Quotes & Sayings About Sitting At The Table

Without fail, every cartoonist that I asked advice from bent over backward to be helpful and encouraging. It took many forms: some of it was just an implicit acceptance, like being invited along to the dinner with all of the good cartoonists, or sitting down at a drafting table with an artist and him showing me how to draw backgrounds and perspectives. — Adrian Tomine

I rushed us out of your parents' house because I didn't think I could manage two hours at the dinner table with everyone focused on Joe Loosey's joystick sitting in the refrigerator next to the applesauce. — Janet Evanovich

When we reached our hall, Nee offered to share hot chocolate with me. Shaking my head, I pleaded tiredness
true enough
and retreated to my rooms.
And discovered something lying on the little table in the parlor where letters and invitations were supposed to be put.
Moving slowly across the room, I looked down at an exquisite porcelain sphere. It was dark blue, with silver stars all over it, and so cunningly painted that when I looked closer it gave the illusion of depth
as if I stared deeply into the sky.
Lifting it with reverent care, I opened it and saw, sitting on a white silk nest, a lovely sapphire ring. Trying it on my fingers, I found to my delight it fit my longest one.
Why couldn't Bran give me this in person? There were times when I found my brother incomprehensible, but I knew he thought the same of me.
Puzzled, but content, I fell asleep with my ringed hand cradled against my cheek. — Sherwood Smith

Well ... yes, and here we go again. But before we get to The Work, as it were, I want to make sure I know how to cope with this elegant typewriter - (and, yes, it appears that I do) - so why not make this quick list of my life's work and then get the hell out of town on the 11:05 to Denver? Indeed. Why not? But for just a moment I'd like to say, for the permanent record, that it is a very strange feeling to be a 40-year-old American writer in this century and sitting alone in this huge building on Fifth Avenue in New York at one o'clock in the morning on the night before Christmas Eve, 2000 miles from home, and compiling a table of contents for a book of my own Collected Works in an office with a tall glass door that leads out to a big terrace looking down on The Plaza Fountain. Very strange. — Hunter S. Thompson

People from the military have been inside that thing. If I went back in time, I wouldn't necessarily be thinking geopolitically, but maybe they would. That has to be half the reason why they're funding us in the first place. Maybe there were earlier versions of history where Republicans didn't vote to pulp all those Andrew Jackson twenties and replace them with bills that had portraits of Reagan. Maybe in the first version of post-Point Zero history, insurgents in North and South Dakota didn't attempt to secede; maybe we weren't fighting enemies both here and in the Middle East. Or maybe there was a full-on civil war going on in the United States and the current state of affairs is an improvement. We don't know. We can't know. And we can't know the extent to which any of us, sitting here at this table, is responsible. — Dexter Palmer

Emma shifted her gaze to Steven, sitting just ahead of her at a table, Garrick Wright beside him. As though sensing her perusal, Steven shifted in his chair to look back at her, and to her utter amazement, he winked. She pursed her lips, amazed that he could take so serious a proceeding so lightly. He mimicked her dour expression, then turned to face the front of the courtroom again. The — Linda Lael Miller

I have a conscience, man, and I've worked really hard to keep it where you would feel like you were talking to the same man at one of my shows or sitting down at my dinner table. — Cody Johnson

Yes, I like sitting at a table in the sun,' I agreed, 'but I'm afraid I'm one of those typical English tourists who always wants a cup of tea. — Barbara Pym

In politics as in high school, who you are is to a large extent defined by who you sit with at lunch, and there was no doubt about it, the Earth was sitting at the loser table. It was not, Bob Pope thought, the true destiny of the Earth in our universe to be counted among the diplomatic equivalent of the acne-ridden and the furtively masturbating. — John Scalzi

Heller wrote Catch-22 in the evenings after work, sitting at the kitchen table in his Manhattan apartment. — Mason Currey

People, her people at least, were always chasing shattered hopes. A father gazing down on dead soil, with a brood of hollow-cheeked children sitting around a barren table. A lonely maid cleaning grates and waiting for a lover who by now wouldn't even recall her name. A weary labourer trudging miles between the hiring fairs, carrying his spade, clothes soiled from sleeping in damp fields. They held candles to storms, her people. They saw their lights extinguished as cruel winds of fate blew. — Paul Reid

I liked reading and working out my ideas in the midst of that endless crowd walking in and out of the (library) looking for something. I, too, was seeking fame and fortune by sitting at the end of a long golden table next to the sets of American authors on the open shelves. — Alfred Kazin

It was impossible to tell what was going through her mind, but she seemed more weirdly here, alive and in her element, than she'd ever been while trudging the halls of Upper Thayer with her books under her arms, or sitting at our dining room table. — Joe Schreiber

