on beer bottles and different things, and we just do a little second line type thing, just us, four or five people, who are just having fun. That makes me day to be able to do that and go hang out with the people in the (Treme) neighborhood, and to do some shows around town, you know? — Troy Andrews

When someone else's safety and acceptance in society is on the line, your personal discomfort comes in a very distant second. — Courtney Milan

When you're a young talent, and you want to launch your brand, you always have tons of questions: Where should I produce? Should I launch a second line? Should I do shoes, accessories? If you have someone who can coach you and give you advice and help you find the right supplier, it's a big help. — Delphine Arnault

When I was in primary school, I was given a five-line script in 'Anansi the Spider Man,' and I decided to just improv and make it my own. For a second, I felt like Kevin Hart because everyone was laughing. I just continued to do it. Why not? — John Boyega

Whether the prayer of Seneca was granted we do not know; but, as we do not again hear of Marcus, it is probable that he died before his father, and that the line of Seneca, like that of so many great men, became extinct in the second generation. — Frederic William Farrar

I didn't realize we were playing a game, he says. I smile. That was the same line he had used during our second meeting. — Kasie West

I am Emperor, my descendants will be numerous. From the second generation to the ten thousandth, my line will not end. — Qin Shi Huang

Charlie Brown got hit with a line-drive!"
"Does anyone here know anything about first-aid?"
"It's probably not serious ... Second or third-aid will do. — Charles M. Schulz

Instincts were his first line of defense. His body was his second. He trained it, kept it in fighting shape, just as he did any other weapon. — Pamela Clare

It doesn't matter what the income level of your family is, or if English is the first or second language. It makes no difference. The bottom line is that every child can be an academic champion, an academic champion and a superstar in academics. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose-well, you didn't know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes-make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere, that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being, but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible. He picked up his pen again, and under the words "Not to be published" drew a second line, thicker and blacker than the first; then sighed, "What fun it would be," he thought, "if one didn't have to think about happiness! — Aldous Huxley

She waved, laughing, waiting for him to go zooming past her. Instead he slowed, then came to a stop right in front of her.
"What are you doing?" she demanded, as he put his foot on the asphalt. She pointed to the finish line, a scant hundred yards away. "Go."
People around them started screaming. Josh ignored them all.
He pulled off his glasses. "How you doing?"
"Josh! This isn't funny. Move." She glanced over his shoulder, knowing the other racers would appear at any second. "Just finish. You can win. Then we'll talk."
"We can talk now."
She shrieked. "No! I said I was wrong. I said I loved you. What more do you want?"
"You," he said. "For always."
"Yes, yes. You can have that. Now go. Cross the finish line. It's right there. Can't see it? Hurry."
"You'll marry me?"
The man next to her turned. "For God's sake, lady. Marry him already. — Susan Mallery

I want to give just a slight indication of the influence the book has had. I knew that George Orwell, in his second novel, A Clergyman's Daughter , published in 1935, had borrowed from Joyce for his nighttime scene in Trafalgar Square, where Deafie and Charlie and Snouter and Mr. Tallboys and The Kike and Mrs. Bendigo and the rest of the bums and losers keep up a barrage of song snatches, fractured prayers, curses, and crackpot reminiscences. But only on my most recent reading of Ulysses did I discover, in the middle of the long and intricate mock-Shakespeare scene at the National Library, the line 'Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter.' So now I think Orwell quarried his title from there, too. — Christopher Hitchens

We must face the fact that society is founded on intolerance. [ ... ] We may prate of toleration as we will; but society must always draw a line somewhere between allowable conduct and insanity or crime, in spite of the risk of mistaking sages for lunatics and saviours for blasphemers. We must persecute, even to the death; and all we can do to mitigate the danger of persecution is, first, to be very careful what we persecute, and second, to bear in mind that unless there is a large liberty to shock conventional people, and a well informed sense of the value of originality, individuality, and eccentricity, the result will be apparent stagnation covering a repression of evolutionary forces which will eventually explode with extravagant and probably destructive violence. — George Bernard Shaw

