Shredded Quotes & Sayings

No person is more ruthlessly cheated than someone strip-mined of his or her ability to recall the vibrancy of the past. After all, what would any person be if robbed of all sense of long-term memory? Without memories, all that any person would know about life is if he or she was hungry or thirsty, cold or hot. Without memories of the past and shredded of any illusion of a future there cannot be a frame for our existence. Without a sense of memory, we lack cognition of the very essence of our being. In absence of our memories, there can be no introspection, no ethical awareness, and no devotion, loyalty, or love. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The glances over cocktails That seem to be so sweet Don't seem quite so amorous Over Shredded Wheat — Frank Muir

Something that sounded like ripping metal shredded the deadly quiet. The inaudible bass smoothed into a low, steady hum. Outside, a low, mechanical growl rumbled closer and closer. Darius caught his breath. He knew that sound, and it wasn't magic.
It was a motorcycle. — Laura Oliva

Well, look who's on my front porch," he said, speaking Empire with this odd hissing accent. "A murderer and a cross-dressing pirate."
I looked down at my clothes, ripped and shredded and covered in mud and sand and dried blood. I'd forgotten I was dressed like a boy.
"So are you here to kill me or to rob me?" the man said. "I generally don't find it useful to glow when undertaking acts of subterfuge, but then, I'm just a wizard — Cassandra Rose Clarke

Feel. Grieve. Let yourself fell the anger at the fact that he was taken from you. Feel the loss of him . Feel the sadness and the missing him. Don't block it out, don't cut so it so stop, don't drink yourself numb. Just sit and let it all rip you apart. And then get up and keep breathing. One breath at a time. One day at a time. Wake up, and be shredded. Cry for a while. Then stop crying and go about your day. You're not okay but you're alive, and you will be okay, someday — Jasinda Wilder

Brody felt a shimmy of fear skitter up his back. He was a very poor swimmer, and the prospect of being on top of - let alone in - water above his head give him what his mother used to call the wimwams: sweaty palms, a persistent need to swallow, and a ache in his stomach - essentially the sensation some people feel about flying. In Brody's dreams, deep water was populated by slimy, savage things that rose from below and shredded his flesh, by demons that cackled and moaned. — Peter Benchley

Capitalism, so called, is when free people accumulate capital of their own free will for use on freely determined projects. The fact of the matter is that most of these projects flop. Donald Trump, for example. Every property he touches seems to go to hell. "Fat Cat" would be the wrong epithet for Trump. If someone other than paroled former Enron accountants were keeping his books, he'd probably be shown to have a net worth less than that of your twenty-pound tabby who just shredded the drapes. What — P. J. O'Rourke

My mind aches with a thousand stories. All variations with shredded threads of truth. — Truth Devour

This next song goes out to the girl who shredded my heart without hesitation back in high school. It's called Ball Busting Bitch, and Laine this one's for you. — Michelle A. Valentine

For people may not know what they think about politics in the Balkans, or the vexed question of men and women, but everyone has a definite opinion about the flavour of shredded coconut. — Louis Simpson

My heart ... " Her lower lip trembled. "I would have given it to you - to save you. I would have done anything." "I'll still take it." "What?" "Your heart," I whispered. "I'll still take it, if the offer stands. I want all of it, even the broken pieces, the shredded ones that no longer fit. I want all of them - all of you. I need it all. — Rachel Van Dyken

I often wonder why women have careers,' said Shredded Napkin suddenly, showing his teeth. I don't think he can possibly be saying what I think he's saying. He isn't, of course. Never mind. I'll stand this because Reality is dishing it out and I suppose I ought to learn to adjust to it. Besides, he may be sincere. There is a human being in there. At least he isn't telling me about something he read in the paper on women's liberation and then laughing at it. — Joanna Russ

I could no longer picture Rosalind in my mind's eye; the tender vision of the girl in white had been blown to pieces as if by a nuclear bomb. This was something unimaginable, something hollow as the yellowed husks that insects leave behind in dry grass, blowing with cold alien winds and a fine corrosive dust that shredded everything it touched. — Tana French

Reading is one of the true pleasures of life. In our age of mass culture, when so much that we encounter is abridged,adapted, adulterated, shredded, and boiled down, it is mind-easing and mind-inspiring to sit down privately with a congenial book ... — Thomas S. Monson

Shredded feelings are the fuel that feed the machinery of melodrama. And good melodrama just has honest feelings and is honest about the way people interact. — Guy Maddin