I used to anticipate my childhood birthday parties as if each were an annual coronation. Like most kids, I loved sitting at the head of the table with a crown on my head. — Letty Cottin Pogrebin

Altogether bad,' the host concluded. 'As you will, but there's something not nice hidden in men who avoid wine, games, the society of charming women, table talk. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly hate everybody around them. True, there may be exceptions. Among persons sitting down with me at the banqueting table, there have been on occasion some extraordinary scoundrels! ... And so, let me hear your business. — Mikhail Bulgakov

Sitting at the table during Color Purple and looking up and suddenly realizing I was acting in front of Steven Spielberg, was pretty cool. It was pretty good. — Whoopi Goldberg

Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died ... He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life ... Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense. — Jhumpa Lahiri

Queen Lily Ruckler, negotiations have ceased with the Commoner leaders of the world. The time for attempting peace is over. There is no other viable option. Mystical-Commoner World War II has been officially declared. Strike now. My heartfelt regrets, Elder Richard Harcourt." I lowered the missive while Bonnie jumped onto the table, sitting regally but watching everyone warily in front of where I stood, and I stated, "We're officially at war. I want to strike Sydney's defenses within the hour, before they realize what's happening." My dead gaze landed on Antonio. I blinked, and then moved on to every gentleman and lady in the room, letting my power touch each of them so that no one would dare argue with me. "I will lead the attack alongside Elder Farrar."
I did.
I relished it, my rage finally finding a useful outlet.
Surprise, surprise, I fucking finally found something I excelled at.
Bloodshed. — Scarlett Dawn

It is never appropriate to comment on a woman's breasts. I would never do it on the street or at a supermarket, but when I'm sitting a table signing books, sometimes I notice that a woman will have remarkable breasts. And I will maybe quietly say something about it. It's not in a sexual way, because I'm a gay man - I would never say to a man "great ass" because that would be sort of creepy.. I hope it's not creepy to quietly tell a woman she has nice breasts. — David Sedaris

I want to get the American people to start sitting at a table together and talking to each other, holding court, and enjoying a meal - and it doesn't have an expense. — Kelly LeBrock

They were actually sitting at a table, like two old friends, not like the hunter
and the hunted. And it wasn't especially awkward. They were comfortable together,
despite the fact that she'd hit him with a bus. Maybe his scheme would work. — Janet Evanovich

I believe in roses. And I believe in putting roses into a vase and sitting the vase on the table. I believe in getting lost and being found, I believe in going barefoot, and in laughter! My religion is to laugh at myself, whenever I can! I believe in the sunlight and in grey skies with big, beautiful clouds! — C. JoyBell C.

As Rosa rolled the hard boiled egg across my forehead I wasn't as disturbed as you might think, even though I was sitting on a plastic table in a five star hotel bathroom in my underwear, being chattered at in Spanish by a lady I'd met only the day before in the herb and flower market. The truth is, I've probably done stranger things in hotel bathrooms. — Becky Wicks

Alexey Alexandorivich had seen nothing striking or improper in the fact that his wife was sitting with Vronsky at a separate table, in eager conversation with him about something. But he noticed that to the rest of the party this appeared to be something striking and improper. He made up his mind that he must speak of it to his wife. — Leo Tolstoy

Once I found her sitting straight up at the dining room table with her eyes half open, staring at nothing. When I touched her shoulder, she didn't even look at me. In spite of all this, or maybe because of it, I always smiled and said hi to her in the halls. I helped her with her English Lit homework and practically did her PowerPoint presentation on the New York Stock Exchange on the morning that it was due. Even so, whenever she saw me coming, she always looked away, like she knew how much crap people gave me about it - not my real friends; I'm talking about world-class losers like Dean Whittaker and Shep Monroe, rich jerks whose Fortune 500 dads swam the icy seas of international finance looking for their next meal. None of that bothered me. — Joe Schreiber

Caleb and Kyle couldn't keep their eyes off me, like I was the queen of frigging England sitting at their table or something. — Shelly Crane

Under business as usual, by mid-century things are looking rather grim," he told me a few hours after I had arrived at One Tree. We were sitting at a beat-up picnic table, looking out over the heartbreaking blue of the Coral Sea. The island's large and boisterous population of terns was screaming in the background. Caldeira paused: "I mean, they're looking grim already. — Elizabeth Kolbert

Katherine was sitting alone at a table, but she didn't look lonely. In fact, there was a small, defiant smile on her lips. As if she wanted to be alone. As if the fact people avoided her was a badge. — Victoria Schwab

Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner, unless you eat some of what's on that plate. Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born here in America doesn't make you an American. — Malcolm X