I love drafting like I love eating ice cream or having sex; I love revising like I love doing logic puzzles; I love line-editing like I love perfectly organizing a bookshelf; I hate reviewing copyedits and the second round of proofreading because, by then, I'm getting pretty tired of my own words. They all have their own challenges, though. — Tim Pratt

They don't even visit the dying
anymore. Their argument being that if someone is dying, there's no
point interrupting a good game of golf, and they'd best just get on with
dying. However, they do give you a helpline number for an
organisation called 'Dying To Help You Out.' A volunteer talks you
through the process of dying alone without medical attention: "feeling
a bit chilled are you, love, don't fret, it's just your lifeblood
congealing in your veins, you'll be gone any second now, hang on pet,
I've got a corpse on line nine, if I don't get back before you peg it,
have a nice afterlife," and then they bugger of leaving you with
Robbie Williams singing Angels. — Gillibran Brown

Do I really have to face him again, Travis? The man will be insufferable after besting me as he did." Travis grinned and grabbed up the empty basket. "You can handle him. I've got faith in you." He held his hand out to her after she finished pinning a second petticoat to the line. She glanced uncertainly at his offering, then slipped her palm into his. On impulse, he tugged her arm, causing her to stumble into him. "We're Archers, Meri," he murmured as he tucked her briefly against his chest. "We can face anything if we do it together. — Karen Witemeyer

He has two antagonists: the first presses him from behind, from the origin. The second blocks the road ahead. He gives battle to both. To be sure, the first supports him in his fight with the second, for he wants to push him forward, and in the same way the second supports him in his fight with the first, since he drives him back. But it is only theoretically so. For it is not only the two antagonists who are there, but he himself as well, and who really knows his intentions? His dream, though, is that some time in an unguarded moment and this would require a night darker than any night has ever been yet he will jump out of the fighting line and be promoted, on account of his experience in fighting, to the position of umpire over his antagonists in their fight with each other. — Franz Kafka

In the wake of the Patriot Act, during the second administration of George W., you made a series of small, handheld weapons. The rule was that each weapon had to be assembled from household items within minutes. You'd been gay-bashed before, two black eyes while waiting in line for a burrito (you ran after him, of course). Now you thought, if the government comes for its citizens, we should be prepared, even if our weapons are pathetic. Your art-weapons included a steak knife affixed to a bottle of ranch dressing and mounted on an axe handle, a dirty sock sprouting nails, a wooden stump with a clump of urethane resin stuck to one end with dull bolts protruding from it, and more. — Maggie Nelson

None of us asked for this life. I, of all people should know that our paths were chosen for us and we were just along for the ride, doing what was necessary and expected. There were far greater forces at work here. He was playing my heartstrings, which sang a sad melody I felt deep in my soul.
For the first time, I could see him for who and what he was now. Even the worst incarnations of evil could change, and from this point forward, I would try to honor that. He was willing to put his life back in the line of fire to help me, and at the very least, he deserved my respect for that. Maybe even a second chance. — L.J. Kentowski

Even when there's not a joke or a hook, the first line has to be good and snapem to attention. Songs ain't novels. You don't have 30 pages to slowly wrap somebody in. They're more like short stories or poems. If the first line hasn't grabbed them, you won't get to the second line. Once you've developed an audience, you may have some luxury and trust, so you don't have to knock 'em over the head with line one. — Dan Bern

The one I'm looking at now is Sylvia Plath. The colors are a translucent sort of jade, pale gold, and, in a few places, milky white. Running jagged and clear, horizontally, through the middle of the canvas, is a line I recognize immediately and, after a long second, place as a line from the poem, "Daddy. — Ella James

