Shuts Down Quotes & Sayings

We want in so many different ways to be," he began again. "This magnificent butterfly finds a little heap of dirt and sits still on it; but man he will never on his heap of mud keep still. He want to be so, and again he want to be so. . . . " He moved his hand up, then down. . . . "He wants to be a saint, and he wants to be a devil - and every time he shuts his eyes he sees himself as a very fine fellow - so fine as he can never be. . . . In a dream. . . . " 'He — Joseph Conrad

Sometimes your whole system just shuts down and you wake up in the morning and everything's black and no matter how much people speak to you and try to talk you out of it and tell you everything's okay, it doesn't work. — Melina Marchetta

The brain shuts down, and the soul watches from a distance as the body tumbles at ever-increasing speed toward doom. This is because, though instinct is good at many things, it's stupid about death. — Max Gladstone

I always thought fainting showed an inherent weakness of character, but I understood it now. It was an act of self-preservation. Confronted by emotion too extreme to handle, the body shuts down to keep from running around like a chicken with its head cut off, potentially injuring itself. — Karen Marie Moning

IS THERE ANYTHING MORE TOXIC THAN THE FEAR of being judged? Judgment shuts us down and makes us hide. It keeps us from being ourselves, which keeps us from connecting with other people. — Donald Miller

She is the gin. Cold, intoxicating. Gives you a rush, makes you warm inside, makes you lose your head. Take too much, it makes you sick and shuts you down.
He is the coffee, hot, steaming, filtered. You have to add stuff to it to make it taste good. Grinds your stomach, makes you jittery, wired, and tense. Bad trip, keeps you up, burns you out.
Coffee and gin don't mix, never do, everybody keeps trying and trying to make it taste good. — Henry Rollins

We are machines, all of us ...
And what does a machine do when too much is assigned to it? When too much coal, too much ink, too much information is forced violently through its channels?
Why, it stutters, it chokes, finally, it shuts down.
Where do they put the broken machines?
There is only one place. — Emilie Autumn

The sky is less grand as it shuts down over less worth in the population. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When you're meeting a whole lot of new people and having to do things you're in - I'm in a constant low-level state of anxiety. Which produces adrenaline, and kind of shuts down - there's a difference between short-term, people-based anxiety. And sort of deep, existential, you know, fear, that you feel all the way down to your butthole. And that, I, that's ... that's what I'll have when I'm alone. — David Foster Wallace

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words. — Orhan Pamuk

He makes up the most remarkable yarns - and then his mother shuts him up in the closet for telling stories. And he sits down and makes up another one, and has it ready to relate to her when she lets him out. He had one for me when he came down tonight. 'Uncle Jim,' says he, solemn as a tombstone, 'I had a 'venture in the Glen today.' 'Yes, what was it?' says I, expecting something quite startling, but no-wise prepared for what I really got. 'I met a wolf in th street,' says he, 'a 'normous wolf with a big red mouf and awful long teeth, Uncle Jim.' 'I didn't know there was any wolves at the Glen,' says I. 'Oh, he comed there from far, far away,' says Joe, 'and I fought he was going to eat me up, Uncle Jim.' 'Were you scared?' says I. 'No, 'cause I had a gun,' says Joe, 'and I shot the wolf dead, Uncle Jim - solid dead - and then he went up to heaven and bit God,' says he. — L.M. Montgomery

In reality, thousands of years of instinct kicked in. Your forebrain shuts down and a second later you're running down a dark alley like a gazelle in three-inch — Annie Nicholas

The family is a court of justice which never shuts down for night or day. — Malcolm De Chazal

Shooting at night in Los Angeles is amazing. The city shuts down at 10 P.M. every night, and a whole different cast of characters comes out. — Dan Gilroy

The planet of humans and dogs spins and sails, spins and sails.
There is nothing I can do about it. Things keep moving. The knackery never shuts down. — Andrew Smith