I ran straight into the wooden fence at the foot of the field.
I was lucky that it had been a rail fence, rather than a barbed wire, or I would have shredded myself into vampire linguine. — Helen Keeble

You know what Ken Lay had for breakfast this morning? Shredded Wheat — Jay Leno

These are my rapists, the ones that turned me inside out, ripped my mind from my body and shredded it. They are also, unfortunately, hot as hell. — Karen Marie Moning

In the morning the whole world had a strange new smell. It was the smell of the aftermath, a green smell, a smell of shredded leaves and oozing resin, of crushed wood and splashed sap, a tart smell, which bore some relation to the smell of bitten apples. It was the smell of death and destruction, and it smelled fresh and lively and hopeful. — A.S. Byatt

My favorite meal to make for myself is meatloaf.I prepare the the ground beef (I don't use anything else) and flatten it out so it's about 1/2 inch thick, then I spread shredded cheddar all over it, then I roll it up. It's amazing. Like a big cheeseburger. — Tim Gunn

On the walk, like shredded lovely flesh, were the petals of the last gallant rose. — Sinclair Lewis

Ouch. Do you mind? This is a silk-wool blend. You'll wrinkle it." "It's about to be shredded." She seethes up at me, eyes shooting sparks. "You just totally threw our business out there." "I told them not to talk about it." Her nose wrinkles. "Which means they'll be talking about it even more." "No, they won't." "Yes, we will," Rye calls. I point at him. "Start practicing your Running Man. — Kristen Callihan

His kissing was slower this time - gentler. The fingertips of his other hand slipped beneath the waist of my undergarment, and I sucked in a breath. He hesitated at the sound, pulling back slightly. But I bit his lip in a silent command that had him growling into my mouth. With one long claw, he shredded through silk and lace, and my undergarment fell away in pieces. The claw retracted, and his kiss deepened as his fingers slid between my legs, coaxing and teasing. I ground against his hand, yielding completely to the writhing wildness that had roared alive inside me, and breathed his name onto his skin. He paused again - his fingers retracting - but I grabbed him, pulling him farther on top of me. I wanted him now - I wanted the barriers of our clothing to vanish, I wanted to taste his sweat, wanted to become full of him. "Don't stop," I gasped out. "I - " he said thickly, resting his brow between my breasts as he shuddered. "If we keep going, I won't be able to stop at all." I — Sarah J. Maas

He wasn't surprised. After the thorny branches had shredded her dress, they had reached for her legs as night fell, and now he could see that she was terribly lacerated. The wounds were deep, and he could see exposed muscles and tendons glisten yellow and pink in a devastating kind of beauty where the ragged flesh gaped open. — Lois Lowry

Nine lies on his back, groaning. His chest is shredded from where Eight slashed him, he's got a fresh black eye, and I think I notice a trickle of blood from where I struck him with his staff. Suddenly, his groans turn to laughter. "That was awesome!" Nine hollers. — Pittacus Lore

Our bill of rights has been shredded. The fourth amendment specifically prohibits the kind of activities the NSA is involved in domestically. The fifth amendment prohibits any president or anyone else from killing anyone without due process. — Ray McGovern

At the wedding, women served a dish of cabbage that had been shredded by wooden kraut cutters, mixed with ground pork and onion, wrapped in bread dough, and baked. — Timothy Egan

2 cups unbleached flour 1 cup rolled oats 1 Tbsp baking powder ½ tsp sea salt 1 cup sliced almonds ½ cup shredded coconut ½ cup chocolate chips 2 cups maple syrup 6 oz firm silken tofu (aseptic package) 1 ripe banana ½ cup saffower or sunflower oil ½ cup vegetable shortening 1 Tbsp vanilla — Tanya Petrovna

Transferring my anger and pain onto paper turns it into something tangible, something that can be shredded or burned, or at the very least, sealed shut in a box. ~Call Me Tuesday — Leigh Byrne

Kitchen-sink cookies," Trishiffany proclaimed. "Sounds disgusting, right? But I've always been so torn about chocolate chips versus butterscotch chips, but here you don't even have to choose. Walnuts and peanuts! Oatmeal and cornflakes! Raisins and dried cherries. Not to mention the shredded coconut. Sometimes we just need our little freedoms, you know? — Helen Phillips

They tasted a new snack called Cracker Jack and a new breakfast food called Shredded Wheat. — Erik Larson