Many Americans and Western Europeans proudly trumpet the diversity of cosmopolises like London and New York without realizing that cosmopolitanism does not mean people of different skin colors all sitting around over wine at a bistro table complaining about organized religion. It means people who hold profoundly different, even mutually exclusive, beliefs and cultural norms functioning in a shared space based on toleration of disagreement. — Jonathan A.C. Brown

I've never seen anything like the way some young people behave. They go out on a date, and they're sitting opposite each other at a table, and they're not looking at each other, and they text each other as though they're deaf-mutes. It's insane. — Iris Apfel

We've been sitting at the compromise table for a long time. We're just waiting for that cold chair to be warmed up by the Republican leadership. They still have time to do the right thing and be responsible. They just seem to be moving further and further away from it. — Debbie Wasserman Schultz

Sitting at the single table in a disreputable pile of lumber mistakenly called a building. — Andrea K. Host

Everyone, this is the new girl. Elder knows her. New girl, this is everyone." A few people look up politely; some actually smile. Most, however, look wary at best, disgusted at worse. The nurse closest to me jabs her finger behind her ear and starts whispering to nobody.
"What's wrong with her?" I ask Harley as he leads me to the table he was sitting at.
"Oh, don't worry, we're all mad here."
I giggle, mostly from nerves. "It's a good thing I read Alice in Wonder-land . I definitely think I've fallen into the rabbit hole."
"Read what?" Harley asks.
"Never mind." All around me, eyes follow my every move.
"Look," I say loudly. "I know I look different. But I'm just a person, like you." I hold my head up high, looking them all in the eyes, trying to hold their stares for as long as possible.
"You tell 'em," says Harley with another Cheshire grin. — Beth Revis

Eve hugged her, hard. "It's beautiful," she said. "What happened to the old frosting?"
Shane, sitting at the table, raised his hand. "Took one for the team."
"Jesus, you ate it? All of it?"
"Nah." He held up the bowl that was sitting in front of him. There was still about half a cup left. "Couldn't finish it all."
Eve blinked and looked at Claire, who shrugged and said, "I always thought he was sweet. — Rachel Caine

He found Luciana sitting alone at a table in the Allied officers' night club, where the drunken Anzac major who had brought her there had been stupid enough to desert her for the ribald company of some singing comrades at the bar.
"All right, I'll dance with you," she said, before Yossarian could even speak. "But I won't let you sleep with me."
"Who asked you?" Yossarian asked her.
"You don't want to sleep with me?" she exclaimed with surprise.
"I don't want to dance with you. — Joseph Heller

I haven't said anything about your novel yet,' he said, taking a seat on the other side of the table. 'But it made an indelible impression on me. I was deeply shaken after reading it.'
'Why's that?' I asked.
'Because you went so far. You went so unbelievably far. I was glad you did, I was sitting here, smiling, because you had brought it off. When we met you wanted to be a writer. No one else had had the idea. Only you. And then you achieved it. But that wasn't why I was shaken. It was because you went so far. Do you really have to go that far, I thought at the time. And it was frightening. Speaking for myself, I can't go that far.'
'What do you mean? How do you mean I went so far? It's just a standard novel.'
'You say things about yourself it's unheard of to say. Not least the story of the thirteen-year-old. I'd never have thought you would dare. — Karl Ove Knausgard

Even here, in the U.S., I walk my daughter's dog and I look for interesting people sitting at a picnic table and I walk over with my white hair and I ask, "Would you mind if I sat and rested here for a minute?" Nobody would refuse that. — Rita Gelman

Nico," I said at last, "shouldn't you be sitting at the Hades table?"
He shrugged. "Technically, yes. But if I sit alone at my table, strange things happen. Cracks open in the floor. Zombies crawl out and start roaming around. It's a mood disorder. I can't control it. That's what I told Chiron."
"And is it true?" I asked.
Nico smiled thinly. "I have a note from my doctor."
Will raised his hand. "I'm his doctor."
"Chiron decided it wasn't worth arguing about," Nico said. "As long as I sit at a table with other people, like ... oh, these guys for instance ... the zombies stay away. Everybody's happier."
Will nodded serenely. "It's the strangest thing. Not that Nico would ever misuse his powers to get what he wants."
"Of course not," Nico agreed. — Rick Riordan

Hadley grabs the laminated safety instructions from the seat pocket in front of her and frowns at the cartoon men and women who seem weirdly delighted to be bailing out of a series of cartoon planes. Beside her, Oliver stifles a laugh, and she glances up again.
"What?"
"I've just never seen anyone actually read one of those things before,"
"Well," she says, "then you're very lucky to be sitting next to me."
"Just in general?"
She grins. "Well, particularly in case of an emergency."
"Right," he says. "I feel incredibly safe. When I'm knocked unconscious by my tray table during some sort of emergency landing, I can't wait to see all five-foot-nothing of you carry me out of here. — Jennifer E. Smith