The summer Night comes brooding down on Earth, As Love comes brooding down on human hearts, With bliss that hath no utterance save rich tears. She floats in fragrance down the smiling dark, Foldeth a kiss upon the lips of Life
Curtaineth into rest the weary world
And shuts us in with all our hid delights. — Frank Herbert

How Obama approaches judicial selection - and how Republicans respond - now becomes an important story and will remain so until the Senate shuts down judicial confirmations, probably in the summer of 2016 if Senate custom in presidential-election years is followed. — Terry Eastland

This reality requires you to bury your nature and conform. This is the only way to survive. It is within this reality one often shares a minuscule of what one could share. Competition and scarcity dominate the mind and the heart shuts down. The lure with which one acquires is left with with subsequent hollowness. There was nothing to be had as all it was, was appearance. The conqueror leaves empty-handed. During a lonely moment, one can go and touch inside. It is here that the spirit shows how life is wasted by living a lie. — Elise Icten

There's a terrible stillness. I notice a small tear in the wallpaper above her shoulder. I notice finger marks grimed on the light switch. Somewhere down in the house, a door opens and shuts. As Zoey turns to face me, I realize that life is made up of a series of moments, each one a journey to the end. — Jenny Downham

Me: *is faced with a distressing situation*

Brain: *shuts down*

Me: No, maybe we should actually deal with this.

Brain: Read 7:26 p.m. — Unknown

The words come out of my mouth, but they don't sound like me. I don't sound like me. Probably because I know it's all lies. But I can see that they're lies that Reeve believes. He swallows them whole. His eyes go blank. Empty. He completely shuts down. — Jenny Han

I look at that woman and all my neurons start firing at once," Devlin said. "My head shuts down and that's not the worst of it."
But he wasn't about to describe the effect she had on his body. Even if the stallion was looking particularly supportive. The memory of A.J. in his arms was potent enough without adding to it the power of words.
"What the hell am I going to do?"
If the stallion had an answer, he wasn't sharing, and Devlin pulled away from the stall with a frustrated groan.
"To top it off, she's got me turning to a horse for advice. — J.R. Ward

Maple leaves in autumn do not suddenly transform into stained glass pendants ... in order to satisfy a human longing for beauty. Their scarlet, ochre, and golden colors emerge as chlorophyll production shuts down, in preparation for sacrificing the leaves that are vulnerable to winter cold, and ensuring the survival of the tree. But the tree survives, WHILE our vision is ravished. The peacock's display attracts a hen, AND it nourishes the human eye. The flower's fragrance entices a pollinator, BUT IT ALSO intoxicates the gardener. In that "while," in that "and," in that "but it also," we find the giftedness of life. — Terryl L. Givens

Love messes up the mind. It actually does. It does things to our brain which no other things can. The part of our brain which is used for making judgments shuts down as a result of our being in "love". Research has shown that the affect of love on the brain is comparable to the affect of drugs. Perfectly sane and logical people turn into love sick crazy maniacs in no time at all. Love is something which is best avoided, if that is possible at all. Nobody deserves to go through heartbreaks. Nobody. — Romi D.

It's funny how your mind can be open, expansive, to almost anything but when there's a hard limit, something your brain can't make that extra leap for, it all shuts down. — Karina Halle

Risk, to some, is a bad thing, because risk brings with it the possibility of failure. It might be only a temporary failure, but that doesn't matter so much if the very thought of it shuts you down. So, for some, risk comes to equal failure (take enough risks and sooner or later, you will fail). Risk is avoided because we've been trained to avoid failure. — Seth Godin

I used to think that a good relationship meant always getting along. But the secret, I realize, is that when one person shuts down or throws a fit, the other needs to stay in the adult ego state. If both people descend to the wounded child or adapted adolescent, that's when all forces of relationship drama and destruction are unleashed. — Neil Strauss

While love shuts down areas of the brain associated with judgment and reasoning by contrast those consumed with hate have very active reasoning facilities. It takes logic to figure out how to attack your enemy. — Randall Parker