Look at the history of peace accords in Africa. They have a terrible record. They are shredded even before the ink on them is dry. — George Ayittey

Down every hall is a gruesome tangle of impossible creatures, and every one of them is split open or strung with barbs or dragging their insides after them, flailing along on shattered limbs or shredded wings or blasted stumps.
I've got the pistol, half a can of spray and a handful of useless shotgun slugs.
I'm dead. — Bill Blais

Before the man lost his sight, he read this story in a magazine: a group of explorers came upon a community of parrots speaking the language of a society that had been wiped out in a recent catastrophe. Astonished by their discovery, they put the parrots in cages and sent them home so that linguists could record what remained of the lost language. But the parrots, already traumatized by the devastation they had recently witnessed, died on the way.
The man feels a great fraternity with those birds. He feels he carries, like them, a shredded inheritance, and he is too concussed to pass anything on. — Rana Dasgupta

As much as I didn't want to, I had to read Jag's note. I pulled it out of my back pocket. His handwriting still made my breath catch, but when I opened it, I wanted to cry.

The paper contained two words: Fly, babe.

I shredded it into little pieces. Fly? The stupid boy wanted me to fly? I'd fly off the handle when I caught up to him. Then he'd see me fly. — Elana Johnson

The Enron scandal continues. The U.S. Senate has announced they are going to subpoena Ken Lay and make him testify. Apparently Lay received the subpoena this morning and then, out of habit, immediately shredded it. — Conan O'Brien

He poisoned her with affection and compassion, and he taught her what it meant to play again. He gave her hope and tore down her past, all with a fierce laugh in those remarkable eyes. He had already taken her soul on an impossible moonlit flight. She might as well give him her shredded, useless heart too, since she hadn't been using it all these years. — Thea Harrison

Add Fat Don't be afraid of fat. Add extra butter to anything. Drizzle olive oil over pasta or salads or even meat just prior to serving (don't heat it if possible). Olive oil mixed with herbs is also great for dipping bread into. (Try the soaked no-knead bread in this book.) Pan-fry meat and fish with some coconut oil, beef tallow, or lard. Make "candy" from coconut oil, honey, shredded coconut, and chocolate (if you like). — Anonymous

I do know I felt as if my heart had been shredded when I found you in our storeroom, unconscious and bleeding. And leaving you with Vinco in the holding cells was the hardest thing I've ever done.
- Riley to Trella — Maria V. Snyder

Wake up O dear,
Into the glory of another morn,
The night has ended, darkness has shredded.
Bathed in the delight of heavenly shower,
The earth is decked by sparkling dews.
Fly high upon the celestial spheres, for
The skies are clear, horizons boundless
Devoid of the clouds of deadly grief.
March ahead O dearest life,
Towards the road that appears endless
Follow the paces of invisible time -
Until its dusk, yet another night! — Preeth Nambiar

Only silence answered me. No, not quite silence - the Peter Pan that Sloane was trying to talk off the roof of the apartment building was shouting something at her, his weedy, prepubescent voice shredded into wordless tatters by the wind. The wind found no such purchase with Sloane. "And I'm telling you that Neverland isn't real!" she shouted. "You can't fucking fly, kid - the laws of physics are for everybody! — Seanan McGuire

And for this imperfect immortality, what prices have been paid? How many livers, lungs, and veins? Shredded, polluted, shot? How many children deserted, family secrets betrayed, sordid trysts laid out for strangers to see? How many wives and husbands shoved to the side? How many ovens scorched with our hair? Gun barrels slid between our lips? Bathtubs slowly reddened by our blood and twisting drowned that drowned us? How many flawed pages burned in disgust and reduced to ashes? How many flawless moments observed from just a slight distance so that, later, we might reduce them to words? All with an unspoken prayer that these hard-won truths might outlast the brief years of our lives. — Kristopher Jansma

It had not been science that Lydia had loved. And then, as if the tears are telescopes, she begins to see more clearly: the shredded posters and pictures, the rubble of books, the shelf prostrate at her feet. Everything that she had wanted for Lydia, which Lydia had never wanted but had embraced anyway. A dull chill creeps over her. Perhaps - and this thought chokes her - that had dragged Lydia underwater at last. — Celeste Ng

Throughout most of my life, I raised tobacco. I want you to know that my own hands, all of my life, I put in the plant beds and transferred it! I hoed it! I've dug in it! I've sprayed it! I've chopped it! I've shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn and stripped it and sold it! — Al Gore