Sitting at the table were three Russian prisoners of war that had been assigned to work on her husband's farm. Hesitantly, we sat down with these men. I couldn't understand a word they said and I couldn't know the awful circumstances under which I would see them again. We stayed at the farm that entire day and she let us sleep in a nice large bed, tucked under the eaves of the attic. It would have been perfect except that we didn't have any pillows or blankets but at least there wasn't a corpse in bed with us! The nights were getting cold this time of year, besides the Russians had made me feel considerably uncomfortable. When I asked her about her neighbors she avoided the question and so I thought it best to continue our search, in hopes of a better place to stay. — Hank Bracker

Im a vegetarian," Luce said. She was glancing around the tables , looking for two people in particular. Daniel and Cam. She'd just feel more at ease is she knew where they were so she could go about having her luch pretending that she didn't see either one of them. But so far no sightings.
"Vegetarian, huh?" Arriane pursed her lips. "Hippie parents or your own meager attempt at rebellion?"
"Uh, neither. I just dont-"
"Like meat?" Arriane steered Luce's shoulders nintey degrees so that she was looking directly at Daniel, sitting at a table across the room. Luce let out a long exhale. There he was.
"Now, does that go for all meat?" Arriane sang loudly. "Like you wouldn't sink your teeth into him?" - Fallen — Lauren Kate

The basket would never make her famous or end up in a museum. The best part of it was the making of it, sitting at the table weaving while outside the lake crashed into shore and the seagulls roosted somewhere for the night and two women stopped for a moment to watch. — Ellen Airgood

We walk up the sandy slope toward the dining terrace. I see Troy sitting at a table with some people I know. I look at Scottie to see if she sees him, and she is giving him the middle finger. The dining terrace gasps, but I realize it's because of the sunset and the green flash. We missed it. The flash flashed. The sun is gone, and the sky is pink. I reach to grab the offending hand, but instead, I correct her gesture.
"Here, Scottie. Don't let that finger stand by itself like that. Bring up the other fingers just a little bit. There you go. That's the cool way to do it."
Troy stares at us and smiles a bit. He's completely confused.
"All right, that's enough." I suddenly feel sorry for Troy. He must feel awful. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

A woman had joined the two men sitting at table three. She was a blonde, one of those fatal blondes, six foot tall or near enough, with hair the color of clover honey. — Martha Reed

I find myself lacing my fingers together and bowing my head. Sometimes my father did this in the morning before sitting down at the breakfast table, but I never asked him what he was doing. Still, I would like to feel like I belong to my father again before I . . . well, before it's over. — Veronica Roth

I had this extraordinarily bizarre moment when, two Fridays ago, my missus gave birth to our second child at 11am and by the same time the following day I was sitting around a table with Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio in Rabat in Morocco, rehearsing a scene we were going to shoot the next day. — Mark Strong

But he said to his wife, sitting next to him on the couch in the TV room, that rarely had he seen a funeral at which it seemed like almost nobody in attendance had any idea why they were there. His wife, who had heard things like this from him before, reminded him of a ceremony he had presided over only a few months ago about which he had had the same reaction. 'Oh right,' the minister said. 'Yes. That one was much worse.' He leaned down to the coffee table and picked up the remote. — Mark Wallace

I can just imagine myself sitting down at the head of the table and pouring out the tea," said Anne, shutting her eyes ecstatically. "And asking Diana if she takes sugar! I know she doesn't but of course I'll ask her just as if I didn't know. — L.M. Montgomery

But the guy sitting at the table next to me who'd been imagining killing his wife and was now imagining seducing me wasn't the problem. No, it was the guy sitting across from me, the man with the bright orange hunting cap pulled low over his eyes, the guy waiting for the right moment to rob the cafe ... he was the one who worried me. — Lori Brighton

I looked to the sitting room then and gaped at Alec's body lying across my sofa making it look smaller than it was. He was reading something.
A book.
"What are you readin'?" I curiously asked.
"That porn book we were talking about earlier at my house. This dude is my God! He just fucked this Ana chick while she was on her period."
"Stop it!" I screeched. "Stop readin' and put the bloody book down!"
He was reading Fifty Shades of Grey.
I was both horrified and mortified.
Alec got up from the sofa, placed the book on the coffee table and turned in my direction.
"Why are you blushing?"
Him noticing my embarrassment only caused my already red cheeks to heat up even more.
"Oh damn, your cheeks are so flushed," Alec said and took a step towards me. — L.A. Casey