A spiritual teaching is a finger pointing toward Reality; it is not Reality itself. To be in a true and mature relationship with a spiritual teaching requires you to apply it, not simply believe in it. Belief leads to various forms of fundamentalism and shuts down the curiosity and inquiry that are essential to open the way for awakening and what lies beyond awakening. A good spiritual teaching is something that you work with and apply. In doing so, it works on you (often in a hidden way) and helps reveal to you the Truth (and falseness) that lies within you. — Adyashanti

If everything you say gets laughed at ...
then you become afraid of everyone ...
and are no longer able to speak ...
even knowing all that does is bother everyone ...
Your heart ...
... shuts down ...
And your words die ... — Natsuki Takaya

Some friends of mine who are actors feel directing shuts them down and kills all their impulses, but the worst thing for me is if I feel a director hasn't noticed. — Cynthia Nixon

Everything stopped that day, literally. I even stopped growing....Injured and traumatized children--they quite often fail to grow to normal height....Resources are diverted. The growth system shuts down....Accidents, catastrophes--something like seventy-five percent of disaster victims are convinced there were warning signs they brushed off....If you trace it back, you can see the mistake--the point you would have had a different outcome....To see the mistake, the place where you went wrong, and not be able to go back and fix it? Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch, p. 615 — Donna Tartt

Jake shuts the van's back doors and lies down next to me. He's really close, so close I can feel him breathing on the nape of my neck. I could put more space between us, but instead I scoot backward, leaning into him, my back pressed into the pleasant warmth of his front. Jake holds his breath for a moment, but he doesn't say anything. And he doesn't move away ... He moves so his mouth is right under my ear, brushing the skin there, and one of his hands slides up, resting on my rib cage. My whole body tingles as he starts to sing softly into my ear. — Hannah Harrington

When a child shuts down his painful emotional side, he also loses the ability to express his joyous side. Emotions are a whole. With anger comes the ability to express delight; with sadness comes the ability to express lightheartedness. This is the breadth of emotion that allows an adult to experience intimacy with a spouse, with God, and with his children — Henry Cloud

In truth she is not a hard lady naturally, and the time has been when the sight of the venerable figure suing to her with such strong earnestness would have moved her to great compassion. But so long accustomed to suppress emotion and keep down reality, so long schooled for her own purposes in that destructive school which shuts up the natural feelings of the heart like flies in amber and spreads one uniform and dreary gloss over the good and bad, the feeling and the unfeeling, the sensible and the senseless, she had subdued even her wonder until now. — Charles Dickens

The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive. — Jeanette Winterson

One thing I noticed over time is that if I got a bad review, usually the bad part of it was at the very end. I could tell that nobody read the whole review because they would just say, "It was great to see the review!" In a way, my brain shuts down at the end of an article. It doesn't really want to go to the end. — Jim Shaw

I was just a few inches away from him and I can feel his breath touches my face. My head started to feel dizzy and my heart was skipping a few beats, like I was having a heart attack. My stomach does a somersault and my brain suddenly shuts down from processing.

Beneath me is the most beautiful man I've ever seen.

-Amanda — Kate Woodsen

But therein lies the paradox: Speaking out and being "real" are not necessarily virtues. Sometimes voicing our thoughts and feelings shuts down the lines of communication, diminishes or shames another person, or makes it less likely that two people can hear each other or even stay in the same room. Nor is talking always a solution. We know from personal experience that our best intentions to process a difficult issue can move a situation from bad to worse. We can also talk a particular subject to death, or focus on the negative in a way that draws us deeper into it, when we'd be better off distracting ourselves and going bowling. — Harriet Lerner

Pain can kill, all on its own: the body goes into shock and shuts down. — Teri Terry

But tomorrow I'll be a different person, never again the person I was. Not that anyone will notice after I'm back in Japan. On the outside nothing will be different. But something inside has burned up and vanished. Blood has been shed, and something inside me is gone. Head down, without a word, that something makes its exit. The door opens; the door shuts. The light goes out. This is the last day for the person I am right now. The very last twilight. When dawn comes, the person I am won't be here anymore. Someone else will occupy this body. — Haruki Murakami