Maybe she should cut the guy a little slack, [ ... ] Maybe Thorne had been a no-show because something bad happened to him on the job.
What if he'd been injured in the line of duty and didn't come by as promised because he was incapacitated in some way? Maybe he hadn't called to apologize or to explain his absence because he physically couldn't.
Right. And maybe she had checked her brain into her panties from the second she first laid eyes on the man. — Lara Adrian

I want limits, damn it. I'll accept omens and portents and second sight. I'll accept giant black hounds and creepy ravens and magpies. I'm still working out the fae and Wild Hunt thing. But I draw the line at people disappearing into thin air. — Kelley Armstrong

The wild notes of tuba and trumpet and trombone rattled and hummed through the trees. In the first group of musicians, there were kids as young as fourteen playing the tuba and one kid who probably couldn't drive banging a bass drum. They stomped together in rhythm to the music. Two ladies had dressed up in what looked like princess outfits. They wore white gloves and socks with tassels. — Hunter Murphy

However, because Britain is young and exciting, I did show my second line here once or twice. — Vivienne Westwood

and heading for the next, running the first horse into the second corral, throwing the saddle on the next bronc and then heading down the line to the next place and the next until winding up back at the first place just about at — Molly Gloss

A short poem from my new book, The Lost Journal of my Second Trip to Pergatory,
Thorny Crowns
Of course the gold one was for special occasions, weddings, etc,
silver for family reunions, office-casual type affairs.
Bronze was a everyday choice; during yard work its burnished surface shone in sunlight.
There were various colors and holiday appropriate ones.
I could never find the hatboxes they were stored in.
But the wooden one was reserved for the long suffering caused by family.
Stevie's funeral, my hospital trips and sister's rebellion rated real wood.
One tip filed extra sharp produced a fine and dramatic line of blood droplets on her brow. — Michelle Hartman

The line that I am urging as today's conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, arepudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body. — Willard Van Orman Quine

Sometimes, for a split second, life's problems just sort of line up and solve themselves and you see the hand of Jehovah Jireh so gloriously and heavily. Just for a second. Like God shining on Moses's face and then he's gone, but still, the shine. And for months afterward your face is alight. — Emily T. Wierenga

Wanderer, who are you? I watch you go on your way, without scorn, without love, with impenetrable eyes - damp and downhearted, like a plumb line that returns unsatisfied from every depth back into the light (what was it looking for down there?), with a breast that does not sigh, with lips that hide their disgust, with a hand that only grips slowly: who are you? What have you done? Take a rest here, this spot is hospitable to everyone, - relax! And whoever you may be: what would you like now? What do you find relaxing? Just name it: I'll give you whatever I have! - "Relaxing? Relaxing? How inquisitive you are! What are you saying! But please, give me - -" What? What? Just say it! - "Another mask! A second mask!" ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

The first rule of being a mercenary? Find out what the client wants, then convince him that, a) you can get it for him, and, b) you're the ONLY one who can get it for him. Second rule? Lie. Often. The truth rarely serves you well in this business
-Cadeon Woede, mercenary, second in line to the throne of the rage demons, a.k.a. Cade the Kingmaker — Kresley Cole

Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind, Two of us will help you, whichever you would find, One among us seven will let you move ahead, Another will transport the drinker back instead, Two among our number hold only nettle wine, Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line. Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore, To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four: First, however slyly the poison tries to hide You will always find some on nettle wine's left side; Second, different are those who stand at either end, But if you would move onward, neither is your friend; Third, as you see clearly, all are different size, Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides; Fourth, the second left and the second on the right Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight. — J.K. Rowling

SEE THE MAN NEXT TO HIM? WITH THE LITTLE MOUSTACHE AND THE GRIN LIKE A LIZARD? Death pointed with his scythe.
'Yes?'
HIS COUSIN, THE DUKE OF STO HELIT. NOT THE NICEST OF PEOPLE, said Death. A HANDY MAN WITH A BOTTLE OF POISON. FIFTH IN LINE TO THE THRONE LAST YEAR, NOW SECOND IN LINE. BIT OF A SOCIAL CLIMBER, YOU MIGHT SAY. — Terry Pratchett