I lapsed into my pathetic cut-off period. Often with humans, both good and bad, my senses simply shut off, they get tired, I give up. I am polite. I nod. I pretend to understand because I don't want anybody to be hurt. That is the one weakness that has lead me into the most trouble. Trying to be kind to others I often get my soul shredded into a kind of spiritual pasta.
No matter. My brain shuts off. I listen. I respond. And they are too dumb to know that I am not there. — Charles Bukowski

These Sultans of the fastnesses were turbaned with tumbled volumes of cloud, which shredded away from time to time and drifted off fringed and torn, trailing their continents of shadow after them; — Mark Twain

My heart feels zested. Finely shredded and ready to add to cake batter. It doesn't hurt, because it's not there anymore. Like the angel's chest, with her empty heart hole - but without the sparkler. — Laini Taylor

The other half, Lost Tokyo-1, has not been located yet, although presumably it exists out there somewhere in the universe, a mega-demi-city of eighty-five million people, a city fractured, cracker in half, torn, ripped not cleanly, but shredded, ragged, ripped along living rome, plans, meetings, dates, conjugal beds in prisons, family dinner tables, secrets being whispered into ears, couples holding hands, separated in an instant without warning or explanation, leaving two halves, bewildered, speaking Japanese to instant neighbours from the other side of the world, unable to understand what has happened, or if things will ever go back to the way they were, hoping its other half might someday find its way back. — Charles Yu

I pore over every word on the cereal box at breakfast, often more than once. You can ask me anything about shredded wheat. — Chris Van Allsburg

What I wanted was to get away. But the moon was too far beyond, and there were white bits under me, where the flesh was shredded off and the bone gleamed that famed ivory, and those below cowered and, if they were not quick enough, were spattered in blood. Then came the jolt, as of a fall, and I saw the leg was caught in an ungainly way in the smaller branches of a mutamba tree, the foot hooked, long like that infamous fruit. — Tsitsi Dangarembga

I pounded through the houses, staggering down the hallways, falling down the steps. It was a hot streaky dawn full of insecticides, exhaust, flowers that could make you sick or fall in love. My battered Impala was still parked there on the side of the road and I wanted to lie down on the shredded seats and sleep and sleep.
But I thought of the bones; I could hear them singing. They needed me to write their song. — Francesca Lia Block

Best thing that ever happened to me, that shredded washer," he whispered.
"Too bad I didn't know what a washer was or I would have shredded it myself," I whispered back and he burst out laughing. — Kristen Ashley

Everything about her shredded my heart because she reminded me too much of my mother, and she reminded me too much of my mother's death. I couldn't handle it. And so I pushed her away. — Jessica Park

But, at the end of the day, we need to represent the taxpayers who have made enormous sacrifices. Many have lost their jobs. Many of them have seen their companies - they don't have a pension - they have seen their companies cut the match for their 401(k). They have seen their health care benefits be shredded. — John Kasich

Even when it isn't going well, knitting can be deeply spiritual. Knitting sets goals that you can meet. Sometimes when I work on something complicated or difficult - ripping out my work and starting over, porong over tomes of knitting expertise, screeching "I don't get it!" white practically weeping with frusteation - my husband looks at me and says, "I don't know why you think you like knitting." I just stare at him. I don't like knitting. I LOVE knitting. I don't know what could have possible led him to think that I'm not enjoying myself. The cursing? The crying? The forteen sheets of shredded graph paper? Knittong is like a marriage (I tell him) and you don't just trash the whole thing because there are bad moments. — Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Life is not fair. The moment one believes in total bliss, it gets shredded by circumstance and unforeseen accidents — Audrey Carlan

In L.A., I get a meal delivery service called Diet Designs. I like a nice butter lettuce salad with some avocado, fresh grapefruit, shredded chicken breast and raw almond slices with a sesame vinaigrette dressing. I also love juicing and am kind of obsessed with it. — Fergie

I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country," Clara said. "I will pray you find a way to be useful," Gamache completed the quote. Reine-Marie dropped her eyes to her hands and saw the paper napkin twisted and shredded there. Clara nodded slowly. "I think you might be right. Peter went to Paris not to find a new artistic voice. It was simpler than that. He wanted to find a way to be useful. — Louise Penny

I had eight brothers and sisters. Every Christmas my younger brother Bobby would wake up extra early and open everybody's presents - everybody's - so by the time the rest of us got up, all the gifts were shredded, ribbons off, torn open and thrown aside. — Tommy Hilfiger