When she enters the room she immediately shuts the window and draws the shade with a quick, hard pull. Then she throws herself down on the bed, and the sobbing starts all over again. It's as if she can't sob when she's not in a lying position - either that or she has to start sobbing the moment she lies down. — Stig Dagerman

If you ask her to do things on command, like clap or walk, she just shuts down. She does not want to perform. — Kim Kardashian

Though we don't have a cure for cancer we at least have stopped being too ashamed to even say the name of the disease - and the trajectory of the AIDS epidemic is edifying, isn't it? Shame shuts down productive thinking, and I'd like to open the doors. It's a first step. — Laura Mullen

Certainty shuts down possibilities and keeps us small. — L.R.W. Lee

Just to be in Boston, in Cambridge, on a Monday night was very horrifying to me. It frightens me . . . All the stores closing up by 5 or 6, coffeehouses being open maybe until 11, just the sense that the world shuts down and you're left with yourself. — Ann Douglas

Funny how nobody talks on the tubes, isn't it? I rarely catch the tube myself, or lifts. Confined spaces, everybody shuts down. Why is that? Perhaps we think everybody on the tube is a potential psychopath or a drunk,so we close down and pretend to read a book or something. — John Hannah

For most cosmologists, a supernatural God is an unnecessary hypothesis. For most Americans, He is an unassailable fact. The American belief machine apparently has a fail-safe component. Nothing shuts it down. — Gary Sloan

At a certain point your brain stops to rationalize things. At a certain point it gives up, shuts off, shuts down. — Lauren Oliver

There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest. And the girls will be picked up from school, and dropped off again in the morning. Your eldest daughter can remember her inhaler, and your youngest will take her gym kit with her, and it is just as you suspected - most of the stuff that you do is just stupid, really stupid, most of the stuff you do is just nagging and whining and picking up for people who are too lazy to love you. — Anne Enright

One sort of optional thing you might do is to realize there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, Spring doesn't feel like Spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for Fall and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June! What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves. Next comes the season called "Locking." That is when Nature shuts everything down. November and December aren't Winter. They're Locking. Next comes Winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not Spring. Unlocking comes next. What else could April be? — Kurt Vonnegut

Whatever. I've never understood what the big deal is about reading." He shuts the door and locks it, turning for the stairs. "Going to another place. Getting lost in time. Pretending that you're living a different life." He heads down the stairs and I follow him. "What's not to love? — Jessica Sorensen

She arches her body like a cat on a stretch. She nuzzles her cunt into my face like a filly at the gate. She smells of the sea. She smells of rockpools when I was a child. She keeps a starfish in there. I crouch down to taste the salt, to run my fingers around the rim. She opens and shuts like a sea anemone. She's refilled each day with fresh tides of longing. — Jeanette Winterson

As a kid, snow served the useful purpose of closing schools. As an adult - it shuts down any activity a decent, suntanned person over the age of thirty-five enjoys. I don't do snow forts, snowballs, snow angels, snowmen, snowmobiles, or snowshoes. I don't like to walk in it, drive in it, ski on it, or sled on it. Other than that, snow is just ducky. — Michael Holbrook

We had eight inches of snow last night. In any other part of the country, that would mean a snow day. Not in Syracuse. We never get snow days. It snows an inch in South Carolina, everything shuts down and they get on the six o'clock news. In our district, they plow early and often and put chains on the bus tires. — Laurie Halse Anderson

My mother, who died aged 82, had Alzheimer's. Losing your memory is bad enough, but everything shuts down. You can't remember how to eat or go to the toilet. It's a terrible disease and so distressing to watch it take over someone you love. — Bonnie Tyler

The dark and the snow are too thick for him to see beyond the first trees. He's been in there before at this time, when the dark shuts down in early winter. But now he pays attention, he notices something about the bush that he thinks he has missed those other times. How tangled up in itself it is, how dense and secret. It's not a matter of one tree after another, it's all the trees together, aiding and abetting one another and weaving into one thing. A transformation, behind your back.
There's another name for the bush, and this name is stalking around in his mind, in and out of where he can almost grasp it. But not quite. It's a tall word that seems ominous but indifferent. — Alice Munro