Marvin Bell always looked very closely at how lines could break, how you could put over one line into the second line. How you could stop the line two or three times within the line: You could make it stop. — Juan Felipe Herrera

Microsoft, by some accounts, the second most capitalized company on the planet, is the only corporate colossus in history whose entire product line could be eliminated with a giant magnet. — David Shenk

And in the summer we would line up three sand dollars John and I had found on our second date when we walked along the ocean holding hands, both of us taut with the knowledge the we had found The One- though neither of us admitted it until much later. It was the same beach where I scattered his ashes. It is good we don't know our own futures. — Elizabeth Berg

One night a guy hit his head on a welding gun. He went to his knees. He was bleeding like a pig, blood was oozing out. So I stopped the line for a second and ran over to help him. The foreman turned the line on again, he almost stepped on the guy. That's the first thing they always do. They didn't even call an ambulance. The guy walked to the medic department
that's about half a mile
he had about five stitches put in his head. The foreman didn't say anything. He just turned the line on. You're nothing to any of them. — Studs Terkel

Too many people think that the faith line divides Muslims and Christians or Jews and Hindus, or just to say that there is this clash of civilizations and people from different religions are inevitably against each other, inherently opposed to each other. I don't believe that for a second. I think the faith line divides totalitarians and pluralists, which is to say that totalitarians from different religious backgrounds. — Eboo Patel

It is not easy to run a shipping line between destinations that not only change their positions by millions of kilometers every few days, but also swing through a velocity range of tens of kilometers a second. Anything like a regular schedule is out of the question; there are times when one must forget the whole idea and stay in port - or at least in orbit - waiting for the Solar System to rearrange itself for the greater convenience of Mankind. — Arthur C. Clarke

Anatole has been explaining to me the native system of government. He says the business of throwing pebbles into bowls with the most pebbles winning an election - that was Belgium's idea of fair play, but to people here it was peculiar. To the Congolese (including Anatole himself, he confessed) it seems odd that if one man gets fifty votes and the other gets forty-nine, the first one wins altogether and the second one plumb loses. That means almost half the people will be unhappy, and according to Anatole, in a village that's left halfway unhappy you haven't heard the end of it. There is sure to be trouble somewhere down the line. The — Barbara Kingsolver

I poked my head through the bushes, and saw that the little bunch I was after had joined a great flock of teal, which was on a sand bar in the middle of the stream. They were all huddled together, some standing on the bar, and others in the water right by it, and I aimed for the thickest part of the flock. At the report they sprang into the air, and I leaped to my feet to give them the second barrel, when, from under the bank right beneath me, two shoveller or spoon-bill ducks rose, with great quacking, and, as they were right in line, I took them instead, knocking both over. When I had fished out the two shovellers, I waded over to the sand bar and picked up eleven teal, making thirteen ducks with the two barrels. — Theodore Roosevelt

Time will solve all the problems Chinese school graduates face. In our bilingual society, there are no more Chinese school graduates, only English school graduates who can speak Mandarin. These English school graduates probably can also read and write Chinese, but they did not go to a Chinese school, and they act and think differently from us. Drawing a line between us, they would never say they graduated from a Chinese school, because former Chinese school graduates, that is, the vanishing group of people that includes us, are second-class citizens. They, on the other hand, belong to the first class, the Chinese elite, English school graduates who are fluent in Chinese. — Yeng Pway Ngon

We are America, second to none, and we own the finish line. Don't forget it. — Joe Biden