But now, sitting on this airplane on my way back to the life I went on to fashion after she left, I think of her differently. I see her so many ways: sitting back on her heels at the side of the bathtub, singing softly as she washes Sharla and my backs; watching at the window for the six o'clock arrival of our father; wrapping Christmas presents on the wide expanse of her bed; biting her lip as she stood before the open cupboards, making out the grocery list; leaning out the kitchen window that last summer to call Sharla and me in for supper. Most clearly, though, I see her sitting at the kitchen table, in her old, usual spot. There is a cup of coffee before her, but she doesn't drink it. Instead, she stares out the window. I see the sharp angle of her cheekbone, the beautiful whitish down at the side of face, illuminated by the sun. Her hands are quiet, resting in the cloth bowl of her apron. She sits still as a statue - waiting, I can see now; she was always waiting. -What We Keep — Elizabeth Berg

Magnus pondered the twelve people taking up residence at the Hawk and Spear Inn, realizing that nearly half of them wanted him dead.

"And you're definitely one of them," he muttered as Nic trudged through the meeting hall, glaring as he passed the prince. Magnus was sitting alone at a table in front of a sketchbook he'd found in a drawer in his room. "Cassian, look," he called. "I drew a picture of you."

Magnus raised the sketchbook. His fingers smeared with charcoal, he held up a page on which he'd drawn an image of a skinny boy hanging from a noose, his tongue dangling from his mouth, two morbid Xs where the eyes should have been.

Nic, allegedly a very friendly fellow to everyone else in the world, shot Magnus a look of sheer hatred. "You think that's funny?"

"What? You don't like it? Well, they do say art is subjective. — Morgan Rhodes

My sisters had been living in the House of Wind since they'd arrived in Velaris.
They did not leave the palace built into the upper parts of a flat-topped mountain overlooking the city. They did not ask for anything, or anyone.
So I would go to them.
Lucien was waiting in the sitting room when Rhys and I came downstairs at last, my mate having given the silent order for them to return.
Unsurprisingly, Cassian and Azriel were casually seated in the dining room across the hall, eating lunch and marking every single breath Lucien emitted. Cassian smirked at me, brows flicking up.
I shot him a warning glare that dared him to comment. Azriel, thankfully, just kicked Cassian under the table.
Cassian gawked at Azriel as if to declare I wasn't going to say anything while I approached the open archway into the sitting room, Lucien rising to his feet. — Sarah J. Maas

It was just the two of us, inside there with just mirrors, all the way around us. Everywhere we looked, there were these two freaks, sitting at a table, eyeballing each other — Christian Bale

He said he was - this is exactly what he said - he said he was sitting at the table in the kitchen, all by himself, drinking a glass of ginger ale and eating saltines and reading 'Dombey and Son', and all of a sudden Jesus sat down in the other chair and asked if he could have a small glass of ginger ale. A small glass, mind you - that's exactly what he said. I mean he says things like that, and yet he thinks he's perfectly qualified to give me a lot of advice and stuff! I could just spit! I could! It's like being in a lunatic asylum and having another patient all dressed up as a doctor come over to you and start taking your pulse or something ... — J.D. Salinger

Was it possible that a bustling display of energy might only be a camouflage for a spiritual vacuum? The thought so impressed me that I mentioned it next day to the French purser, at whose table I was sitting. He nodded his agreement. "Stevenson is right," he said. "Indeed, if you will pardon my saying so, the idea applies particularly to you Americans. A lot of your countrymen keep so busy getting things done that they reach the end of their lives without ever having lived at all." — Arthur Gordon Webster

These are my cards on the table. I think you're beautiful. I feel like I'm an idiot with dirt on his face sitting next to someone out of a painting. I think...I think I'm just plain stupid for you. I know that's not exactly sweet talk out of a play. Frankly, I'd kiss your shadow. I'd kiss dirt that had your heel print on it. I like feeling this way. I don't give a damn what you or anyone else thinks...this is how it feels every time I look at you. — Scott Lynch

I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner. Sitting at the table doesn't make you a diner. — Malcolm X

Sitting at the table, watching the cards being dealt, I heard a man say that the difference between an amateur and a pro is that the pro doesn't have an emotional reaction to losing anymore. It's just the other side of winning. I guess I'm a farmer now, because I'm used to loss like this, to death of all kinds, and to rot. It's just the other side of life. It is your first big horse and all he meant to you, and it is also his bones and skin breaking down in the compost pile, almost ready to be spread on the fields. — Kristin Kimball