Forest Gump had it wrong. Life is not a box of chocolate; it's a kaleidoscope. In the flip of a wrist, realities are shredded and the world takes on a totally new shape. — Carolyn Haines

Charm is like tinsel without the tree. What's tinsel without the tree? Shredded tinfoil. — Anna Quindlen

Maggie had no clue that looking at her was like being stabbed in the gut. No clue that she ripped my heart to pieces by just standing in front of me. This girl had no clue that her very existence shredded my soul. — Ashlan Thomas

Perhaps grief is like battle: After experiencing enough of it, your body's instincts take over. When you see it closing in like a Martial death squad, you harden your insides. You prepare for the agony of a shredded heart. And when it hits, it hurts, but not as badly, because you have locked away your weakness, and all that's left is anger and strength. — Sabaa Tahir

I love the feeling of shredded wheat. I love healthy bird food with a fun-to-eat feel. Then you spray them with sugar, and I'm there. — Penn Jillette

He also keeps his silence when Bible passages become shredded to justify unwinding, and kids start to see the face of God in the fragments. — Neal Shusterman

Talking to Robespierre, one tried to make the right noises; but what is right, these days? Address yourself to the militant, and you find a pacifist giving you a reproachful look. Address yourself to the idealist, and you'll find that you've fallen into the company of a cheerful, breezy professional politician. Address yourself to means, and you'll be told to think of ends: to ends, and you'll be told to think of means. Make an assumption, and you will find it overturned; offer yesterday's conviction, and today you'll find it shredded. What did Mirabeau complain of? He believes everything he says. Presumably there was some layer of Robespierre, some deep stratum, where all the contradictions were resolved. — Hilary Mantel

A threat to kill is unreal--actual blood and shredded flesh has its own reality. — Frank M. Robinson

She was right. The purebred girls were making mistakes on purpose, in order to give us an advantage. 'King me,' I growled, out of turn. 'I say king me!' and Felicity meekly complied. Beulah pretended not to mind when we got frustrated with the oblique, fussy movement from square to square and shredded the board to ribbons. I felt sorry for them. I wondered what it would be like to be bred in captivity, and always homesick for a dimly sensed forest, the trees you've never seen. — Karen Russell

Kind of what? Gordon challenged, cutting his eyes to Kevin even as a mental image of himself in the back of Aiden's truck popped into his mind. Shredded jeans in a ball on the floorboard and riding the Outlaw with the athleticism of an Olympic gold medalist in ass fucking. — Santino Hassell

I am as vulnerable and fragile as it is possible to be. I am shredded to the core. I am at the point where I am stripped bare. — Rachel Hunter

What do you think? More cheese? Less cheese? Different cheese?" Keith held up a measuring cup of shredded mozzarella and looked inquiringly at Veronica across the kitchen island. She was slicing tomatoes but paused mid chop to look up with one raised brow. "When is the answer ever less cheese?" "Fair point." He dumped the entire cup into the mixing bowl and started to stir. — Rob Thomas

His words hung hollow between us, the knowledge that I'd given him my virginity, my body, my heart, my everything, only for him to walk away in a few weeks shredded me. — Aria Cole

I WAS seriously hurt because of you. Seeing you in another guy's arms, kissing him ... It shredded me, Eva. Cut me open and left me bleeding. I kicked he ass in self-defense. — Sylvia Day

My butterfly dress was visible on the washroom floor, bent and shredded wings and all. Cheeks hot, I remember what he'd suggested before someone shot him.
His eyes found the dress too. I was teasing about that. Unless you were looking forward to it. Then I meant every word. — Jodi Meadows

In the US, first of all, the electoral system has been almost totally shredded. For a long time it's been pretty much run by private concentrated spending but now it's over the top. Elections increasingly over the years have been [public relations] extravaganzas. — Noam Chomsky

The danger to power is obsession - power junkies. You need a very strong mind and humor to balance yourself. If you don't, you will get shredded. — Frederick Lenz

But how a game plan came to be, what a finished plan looked like, I had no idea. I'd heard that all copies were shredded as soon as the game was over. — Nicholas Dawidoff

It was a good weekend. Five thousand words of Carry On. Fish tacos with radish and shredded cabbage. Only two more conversations about Wren. And Sunday afternoon brought Levi back, taking her front steps two at a time. — Rainbow Rowell