He smiled, setting his forehead to hers. "you are very bad for me. I am trying to turn over a new leaf
I am trying to be more gentlemanly."
"But what if I want you to stay a rake?" she teased, her fingers trailing down his neck and chest, fingering the buttons on his waistcoat. "A libertine, even?" she slipped one fastening from its seat and he grabbed her errant hand, bringing it to his lips for a swift kiss.
"Callie," he said, his voice thick with warning as she set her free hand to the second button on his coat.
"What if I want the rogue, Gabriel?" the question was soft and sweet.
"What are you saying?"
She kissed across the firm square line of his jaw and whispered to him, shyness in her shaking voice, "Take me to bed, Gabriel. Give me a taste of scandal. — Sarah MacLean

Trust me, my runners aren't going to run one event while looking past it to the second event. When they get on the line for the 10K, that's a do-or-die situation for them. — Alberto Salazar

In the spring of 2009, I was the 217th person ever to be diagnosed with anti-NMDA-receptor autoimmune encephalitis. Just a year later, that figure had doubled. Now the number is in the thousands. Yet Dr. Bailey, considered one of the best neurologists in the country, had never heard of it. When we live in a time when the rate of misdiagnoses has shown no improvement since the 1930s, the lesson here is that it's important to always get a second opinion.
While he may be an excellent doctor in many respects, Dr. Bailey is also, in some ways, a perfect example of what is wrong with medicine. I was just a number to him (and if he saw thirty-five patients a day, as he told me, that means I was one of a very large number). He is a by-product of a defective system that forces neurologists to spend five minutes with X number of patients a day to maintain their bottom line. It's a bad system. Dr. Bailey is not the exception to the rule. He is the rule. — Susannah Cahalan

You gotta be hungry for it. You've got to put everything you got on it. EVERYTHING! Every second. You have to be the first one in line. That's how leaders are born. — Ray Lewis

Barnet was a man with a rich capacity for misery, and there is no doubt that he exercised it to its fullest extent now. The events that had, as it were, dashed themselves together into one half-hour of this day showed that curious refinement of cruelty in their arrangement which often proceeds from the bosom of the whimsical god at other times known as blind Circumstance. That his few minutes of hope, between the reading of the first and second letters, had carried him to extraordinary heights of rapture was proved by the immensity of his suffering now. The sun blazing into his face would have shown a close watcher that a horizontal line, which had never been seen before, but which was never to be gone thereafter, was somehow gradually forming itself in the smooth of his forehead. His eyes, of a light hazel, had a curious look which can only be described by the word bruised; the sorrow that looked from them being largely mixed with the surprise of a man taken unawares. — Thomas Hardy

Your head is pounding with voices of confession and revelation. You followed the rails of white powder across the mirror in pursuit of a point of convergence where everything was cross-referenced according to a master code. For a second, you felt terrific. You were coming to grips. Then the coke ran out; as you hoovered the last line, you saw yourself hideously close-up with a rolled twenty sticking out of your nose. The goal is receding. Whatever it was. You can't get everything straight in one night. — Jay McInerney

In the reign of Shulgi a wall had been built across the country, more than 250 kilometres long, to keep them out. It was called 'a wall to keep out the Martu'. Shulgi's second successor ordered it to be rebuilt and strengthened, calling it Muriq-Tidnum, 'It Fends Off Tidnum.' But walls must end somewhere and enemies can often outflank them: in 1940 Hitler made the impregnable French Maginot Line irrelevant by sending his tanks through the forest of the Ardennes. And so it was with Muriq-Tidnum. — Paul Kriwaczek

I focus back on Kayden, releasing a breath trapped in my chest. "Are you okay?" He cups his hand over his eye, stares at his shoes, and keeps his other hand against his chest, seeming vulnerable, weak, and perplexed. For a second, I picture myself on the ground with bruises and cuts that can only be seen from the inside. "I'm fine." His voice is harsh, so I turn toward the house, ready to bolt. "Why did you do that?" he calls out through the darkness. I stop on the line of the grass and turn to meet his eyes. "I did what anyone else would have done. — Jessica Sorensen