I scored a goal!" I said.
"Oh, great!" Mom said.
When we returned home and I was sitting at the kitchen table to eat supper, I said it again.
"I scored today!"
"Was it a match?" Yngve said.
"No," I said. "We haven't had any matches yet. It was training."
"Then it means nothing," he said.
A couple of tears detached themselves and rolled down my cheeks. Dad looked at me with that stern, annoyed expression of his.
"For Christ's sake, you can't cry about THAT!" he said. "There must be SOMETHING you can take without blubbering!"
By then the tears were in full flow. — Karl Ove Knausgard

Watch the Film You Paid to See"

In my bedroom my weight is three times more
than what I'd weigh on Jupiter.
If your kitchen was on Mercury I'd be heavier by half
of you while sitting at your table.
On Uranus, a quarter of my weight is meat,
or an awareness of myself as flesh.
On Venus the light would produce a real volume around me
that would make me look happy in photographs.
This is how it is with quantity in any life. It's a fact
that on certain planets I'd actually be able to mount
the stairs four at a time. Think of the most beautiful horse
in the world: a ridiculously beautiful golden horse,
with a shimmering coat; it would weigh no more
than an empty handbag on Mars. You need
to get real about these things. — Todd Colby

I hope to be 70 and sitting at the table with journalists, talking about my films. — Elena Anaya

My mom was sitting at the kitchen table. She'd set her coffee down, making a noise that made me look her way. I'd begun to notice her less and less often, like her colors were fading and blending in with walls. She was shrinking. Or maybe her sphere of influence in the family was shrinking. My dad glanced at her, too, and then wrote something on a napkin.
He slid it across the counter to me - Don't worry. Come home in one piece. Have fun and act like a sixteen-year-old for a change. — Laura Anderson Kurk

I don't know whether it's a fear of standing up, but I really love sitting at the table and blabbing. I learn so much that way, and I think I get free that way, free from inhibition and fears. — Mare Winningham

Real winning and losing all takes place at the meditation table. This is where the battles are. Winning is stopping thought. Losing is sitting there and being subjected to all kinds of ridiculous thoughts — Frederick Lenz

I think you'll see if you look at 'Up', we've focused a lot on labor (and the forces trying to keep labor down) and have featured everything from Wal Mart workers, to on-the-ground organizers, to union presidents to restaurant workers sitting at the table sharing their experience and expertise. — Chris Hayes

It was cold in the street and I crossed to the lighted blaze of shops in Rue Fuad. In a grocer's window I saw a small tin of olives with the name Orvieto on it, and overcome by a sudden longing to be on the right side of the Mediterranean, entered the shop: bought it: had it opened there and then: and sitting down at a marble table in that gruesome light I began to eat Italy, its dark scorched flesh, hand-modelled spring soil, dedicated vines. I felt that Melissa would never understand this. I should have to pretend I had lost the money. I did not see at first the great car which she had abandoned in the street with its engine running. She came into the shop with swift and resolute suddenness and said, with the air of authority that Lesbians, or women with money, assume with the obviously indigent: 'What did you mean by your remark about the antinomian nature of irony?' - or some such sally which I have forgotten. — Lawrence Durrell

Good morning, sunshine," he said, his smile quickly disappearing in the face of her murderous glance when she raised her face to look at him.

"Shut up and die, morning person. Coffee," she mumbled.

Right. Note to self. Mate was not a morning person. He poured a cup of coffee and placed it on the table near her hand along with the sweetener and cream. He watched as she poured three packets of Equal into the coffee with her forehead still on the table. He looked on in amazement as she felt around and unscrewed the cap to the cream before dousing the dark liquid. She stirred for a second before dragging the cup to her lips. After a few sips she was able to lift her head. By the time she had finished half a cup she was sitting upright. When she finished the cup, her eyes were open and she was looking around.

"You need to be a coffee commercial," Connor said, staring at his mate. — Alanea Alder

To work for better understanding among people, one does not have to be a former president sitting at a fancy conference room table. Peace can be made in the neighborhoods, the living rooms, the playing fields, and the classrooms of our country. — Jimmy Carter

At the table of a gentleman living in the Chausee d'Antin was served up an Arles sausage of enormous size. "Will you accept a slice?" the host asked a lady who was sitting next to him; "you see it has come from the right factory."It is really very large," said the lady, casting on it a roguish glance; "What a pity it is unlike anything." — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

The third day, he wasn't on the road. I wanted to feel relieved. Instead, I was disappointed. Until I got home. Mom had had the day off, the first in a long while. So, of course, she was home when I got there. And so was Joe. Sitting at our kitchen table. Wearing dress pants, a dress shirt. And a bow tie. Which, unbeknownst to me, turned out to be one of my greatest weaknesses. I — T.J. Klune