Through the years, I have combined meditation, action, and the Iron into a single strength. I believe that when the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts. Time spent away from the Iron makes my mind degenerate. I wallow in a thick depression. My body shuts down my mind. — Henry Rollins

Almost everyone shuts down when science becomes too technical; you've got to infuse it with entertainment and storytelling to make it effective. From high school on, science is taught in a very dry manner, which isn't as potent. — Greg Graffin

Everything in me turns on and shuts down at the same time. I am weak and strong. I am terrified and brave. I am lost and found. I am here and gone. I'm afraid I'm going to stop breathing again. — Katja Millay

The Chinese government sometimes shuts down the Internet and mobile services in specific areas where unrest occurs. — Rebecca MacKinnon

For something to collapse, not all systems have to shut down. In most cases, just one system is enough. For example, the human body is a system of systems. If just one system, such as the cardiovascular system, shuts down, death follows. — Robert Kiyosaki

Something inside me shuts down and I'm too numb to feel anything. It's like watching complete strangers in another Hunger Games. But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers.
Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion. — Suzanne Collins

Everest silences you ... when you come down, nothing seems worth saying, nothing at all. You find the nothingness wrapping you up, like a sound. Non-being. You can't keep it up, of course. the world rushes in soon enough. What shuts you up is, I think, the sight you've had of perfection: why speak if you can't manage perfect thoughts, perfect sentences? It feels like a betrayal of what you've been through. But it fades; you accept that certain compromises, closures, are required if you're to continue. — Salman Rushdie

It is not an arbitrary "decree of God," but in the nature of man, that a veil shuts down on the facts of to-morrow; for the soul will not have us read any other cipher than that of cause and effect. By this veil, which curtains events, it instructs the children of men to live in to-day. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you live with someone all your life, you can tell when you are annoying them. Their face just shuts down. Their words sound almost mechanical, because they are reining in all the other emotions. — David Levithan

It does no good to run. And it does no good to hide. But I know what it's like. Your brain shuts down, and you follow your instincts. Or, at least, you think you do. But you know what you're really doing? When you flee through the night, or crawl into your little bolt-hole? You know what's really guiding you? Controlling you? Pushing you on? Genre conventions. — Mike Carey

The gibbering mad SandWing a few cages down who never shuts up, all night long? (What is her story? Has she really been here since the rule of Queen Oasis?) Or — Tui T. Sutherland

Soul-the spiritual principle, the creative spark of God-cannot work if you panic. Anxiety shuts down the creative centers. When you can't think, whatever you try to do becomes one blunder piled upon another. If you slow down, the spiritual principle can begin working through you so that you can figure out the solution to the problem that is bothering you. — Harold Klemp

I happen to be one of those people whose memory shuts down under pressure. The answers would come to me in the middle of the night in my sleep! Besides, I am a millionaire. — Terry Pratchett

The problem is, is when your focus is created by a crisis, then the frontal lobe shuts down essentially, the frontal cortex which is your intuitive intelligence. So you get very clever and very stupid in a crisis. Also, you pump adrenalin into your body from what you - physiologically you'll crash. — David Allen

But I'm not superstitious. I don't really eat dinner before I go on stage, because digesting a lot of food kind of shuts you down. And I try not to get involved in emotional conversations with anyone beforehand either, so I've got a clear head. — Michael Bolton

Whenever I have to do anything fan-related there's always a whole bunch of people. My brain kind of shuts down when there are loads of people screaming at me. I'm not thinking at all so I can't really remember what's happened immediately afterwards. — Robert Pattinson

A man does not learn very well, Mr. Robbins. Women, yes, because they are used to bending with whatever wind comes along. A woman, no matter the age, is always learning, always becoming. But a man, if you will pardon me, stops learning at fourteen or so. He shuts it all down, Mr. Robbins. A log is capable of learning more than a man. To teach a man would be a battle, a war, and I would lose. — Edward P. Jones