It's boring."
"Oh," I said. I rubbed at my jaw. "You think I should have gone four-color?"
Bob stared at me for a second and said, "I have nightmares about Hell, where all I do is add up numbers and try to have conversations with people like you."
I glowered up at the skull and nodded. "Okay, fine. You think it needs more drama."
"More anything. Drama would do. Or breasts."
I sighed and saw where that line of thought was going. "I am not going to hire a leggy secretary, Bob. Get over it."
"I didn't say anything about legs. But as long as we're on the subject ... — Jim Butcher

It was lucky that snarking at Luke was habit by now: Elliot remembered a line from a book he'd read once, that habit was second nature, and nature stronger than the first. It was a comfort, to have a natural expression rather than one he had to pin on. — Sarah Rees Brennan

In 1986, our commencement speaker was George Schultz, secretary of state, fourth in line to the president. You get me-basic cable's second most popular fake newsman. At this rate, the class of 2021 will be addressed by a zoo parrot in a mortar-board that has been trained to say congratulations. — Stephen Colbert

So, it's a very, you know - maybe we're wrong in - you know, we go around thinking the innovator is the person who's first to kind of conceive of something. And maybe the innovation process continues down the line to the second and the third and the fourth entrant into a field. — Malcolm Gladwell

I recognized the handwriting, and my heart gave a skip; when I opened it I got a turn, for it began, 'To my beloved Hector,' and I thought, by God she's cheating on me, and has sent me the wrong letter by mistake. But in the second line was a reference to Achilles, and another to Ajax, so I understood she was just addressing me in terms which she accounted fitting for a martial paladin; she knew no better. It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whore-mongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not far off the mark. — George MacDonald Fraser

Do you know what's one mistake we always make? Believing that life's immutable, that once you get on a particular track you have to follow it to the end of the line. But it appears that fate has more imagination than we do. Just when you think you're in a situation you can't escape from, when you've reached the lowest depths of total desperation, everything changes as fast as a gust of wind, everything's overturned; from one second to the next you find you're living a new life. — Susanna Tamaro

People who claim to know jackrabbits will tell you they are primarily motivated by Fear, Stupidity, and Craziness. But I have spent enough time in jack rabbit country to know that most of them lead pretty dull lives; they are bored with their daily routines: eat, fuck, sleep, hop around a bush now and then ... No wonder some of them drift over the line into cheap thrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful adrenalin rush in crouching by the side of a road, waiting for the next set of headlights to come along, then streaking out of the bushes with split-second timing and making it across to the other side just inches in front of the speeding front wheels — Hunter S. Thompson

The Queen died. The King died."
"The Queen died. And the King died of a broken heart."
The first line was fact. The second line was a story. It placed the facts in context, added emotion and made us connect to it by making it memorable. — Daniel H. Pink

You have to visualize a second or two ahead of your car what line you are taking, what you are going to do, before you get there because it comes too fast. — Emerson Fittipaldi

All great masters are chiefly distinguished by the power of adding a second, a third, and perhaps a fourth step in a continuous line. Many a man has taken the first step. With every additional step you enhance immensely the value of your first. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

A good crowd had formed along the sidewalk and the concrete ledge that bordered Louis Armstrong Park. The anticipation was dizzying...New Orleans had the big-boy parades and [Jackson & Billy] couldn't wait to attend a second line... — Hunter Murphy

I wouldn't be so bold as to say that what we're doing is what sets us apart from everyone, I think that's for everyone else to decide. You're walking the thin line by saying something like that and we don't try and pay attention to what's popular right now. The second you do that you're just going to start sounding like other people and you're going to lose sigh of who you are. — Jason C. Miller

I don't go back and read my own stuff too much, but there are times where I second-guess myself and said I could have done something different, like a line of dialogue. — Jason Aaron

Then I tried out for the Fontana High School drum line, in Riverside, and I did really well. I got second chair, and played snare in that drum line for three years. — Travis Barker

When I start writing, the first line might come from reality, but the second and the third one, I have to write it. So this is the genesis of my creation. If I want to know what happens, if I want to find out the secret, I have to write it. — Pedro Almodovar