She wanted to explain everything to him - how certain notes of the Moonlight Sonata shredded her heart like wind inside a paper bag; how her soul felt as endless and deep as the sea churning on their left; how the sight of the young Muslim couple filled her with an emotion that was equal parts joy and sadness; and above all, how she wanted a marriage that was different from the dead sea of marriages she saw all around her, how she wanted something finer, deeper, a marriage made out of silk and velvet instead of coarse cloth, a marriage made of clouds and stardust and red earth and ocean foam and moonlight and sonatas and books and art galleries and passion and kindness and sorrow and ecstasy and of fingers touching from under a burqua. — Thrity Umrigar

For Delta blueman Robert Johnson and his contemporaries, the train was the eternal metaphor for the travelling life, and it still holds true today. There is no travel like it. Train lines carve through all facets of a nation. While buses stick to major highways and planes reduce the unfolding of lives to a bird's eye view, trains putter through the domains of the rich and the poor, the desperate and the idle, rural and urban, isolated and cluttered. Through train windows you see realities rarely visible in the landscaped tourist areas. Those frames hold the untended jungle of a nation's truth. Despite my shredded emotions, there was still no feeling like dragging all your worldly possessions onto a carriage, alone and anonymous, to set off into the unknown; where any and all varieties of adventures await, where you might meet a new best friend, where the love of your life could be hiding in a dingy cafe. The clatter of the tracks is the sound of liberation. — Patrick O'Neil

When Joe and I got married two years ago, we were both super strictly Paleo and we were shredded for the wedding! All of our wedding pictures consequently turned out fantastic. I wish I could say I was as thin now as I was then! — Eva LaRue

For days I kept imagining the fate of the world's misplaced letters. I started noticing them everywhere. All the right letters sitting on desks and dressers, slipped into purses, abandoned in email Draft folders, forever sealed and unsent. Shredded. Forgotten, sometimes intentionally. And the wrong letters, placed in someone else's hands - which, once delivered, may never be taken back. Emailed and immediately regretted. — Avi Steinberg

She was also wearing brown high-heeled boots, the kind that don't make sense.

Boots are for working, for walking through wet mud, for keeping feet from getting shredded by brokenglass and falling machine parts.Boots with spiked heels were just as practical as sandals with steel toes — Penny Reid

Gray clouds were charging across tissues of white, which stretched and shredded and tore slowly, until through their final layers there gleamed a hint of the disappearing blue. Summer was retreating. The wind roared, the trees groaned, yet the noise seemed insufficient for those vast operations in heaven. The weather was breaking up, breaking, broken, and it is a sense of the fit rather than of the supernatural that equips such crises with the salvos of angelic artillery. — E. M. Forster

Laughter isn't even the other side of tears. It is tears turned inside out. Truly the suffering is great, here on earth. We blunder along, shredded by our mistakes, bludgeoned by our faults. Not having a clue where the dark path leads us. But on the whole, we stumble along bravely, don't you think? — Alice Walker

I believe it was Shakespeare, or possibly Howard Cosell, who first observed that marriage is very much like a birthday candle, in that 'the flames of passion burn brightest when the wick of intimacy is first ignited by the disposable butane lighter of physical attraction, but sooner or later the heat of familiarity causes the wax of boredom to drip all over the vanilla frosting of novelty and the shredded coconut of romance.' I could not have phrased it better myself. — Dave Barry

They saw even more ungodly things - the first zipper; the first-ever all-electric kitchen, which included an automatic dishwasher; and a box purporting to contain everything a cook would need to make pancakes, under the brand name Aunt Jemima's. They sampled a new, oddly flavored gum called Juicy Fruit, and caramel-coated popcorn called Cracker Jack. A new cereal, Shredded Wheat, seemed unlikely to succeed - "shredded doormat," some called it - but a new beer did well, winning the exposition's top beer award. Forever afterward, its brewer called it Pabst Blue Ribbon. — Erik Larson

How many fears came between us? Earthquakes, diseases, wars where hell rained smoldering pus from skies made of winged death. Horror tore this world asunder. While inside the bleeding smoke and beyond the shredded weeping flesh we memorized tales of infinite good. -from The History Lesson — Aberjhani

A neighbour put his budgerigar in the mincing machine and invented shredded tweet. — Chic Murray

My character on 'Orange is the New Black' is not one that requires being absolutely shredded with 5% body fat. But I wouldn't be opposed to doing that for a role one day. — Matt McGorry