When I was in fourth grade, a novelist came to talk to my English class. She told us that being an author meant sitting at the kitchen table in pajamas, drinking tea with the dogs at your feet. — J. Courtney Sullivan

Lawford had soundlessly stolen a pace or two nearer, and by stopping forward he could, each in turn, scrutinize the little intent company sitting over his story around the lamp at the further end of the table; squatting like little children with their twigs and pins, fishing for wonders on the brink of the unknown. — Walter De La Mare

I am absolutely convinced that the E.U. will still be around. I am convinced the U.K. will be sitting at that table and not negotiating an exit, but being there to stay. — Mark Rutte

Yet, even allowing for these failings, was not St John Clarke still a person more like myself than anyone else sitting round the table? That was a sobering thought. He, too, for longer years, had existed in the imagination, even though this imagination led him (in my eyes) to a world ludicrously contrived, socially misleading, professionally nauseous. On top of that, had he not on this earlier occasion gone out of his way to speak a word of carefully hedged praise for my own work? Was that, therefore, an aspect of his critical faculty for which he should be given credit, or was it an even stronger reason for guarding against the possibility of corruption at the hands of one whose own writings could not be approved? — Anthony Powell

This past Thanksgiving, my father was at the farm, and I had all 11 dogs in the house with a father who never allowed dogs in the house. And he got up to leave the table and came back and Solomon was in his chair. And he says, "This dog is in my chair." And I said, "It's the other way around, you're sitting in his chair." — Oprah Winfrey

Again and again we picture ourselves sitting together with the people we feel drawn to all our lives, precisely these so-called simple people, whom naturally we imagine much differently from the way they truly are, for if we actually sit down with them we see that they aren't the way we've pictured them and that we absolutely don't belong with them, as we've talked ourselves into believing, and we get rejected at their table and in their midst as we logically should get after sitting down at their table and believing we belonged with them or we could sit with them for even the shortest time without being punished, which is the biggest mistake, I thought. All our lives we yearn to be with these people and want to reach out to them and when we realize what we feel for them are rejected by them and indeed in the most brutal fashion. — Thomas Bernhard

But at night, once I had taken off my makeup and my defenses were down and my mind started to wander, it seemed rather than new love sitting down at the table of my life to join me, old love managed to find its way back in ... — Mandy Hale

She thought, if we stay here, soon enough it will be you sitting at the table and me, I don't know, cooking something, and the snow flying, and the old man so glad we're here he'll be off in his study praying about it. And geraniums in the window. Red ones. — Marilynne Robinson

Would you like to know how Charlotte got those nine stitches?" I asked suddenly, in a tone of voice that sounded perfectly normal to me. "We were up at the Lake. Seymour had written to Charlotte, inviting her to come up and visit us, and her mother finally let her. What happened was, she sat down in the middle of our driveway one morning to pet Boo Boo's cat, and Seymour threw a stone at her. He was twelve. That's all there was to it.

He threw it at her because she looked so beautiful sitting there in the middle of the driveway with Boo Boo's cat. Everybody knew that for God's sake-me, Charlotte, Boo Boo, Waker, Walt, the whole family." I stared at the pewter ashtray on the coffee table. "Charlotte never said a word to him about it. Not a word." I looked up at my guest, rather expecting him to dispute me, to call me a liar. I am a liar, of course. Charlotte never did understand why Seymour threw that stone at her. My guest didn't dispute me though. — J.D. Salinger

I came from here, you came from there.
And now we're both sitting at the same table. — Amin Maalouf

You'll not sit at the dinning table and expect the food to jump into your mouth. If you're hungry, pick a spoon and start eating. Stop sitting in the dinning world to look at the eaters, it is your turn to start eating if you know you're hungry. — Michael Bassey Johnson

When we're married and he looks at me sitting beside him at the table, he should feel as if he's fought a great battle and accomplished something - namely, winning me. He'll treasure me more. I like being treasured. — Linda Howard

If you persuade liberalism that its dismissive marginalizing of religious discourse is a violation of its own chief principle, all you will gain is the right to sit down at liberalism's table where before you were denied an invitation; but it will still be liberalism's table that you are sitting at, and the etiquette of the conversation will still be hers. — Stanley Fish

Food is about communal togetherness. Our family does sit at the table. I think it's a great tragedy if a family doesn't have a table, as there is such an atmosphere of good will and warmth when we have eight people sitting around it. — Jonathan Dimbleby

This is what I like, sitting at a table and watching people go by. It does something to your outlook on life. The Anglo-Saxons make a great mistake not staring at people from a sidewalk table. — Patricia Highsmith