Look at that," he said. "How the ink bleeds." He loved the way it looked, to write on a thick pillow of the pad, the way the thicker width of paper underneath was softer and allowed for a more cushiony interface between pen and surface, which meant more time the two would be in contact for any given point, allowing the fiber of the paper to pull, through capillary action, more ink from the pen, more ink, which meant more evenness of ink, a thicker, more even line, a line with character, with solidity. The pad, all those ninety-nine sheets underneath him, the hundred, the even number, ten to the second power, the exponent, the clean block of planes, the space-time, really, represented by that pad, all of the possible drawings, graphs, curves, relationships, all of the answers, questions, mysteries, all of the problems solvable in that space, in those sheets, in those squares. — Charles Yu

I'm a Christian first. I'm a family guy second. As much as I like coaching, as much as I like basketball, it's third, fourth, or fifth down the line. — Steve Alford

I closed my eyes as I put my hand in his. It was different the second time. Something clicked into place and I could almost sense a line of energy connecting us. I gasped as it tightened around my heart. — Aileen Erin

Muse, We are servants of the Mystery. We were put here on earth to act as agents of the Infinite, to bring into existence that which is not yet, but which will be, through us. Every breath we take, every heartbeat, every evolution of every cell comes from God and is sustained by God every second, just as every creation, invention, every bar of music or line of verse, every thought, vision, fantasy, every dumb-ass flop and stroke of genius comes from that infinite intelligence that created us and the universe in all its dimensions, out of the Void, the field of infinite potential, primal chaos, the Muse. To acknowledge that reality, to efface all ego, to let the work come through us and give it back freely to its source, that, in my opinion, is as true to reality as it gets. — Steven Pressfield

I live and die with the Indians. The first game I attended back in the mid-'90s was almost a religious experience. We were down by six and won by two, and it was glorious. The stadium is so beautiful, and the way it frames the city when you're sitting high above the second base line is spectacular. — Mary Doria Russell

I instantly thought the guy was cute, in that gaunt, never-sees-the-light-of-day, New York street urchin kind of way. And he never stood still for a second. From across the tracks I read his expression as I have everything on my side except destiny, only his expression clearly hadn't informed his head or heart yet. The guy looked over and caught me staring, and once his eyes met mine they never deviated. He took several cautious steps forward, stopping abruptly at the thick yellow line you weren't supposed to cross. His arms dangled like a puppet and he seemed to skim the ground when he walked, as if suspended over the edge of the world by a hundred invisible strings. — Tiffanie DeBartolo

If the husband is always the prime suspect, the lover must be second in line. — April Smith

I want to stick in live television. And I'm hoping to continue on in a second season of Rock Star. Plus, I've got my 'Barely Brooke' swimsuit line with Venus USA and my new calendar is coming out. — Brooke Burke

Christopher Robin is going.
At least I think he is.
Where?
Nobody knows.
But he is going -
I mean he goes
(To rhyme with "knows")
Do we care?
(To rhyme with "where")
We do
Very much.
(I haven't got a rhyme for that "is" in the second line yet.
Bother).
(Now I haven't got a rhyme for bother. Bother)
Those two bothers will have to rhyme with each other
Buther.
The fact is this is more difficult
than I thought,
I ought -
(Very good indeed)
I ought
to begin again,
But it is easier
To stop.
Christopher Robin, good-bye,
I
(Good)
I
And all your friends
Sends -
I mean all your friend
Send -
(Very awkward this, it keeps going wrong.)
Well, anyhow, we send
Our love
END. — A.A. Milne

There are two basic defenses for an open ending: one is, If you read carefully enough, you'll know what happened. And the other is, That's how life is: things don't come to neat endings, there isn't a "happily ever after." But if you take that second line of defense, then I think you have to make the point that the writer has shown the range of possibility. — Lorin Stein