The music was more than music- at least what we are used to hearing. The music was feeling itself. The sound connected instantly with something deep and joyous. Those powerful moments of true knowledge that we have to paper over with daily life. The music tapped the back of our terrors, too. Things we'd lived through and didn't want to ever repeat. Shredded imaginings, unadmitted longings, fear and also surprisingly pleasures. No, we can't live at that pitch. But every so often something shatters like ice and we are in the river of our existence. We are aware. And this realization was in the music, somehow, or in the way Shamengwa played it. — Louise Erdrich

There was a silence, and I looked at Laura - really looked at her - and had the sudden impression that I was having dinner with a simulacrum, a knockoff. I felt like the man who buys the box of genuine wartime memorabilia at auction and brings it home to discover, under the first layer, piles and piles of shredded newspaper. — Paul Murray

Hash Brown Casserole Servings: 10-12 What you need: 32 oz bag of frozen hash browns 8 oz sour cream 10.5 oz cream of mushroom soup ¼ cup finely chopped onion 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese ½ cup butter, melted Salt and pepper, to taste What to do: Slightly break apart the frozen hash browns. Spray your slow cooker with non-stick spray. In your slow cooker, mix together the hash browns, sour cream, cream of mushroom soup, onion, cheese, and melted butter. Sprinkle the mixture with salt and pepper and cook for 4-5 hours on low. — Hannie P. Scott

I have them a few minutes to absorb everything while I teased Ubie, who only had to recover from his near-death experience. I was so glad Reyes hadn't ripped him to shreds. I liked him much better un-shredded. Unlike, say, my preference for lettuce or heavy metal guitar solos. — Darynda Jones

Aunt Rachel removes the knaffea from the oven and places it on its sumptuous tray; the shredded phyllo dough is crisp and brown, crackling with hot, rose-scented syrup. Nestled within, like a naughty secret, is the melting layer of sweet cheese. The pastry is freshly hot, the only way to eat it, really, with its miraculous study in contrasts - the running cheese hidden within crisp, crackling layers of baked phyllo and the distinctive, brocaded complexities of flavors. It's so hot that it steams in your mouth, and at first you eat it with just the tips of your teeth. Then the layers of crisp and sweet and soft intermingle, a series of surprises. It is so rich and dense that you can eat only a little bit, and then it is over and the knaffea is just a pleasant memory - like a lovely dream that you forget a few seconds after you wake. But for a few seconds, you knew you were eating knaffea. — Diana Abu-Jaber

Mere moments after stepping foot on French soil Pierre was leaving again. He had left the UK on a French passport identifying him as a 'Guillaume Racine'. The name existed only on that passport, the passenger manifest for the journey, and a prepaid Visa with which he had paid. Both the card and the passport would be shredded shortly. — Sean Campbell

When two people break up, it's all about them; they can't see anyone else. And the people getting smashed to bits are the kids. Then you're getting torn - your mum wants you, your dad wants you. You just get shredded. It has a long-lasting effect as well. — Vinnie Jones

This last year I've felt like one of those snowflakes we used to make in school. The ones where you fold the paper a certain way and then keep cutting and cutting until the paper is shredded. That's what I look like, a paper snowflake. And each hole has a name. And nobody, not you, not me, can fill the holes that someone else has left. All we can do is keep each other from falling in the holes and never coming out again. — Amy Harmon

Martha Stewart denied allegations that she had been given inside information to sell 4,000 shares of a stock in a biotech firm about to go under. Stewart then showed her audience how to make a festive, quick-burning yule log out of freshly-shredded financial documents. — Dennis Miller

The Mania Speaks


You clumsy bootlegger. Little daffodil.
I watered you with an ocean and you plucked one little vein?
Downed a couple bottles of pills and got yourself carted off to the ER?
I gifted you the will of gunpowder, a matchstick tongue, and all you managed
was a shredded sweater and a police warning?
You should be legend by now.
Girl in an orange jumpsuit, a headline.
I built you from the purest napalm, fed you wine and bourbon.
Preened you in the dark, hammered lullabies into your thin skull.
I painted over the walls, wrote the poems. I shook your goddamn boots.
Now you want out? Think you'll wrestle me out of you with prescriptions?
A good man's good love and some breathing exercises?
You think I can't tame that? I always come home. Always.
Ravenous. Loaded. You know better than anybody:
I'm bigger than God. — Jeanann Verlee