Sitting down at the table is a sacred event. It's the heart of the home. People have ginormous homes or crappy little homes, but the kitchen is where we always end up sitting. It's where the stories happen, the family happens. — Debi Mazar

I don't know what it is that comes over me, but suddenly I'm crossing to his side of the table and sitting down in his lap, arms wrapping around his neck. His lips are soft against mine, and when I part them he tenderly obliges, tasting me delicately. His fingers prod at my back, never going further than the small indent at the base of the spine, and it's all very lovely and nice.
"I think I could get used to you," I say, looking down into his beautiful brown eyes, deep like the color of autumn.
(From "Undone, The Romance of Nick and Layla [Part 5"]). — Crystal Cierlak

At a table behind, a man was sitting with his knees pinched together and eating as if it were a punishment: for a few seconds his hand sped between the carton of fries, the small tub of ketchup and the chewing mouth, then he swallowed, grabbed the hamburger with both hands, put it to his lips and took a large bite. — Karl Ove Knausgard

Malfoy," said Ron, sitting down on George's other side and glaring over at the Slytherin table. George looked up in time to see Malfoy pretending to faint with terror again. "That little git," he said calmly. "He wasn't so cocky last night when the dementors were down at our end of the train. Came running into our compartment, didn't he, Fred?" "Nearly wet himself," said Fred, with a contemptuous glance at Malfoy. — J.K. Rowling

I stepped out of the shower and dried my hair, rubbed on body lotion, cleaned my ears. Then to the kitchen to heat up the last of the coffee. Only to discover: no one sitting at the opposite side of the table. Staring at that chair where no one sat, I felt like a tiny child in a De Chirico painting, left behind all alone in a foreign country. — Haruki Murakami

I am the king. You're the knight sitting at my round table. That's the nature of our relationship when it comes to war or other conflict resolution in this family. — Sarah Black

But in a tournament, you can be said in for all your money at any point so you can't make any mistakes so you have to, it's all about where you're sitting at the table. — Al Alvarez

In Shakespeare's day much less time was spent in eating and drinking than formerly, when, besides breakfast in the forenoon and dinners, there were "beverages" or "nuntion" after dinner, and supper before going to bed - "a toie brought in by hardie Canutus," who was a gross feeder. Generally there were, except for the young who could not fast till dinnertime, only two meals daily, dinner and supper. Yet the Normans had brought in the habit of sitting long at the table - a custom not yet altogether abated, since the great people, especially at banquets, sit till two or three o'clock in the afternoon; so that it is a hard matter to rise and go to evening prayers and return in time for supper. — William Shakespeare

Already, the brain consumed more than a quarter of the body's blood supply ... an organ accounting for only a small percentage of body mass. If brains grew larger, and better, then perhaps they would consume more - perhaps so much that, like an infection, they would overrun their hosts and kill the bodies that transported them. Or perhaps, in their infinite cleverness, they would find a way to destroy themselves and each other. There were times when, as he [Stone] sat at State Department or Defense Department meetings, and looked around the table, he would see nothing more than a dozen gray, convoluted brains sitting on the table ... Just brains, sitting around, trying to decide how to outwit other brains, at other conference tables.
Idiotic. — Michael Crichton

For the longest time I was so sick I didn't have the strength or inclination to read, but looking at my books stacked up on the bedside table was comforting, like having old friends sitting in the room with me, friends who didn't require anything of me, friends who brought me great pleasure just with their presence, waiting until I could engage with them again.... bibliophiles know the inanimate pleasure of the friendship with books. — Lindsey O'Connor

We hold these stories and mad idea and events in our head and they run around and around telling us we are different, separate, broken.
Then one day the mad idea escapes the asylum. Most times it's unplanned. It just tumbles out on the lap of the man sitting next to us on the bus, or it slips sideways into a conversation on line at the Trader Joe's or it falls out at the kitchen table when your neighbor comes to pick up her cat.
And there is a terrifying moment when it first hits the light of day, where we think, "holy mother of God! What have I done? How could I have been to casual with my crazy ways?"
But the man on the bus just smiles and nods his head, and the casher takes a moment to look us in the eye and the neighbor sits for a cup of tea and together we move into some new agreements that we are all in fact crazy and it's so much nicer to be out of the closet with it all. — Maureen Muldoon

Truman had been sitting in a chair in the bedroom with several new books stacked on a table beside him. Did the President like to read himself to sleep at night, McCormick asked. "No, young man," said Truman, "I like to read myself awake." Thomas — David McCullough

The gaze that the colonized subject casts at the colonist's sector is a look of lust, a look of envy. Dreams of possession. Every type of possession; of sitting at the colonist's table and sleeping in his bed, preferably with his wife. The colonized man is an envious man. — Frantz Fanon